It's Monday, April 25 and Day 72 since Justice Antonin Scalia died and Mitch McConnell laid down his Supreme Court blockade: No meetings, no hearings, no votes on his replacement. It's also Day 42 since President Obama named Merrick Garland to be Scalia's replacement. What's the Senate doing today instead of considering the Supreme Court nominee?
It's another leisurely start, as they plan to reconvene at 3 PM and vote at 5:30 PM on an amendment to an energy and water appropriations bill. The one that won't have Flint, Michigan, funding and that probably won't be considered by the House, because the House isn't doing work these days.
Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell is back to boasting about how productive his Senate is.
“This week we have seen what can be accomplished on behalf of the American people with a Senate that’s back to work under the Republican majority,” Mr. McConnell declared in a floor speech on Wednesday, minutes before passage of a bipartisan energy bill and a day after the adoption of legislation to tighten aviation standards.
“We just passed two broad-based bills aimed at protecting consumers and modernizing our energy policies respectively, and both bills take important steps to bolster national security,” Mr. McConnell said. “The Republican-led Senate has made important strides to get the legislative process functioning again.”
If that's at all true, it's because Democrats in the Senate feel an obligation to do what they've been elected to do—legislate, unlike the previous Republican minority which was pretty much just intent on stopping everything but the absolute bare minimum. Now that they're in control, they're sort of doing the half-minimum—enough to say that stuff is happening, even if it's a lot of wheel-spinning stuff.
And it doesn't include making sure the nation has a fully functioning Supreme Court.
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