Dems ding McConnell for first week in charge

A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) dinged the new GOP majority leader on Thursday for breaking its word twice in the opening days of the new Congress.

{mosads}Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced Thursday that the Senate wouldn’t be voting again this week — after saying that Friday votes would be an important part of his revamp of the Senate. 

Democrats had already criticized McConnell this week for using Senate rules to bypass the Energy and Natural Resources Committee to bring a bill authorizing the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

“Between his broken promises, ‘bitter’ opening speech and widely-mocked attempt to claim credit for economic gains, it has not been a good first week for Senator McConnell and the Republican majority,” Reid’s spokesman, Adam Jentleson, said in a statement. “We hope Senate Republicans will rethink their approach in the coming weeks.”

Reid has been away from the Senate this week, as he recovers from an accident with exercise equipment shortly before Congress reconvened this year. 

As Jentleson noted, Democrats have also knocked McConnell for suggesting that gains the economy made last year began around the time Republicans became a good bet to take over the Senate.

A spokesman for McConnell  pushed back on Jentleson’s statement, saying that the Senate would vote Monday on the Keystone bill the Energy panel passed Thursday. 

McConnell’s office said the majority leader only used the rule bypassing the committee to get the process started, and that Democrats have known from the start that the panel bill would come to the floor.