Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell affirmed Wednesday that the chamber will reconvene next week, a day after the Democrat-led House scrapped plans to return to D.C., on May 4 amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“We’re going to come back to work next Monday, the House is not,” the Kentucky Republican said on Fox News Radio.
“We feel like if people on the front lines are willing to work during the pandemic, we should be as well,” Mr. McConnell said. “We’ll practice proper safeguards in the wake of this and work safely in the Senate but get back to business. We’re not going to sit on the sidelines.”
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer had announced Tuesday the full House won’t return next week as planned, citing advice from Congress’s in-house physician and increasing cases in and around D.C.
Mr. McConnell said he’s willing to negotiate on the next round of coronavirus-related legislation even if the full House isn’t in town.
Mr. McConnell says he’s open to providing additional funding for states and localities — a key Democratic demand — in the next bill.
But he has also said adding provisions that would shield reopening businesses from liability is a “red line” for Republicans.
“If there’s a lawyer out on the sidewalk looking at every move you make as to whether or not you somehow have been irresponsible in this phase one and two that we move into as we reopen America, that’s not the way to get the country going again,” he said.
Mr. McConnell also said recently that the Senate would start confirming President Trump’s judicial nominees again as soon as the chamber was back in session.
On Wednesday, he touted the fact that the Senate has confirmed two U.S. Supreme Court justices and 51 federal appeals court judges during Mr. Trump’s first term, while President Barack Obama got 55 circuit court judges confirmed during his eight years in office.
Mr. McConnell talked about judges in the context of Mr. Trump’s record during his first term in office, also mentioning the 2017 tax-cut law and an economy that had been humming before the pandemic took hold.
“I think the president [has] done a good job, he has a strong argument for reelection in the fall, and I wouldn’t be alarmed by what polls may be showing in April, as the election is in November,” he said.
Mr. McConnell said recent polls on the presidential race mirror those from the same point in 2016, when the president defied many public surveys and predictions to topple Hillary Clinton.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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