Republican senator on McConnell's Senate: 'I think it sucks.'

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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/4/2/1753872/-Republican-senator-on-McConnell-s-Senate-I-think-it-sucks

Republican senator on McConnell's Senate: 'I think it sucks.'
Joan McCarter
Daily Kos Staff
Monday April 02, 2018 · 1:58 PM EDT


Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made a lot of promises down the line. When the Republicans regained the majority back in 2014, he promised a return to “regular order” where there will be lots of debate on lots of amendments from all sides. He’s reiterated that promise most recently on immigration, saying there would be weeks of free-for-all debate. He lied, and even his own members are getting frustrated with it.

Republican John Kennedy has served in the Senate a full 15 months— and not once received a roll call vote on one of his legislative amendments.

"I think it sucks," the Louisiana senator fumed as Congress headed home in March for a two-week recess. The Senate has voted on only six amendments this year.

"All I hear is, 'Well, it's not done that way,'" Kennedy said of his call for a more robust debate of ideas on the Senate floor. "Well, the way we've been doing it for a long time sucks."[…]

The body has taken just 25 roll call votes on so-called binding amendments so far during this two-year Congress, a sharp decrease from the 154 amendments voted on by this point during the 114th Congress under Barack Obama. Each year since McConnell took over, the Senate has voted on fewer nonbudget amendments: 140 in 2015, 57 in 2016, 19 in 2017 and six so far this year.

“There's a lot of weeks I'm not sure why I show up," said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).

McConnell blames that on the Democrats, of course, or sends his spokesman Don Stewart, out to do it. McConnell “’can and does make it easy’ for senators to vote on amendments,” said Stewart, “but he blamed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for adopting then-Majority Leader Harry ‘Reid’s anti-amendment strategy’ of shielding vulnerable senators from tough votes.”

That’s a hard argument to sustain when you look at the two major legislative efforts McConnell has brought to the floor this session—Trumpcare and tax cuts. Both were done under budget reconciliation rules which allowed McConnell to cut Democrats entirely out of the process. But it wasn’t just Democrats who were cut out—most rank-and-file Republicans were as well, as McConnell and a handful of his male colleagues crafted both behind closed doors.

It’s a process that’s decreased the entire number of amendments according to research from James Wallner, a fellow at the right-leaning R Street Institute. He found that through last fall, “senators filed just 1,090 amendments, putting the chamber on pace to introduce far fewer than the 5,125 amendments in the preceding two-year Congress.” And he says, that “decline in amendments and debate […] ‘is entirely on McConnell.’” It's not going to pick up, either, because McConnell has all but ruled out bringing legislation to the floor for the remainder of this year, instead wanting to focus on pushing through Trump nominees—safer political ground right now with the Republican base. Even while it’s pissing off Republican lawmakers.