Politics

Top Senate Dem: Republicans Delayed Recess To Avoid Voters

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Alexa Archambault Capitol Hill Intern
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Shortly after news broke that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell decided to push back August recess two weeks in order to work on passing key legislation, the Senate’s most powerful Democrat said that the delay is simply a plan to keep GOP senators clear of their constituents.

“I have sympathy for the Republicans,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a Tuesday press conference. “If I were them, I wouldn’t want to go home and face the voters, either.”

Schumer explained that he believes shortening recess will not help the hotly contested Senate health care bill pass, which is one of the main reasons for McConnell’s delay.

“The problem that Republicans are having with health care is not time, it’s the substance of the bill,” Schumer said. “They’ve had six months on this bill, since January 4. They haven’t been able to make any progress. Two weeks is not going to solve their problem.”

Senate Republicans deny any claims that they want to avoid their constituents.

“That’s not the purpose of this at all,” said Georgia Republican Sen. David Perdue, the leader of a group of ten senators who wrote a letter calling on GOP leadership to shorten or forgo August recess. “There’s only one purpose, and that’s to get the results that people back home, who we are talking to, are asking us to get.”

Despite the Georgia senator’s comments, Schumer stuck to his talking point throughout his press conference.

“It’s a gambit. They’re struggling with health care. They don’t want to go home and face their constituents,” Schumer said.

Senate Republicans may be closer to a health care victory than Schumer suggests, though.

“We’ll be laying out a revised version of the repeal and replace effort – the text of that – on Thursday morning,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday. “We hope to have a CBO score by the beginning of the week and a motion to proceed to that bill next week.”

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