Although senators won't return to Washington until Jan. 8, a group of upper house and White House negotiators plan to hold virtual meetings over the Christmas and New Year holidays.
Members of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives left the capital for the holiday break last week.
Therefore, according to a report by The Hill newspaper, the departure of both chambers from the Capitol marks the end of the most unproductive legislative session in the last 30 years, as Congress approved only 27 bills that President Joe Biden signed into law.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) attributed the lack of success to former President Donald Trump's influence on the House of Representatives.
“We have experienced a year marked by chaos, extremism and paralysis. “There is no doubt that divided government and MAGA extremism (short for Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan) have made legislation in 2023 very difficult,” he said in his comments.
“For most of the year, it was as if Donald Trump himself was in charge of the House of Representatives, which made it extremely difficult to get anything done,” Schumer lamented.
However, the Democrat noted that he was able to confirm the more than 300 non-political military promotions that Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) kept on the floor for months to protest the Pentagon's policy of reimbursing female service members who travel one have an abortion.
Schumer, who managed to unanimously confirm Tuberville's last 11 remaining four-star generals last night, urged his colleagues on Wednesday not to abandon the emergency package for Kiev worth more than $61 billion.
But Republicans are demanding that all of this be accompanied by major changes to asylum policy and border security reforms, which would mean a resumption of Trump's measures, which were heavily criticized during his time in office.
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