An interesting move

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid has been working for weeks with Republicans to produce a truly bipartisan jobs creation bill. Now that he has produced a truly bipartisan bill that had Republican support, he has turned around and stripped out all of the Republican suggestions (including tax breaks), as well as some of the things Democrats wanted (extension of unemployment benefits, subsidies for health insurance). It is true the stripped down bill is much less expensive ($15 billion vs $85 billion over the next decade) which is very good. But expense does not seem to have been his motive. Instead, his public comments suggest he was just setting up a political trap for the Republicans - daring them to vote against a "jobs" bill that, in theory, they helped write.

If I were a Republican senator, I would be leery of ever again working with Harry Reid. With the nation truly in crisis, it is bewildering that Congress is still playing such childish games.