McCain Snaps Over GOP Roadblocks

Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) blasted his GOP colleagues for grandstanding on the budget, Ezra Klein notes.

“The quick background here is that congressional Republicans have spent years calling for a return to ‘regular order’ in which the House writes a budget, the Senate writes a budget, and the two chambers move to a conference committee to hash out their differences. This year, for the first time since 2009, Senate Democrats wrote and passed a full budget, shepherding it to passage through an open amendment process. Now various Senate Republicans are blocking the move towards conference — blocking, in other words, the move towards the regular order they demanded.”

McCain unloaded last night: “What are we on my side of the aisle doing? We don’t want a budget unless we put requirements on the conferees that are absolutely out of line and unprecedented?”