SEN RICK SCOTT: Americans work five days a week, why can’t the Senate?
Did you know the U.S. Senate has only been in session 79 days (about 40% of the time) so far this year? And so far, we haven’t passed anything to secure our elections, reduce inflation, cut spending or prevent another Democrat shutdown.
Well, what isn’t shocking is the fact nothing has gotten done while we only work 2.5 days out of the week. It is crazy. At the slow rate we are getting stuff done, we should be working seven days.
Let’s just take a status update: The Senate has yet to deliver on several of our key promises to the American people this year, including securing our elections through the SAVE America Act.
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As I noted in a recent letter to my Senate colleagues. Republicans, Democrats and Independents overwhelmingly want voter ID for elections and only Americans to be able to register for elections, the main components of the SAVE America Act.
Yet the Senate still hasn’t passed it — or even agreed on how to proceed on it. To fix this, we need to change how we do business.
The job of a senator used to be to arrive in Washington to debate, vote on and accomplish all our agenda items before we allowed ourselves to go home.
Sadly, that’s no longer the case. In recent decades, under the leadership of both Democrats and Republicans, the Senate has worked less and less, and Americans felt the consequences of the legislature’s lack of urgency.
Right now, we take fewer than 10 votes a week. We arrive late Monday to vote and leave as soon as possible on Thursday afternoon. The Senate is rarely in session on Fridays and almost never works over the weekend — even when pressing deadlines approach on issues critical to the safety, security and stability of the American people.
And it’s not just election security that is at stake. We still need to fund the government to prevent another open-borders Democrat shutdown. We need to cut spending to reduce interest rates and inflation that are wreaking havoc on American budgets.
America is the greatest country in the world. We have the strongest economy because of the workers who bust their butts every day to do their jobs, provide for their families and achieve the American Dream.
I think the Senate should demonstrate the kind of work ethic we depend on from the American people to keep our economy running. We have so many policies to enact before election day this November. If we still have work to do, then why do we only show up 2.5 days a week?
Our situation is not a failure by any one party or individual, it’s a problem that’s been getting progressively worse for decades. Congress is decreasingly productive every year because we leave to go home on Thursday when there is still work to do.
I’m sure we would all love to be home with our families as much as possible — every American probably feels that way — but that’s not the job we all asked our constituents to elect us to do. It’s certainly not the job that I promised the people of Florida. I told them I’d work as hard as I can to help them achieve the American Dream, stay safe and live free.
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Time is short. Getting all of this done before November would mean staying in Washington until we figure out how to deliver it. It would mean sitting down and working together to find solutions, instead of throwing up our hands and going home.
We can’t take "no" for an answer, and we can’t stop just because it’s hard.
To that end, I will be going directly to the Senate floor over the coming weeks to bring up policies that I ran on when I asked Floridians to vote for me.
Let’s fix the problem. Let’s stop flying home on Thursday after lunch, start voting more and make good on our promises. That’s what the American people deserve.