Before, to Republicans, it was, “[I]f these [gun control] measures stop one mass shooting, or save one child’s life, it’s worth it.” Now, to Democrats, it’s, “[I]f you can help one child who has cancer, why wouldn’t you do it?”
Oh how the narrative has shifted.
CNN reporter Dana Bash put Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on the spot at a Wednesday press conference, asking him why he wouldn’t support a piecemeal spending bill offered by House Republicans that would fund the National Institutes of Health, which operates clinical trials for childhood cancer. Bash went right after Reid, asking straightly: If you can help one child who has cancer, why wouldn’t you do it?
“Why would we want to do that?” Reid shot back. “I have 1,100 people at Nellis Air Force base that are sitting home. They have a few problems of their own.”
Reid’s comments were in the context of his preference to see a wholesale, ‘clean’ funding bill that appropriates money to all agencies pass Congress, instead of several smaller measures that end portions of the shutdown one piece of legislation at a time.
“Why pit one against the other?” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) chimed in, summing up Reid and Senate Democrats’ position.
However, Reid and the Senate already agreed to a plan that continues troop pay and payments to certain Department of Defense civilian personnel, departing from the full funding bill or no funding bill at all approach.
Earlier in the day during a Senate floor speech, Reid defended himself from a characterization in National Review that the House GOP saw him as the ‘villain of villains’.
“I am not a criminal. I am not a scoundrel. So they better get a different definition for me.”
Reid’s comment Wednesday afternoon didn’t help his case. The House GOP Conference started the Twitter hashtag #HeartlessHarry to bring his remark to a wider audience:
Helping a kid with cancer? Why would Harry Reid want to do that? #HeartlessHarry pic.twitter.com/IXW0TrHr4K
— House GOP (@gopconference) October 2, 2013
And he was lacking amusement about Republicans’ messaging on the matter.
Republicans are in such desperate straits that they have literally resorted to accusing me of not caring about kids with cancer. Shameful.
— Senator Harry Reid (@SenatorReid) October 2, 2013
Video of Reid’s exchange with Bash, via the Washington Free Beacon:
