Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) and House conservatives chastised Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday for holding up over 300 House-passed bills and urged the Senate to drop the legislative filibuster to enable the Republican-controlled Congress to pass President Donald Trump’s agenda.
Rep. Ken Buck, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, and other conservatives led a “special order” to take to the House floor to deliver speeches in sequence on a particular topic to draw attention to the importance of passing the Republican agenda.
Rep. Ken Buck told Breitbart News on Thursday, “The House has passed over 308 bills that now sit languishing in the Senate. We’ve passed legislation to protect Americans from violent illegal immigrant felons, to repeal Dodd-Frank, and to end late-term abortions. The American people expect the Senate to act, and tonight we’re going to take to the House floor to remind the upper chamber about all of the important bills we’ve sent their way.”
Bills that the House passed that languish in the GOP-controlled Senate include Kate’s Law, the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act that crushes sanctuary cities, the North Korea State Sponsor of Terrorism Designation Act of 2017, the Competitive Health Insurance Reform Act of 2017, and the Financial CHOICE Act of 2017.
These conservatives hope that they can continue to build pressure on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to get the legislation through the Congress’s upper chamber.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell faces increasing pressure to pass the president’s agenda. McConnell cracked under pressure to open the Senate through Fridays and even the weekend; Senate Republicans called for the Senate to remain open 24/7 to confirm over 200 Trump judicial and executive nominees.
Conservatives called on McConnell and the rest of the Senate leadership to resign for their inability to pass President Donald Trump’s agenda, which includes repealing Obamacare, passing a tax reform package, and funding a southern border wall.
On the House floor on Thursday night, Rep. Ken Buck said, “Unfortunately much of the House’s important work has been stalled.”
Rep. Buck said, “I would like to spend the next hour recognizing the bills that remain motionless in the Senate.”
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) spoke about the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act.
“We had a tragedy in San Francisco with the murder of Kate Steinle. She was murdered by an illegal immigrant who was deported five times,” he said. “But he kept coming back to San Francisco because he knew it was a sanctuary city. Kate Steinle now rests in her grave, and America feels her pain.”
“If we got rid of the Senate filibuster, we would see more action on this bill,” King declared.
Congressman Jody Hice (R-GA) spoke about the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which bans abortions in which a fetus can feel pain.
“Every day the Senate is doing nothing, lives are lost. I am also proud that the House in our appropriations package, defunded Planned Parenthood,” Hice said.
Hice charged, “The 60 vote threshold has become an enormous barrier to us getting our work done. The heart of that is to defend life. I call on the Senate to deal with the filibuster and deal with the 60 vote rule.”
Rep. Alex Mooney (R-WV) said that the House passed the Financial Choice Act, which would have repealed many sections of the Obama-era Dodd-Frank Act. Mooney charged, “Dodd-Frank was what Obamacare was to the healthcare market.”
The Financial Choice Act would eliminate provisions in Dodd-Frank that would allow for future bailouts of large Wall Street banks in the event of a future financial crisis.
“Most Americans think that Americans should not bail out failing banks,” Mooney added.
“We no longer have conference committees in Congress anymore,” he said. “We simply want the Senate to do their job, and we can work out the differences in the conference committee.”
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-GA) said the Senate needs to ditch the Senate filibuster to pass laws that will benefit the American people. Biggs said, “I call upon the Senate to put arcane Senate rules aside and adopt laws that will benefit the American people.”
“These bills will most likely languish in the Senate, mostly due to the filibuster. The filibuster is not even in the Constitution,” Biggs added.
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