Word: byrds
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Despite a lot of huddling last week, neither side in Congress is close to agreeing on a specific package. Said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Robert Dole: "We haven't put enough together to wad a shotgun." The Democrats were still busy jockeying for position. Senate Minority Leader Robert Byrd called on the President to submit a new budget with a vastly reduced deficit. House Speaker Tip O'Neill proposed a Camp David meeting of Administration and congressional leaders of both parties, at which a bipartisan budget could be worked out. The simplest but also the most provocative proposal...
...Republican-controlled Senate, Minority Leader Robert Byrd of West Virginia urged Reagan simply to withdraw his proposed budget and submit one less awash in red ink. But Byrd could not resist scoffing at his Republican colleagues for bewailing the huge deficits after they had pushed through Reagan's program of tax cuts last year. "When you buy bologna at the supermarket," said Byrd, "you shouldn't expect to get home and find roast beef...
Democrats tended to blame the President and his party, rather than the process. Senate Democratic Minority Leader Robert Byrd of West Virginia termed the veto "a manufactured Shootout." House Speaker Tip O'Neill was unusually personal, scoffing at Reagan: "He knows less about the budget than any President in my lifetime." But Massachusetts Republican Silvio Conte of the House Appropriations Committee put the blame more broadly on Congress, declaring, "We're the laughingstock of the nation." In fact, there was plenty of blame for all to share...
Republican leaders in the Senate, on the other hand, normally would vote against a bill that the President did not like, while Democrats would feel free to push it. But Byrd took a position opposite that of House Democrats, arguing that it would be futile to pass the bill without the votes to override a veto. Republican Senators, also differing with their House counterparts, decided to approve the compromise, just so Reagan could wield his dramatic veto...
...times, the maneuvering degenerated into low farce. At one point, Senate Democratic Leader Robert Byrd introduced, and persuaded all those Democrats present to vote for, a series of taunting amendments to the continuing resolution. One would have declared the "sense of the Senate" to be that the budget had to be balanced by fiscal 1984, a goal that Reagan had long proclaimed but has now abandoned as unrealistic...