On Friday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) got a brutal reminder that he no longers controls the Senate agenda as he attempted to adjourn the Senate and postpone the debate on the Democratic coronavirus bill until Saturday.
McConnell’s move came after Democrats tried to work out a deal that could win over all 50 members of their caucus, which took almost 12 hours of negotiations.
“They want to begin the vote-a-rama that could have been done in daylight because of their own confusion and the challenges of getting together 50 people to agree on something when they could have doing it quicker on a bipartisan basis,” McConnell said, according to The Hill. “So rather than start the voting at five minutes to 11, I move to adjourn until 10 a.m.”
But Democrats shut down McConnell’s effort with Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) vowing that the Senate will power through Friday night and likely into Saturday morning in order to wrap up the nearly $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill.
“Now that this agreement has been reached, we are going to power through the rest of the process and get this bill done,” he said. “Make no mistake: we are going to continue working until we get the job done.”
Democrats announced that deal shortly before 8 p.m., but are still waiting on a Joint Committee on Taxation score.
