Breitbart News: U.S. Senate Takes Another Long Weekend, Clocks Out on Thursday Afternoon
Just two days after conservatives held a press conference on Capitol Hill to launch a #MakeCongressWorkAgain campaign to put a spotlight on the Republican-led Senate’s short work week and its failure to get business done, Senators closed up shop at 3:00 p.m. on Thursday.
The Conservative Partnership Institute tweeted out the Senate’s notice: “Vote Alert. No More Votes. For the information of all Republican Senators, there will be no more roll call votes during this week’s session of the Senate.”
“It’s 3:00 Thursday in DC, but for the Senate, it’s 5 o’clock Friday somewhere…” CPI said in its tweet, accompanied with the hashtags #TGIT and #MakeCongressWorkAgain.
On Tuesday, Sen. David Perdue (R-GA), Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots; Marc Short, White House director of legislative affairs; and former Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), who now works at CPI, told reporters that Americans are fed up with Congress working short work weeks and not getting business done that the American people elected them to do.
That business includes 271 outstanding nominations sent to them by President Donald Trump and a lack of budget planning that could result in another bloated Omnibus spending bill.
“We’re here today to demand that Congress do its work and get its work done on time on nominations and on spending,” Martin said at the press conference. “If they haven’t passed all spending bills by the end of July they should cancel the August recess.”
“And if Congress hasn’t confirmed President Trump’s nominees by the end of July they should cancel the August recess,” Martin said.
Breitbart News reported:
Marc Short, White House director of legislative affairs, gave reporters at the press conference what he said is a tally kept by the executive branch on Trump’s nominations.
The tally shows 271 outstanding nominations — 169 pending in committee and 102 pending on the Senate’s calendar.
It also shows proof, Short said, of how Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is “weaponizing” the cloture procedure.
Cloture has been used by the Democrats to block 89 Trump nominations. This contrasts with the total combined 32 cloture procedures for four previous administrations — Presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
“We all know that if Congress goes home in August without passing the funding bills, the same thing is going to happen that just happened,” DeMint said at the press conference, referring to the $1.3 trillion spending bill Congress recently passed and Trump signed, at the same time vowing never to do it again.
“He’s going to be given a choice in late September to either sign another bill or to close the government down right before the election,” DeMint said. “Those are unacceptable options.”
Perdue announced at the press conference a letter had been sent to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to express support for the Senate to “do whatever is necessary” to clear its legislative calendar, including working on the weekends and through the summer.
By Penny Starr
Breitbart News
May 10, 2018