Earlier today, CNN Congressional Reporter Dana Bash asked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid why the Senate would be blocking the small appropriations bills that the House will begin sending over today, including one that would allow for continued funding of pediatric cancer studies at the National Institutes of Health:
In this clip, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., gets a taste of the same medicine Democrats have been dishing out in the Obamacare debate for years. Why, he is asked by CNN’s Dana Bash, will he not go forward if the House passes a bill restoring NIH funding so that about three dozen kids with cancer can get treatment right away?
Reid, looking a bit flummoxed, personally attacks Bash’s intelligence for asking the question.
Speaking of the House, Reid asks, “What right do they have to pick and choose what part of government’s going to be funded?”
The answer to that question, of course, is that Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution states that all appropriations must be approved by Congress and, as David Freddoso notes in the linked article, as one of the two Houses of Congress, the House of Representatives certainly has a right to have a voice in appropriations. Perhaps Senator Reid may want to rethink his statement here.The Senate doesn’t have to accept the House’s appropriations bills, of course, but one does wonder if they’ll end up paying a political price for it.
