Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said Thursday he was disappointed that the White House threatened to veto his legislation approving the Keystone XL pipeline, arguing the president’s move was “not the way a democracy works.”
The West Virginia lawmaker said he was upset Obama did not reserve judgment on the bill until it went through the committee and amendment process in an interview with Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom.”
“I just couldn't believe that out of the gate, two hours after [Sen.] John Hoeven [R-N.D.] and I announced that were introducing the bill, that they would come out from the White House and the president would make a statement that he's going to veto it,” Manchin said.
The Democrat said he had been hopeful the president’s history serving in the Senate would have led him to hold off on a veto threat.
“I would have thought the president would say, ‘Listen, being a former legislator, I'm going to wait until this process unfolds. And at the end of the day, I'll tell you, do I like what they came up with, or do I not like what they came out with, and this is my reason for veto,’ ” Manchin said. “[He] never even gave it a chance, never even gave it a chance. Now, that's just not the way you do legislation. It's not the way a democracy works. And it's not the way the ... three branches of government should work.”
Reread your Constitution, chuckles. The President vetoing a bill is precisely how American democracy works. The redress to this, also in said Constitution, is for the Congress to override the President's veto, which it can do with a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate. If you can do that, you can pass anything you like no matter what the President says.
Get to making those phone calls, Joe. Your energy company masters are waiting.
Republican filibusters are not how democracy works, and are not part of the Constitution - they only exist due to internal rules set by the Senate. Funny how we never heard Senator Manchin (or any of the Tea Party constitutional scholars) speak out on that issue...
ReplyDeleteI can find it in my heart to have a small bit of sympathy for Joe's. According to Schoolhouse Rock, Congress passes and sends them to the President to be signed or vetoed. The President making a preemptive announcement that if a particular bill is passed then he will certainly veto is a bit of jumping the gun and not part of the regular system.
ReplyDeleteThe real question is, how did a man with such a simplistic understanding of the world learn to tie his own shoes? Even still, how on Earth did he become a God damned US Senator?
My opinion here is quite distinct from having picked "Senate ends in a tie, King or Manchin or both defect to the Republicans" as the most likely outcome in the November 2014 office election pool.
Saying things to others in the hope of convincing them to share your viewpoint is the essence of democracy - what Senator Manchin apparently thinks is that anyone criticizing him, or seeking to convince others to vote in ways he does not approve, is somehow being anti-democratic. I can only assume the Senator has confused democracy with autocracy - with West Virginia coal mine owners being the autocrats.
ReplyDeleteThis isnt a democracy so american democracy doesnt exist to begin with. If it did we could vote our ownselves and wouldnt need these asshats.
ReplyDeleteYour message came through garbled, could you try again? I had some trouble earlier with words vanishing at random.
ReplyDeleteAs written, it sounds like you are making a comment on the idea that democracy will work only until people discover that they can vote themselves money at government expense - which has certainly happened on the part of rich people as a class.
We dont have democracy. Democracy is when we vote on stuff. We have republicanism. Republicanism is when we vote for, or have installed, people who get to vote for stuff in our name. We like to call this democracy but...
ReplyDeleteGot'ya, OK thanks.
ReplyDelete