Covid and other medical situations are beating on them this week…
They need EVERY member in attendeance to get things done ….
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, tested positive for the coronavirus on Sunday, forcing him into isolation just as the Senate was set to reconvene on Monday night after a two-week recess, and ahead of one of its last major work periods before the midterm elections.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, announced on Monday that he, too, had tested positive and would be working remotely for the week.
And Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, 82, who broke a hip last month in a fall at his home in McLean, Va., was still out recovering from surgery. Mr. Leahy’s spokesman, David Carle, said the senator would be “available for votes this week if necessary.”
Still, the three absences threatened to upend Democrats’ plans for a productive July in the evenly divided Senate, and were the latest reminders that the party’s bare-minimum majority is exceedingly precarious.
Democratic leaders had expected this week to finally confirm Steven M. Dettelbach, President Biden’s nominee to head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and Ashish Vazirani as a deputy under secretary of defense. They had also planned to vote on the confirmation of Michael S. Barr to serve as the Federal Reserve’s vice chair for supervision.
On Monday, Democrats were in wait-and-see mode all day, assessing whether they would be able to move forward on the confirmations, aides said. With the Senate evenly divided, assuming Republicans are fully in attendance and unanimously opposed, the absences among Democrats would mean they could not muster a majority to confirm any nominee along party lines….