Senators cleared a major hurdle Tuesday to pave the path forward for the Agriculture-FDA appropriations bill, but other spending proposals — and dozens of President Donald Trump’s nominees — are still facing obstacles ahead of the August recess.
Democrats and Republicans are working to find compromises to assemble an appropriations package and vote on it in the coming days, but Democrats’ threats to hold up a spending deal later this year and their effort to slow-walk votes on nominees is frustrating GOP leaders.
“This has got to stop, and clearly the Democrats are starting something and creating a precedent that is going to come back to haunt them,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said Tuesday about Democrats forcing Republicans to take multiple time-consuming procedural votes on each nominee.
“This is really bad,” Thune said. “This is a bad practice on their part, because as you all know, what goes around comes around, around here.”
