GOP Senators are asking Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to expand their work schedule in order to accomplish outstanding work items. They’re asking, specifically, for McConnell to cancel the August recess, one of the most anticipated breaks of the year for Senators.
“Our current Senate calendar shows only 33 potential working days remaining before the end of the fiscal year. This does not appear to give us enough time to adequately address the issues that demand immediate attention. Therefore, we respectfully request that you consider truncating, if not completely foregoing, the scheduled August state work period, allowing us more time to complete our work,” ten Senators wrote in a letter to McConnell.
The Senators are looking for work to get accomplished on repealing Obamacare, reforming the tax code, and one of their biggest priorities – funding the government. Republican Senators are hoping to pass twelve individual spending bills, instead of another omnibus.
“We stand ready to work Mondays and Fridays, nights as well as weekends, to ensure the funding process is not used to jam the president with a bad spending deal,” the Senators wrote.
“There are a lot of things that I’m unhappy about in this bill. There are a lot of things that we shouldn’t have had in this bill. But we were, in a sense, forced to if we want to build our military,” the president said after signing a $1.3 trillion omnibus bill in March.
“I say to Congress, I will never sign another bill like this again,” he said. “I’m not going to do it again. Nobody read it. It’s only hours old. Some people don’t even know what’s in it.”
The bill was criticized heavily by conservatives as being a grab bag for Democratic demands but included very little in the way of Republican requests.
“This may be the worst bill I have seen in my time in Congress, the worst bill our leaders have ever allowed to come to the floor,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said at the time. “The one thing we don’t fund is the one issue we all campaigned on, a border security wall, and that is not in the legislation.”
“The stakes are much higher this year. We simply cannot afford to lose any additional time in resolving these issues when tax reform is hanging in the balance. Robust change to our tax code is our single most important economic growth tool, and there is already growing anticipation for us to act,” the Senators wrote. “Failure to deliver could have devastating economic consequences.”
The letter is signed by Sens. David Perdue of Georgia, Steve Daines of Montana, Joni Ernst of Iowa, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Mike Lee of Utah, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, Luther Strange of Alabama, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Dan Sullivan of Alaska.
Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr