McConnell Is The "Grim Reaper" Of The Legislative Process

The House of Representatives has been busy in the 116th Congress -- conducting investigations of Trump wrongdoing, and fulfilling their legislative function. The Senate has done neither.

That's because the Majority Leader (Mitch McConnell) has decided he will block everything the House sends him -- regardless of whether it will help most Americans or not. While he has changed Senate rules to allow the ratifying of more right-wing judges for the federal court, he has blocked (killed) almost all legislation.

The current Senate is the most "do-nothing" Senate of modern times.

Here is part of a May 13th op-ed by David S. Bernstein at wgbh.org:

Barring something unexpected, this Tuesday will mark two months since the U.S. Senate held a roll call vote on passage of any type of legislation. That was a joint resolution to nullify President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the Mexican border (which Trump later vetoed).

It’s been three months, as of Sunday, since the Senate last took yeas and nays on a genuine, full-fledged bill: the John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act. It passed, 92 to 8, and was later signed into law. 

So there was some eye-rolling last week when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell harshly criticized House Democrats, telling them to “move on” from investigating the Trump administration, and get back to the business of legislating for the country. When, some Democrats mused, will McConnell allow the Senate to move on to that business? 

The United States Senate, that great deliberative body, has effectively ceased legislating this year. It has shut down. Closed for business until 2021. . . .

With little hope of seeing legislation actually reach the floor, Senators on both sides of the aisle have largely given up on trying to craft bills in committee. 

Senate committees have held hearings on just a dozen bills this year, according to Library of Congress data at congress.gov; there are typically hearings on at least a couple hundred in a two-year session. On average, over the past 10 sessions, nearly 600 bills go through “markup,” a key step in finalizing the contents. Just 57 bills have been marked up in the Senate so far. 

Perhaps the most telling statistic, showing the dearth of deliberation and debate in this Senate, is the number of amendments considered to the legislation moving through. 

Over the previous 10 years, the Senate has seen an average of 443 amendments proposed on the floor each year, ranging from technical fixes to complete replacement bills. Many were adopted by voice vote, and others were ultimately tabled or withdrawn. But on average, 113 of those amendments received full roll call votes. 

So far this year, just 28 amendments have even been allowed on the floor. Only eight of them have received roll call votes. The last action of any kind taken on an amendment in the Senate was six weeks ago, on April first. . . .

While the Senate stands still, the House of Representatives has kept busy. Roughly 100 bills passed by the House of Representatives are awaiting Senate action. 

The latest, passed on Thursday, relates to health insurance coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. It was the first of a series of health care bills House Democrats plan to vote on this month. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has been publicly calling the Senate a graveyard for House bills. Some of those, to be sure, are liberal wish-list items of limited interest in the Republican-led Senate. But many are relatively uncontroversial measures, with bipartisan support. 

One bill, to help veterans get skills and jobs in STEM and computer science fields, had bipartisan House sponsors and passed by voice vote in February. Another, the Financial Technology Protection Act, was introduced by Republican Ted Budd of North Carolina, passed the House unanimously in late January. Both now sit in the Senate, assigned to committees along with many others like them, receiving no attention or action. 

“McConnell is treating anything that comes from the House as a non-starter,” said Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts.