Schumer gives McConnell an ‘F’ on Senate action

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Thursday gave the first 100 days in the new Congress under Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) an “F” grade.

“On getting anything done to help the American people, Leader McConnell and the Senate Republicans in the first 100 days get an ‘F,’ ” Schumer told reporters in a pen-and-pad briefing. 

“Unfortunately … in those first 100 days of the Republican-controlled Senate, Leader McConnell has turned the Senate into a legislative graveyard for priorities the American people care about,” Schumer said, jabbing McConnell for what he called a lack of accomplishments in the Senate during and dismissing the GOP leader’s focus on confirming nominees.

{mosads}“The greatest challenges we face — health care, income inequality, voting rights, gun safety, the environment, paycheck fairness — McConnell and the Republicans refuse to take any action. The House has passed a whole lot of bills on these issues,” Schumer said.

He said he doesn’t expect McConnell to put House-passed Democratic bills on the floor but called on him to take up Republican proposals addressing the same issues so the Senate would have a chance to debate.

Instead, he said, much of the week is spent in procedural quorum calls, when the Senate desk slowly ticks through the names of senators to burn up time.

“We haven’t had real debate on any of the significant issues I mentioned,” he said.

McConnell has devoted most of the chamber’s time to confirming President Trump’s executive branch and judicial nominees. 

Schumer, however, belittled that effort.

“In terms of executive nominees, President Trump this week created more executive job openings than the Senate filled,” he said, referring to a shake-up at the Department of Homeland Security that resulted in the resignation of Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

The GOP leader can move through district court and sub-Cabinet executive branch nominees more quickly after changing the Senate rules to reduce the amount of floor time that must elapse after a Senate votes to end debate and set up a final vote.

McConnell set a new precedent through a party-line vote, a tactic called the nuclear option, because it is seen as a major escalation of partisan warfare to change the Senate’s operating rules on a unilateral basis. 

Schumer on Thursday said he expected McConnell to curtail the minority party’s rights in order to speed the processing of Trump’s nominees.

“I always thought he would change the rules. A lot of members on his side didn’t like it and they tried to reach out. Any time we offered some kind of real compromise — McConnell, even when the Republican members said, ‘Well, maybe this was good,’ they’d bring it to McConnell and he’d say ‘no,’ ” he said. 

As a result of it being anticipated, Schumer said last week’s nuclear option “hasn’t changed the relationship” between the two leaders.

But Schumer warned that history will not judge McConnell well.

“He’s hanging his entire hat on putting all these judges in and I don’t think history is going to look kindly on either the way he’s changed the rules to do that, but more importantly how the Senate has done so little on the major issues of the day,” he said.