Topic: NewsBusters
In a Feb. 8 NewsBusters post (and TimesWatch item) asserting that a New York Times article "falsely claim[ed] that Senate Republicans "blocked the debate" over an Iraq war resolution, Clay Waters made a false claim of his own:
Republicans blocked the debate?
[Times reporter Jeff] Zeleny again ignored the fact that Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will not allow votes on two Republican alternatives that would probably pass the Senate with the 60 votes required. In other words, it's Democrat Reid, not Republicans, who is "blocking" a fuller debate on Iraq.
In fact, Reid did offer to bring both Republican alternatives up for a vote -- just not on the terms Republicans want. Republicans offered to bring up all four proposed resolutions on a straight up-or-down vote, but Republicans want to preserve the right to filibuster the Democratic resolutions by holding them to a 60-vote standard.
While Democrats are, in the process of all this, arguably blocking a vote on one Republican resolution that might pass with 60 votes (as Waters notes later), it is false to say that Reid "will not allow votes" on the Republican resolutions; he just won't allow the kind of vote Republicans prefer.
