J's Cafe Nette

President Bush invited Senate Majority Leader Reid to the White House to discuss the stalemate over the war funding supplemental.

Mr. Reid’s response? Basically he told the president to take his invitation and shove it.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday turned down President Bush’s invitation to meet at the White House next week to try to break through the stalemate over Iraq war spending bill, charging the invitation came with “preconditions.”

Reid’s response was the latest in the intensifying push-and-shove match between the Democratic-controlled Congress and the White House.

Reid said Bush needs to “take a seat of negotiation, of compromise, of direction change.”

“The president is inviting us down to the White House with preconditions. That’s not the way things should operate,” he said at a press conference on Capitol Hill. “The president is now having to deal with a Congress. He’s never had to do that before. The president in the past, he has just done whatever he wanted. He had a big rubberstamp here up on Capitol Hill, whatever he wanted, they stamped OK. That’s not the way it is now.”

Just how long are the leaders in congress going to keep telling us there’s a new sheriff in town?

Since when has a leader of congress refused to work with the President of the United States to get a compromise bill they can both be satisfied with?

Bush shoved back with these words:

“Democratic leaders in Congress are bent on using a bill that funds our troops to make a political statement about the war,” Bush said. “They need to do it quickly, get it to my desk so I can veto it. And then Congress can get down to the business of funding our troops without strings and without further delay.”

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino called Reid’s rejection of the president’s invitation a “knee-jerk reaction.”

“The invitation stands, we would like for them to come down and talk with us,” Perino told reporters at the White House.

Bush said without funding, the “clock is ticking for our troops in the field.”

“Instead of approving that vital funding, the Democratic leadership in Congress has spent the last 64 days pushing legislation that would undercut our troops just as we are beginning to make progress in Baghdad,” said Bush, who sent the funding request to lawmakers 64 days ago.

Speaker Pelosi also weighed in with her “do-nothing Congress” line.

Referring to a letter from some Republican senators and representatives asking her to call congress back in session and work on the supplemental bill, this was her response:

“Coming from the Republicans, who ran the ‘do-nothing’ Congress, this letter is a cheap political stunt,” Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said in a statement to FOX News.

“The American people overwhelmingly support the Democratic plan for change in Iraq, yet the president has threatened to veto legislation that contains his own benchmarks for success in Iraq, ensures our troops have the training they need, and supports our veterans,” Daly added.

I’m just wondering when the two leaders of congress are going to stand outside the White House and throw rotten tomatoes at it, hoping to hit the president while he is outside for some event.

Today, I am not proud of my government and the child-like behavior they are exhibiting. Compromise is the name of the game in politics and with the slim majorities the democrats have in both houses they would do well to remember that and work with a president who no longer has majority support in congress. Both sides must be willing to negotiate or nothing will ever get done and this will be the biggest “do nothing congress” our country has ever seen.

Meanwhile, our soldiers, marines, airmen and sailors in the field are being kicked around like a football.

This is unacceptable and thoroughly disgusting behavior.

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