Just days before the Senate took a five-week summer recess, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., warned his colleagues that, come September, “There will be no weekends off.”
In a July 31 address on the Senate floor, Reid detailed a handful of tasks that would keep the Senate busy throughout the month of September:
We need to pass appropriations measures to keep the government from shutting down, we need to pass a temporary extension of the Internet Tax Freedom Act, we need to do something, of course, as I just mentioned, about Ex-Im Bank. We have to do the defense authorization bill which is extremely important for the fighting men and women of this country. We are going to address the [Senator Mark] Udall constitutional amendment on campaign finance reform and we’re going to reconsider a number of issues — college affordability, minimum wage, Hobby Lobby, student debt. So we have a lot of work to do.
He added: “Following the August recess, we’re going to be here for two weeks and two days. That’s not a lot of time for the workload we have to do. There will be no weekends off.”
It didn’t take long for Reid to abandon that promise, however.
Last week, Reid gave the Senate a three-day weekend and this week the Senate again adjourned early. Senators won’t be back in Washington until a lame-duck session following the Nov. 4 midterm elections, leaving many of the issues Reid listed either unaddressed or unresolved.
