Senate Republicans plan to use a rare August work period to tackle a long and unfinished to-do list that includes healthcare reform, increasing the nation’s borrowing limit, authorizing defense spending and extending the ability to impose user fees on drug manufacturers that help pay for approvals.
“We intend to fully utilize the first two weeks in August,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., pledged Tuesday after announcing a two-week delay in the summer break, a move that will keep senators working in Washington through mid-August.
As senators and Capitol staff scrambled to scrap early August congressional delegations and vacations plans, McConnell blamed Democrats for the partially canceled recess. He said Democratic opposition has prevented the Senate from passing key bills and approving the Trump administration’s nominees.
“We simply, as a result of all this obstructionism, don’t have enough time to address all of these issues between now and the originally anticipated August recess,” McConnell said Tuesday. “So we’ll be here the first two weeks of August.”
Healthcare will top agenda in August if senators can’t pass a bill this month, although so far the split within the Republican Party is what has prevented a bill from passing, and Democrats won’t have any say on the bill as long as the GOP is in agreement.
Republicans hope to vote on a bill by next week but have yet to reach consensus on legislation that would garner the support of 50 GOP lawmakers, enough to allow Vice President Mike Pence to break the tie and pass the bill. Adding back a portion of the recess will provide a three-week buffer if next week’s attempt to bring up the bill fails.
In an interview Tuesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan told 1120 KMOX he wants the Senate to return a bill to the House for consideration before August.
“My hope is that they get it to us in July, and that is completely in realm of possibility,” Ryan said.
Senate Republicans also plan to use the extra time to tackle the debt ceiling.
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin urged Congress to take up a vote to raise the nation’s borrowing limit before leaving for the August recess, and McConnell confirmed Tuesday he plans to do that, but it could take time.
“Ideally, we would deal with the debt ceiling before the August recess,” McConnell said.
Republicans in the past have struggled to come to agreement on a debt ceiling increase because conservatives insist the move be accompanied by spending cuts. But McConnell was noncommittal on whether the Senate was looking to pass a bill that included spending cuts.
McConnell said senators would also use the August work period to take up a bill that would authorize $640 billion in defense spending for fiscal 2018. The bill cleared the Senate Armed Services Committee with bipartisan backing on June 28, but has yet to make it to the Senate floor for a vote.
And, finally, McConnell said lawmakers would tackle a bill the reauthorize the Food And Drug Administration’s user fee system. The fees are paid by drug and device manufacturers to fund the FDA’s review of their products.
A bill reauthorizing these user fees cleared the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions panel in May, but this bill has also not made it to the Senate floor for a vote.
The bill rejects a proposal by the Trump administration to cut the FDA’s budget and double the fees.
McConnell’s decision to delay the recess came at the urging of a group of newly elected GOP senators who told him their constituents want to see Congress pass the agenda promised in the 2016 campaign.
Among them was Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., who said the congressional to-do list also includes reauthorization of the nation’s flood insurance program, which expires in October, as well as a major infrastructure bill promised by Trump.
Kennedy said anyone who thinks the Senate can finish all this work without extra weeks in August is fooling themselves. “That’s just a testament to the power of human denial,” he said. “We have got to work longer and harder.”
