A fall road map for Senate Democrats

With summer vacation ending, students all across America have returned to the classroom, excited to learn.

This week, after the longest summer recess in Senate history, lawmakers are also returning to Washington.

{mosads}And while we know that most students will work hard in the coming year, we are still waiting for Senate Republicans to finally start doing their jobs on a critical list of must-do items that they have failed to accomplish.

By choosing a long recess over calls from Democrats to do their job, Senate Republicans face several failed assignments from last semester. Senate Democrats have a road map for the fall that will clean up these failures and move forward on priorities that are vital to hardworking American families.  

Our fall road map calls for the Republican majority to accomplish two goals: respond to the nation’s most pressing public health and safety crises and succeed in basic governance. At the moment, Senate Republicans have failed in both categories, making them unable to move forward on other important issues like college affordability.

The most recent reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention list more than 16,000 individual cases of Zika within the United States and U.S. territories, with nearly 14,000 cases occurring in Puerto Rico alone. Hundreds of those infected are pregnant women, resulting in a total of 21 birth defects. Five of those cases resulted in pregnancy losses. It is totally irresponsible that Republicans have been playing politics with this deadly crisis. It is past time to move forward with the bipartisan agreement we passed with 89 votes in May to give doctors and researchers the tools they need to combat the Zika virus. And Senate Republicans should not add any poison pill amendments designed to sink the package.

Senate Republicans also put our safety at risk when they refuse to do their job and pass commonsense measures to keep Americans safe from gun violence. In the wake of terrible attacks in communities across America, their lack of action speaks louder than words. We need to keep guns out of the hands of potential terrorists and close the loopholes in our background check system. Senate Republicans are failing at public health and safety. It is a class that Americans need them to pass.

Senate Republicans are also failing Government 101: considering Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court and returning the budget process to regular order. 

It is time for Senate Republicans to do their job and finally stop their unprecedented refusal to hold hearings on the president’s nominee, whom many of them have praised in the past and who received the American Bar Association’s highest rating. We are now on Day 175 — by far the longest wait for any Supreme Court nominee in history. As the court begins its new term in October, it is the American people who will pay the price of holding an open seat for “President Trump” to fill.

And with only 23 days until the federal government runs out of money, the same Republicans who pledged to return the budget process to regular order have failed to send a single funding bill to the president’s desk. Despite bipartisan agreement last year on government funding levels, many Republicans are now proposing new cuts in critical services that affect the safety and quality of life of American families. We cannot afford more Republican budget brinksmanship.

Senate Republicans are failing to address the most basic challenges of middle-class families. Perhaps the best example of this comes in their inaction to lower the costs of college. Too many college students cannot afford to start college or are burdened with exorbitant loans when they graduate, which stops them from being able to buy a house or start a business. The In the Red Act would put students on a path toward debt-free education, which is critical for their future and the future of our country.  

Our fall road map calls on Republicans to reverse their F’s from the summer and do their job. Senate Democrats are at our desks, pencils sharpened, ready to get the job done for American families.

Schumer is the senior senator from New York and the chairman of the Democratic Policy and Communications Center. Stabenow is the senior senator from Michigan and the vice chairwoman of the Democratic Policy and Communications Center.