Mitch McConnell cancels most of Senate's August break, blames it on Democrats

WASHINGTON — Senate staff hoping to wear jeans in August while their bosses were back home are out of luck — at least for most of the month.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Tuesday that he would keep lawmakers in Washington for most of the month. His main reason? Democrats have displayed "historic obstruction" by holding up President Trump's nominees and senators need to stick around to confirm those nominations and pass other legislation.

“I’ve canceled the August recess. We have a lot of important work to do as a result of unprecedented obstruction,” the Kentucky Republican told reporters, referring to Democratic senators have been using procedural tools in order to delay some of the president's nominees.

Senators will be able to spend one week at home at the beginning of the month before returning to the Capitol.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer pushed back on McConnell's assertions.

"Mitch McConnell can't have it both ways he spends all his time bragging to his base that they've appointed more judges than anyone else and now he's saying they haven't pointed enough," the New York Democrat said. "It just doesn't pass the laugh test."

In addition to nominations, McConnell said Senate also needed to spend some of August passing individual appropriations bills in order to avoid a last minute massive spending package, like it did in March.

Last year, the Senate failed to come to an agreement by the funding deadline, so it spent months passing short-term spending bills and went through two government shutdowns before it finally passed a behemoth package known as an omnibus.

"The president has made it quite clear he doesn’t intend to sign another omnibus and in order to prevent that obviously we should do our work, which is to pass individual appropriations bills," McConnell said. The funding deadline is Sept. 30, just weeks before the midterm elections.

McConnell has faced pressure from a growing group of Senate Republicans who feel the body has not accomplished enough under a GOP majority. The lawmakers want to show voters ahead of the midterm elections that they are working in lockstep with the president and his agenda.

But the cancellation also has another benefit that McConnell did not mention. If lawmakers have to be in Washington to vote in August, that's less time those up for re-election — particularly the 10 Democrats up in states President Trump won in 2016 — are home talking to voters. If they choose to skip votes and head home to campaign, they could be handing their GOP opponents opposition for ads.

There is one Republican senator who could feel the heat from this decision, though: Nevada Sen. Dean Heller, who is considered the most vulnerable Republican up for re-election.

One of those 10 Democrats, Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, described the cancellation as a purely political maneuver.

"Mitch is using any excuse he can to hold those of us who want to be home campaigning here in Washington because we have to vote," Nelson told reporters Tuesday. "And that's what he's doing. This is nothing but raw politics."

McConnell may have been putting the squeeze on vulnerable Democrats, but you wouldn't know it listening to Schumer. He said the additional work time meant they could focus on health care.

"We Democrats welcome this additional time because it gives us the opportunity to address an issue that's on the top of the mind of so many of the American people and one that the Republicans have badly mishandled up to this point — health care," Schumer said. Democrats have calculated that health care is one of the critical policies they should run on in 2018.

Republicans passed an overhaul of the tax code at the end of last year and confirmed a new conservative Supreme Court justice, but otherwise have failed to accomplish any other big-ticket campaign promises. Last August, recess was scheduled to be pushed back a couple weeks so lawmakers could continue their attempts to repeal Obamacare. That effort ultimately failed and lawmakers were able to go home in early August.

Contributing: Ledyard King of USA TODAY

Cox Media Group