The Senate on Monday was forced to delay its plans to vote on important legislation, when it realized that bill didn’t exist yet.
Senate Republicans were hoping to hold a vote to advance a bill funding the federal government through mid-December, which would also fund anti-Zika efforts.
But the only problem was, there wasn’t any agreement on what the bill should look like. Among other things, Republicans are trying to block health clinics in Puerto Rico associated with Planned Parenthood from getting the money.
At around 3 p.m., Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Democrats still aren’t happy with the GOP plan:
That meant trouble, since the procedural vote was scheduled for 5:30 p.m.
Would the Senate really advance a bill that still wasn’t written? They were thinking about it, but in the end, they had to back off the idea of voting on a bill that no one really knew anything about.
Here’s how Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced the delay:
Turning that into plain English, McConnell was asking for an agreement in the Senate that the procedural vote on the bill no one has seen yet will be held on Tuesday, not Monday. No one objected, so the vote was delayed.
Now senators just need a bill, which they hope to negotiate by Tuesday.
