Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell McConnell other GOP leaders argue that they are working more efficiently by hashing out deals with Democrats and don’t need to keep the chamber in five days a week. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo Senate’s biggest fear: Working on Fridays The Senate canceled its August recess, but it still loves long weekends.

On Tuesday, Mitch McConnell canceled August recess because he said senators weren’t getting enough done. At 4:52 p.m. Thursday, he sent senators home for yet another three-day weekend.

The Senate may be clawing back three weeks of its annual vacation to dig in on nominees and spending bills this summer, but pretty much every week the chamber is in session it slices off another working day. The Senate is scheduled to be in session five days out of most weeks, yet the chamber has worked on just two Fridays in the past 12 months.


McConnell and other GOP leaders argue that they are working more efficiently by hashing out deals with Democrats and don’t need to keep the chamber in session five days a week when much of that time would be spent running out the clock until the next vote allowed under Senate rules.

But the Senate’s voting schedule of starting on Monday at 5:30 p.m. and leaving by 2 p.m. on Thursday presents the chamber with an optics problem, especially as President Donald Trump urges them to accomplish more of his agenda.

“I’m the guy that said we ought to work 24-7,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said as he left the last vote of the week on Thursday. “But I’m not in charge. Above my pay grade, apparently.”

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Some senators in both parties readily accept the cognitive dissonance between the GOP push to keep working through August — goosed by Trump’s tweet to “STAY!” — and the constant smell of jet fumes on Thursday afternoons. But they’ve also accepted the reality that they don’t dictate the schedule.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), a former speaker of his state’s House of Representatives, recalled that he occasionally imposed a six-day workweek in that position.

“If it were up to me, when I had to deal with this as speaker, I had people every day there except Sunday,” Tillis said. “Hopefully, we don’t have to get to that, because that affects relationships.”

Indeed, Republicans privately worry that if they lengthen the Senate workweek, the results could be embarrassing. Most senators want to spend as much time out of session as possible, and with the GOP’s working majority at just 50 members, any absences could lead to failed floor votes.

Asked why the Senate would work through August but not on Fridays, Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden quipped that at times “when people ask a logical question ... around here we come up short on the logic issue.”

“We are glad to be here in August fighting to hold down health care costs. But absolutely, if you’re serious about working, you’ve got to work more than just calling it a day at 1:45 [p.m.],” Wyden said as he left Thursday’s final vote of the week.

According to Senate statistics, the chamber has had a regular Friday workday just eight times since January 2017. And since last April, the Senate was in for a regular session on a Friday just twice: Dec. 1, 2017, and Jan. 19, 2018. On another day in February this year, the chamber worked past midnight on a Thursday into a Friday.

McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said Republicans “would love to process nominations and legislation every day of the week” but are stymied by Democratic holdups that would make a Friday session a waste of time

“It’s not the lack of voting on any particular day that caused the need to cancel the August recess — it’s the Democrat obstruction, and more than 100 cloture votes they’ve caused that require the need for that additional time to complete work on legislation and nominations,” Stewart said.

When the majority leader announced he would ax most of the August recess earlier this week, he cited similar reasoning about the “unprecedented obstruction” of Trump nominees by Democrats. McConnell swatted away a suggestion that Democrats, who stand to lose out on key campaigning time for their vulnerable incumbents, might be able to get back some of August by striking a deal.

“It’s inconceivable to me that we can’t use these weeks, even with cooperation,” the Kentucky Republican told reporters on Tuesday. “We’ve got a lot of appropriations bills to pass.”

But as Tillis put it, “the underreported story is, there’s a lot of cooperation going on” in the Senate, particularly when to comes to spending talks between Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and ranking member Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.).

“[I]f anything, an ‘in on Monday, out on Friday afternoon’ schedule we should consider,” Tillis added.

Keeping senators in session on Fridays, when many return to their home states to see their families and engage with constituents, would be no easy task for McConnell. And because the chamber’s procedural rules allow a single senator to withhold the consent required to speed action in the Senate, more Friday sessions might lead only to more running out the clock rather than more Friday votes.

Even so, McConnell himself vowed to return the Senate to a schedule that more closely resembles that of the American workforce when he took the majority leader’s post in 2014, observing that “most people work five days a week.”

“The first thing I need to do is get the Senate back to normal. That means working more,” McConnell said during a 2014 news conference. “I don’t think we’ve had any votes on Friday in anybody’s memory.”

And many in his conference say they’re ready to show up any time they’re asked. “I’m prepared to work whenever we’re in session,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said.

McConnell’s August cancellation promises to rob vulnerable minority-party incumbents of valuable days to spend on the campaign trail as the GOP tries to topple some of the 10 Democrats who are defending their seats in states that Trump won. Of course, the lost time will also affect imperiled Republicans like Nevada Sen. Dean Heller, who faces a long commute home and benefits from a workweek designed so that lawmakers don't have to live in Washington.

But Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) joked this week that “county fairgoers around the country are excited” about the scrapped summer recess “because the parades just got a heck of a lot shorter.”

Democrats, meanwhile, are vowing to find an August upside. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and his caucus hope to divert the spotlight to health care for the entire month, slamming the GOP for the rise in premiums after the repeal of Obamacare’s individual mandate.

That doesn’t mean they’re satisfied with adding workweeks while most remain 3½ half days long.

“I’ve been saying this all along: If we’re going to work, let’s work,” Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) said. “I stand ready to stay here in the sweltering heat of whatever if we can get results to get things done, like the farm bill, like the defense authorization. Our schedule should reflect the work schedule of the American [people].”

Behind senators’ bipartisan eagerness to tout their stamina, though, there’s a reality that neither they, nor their staff, nor the reporters who cover them can acknowledge without looking unseemly: By the time Thursday afternoon rolls around, many of the Capitol’s denizens are happy to see the stampede out the door.