Two Democratic Senate leaders, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin, jolted the political world this week with an unexpected announcement: They’d reached a landmark agreement on an ambitious climate/taxes/health care package. It’s not yet clear if the bill will pass, but it could prove to be one of the most important legislative breakthroughs in recent memory.
Republicans aren’t handling the developments especially well.
To hear GOP lawmakers tell it, Democrats unveiled the compromise deal after a bipartisan vote on an unrelated measure — a bill Republicans intended to hold hostage until they were convinced the reconciliation package was dead. When they helped pass the other legislation, only to learn soon after that the dead bill was alive after all, they felt suckered.
But congressional Republicans aren’t just licking their wounds, they’re also lashing out wildly. On Wednesday night, for example, GOP senators rejected a burn pits bill for sick veterans — legislation dozens of those same senators recently voted for — as part of an apparent tantrum. House Republican leaders threw a related fit.
HuffPost reported that the party’s list of targets appears likely to grow.
Sen. Susan Collins, one of a handful of GOP senators working to garner support in her party for a bill to codify gay marriage, said the Democrats’ surprise embrace of a tax and climate change bill made her job much harder. “I just think the timing could not have been worse and it came totally out of the blue,” the Maine senator told HuffPost Thursday.
The Maine Republican added, “After we just had worked together successfully on gun safety legislation, on the CHIPS bill, it was a very unfortunate move that destroys the many bipartisan efforts that are under way.”
In other words, because Democrats are trying to advance their popular agenda in a way the GOP doesn’t like, Republicans are prepared to punish veterans and possibly reject marriage protections for American families.
In fact, as yesterday progressed, GOP rhetoric grew increasingly hysterical. The conservative Washington Times, for example, quoted Sen. John Cornyn saying, “I can only speak for this senator when I say this betrayal is an absolute declaration of political warfare. To look you in the eye and tell you one thing and to do another is absolutely unforgivable.”
But there was no deal to break. No handshake agreement. No one lied. No one abandoned their word. No one ignored any rules or violated any institutional norms.
To hysterically describe two Democratic leaders reaching a compromise agreement on their own party’s agenda as “an absolute declaration of political warfare” isn’t wrong, it’s bizarre.









