Sen. Maize Hirono Just Humiliated Mitch McConnell On The Shutdown

Last updated on January 12th, 2019 at 01:39 pm

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Sen. Maize Hirono (D-HI) and called out McConnell for being a coward who could end the government shutdown but won’t use his power and do his job.

Sen. Hirono said on MSNBC‘s All In with Chris Hayes:

That’s one of the lamest excuses I’ve heard from somebody who has the power to bring the House pass bills to keep the government open and who had no reluctance to use the powers to force a vote eliminating the Affordable Care Act for millions of people or to change the requirement for how many people it would take to put a Supreme Court justice on the court with Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. He had no problem using his power to prevent Merrick Garland from being considered and yet, yet, he’ll say I have no power to bring these bills to the floor.

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That is so lame and the excuse he gave. We are a separate branch of government. I don’t need to remind Mitch McConnell that the Congress is a separate branch of government and what we should do and what he should do, because there are two people to stop the shut down right now, one is the president who is a hostage taker having taken 800,000 people hostage, not to mention the thousands and thousands of contractors, he is a hostage taker. We do not negotiate with hostage takers. The other person to end the shutdown is Mitch Mcconnell because he has the power. He won’t do it. Everyone should be asking why aren’t going to use the power you had no problems to force $1.5 trillion tax cut for the richest people in our country and basically screwing the middle class, why don’t you do it?

And he says oh, because the president won’t sign it. There is a thing called overriding the veto. Chris, you have a lot of people that watch your show all over the country. I would say to every one of your viewers who live in districts represented by Republican Senators, they should call up their Senators and say go and tell Mitch Mcconnell to do his job, bring these bills on the floor because we already in the Senate passed these last year and make sure that everyone gets paid. He won’t do it. So it’s very clear to me who can end this shutdown. I do not rely on the president because he is immoral, makes no distinction between right or wrong or doesn’t care. I won’t rely on this guy but Mitch McConnell can do something about this.

Sen. Hirono was correct. Mitch McConnell does have the power to end this shutdown. He won’t because he knows that a non-wall funded bill to reopen the government would easily pass the Senate and have a veto-proof majority. If Trump vetoed the legislation, the Senate would override his veto.

McConnell had no trouble throwing his power around before, but with Democrats in control of the House, he revealed himself to be nothing more than another cowardly Trump lap dog.

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association