Lawrence O'Donnell Slams Eric Cantor For Not Knowing How a Bill Becomes a Law
Lawrence O'Donnell opened his show tonight saying Eric Cantor needs to go watch Schoolhouse Rock, which my friend Laffy over at The Political Carnival also made note of today. Apparently the Republican House Majority Leader is unaware of how a bill becomes a law.
As she noted, Taegan Goddard made this his Extra Bonus Quote of the Day:
"What this bill says is it reiterates again the deadline, and that the Senate should act before the deadline, and that's what the American people are expecting. The bill then says if the Senate does not act, then H.R. 1 [the House-passed bill] will be the law of the land."
-- House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), quoted by the Washington Post, forgetting that bills -- even symbolic ones -- cannot become law without also passing the Senate and getting the President's signature.
I did not record this live so the beginning of my recording didn't catch all of this, but here's the clip from Schoolhouse Rock that Lawrence O'Donnell played part of during the beginning of his show tonight before he tore into Cantor in his opening segment above.
I don't know about anyone else, but this game playing by Republicans over a shut down of the government when there are real lives at stake if it happens and their demands have been met and then some with the suffering they want to inflict on the American public while the rich keep their tax cuts is getting old in my book. I'm tired of hearing about who's going to cut more when any cuts to social programs are the last thing we need if we don't want our economy to head into another downward spiral. Apparently Eric Cantor is more worried about scoring points with the right wing base of his party than whether his constituents suffer if they do shut down the government because they refuse to negotiate with the Democrats. Here's more from the link on Goddard's post.
House Republicans plan symbolic bill to pressure Senate on shutdown:
