WASHINGTON — U.S. senators are doing something rare this weekend: Actually working.
Well, at least, some senators are. On Friday night only 83 of the Senate’s 100 members showed up for a late night vote, which is only compounding the tangible frustration at the Capitol as lawmakers have seen their schedules upended — including one senator who had to scrap her plan to attend the Super Bowl — over an internal GOP debate that’s now boiled over into public view.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is forcing his colleagues to stay in town this weekend and battle over a now $95.3 billion foreign aid package that includes funding for Taiwan, Israel and Gaza — a measure that included border security funding and reforms last weekend until the GOP killed that compromise measure — because Paul opposes the $60 billion in the measure earmarked for Ukraine.
Party leaders hoped to work out a time agreement to speed up debate, but Paul has employed his senatorial right to delay — a filibuster, of sorts — telling the press corps he won’t allow that until “hell freezes over.”
“So hell hasn’t frozen over yet?” Raw Story asked Paul as he left the Capitol on Friday evening.
“Nope,” Paul told Raw Story. “We're still waiting.”
“So we can expect Sunday?”
“I think it'll be Monday or Tuesday until we're finished,” Paul said. “I don't think we should easily allow people to send money to protect someone else's border when we're not willing to protect our own border.”
The Senate isn’t even scheduled to be in session this coming week — let alone this weekend — but senators' planned two-week long President’s Day recess is now delayed indefinitely because of Paul’s protest.
Paul’s last stand is a farce to many of his colleagues, including many of the 17 Republican senators who have advocated for the same isolationist — a.k.a. America first — agenda as Paul but didn’t even bother to show up to the Senate’s Friday night vote.
The Senate’s technically in session today, with some senators giving floor speeches to an empty chamber. But no votes are scheduled, so the Capitol’s quiet.
Senators are slated to come back to the Capitol Sunday afternoon for another procedural vote to keep the foreign aid measure moving, albeit slowly. It’s unclear if those 17 Republicans plan to play hooky from their duties, again, especially after at least one of the party’s private meetings this week devolved into a shouting match that left at least one senator reporting she was “pissed off.”
The GOP has been in disarray since House Speaker Mike Johnson and other prominent Republicans rejected a bipartisan border security compromise that took four grueling months to negotiate after Republicans demanded border funding be a part of any foreign assistance measure.
Johnson torpedoed the initial $118 billion measure with border funding, and on Tuesday the House defeated a $17.6 billion measure that would have only funded Israel after Johnson put it on the floor without measuring its support within his divided conference.
Since then, Speaker Johnson's failed to offer his party an alternative. That’s left his Republican allies in the Senate divided over how the party should proceed, because anything they pass has to be approved by the House eventually. That has Democratic senators all but rolling their eyes.
“We’re starting to look more like the House,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) complained to Raw Story as he was getting in his car Friday evening.
While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell supported rank-and-file Republicans' initial calls for border funding, he’s now been left overseeing an internal GOP brawl as Republican senators fight over which measures the party wants to formally offer on the Senate floor as amendments to the broader aid package.
“There’s a division there. This is not about McConnell and his grip on the leadership. This is about a faction of new Republicans who think disrupting is progress,” Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) told Raw Story after casting another procedural vote on the foreign aid package Friday.
Democrats complain 2024 presidential politics have now engulfed the Capitol at the behest of the party’s presumptive nominee, former President Donald Trump.
“I’m sorry that we have Republicans that are standing with Donald Trump,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) told Raw Story while walking to her car Friday evening.
“He doesn't want to make a deal on the border, but he also wants to get [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelensky. Remember his first impeachment was because of what happened with Zelensky — that ‘perfect’ phone call?” Stabenow said. “So he could get Zelensky and help his buddy [Russian President Vladmir] Putin who he wants to help him in the election, again. And he gets all of that if this bill goes down.”
“Do you think that's part of it?” Raw Story inquired.
“I think it’s not ‘part of it’ — of the people holding this up, it’s like almost all of them. Almost all of them. It really is,” Stabenow said. “Everything they’re doing is for an audience of one: Donald Trump.”
The far-right, spurred on by Trump, is now targeting GOP senators who are voting with Democrats to send more assistance to Ukraine, which is rankling congressional Republicans who support American allies in Eastern Europe.
“It's unfortunate that they are not recognizing the challenges that the United States is facing right now — and that our friends and our allies are,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) told Raw Story. “These are hard times that require, oftentimes, difficult decisions that can be complicated and complex. And so a knee jerk reaction, like calling people ‘traitors’ for trying to understand the full extent of what we have in front of us as a nation, nothing is that simple.”
Murkowski says she doesn’t personally blame Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.
“I don't know. The way things have been going around here, if it wasn't Rand, it's probably gonna be somebody else,” Murkowski said. “To me, we ought to be able to figure out pathways forward on significant measures, like the one we have in front of us.”
It’s the Senate, so, of course, Paul and others have their defenders.
“Every senator’s got a right,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) told Raw Story. “You don’t get far in this place if you hold bitterness.”
“Are you mad at Rand Paul at all?” Raw Story asked on the Capitol’s steps.
“Well,” Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) replied through a deep breath and slight senatorial grimace.
Rosen has been an outspoken advocate of Las Vegas tourism, including the tens of millions of dollars the city is expected to rake in from hosting this weekend’s Super Bowl, which Rosen has a ticket for.
“So if there are votes on Sunday are you coming back?”
“I’m not leaving. You can’t get to Las Vegas and come back,” Rosen told Raw Story after voting on Friday evening. “Nope. We’re here.”
“Oh, so you can't even go?”
“No,” Rosen said through a laugh. “My husband's gonna have a great time.”
“That really sucks! I’m sorry.”
“It does,” Rosen told Raw Story. “It does.”