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| McConnell (R-KY) Psychopathy Enabler |
He is Mr. McConnell (R-KY), the Republican Senate Majority Leader, who for the second time, has refused to allow a vote on the Senate bill which has been approved by the U.S. House.
It is likely that the measure will pass with enough votes to make it veto proof and thus allow federal workers to go back to work and receive their paychecks. Our government would be functioning once again to the dismay of Mr. Trump.
Mr. McConnell's cowardice is simply enabling our psychopath-in-chief to continue to hurt all Americans.
Here's the story...
McConnell blocks House bill to reopen government for second time, Jordain Carney, thehill.com, 15 Jan 2019.
Senate Republicans blocked a House-passed package to reopen the federal government for a second time in as many weeks on Tuesday.
Democratic Sens. Chris Van Hollen (Md.) and Ben Cardin (Md.) asked for consent to take up a package of bills that would reopen the federal government.
One bill would fund the Department of Homeland Security through Feb. 8, while the other would fund the rest of the impacted departments and agencies through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.
Under Senate rules, any senator can ask for consent to vote on or pass a bill, but any senator can object. McConnell blocked the two bills, saying the Senate wouldn't "participate in something that doesn't lead to an outcome."
McConnell for weeks has said he would not bring legislation to the floor on the shutdown unless there was a deal between President Trump and Democrats on border security, the issue that has triggered the shutdown. McConnell has described other votes as "show votes."
"The solution to this is a negotiation between the one person in the country who can sign something into law, the president of the United States, and our Democratic colleagues," McConnell said Tuesday.
Roughly a quarter of the government has been shut down since Dec. 22 over an entrenched fight on funding for Trump’s proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border wall.
The Senate passed a stopgap bill late last year by a voice vote, but it was rejected by the White House because it didn’t include extra border money.
Trump is demanding more than $5 billion for his signature wall. Democratic leadership has pointed to $1.3 billion as their cap and argued that it must go to fencing.
House Democrats passed their package to fully reopen the government earlier this month and have begun passing individual appropriations bills as they try to ratchet up pressure on Republicans to break with the president and support the legislation. But those bills are expected to go nowhere in the GOP-led Senate.
McConnell sought to drive a wedge between Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Democrats earlier Tuesday, characterizing the newly minted House leader as making border security “take a back seat to the political whims of the far left.”
“Here in the Senate my Democratic colleagues have an important choice to make. They could stand with common sense border experts, with federal workers and with their own past voting records, by the way, or they could continue to remain passive spectators complaining from the sidelines, as the Speaker refuses to negotiate with the White House,” McConnell said from the Senate floor.
Talks between Trump and congressional leadership are at a standstill after the president walked out of a White House meeting last week when Pelosi told him that Democrats would not consider border wall funding even if he fully reopened the government.
Democrats are trying to build pressure on McConnell to break with Trump and move legislation, something Senate GOP leadership say the careful Republican leader will not do.
Though several senators are publicly picking their own ideas, Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican, said on Tuesday that hasn’t resulted in much pressure from within the caucus for McConnell to change his strategy.
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