July 24, 2007
Senate Lunch Chatter: Dems Sound Off On Wage Hike, Gonzales
UPDATED.
Senate Democrats led by Ted Kennedy celebrated the passage of a higher ed bill in a presser following the Tuesday lunches. Afterwards, House Dems led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi came to the Senate side and joined Senate Dems in a procession to Upper Senate Park for a celebration of the minimum wage hike that went into effect today. The first-in-a-decade increase was passed into law at the end of May as part of a bill funding U.S. troops in Iraq.
Senate Intelligence Chairman Jay Rockefeller also told reporters that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was lying earlier today in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, when he said that Rockefeller and others knew of a 2004 White House effort to get then-AG John Ashcroft to sign off on a secret intelligence program while hospitalized. Rockefeller said he knew nothing of it, and didn't even know at the time about internal DOJ dissent over the program.
Earlier today, though, signs that the bipartisan traditions of the Senate are not dead yet appeared in the halls outside the lunches. As the Senate wrapped up votes on the bipartisan higher education bill, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell suggested that the Senate, in these final two weeks before the August recess, could get bipartisan deals on a bill implementing 9/11 committee recommendations and an ethics and lobbying bill as well.
But he got in a criticism of the Democrats, too. "They've wasted the first seven months by being excessively partisan," he said. And later, McConnell's deputies, Trent Lott, Jon Kyl and John Cornyn, emphasized the lack of legislative accomplishments as the Democrats rallied outside. "We are literally doing nothing," Cornyn said.
Posted at 3:17 PM
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Alberto Gonzales, Bush Administration, Congress, John Ashcroft, Senate
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