Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has set up a rare Sunday vote ahead of a looming and critical deadline which will fall just before Congress goes on a long recess, hoping he can twist arms in the Senate and jam the House of Representatives into going along with the bill he wants instead of what they already passed. That's despite that fact that House leadership has repeatedly and very publicly said it won't work. Sound familiar? That's because
we've been here before, and pretty recently. It was just two months ago that McConnell was trying to ram an extension of the Patriot Act through Congress, after the House had already passed bipartisan legislation that included reforms and with bipartisan opposition in the Senate.
This time around it's a highway funding bill, which the Senate will vote on Sunday having passed a procedural motion to move it forward Friday, 51-26 (many senators had already left for the weekend). To try to overcome opposition on both sides of the aisle, he's attached two amendments: repealing Obamacare and reopening the Export-Import Bank. He added those two presumably in hopes that they'd cancel each other out. Democrats will hate (for very good reason!) voting again on Obamcare, but Republicans love it. There's very strong opposition within the GOP for the Ex-Im Bank, but Democrats wanted it. Not a very subtle ploy from McConnell to try to get a bill done quickly.
One of his big problems is that he's steamrolling his own members to do it. While he was setting up all these votes McConnell repeatedly blocked Sen. Rand Paul from speaking, totally ignoring his Kentucky colleague's attempts to be recognized. As if he could keep his grandstanding members from grandstanding. What followed next was a demonstration of just how futile that is, when Sen. Ted Cruz went on an 18-minute tirade attacking McConnell for not allowing his amendments, saying repeatedly that McConnell had lied to him, could not be trusted, and basically was a horrible Republican.
Maybe in an attempt to placate Paul and Cruz, McConnell has set up a fast-tracked vote to defund Planned Parenthood, since both of them wanted to add that amendment to the highway bill. But, of course, it's not the same thing. Because, as everyone knows, how they could really get the good headlines (which is all either of them wants) is by holding up this very important must-pass piece of legislation that has a hard deadline for expiration. It seems that all McConnell has achieved here is to really piss off his two most troublesome members. The Sunday vote could prove to be very interesting.
But once we get past Sunday and the Senate vote, he's got a hostile House to convince. Republican leadership there has already said they're not interested. Having the Ex-Im Bank amendment added will only harden Republican opposition in the House, and Democrats aren't there either, with leader Nancy Pelosi urging the Senate to just take the House bill and get it over with.
Yeah, it's déja vu all over again. Once again, McConnell has an opportunity to show that Republicans can lead, and once again he is failing miserably.