Spin, spin, spin away. It won't work.
If you're finding yourself knee-deep in bullshit this August, it might have
something to do with this.
Republican senators were sent home for August recess with a pocket card printed with a simple message.
“When Republicans took control of the Senate, we promised to get the Senate working again,” the card reads. “We are keeping our promise.”
The card lists an assortment of legislation passed in the Senate, from long-term highway and education reauthorizations to the anti-human trafficking bill. Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, leads the operation that produces the materials for the August recess.
“I think, particularly for our ’16 cycle, but for everybody … going into the August recess, I think the message is that the Republican majority matters, and it’s made a difference. If you look at the way that regular order has been restored in the Senate, the record of accomplishment, the list of things that we’ve been able to get done and the way in which we have opened up the process and allowed not just Republicans but Democrats to be a part of it has led to a lot of bipartisan successes,” Thune said in an interview shortly before the Senate adjourned for the district work period.
If you ignore the fact that the anti-human trafficking bill was waylaid for days and days because Republicans insisted on attaching completely gratuitous anti-abortion language to it, and the fact that highway funding almost didn't happen because some Republicans wanted to hijack it with anti-Planned Parenthood amendments and that the long-term bill they passed will never fly with the House, then yeah, they accomplished some stuff. You also, though, have to ignore the fact that Mitch McConnell's Senate is
lagging far behind Harry Reid's Senate of previous years, and is in fact on track to be the least productive Senate in recent history. And when it comes to confirming judges, it's been a disgrace, lagging behind previous sessions and on track to "confirm the fewest judicial nominees since statistics started being kept."
Oh, and that bit about "regular order"? Not so much there, either. "Through the August recess, Sen. McConnell has "filled the amendment tree" more than any Senate leader—blocking senators from both parties from having amendments voted on." That was the thing Republicans relentlessly bitched at Reid about, not letting them have amendments.
It's unlikely to work, anyway, as Americans hate Congress too much to believe much of anything they hear.