It's Tuesday, September 20, and Day 219 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 188 since Merrick Garland was nominated by President Obama to fill that vacancy.
The Senate has a vote today in their ongoing effort to keep government from shutting down in 10 days. The vote was originally scheduled for Monday afternoon, then delayed until 2:15 PM ET on Tuesday, then pushed back again to 5:15 PM ET Tuesday. This is the cloture vote to get agreement to move on to debate to keep the government's lights on.
Following the weekly conferences lunches, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell gave a few glimpses into what happened in it to allow that vote to go forward—mostly caving in to hostage-taking on the part of a few of his members. The Senate will probably go into next week because Sen. Rand Paul and a few others are demanding a vote on a resolution disapproving the sale of more than a billion dollars worth of arms to Saudi Arabia, a resolution McConnell says he will "aggressively" work against. Also too, they want to stick around to have a veto override vote on a bill President Obama hasn't vetoed yet. So it's worth it to McConnell to stick around for an additional week if he can poke a thumb in Obama's eye.
Meanwhile, there are no votes scheduled on judicial nominations, despite Democrats' best efforts.
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