Sen. Tim Kaine, speaking early this morning, absolutely NAILS IT:
“This process shows how misplaced the priorities of the Senate are at a critical moment in time. There’s an epic national crisis that we should be addressing – a pandemic that is raging and causing unprecedented death and economic distress at a massive scale. And yet the Senate has been sitting on its hands since late April, when we passed our fourth and final piece of COVID legislation…We’ve done nothing since, and the death toll is now approaching 230,000…The Chief of Staff for President Trump admitted defeat yesterday…And yet the Senate is doing nothing…This is inexcusable…The Senate majority does not want a COVID relief bill…The Senate majority abandoned their commitment to helping Americans through this emergency on September 18, the day that Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, and since then rushing Judge Barrett to confirmation has been all that matters to them. No matter that Americans deeply need COVID relief…No matter that the Senate majority broke its word to their colleagues and the American public that a Supreme Court vacancy occurring in a presidential election year would not be filled until after the election to quote let the people decide…My question is WHY?…The actual effort is particularly heartless…[it] is driven by the Republican desire to destroy the Affordable Care Act…This vote will hurt the body…hurt the Supreme Court, and hurt millions of people in crisis who are struggling and even dying as the Senate ignores their needs.”