Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will keep the Senate in session the first two weeks of August, the Kentucky Republican announced Tuesday — as the GOP faces a daunting to-do list that includes repealing Obamacare and raising the debt limit.
McConnell made the announcement during a party lunch on Tuesday, according to a source. In a statement soon after, the majority leader said he wants to take up the annual defense authorization measure and address a backlog of nominations “that have been mindlessly stalled by Democrats.
“In order to provide more time to complete action on important legislative items and process nominees that have been stalled by a lack of cooperation from our friends across the aisle, the Senate will delay the start of the August recess until the third week of August,” McConnell said.
Agitation from the Republican rank and file to cancel at least part of the annual August recess has been building for weeks with a small group of junior GOP senators pressuring their leadership to stick around in Washington to tackle not just health care but tax reform and other items on the party’s agenda.
“We have to be here. And we need time to do it,” Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska said at a news conference Tuesday with other GOP senators pushing to curtail the recess. “If we’re working three days a week, which is what we do, we’re not going to get it done.”
Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), who led the effort, talked to McConnell about his proposal several times.
(First reported by Politico News)http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/11/mcconnell-senate-will-work-through-first-two-weeks-of-august-recess-240407 (July 12, 2017)
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