WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 (UPI) -- Relations between U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President George Bush have reached a new low.
Reid, a Nevada Democrat, has called the president a loser and a liar, and even has referred to him as King George. Mostly, the Senate leader just calls Bush "this guy."
In recent weeks, the already-strained relationship between the two men has deteriorated amid rancorous battles over government spending and domestic priorities, the Iraq war and expansion of a popular health insurance program for children, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
"I fear that the Bush years will be known as a rare, even dark time," Reid said Friday on the Senate floor.
Bush and his aides insist the Republican president harbors no animosity toward Reid.
"I have got cordial relations with the leaders when I talk to them," Bush said this month when asked at a news conference about his relationship with the Democratic-controlled Congress, the newspaper reported.
Ross Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers who wrote a biography of Sen. Mike Mansfield, the longtime Democratic leader, said that even during the Watergate scandal, Mansfield's criticism of President Richard Nixon was not as sharp.
"There is clearly some very toxic chemistry that exists between the majority leader and the president right now," Baker said.
