People getting paid by us taxpayers ain’t coming to work….
Not getting along with their own party….
Tens of them bailing out….
Watching a rouge President trying and succeeding in by-passing their governance…..
Doing crazy assed stuff …
And trying to raid the US Treasury anyway he can…
Tuesday was supposed to be a voting day in the House, with members flying back to Washington to begin their workweek by passing a slate of bipartisan bills.
Instead the floor was largely deserted after Republican leaders pushed back the chamber’s first votes — further adding to a gaping divide between the House and Senate in how often lawmakers on each side of the Capitol are carrying out their most basic legislative duties.
According to a POLITICO analysis of the Congressional Record, the House has gaveled in 241 days during the 119th Congress, compared to the Senate’s 284 session days. The analysis includes brief pro forma sessions, which both chambers conduct during extended recesses at roughly the same pace.
That 43-day gap is looming extra large as Hill Republicans face a massive time crunch ahead of the midterms, with hopes of passing several major pieces of legislation ranging from a GOP-only immigration enforcement funding package to bipartisan transportation and housing bills and key extension of government surveillance powers.
But even though the House has only 38 scheduled legislative days left before Election Day, GOP leaders have continued to cancel votes at times, prompting many lawmakers to stay home as Speaker Mike Johnson struggles to wrangle his tiny majority.
The ever-tightening calendar has further imperiled the GOP’s hopes of passing yet another longshot party-line bill focused on war funding and affordability issues before voters head to the polls — one that Johnson has said Republicans could advance by the end of July despite a lack of consensus on what exactly should go in it.
Johnson often argues the “sausage-making” of the legislative process isn’t always pretty, and he has managed to get out of many — though not all — of his tough spots.
“Despite a razor-thin House majority, and the resulting frequency of various attendance problems, and despite a string of record-setting government shutdowns forced by the Democrats, Speaker Johnson, his leadership team, and House Republicans have delivered countless positive legislative results for the American people,” said Taylor Haulsee, a spokesperson for the speaker, citing “lower taxes, secure borders, reduced crime, a return to American energy dominance, massive reductions in burdensome regulations, fraud, waste and abuse, and more.”
Furthermore, senior House Republicans and aides argue it’s often better to cancel votes or keep members home than risk bringing them back prematurely to a failed vote that would generate frustrations and risk a backlash against Johnson and his fellow leaders.
The biggest reason for the discrepancy between the House and Senate calendars was last fall’s record-setting government shutdown. Johnson kept his chamber out of session for nearly two months after House Republicans passed a funding package that languished in the Senate due to a Democratic filibuster….
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On some recent voting days, Johnson did not appear to have a functioning majority. In the hours before lawmakers left for the Memorial Day recess, GOP leaders suffered an embarrassing defeat when a small group of Republicans joined with Democrats to vote down a bill that would have advanced plans for the Smithsonian National Women’s History Museum while barring exhibits on transgender women and giving Trump more control over its location….
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