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Senate Majority Mitch McConnell and his entire team of slavering minions have decided to just let Donald Trump dictate their job. Or as Politico's Burgess Everett puts it, the Senate is "outsourcing its legislative duties to a divided White House and the whims of President Donald Trump, as it makes its first sustained attempt at overhauling gun laws in years."
Well, except for that second part. McConnell is not really attempting anything, and certainly not in a sustained way. The White House is indeed divided, apparently with no one actually in charge of the issue. You've got one hand—Attorney General William Barr and Legislative Director Eric Ueland—circulating a proposal and the other hand—White House spokesperson Hogan Gidley—disavowing the proposal, emphatically saying Trump has not okayed it.
Rather than doing its job as the second half of the third and coequal branch of government and presenting the White House with legislation, the Senate is throwing up its hands. "First time ever in history when the president sets the agenda every day when he tweets at 4 in the morning," grumble Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson. He gets to grouse about Trump because he's retiring. However, one who is wanting to stick around, Pennsylvania's Pat Toomey, is bending over backward to excuse Trump. "The president's got a learning curve on this stuff. He didn't grow up in West Virginia, you know, with a gun in every room of the house. […] He's processing a lot of different ideas. … It's not a terrible process." Translation: it's a terrible process.
But oh, so complicated they whine. "It's so fraught, not only with the particulars of the legislation, but the politics around it. It's really complicated stuff," said Senate Majority Whip John Thune. It's not fraught and not complicated. The people who elected these senators are demanding action, they overwhelmingly support the universal background checks in the bill the House has already passed, so the politics is easy as far as the public is concerned. So is the process. Take the bill the House passed, have an up-or-down vote in the Senate, and if it passes present it to Trump for his signature.
That's not going to happen, however. Moscow Mitch isn't going to let it and Democrats are pointing that out. "It's Sen. McConnell's decision to make the United States Senate a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump administration," Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin said. "It's a shame. We used to be a separate institution." So here's a thought. Democrats in the Senate should stop lamenting and start getting loud about the criminal enterprise the White House has become with McConnell's help. Join the resistance and convince the House to impeach.
This has to end. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats end McConnell's career as majority leader.