EDITORIAL: Senators get their wish for more work time

Should Congress continue work or go home for its customary August break?

A group of U.S. senators, led by Georgia’s David Perdue, thinks it should not. And leadership, which had seemed cool to the idea initially, has agreed with the group.

Noting Tuesday that the Senate has only 31 scheduled working days before the federal fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, a group of eight Republican senators, including Perdue, conducted a news conference Tuesday, urging that the August recess be shortened or eliminated to give the Senate time to address major issues, including health care, tax reform, the budget, the debt ceiling and jobs.

“We’re willing to forego some or all of the August work period,” Perdue said at the opening. “We’ve got some very important issues we’ve got to get done, get some results.”

Health care regulation, taxes and the Supreme Court nomination were the big topics at the first of the year, Perdue said, adding the Senate made progress on many of those items. But big-ticket issues still remain on the budget, health care and tax reform.

“Even if we get through health care in the next week or two, through now and the end of the fiscal year we only have 31 working days left,” the Georgia senator said. “… We want to make sure we have plenty of time to get all of that done.”

Perdue said there were no ulterior motives for the request.

“There’s one one purpose for this,” he said during a question-and-answer session, “and that’s to get the results for the people back home.”

He said the letter the 10 senators sent Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell last week wasn’t “a shot at leadership,” but a “positive way” of saying there was work that needed to be done. “We’re willing to amend the tradition in the Senate,” Perdue said. “The last time this was even attempted was 1994.”

Shortly after the new conference, the senators got their wish. McConnell said he would delay the start of the recess, officially called state work days, until the third week of August, cutting the period for visiting back home in half. The Senate had been scheduled to close up work at the end of July and not return into session until early September. Now, the break will begin Aug. 14.

If nothing else, the extension gives the Senate, which was expected to vote next week on health care reform, extra time to deal with that issue, which has been difficult at best. There have been questions as to whether McConnell could pull together the votes to pass a health reform package planned to be considered next week.

And that is the spectre that looms over the rest of the agenda of the president and congressional Republicans. After seven years of preaching repeal and replace, they have to take action, and that action can’t result in a health care plan that is seen as inferior to what it is replacing. It’s difficult to see how tax reform and spending can be addressed until health care is successfully dealt with.

The senators asked for the time to work, and it has been given to them. That was the easy part.

Now comes the real work. They have to find the solutions.