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In the completed, nothing gets done within the issue of the day.
The president “is all around us – 15 tweets in 19 hours,” said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who invested months of his level of the immigration debate only to watch the time and effort sink. “Trying to maintain where his mind lights daily is tough."
Trump’s March 5 deadline to supply expiring protections for most young immigrants briefly trained the Senate on that topic, though the chamber did not pass anything. Then a president flirted with Democrats on gun control following Florida school massacre, seemingly building momentum to get a rare breakthrough.
But before anything happened for the Hill, Trump had advanced tariffs – creating a genuine GOP freak-out including a movement to rein in Trump. In the event the White House might try and refocus the Capitol’s attention back on gun violence or immigration is anyone’s guess.
“Short attention span around here. Obviously on guns, you do not do this one unless you’re forced. On immigration, there’s no real deadline,” said Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a retiring senator also in the biggest market of both issues. He said he’s worried he’ll end his Senate career this holiday season without Congress having taken action on either issue.
The lone exception within the Senate is Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who won’t let media coverage as well as whims of the White House dictate his floor schedule. McConnell shelved the gun debate even though it is in the media spotlight, instead plugging away at confirming lifetime judicial appointments. He’s at this point declined to devote time even for a bill backed through the National Rifle Association to modestly strengthen the background checks system.
Last year’s tax reform push and doomed attempt at repealing Obamacare, conversely, each occupied months of energy.
All the fact that is to claim that the Senate is occasionally ideal for focusing – if your focus is on something McConnell is wishing for.
“Congress features a very adequate attention span relating to helping special interests,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). “It’s things which anyone wants, [but] that the interest groups that run the Republican Party would not like when the attention span is short.”
McConnell’s No. 2, Majority Whip John Cornyn, said he’s still working on his bill to shore within the criminal record search system.
“This dilemma is not going away," Cornyn said. "We’re variety of in an inflection point on this whole topic we desire to make sure all of us it done and have it performed correcly.”
But by the point any debate for the bill might happen, Congress may well be more than only a month taken away from the college shooting. Some lawmakers say the media’s whims don’t help, either.
“You’re not much as good as were, are you currently?" Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) told a reporter who mentioned Congress’ attention deficit disorder.
Before guns, it absolutely was immigration. If so, McConnell reserved 7 days in February to debate the individual – only as part of an offer to obtain Democrats to accept to reopen the federal government. (The weeklong exercise yielded plenty of acrimony and precisely zero new laws that will help Dreamers.)
The majority leader is showing no indication of openness into a similar debate on guns, at the same time some senators need more legislative give-and-take.
“There’s a fear upon sides with the aisle sometimes to let senators be senators, and hang up a challenge on the floor, and let everybody have in internet,” Kennedy said.
Instead, McConnell taken on bank deregulation, infuriating liberal Democrats.
Gun control activists have vowed to maintain heat on Congress, and Democratic leaders imagine that nationwide demonstrations scheduled for March 24 will help. With federal court rulings effectively preventing the Trump administration from executing its promises to end Obama-era protections for young immigrants, advocates for the issue appear ready to place chances while using the judiciary after falling short in Congress.
But ultimately, like lawmakers, they’re at the mercy of Trump’s outsize ability to control a Washington agenda that now changes at head-snapping speed.
“It’s who they’re,” Durbin said.
