Harry Reid is finally pissed!  Here's his op-ed in today's WaPost:

At the beginning of this Congress, many of my Democratic colleagues wished to change the rules of the Senate to limit the minority party’s ability to kill important, job-creating legislation with arcane parliamentary maneuvers and needless delay. I opposed this rule change, believing we needed to preserve the right of the minority to offer amendments.

Rather than limiting those rights, we came to an understanding with Republicans, who agreed to respect the Senate’s tradition of conciliation in the interest of getting things done. They agreed to stop forcing procedural votes for the sake of slowing down legislation, and we agreed to preserve the minority party’s right to block bills when necessary.

Since then, Republicans have failed to abide by that agreement. Rather than working with Democrats to pass job-creating legislation, they have used procedural maneuvers to kill several common-sense bills — including a noncontroversial small-business loan program — that have previously passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. They have twice nearly shut down the government and forced our nation to the brink of default for the first time in its history.  [emphasis mine]

We now have two parties in America.  The Democrats are trying hard to keep our long tradition of governing by consensus and compromise.  The Republican party is determined to exclude anyone and everyone who disagrees with them.  They want a one party system, they want it all.  If the Senate needs to pass a bill, it will only be the one the Republicans approve of or it won't get done, the country be damned.  And yes, we are increasingly damned.  About half of the voters in America are Democrats, but the Republicans are working hard at disenfranchising every single one of us. 

--Trakker