Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) — desperate to pass a stalled tax extenders and unemployment bill — suddenly is in a New York state of mind in his effort to cut a deal on the legislation.
Reid met with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg Wednesday to discuss a wide range of issues. And Thursday morning, he singled out the Empire State with New York's junior Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand presiding over the Senate. He then tried to leverage local New York interests against Republicans, who blocked a procedural vote on the bill last week and show little sign of movement.
"Mayor Bloomberg was here trying to reach out on a bipartisan basis to get this bill passed. He called a number of Republican governors, reported to me as to those conversations," Reid said on the floor Thursday. "Without a single exception, Republican governors, Democratic governors ... lots of them have called me [to express] how really desperate some parts of this country are for this money."
The majority leader brought up the issues of FMAP—a federal program to provide states with funding for Medicaid—as well as funding for teachers, police officers and firefighters. The New York Congressional delegation huddled both on their own Wednesday morning and then again Wednesday afternoon with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to convey their serious concern about getting Medicaid and educational funding through the Senate.
House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel told POLITICO Wednesday that New York representatives took a considerable amount of time to discuss the issue of Medicaid with Pelosi, trying to get the speaker to put pressure on the Senate to move on the stalled benefits package.
"We dealt with FMAP, in terms of being reassured it's a national issue," Rangel said.
GOP senators are insistent that the tax extenders bill be offset in compliance with the upper chamber's "pay-go" rules, which require all new spending bills to be deficit neutral. Reid, however, continued to express his belief that an emergency spending designation — which would exempt the bill from needing to be fully off-set — is necessary.
"We've tried to bring it to the floor but the Republicans have said 'no'," Reid said of the bill. "Once we finally succeeded in bringing it to the floor, we tried to bring it to a vote. The Republicans said 'no.' Somewhere along the line throughout these charades, this jobs-creating bill has become a political football and that is too bad. The debate is focused more on winning and losing than whether what I'm doing is right."
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) contested the notion that Republican objections are purely political, reiterating the need that any scaled back version of the extenders bill not add to the deficit.
“The only thing Democrats are insisting on in this debate is that we add to the debt," McConnell said. “The principle they’re defending here is not some program. The principle Democrats are defending is that they will not pass a bill unless it adds to the debt.”
