Juan Williams: "The GOP Blockade Hurts Us All"

Juan Williams is side-eyeing Senate Republicans

Asserts the moderate-liberal commentator in Washington, D.C., on the upcoming vote to confirm moderate-conservative Chuck Hagel as U.S. Secretary of Defense: "Never before has the minority party in the Senate filibustered a president’s nominee for a Cabinet post, let alone the secretary of Defense. Now that the precedent is set, the next step for the GOP is filibustering an Obama Supreme Court nominee. Nothing short of filibuster reform can prevent this."

More: "In order to deny the twice-elected president a fully functional government, the current Republican Senate minority has used about a quarter of all filibusters in Senate history to block Obama’s choices. This political strategy is powerful because it is largely ignored by the press, or dismissed as more of the same old, dysfunctional political game that is played in D.C. But this is newsworthy. This widespread use of filibusters undermines the authority of the president to have his nominees run federal agencies created by congressional vote to serve public need. The GOP is throwing a wrench in the legitimate, democratic functioning of government because it doesn’t like the president’s policies — even though the president ran on those policies and the American people liked him enough to elect him twice."