Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on Thursday blasted House Speaker John Boehner from the Senate floor, accusing the Republican leader of operating the House of Representatives like a “dictatorship.”
Reid said Boehner is actively blocking a vote on a proposal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff, even though Nevada’s senior senator claimed the package has more than enough support to pass both houses of Congress.
“Everyone knows, including the speaker of the House of Represenatives today, that if they had brought up the Senate-passed bill that would give relief to everyone making less than $250,000 a year, it would pass overwhelmingly,” Reid said. “Every Democrat would vote for it, Republicans would vote for it. But the speaker, he says, ‘No, we can’t do that.’ It has to be a majority of the majority. So they’ve done nothing.”
Reid went on to say that Boehner is denying the will of “the vast majority of the House of Represenatives.”
“The American people, I don’t think understand, the House of Representatives is operating without the House of Representatives,” Reid said. “It’s being operated with a dictatorship of the speaker, not allowing the vast majority of the House of Represenatives to get what they want. If the 250 would be brought up, it would pass overwhelmingly. I repeat.”
