Democrats have become rather adept at including things in bills which the Republicans don’t support but because of the overall bill in which they’re included, can’t vote against.   The hate crime legislation is a good example – it was included in a bill which authorized defense spending.

Apparently Republicans are trying to play the same game now:

Senate leaders remained at an impasse Wednesday over adding tax provisions to a bill that would extend unemployment insurance benefits to millions of jobless workers.

The impasse:

But Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., remained at loggerheads on what other amendments the chamber might consider. Republicans have been pushing for amendments on the community group ACORN and on the E-Verify system that checks potential employees’ immigration status.

Turnabout is fair play in politics, but Harry Reid finds this all to be just a terrible bother:

Reid called those amendments “vexatious,” “argumentative,” and “not relevant.”

Of course when Reid is adding hate crime legislation to a defense appropriation bill, it isn’t at all vexatious, argumentative or “not relevant”. It was simply business as usual.

~McQ