Senate leaders returned to the floor Monday afternoon for the first time since their Columbus Day recess, which was particularly busy with codels to China and Israel, and behind-the-scenes conversations with the White House about an emergency funding package to Israel.
"We want to move this package quickly," Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the floor. "The Senate must go first — I know that the House is in disarray, but we cannot wait for them. The needs are too great, and if we pass a strong package, with strong bipartisan support, it will import to in the House somehow or other to act despite the morass they are in."
Schumer led a delegation of bipartisan lawmakers to the Holy Land over the weekend, just a few days after he cut his codel to China short last week. He said on the floor the trip pushed back "in a significant way against the dangerous false equivalency between what Hamas is doing and the response against them."
