Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is bringing up—for the third time—a defense authorization bill that Democrats have already blocked twice and have vowed to block again, continuing his leadership strategy of repeating his failures over and over and over, maybe to keep the Senate from actually doing anything? That's Sen. Harry Reid's
opinion, and he says that the Democrats will oppose the bill again, because McConnell is trying to force it outside of the full appropriations process.
Reid said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was "wasting the Senate's time" by repeatedly filing procedural motions to move forward with the defense bill that "he knows will fail." […]
McConnell sought to pressure Democrats Wednesday, saying that with a budget deal reached they should let the legislation move forward. […]
But Democrats, including Reid, are voicing concerns about moving a stand-alone defense spending bill.
The Nevada Democrat said that Republicans "tried this piecemeal approach already. It didn't work."
Reid and fellow Democrats insist that an omnibus spending agreement—on both non-defense and defense spending—has to be struck, in part to force Republicans to stay at the table to negotiate the full budget that complies with the
deal struck last month. Sen Chuck Schumer (D-NY) explained Democrats' position. "We could pass a defense bill and then they could say, 'Well, we'll do a [continuing resolution] on the rest of it,' violating the 50-50 deal. We need to negotiate an omnibus all at once and all together."
So the Senate will spend the next few days—again—discussing a bill that—again—won't pass. That's Mitch McConnell's Senate.