It's Thursday, September 15, and Day 214 since Justice Antonin Scalia died and Mitch McConnell decided no nominee would get any Senate attention: No meetings, no hearings, no votes. It's also Day 183 since Merrick Garland was nominated by President Obama to fill that vacancy.
It's good news for Flint, Michigan, finally. A water bill passed that will provide funding to the city to deal with its lead crisis. How many months after the crisis emerged? There's still the Zika crisis to contend with, but they've had to put that off until Monday, in order to give more time for everyone to negotiate and House Speaker Paul Ryan to figure his way out of the jam he's in. Spoiler alert: he can't. But it'll be fun watching him squirm.
Meantime, here's another dubious achievement for McConnell.
The U.S. Senate is on track to work the fewest number of days since 1956, a fact that Democrats seized on Wednesday to attack the chamber’s Republican leadership.
Senators returned last week to Washington after a seven-week break. Another recess could come as early as the end of this week or next, freeing embattled senators to return to the campaign trail in their states. […]
Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri hauled a new prop to the Senate floor on Wednesday: a 2016 calendar.
The days legislators were not scheduled to be in Washington were marked out in black.
It has been more than 60 years, she said, since the Senate has worked so few days.
“I showed this calendar to people at home. They thought I was kidding,” McCaskill said.
“I think there is like 240 workdays that most Americans work every year,” she said. “By my estimate, I think we’re working about 110 of those. Now, no wonder the American people are angry.”
No wonder.
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