Congress is usually scheduled to be on break for the entire month of August, but this year will be different.
On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R- Ky.) delayed the start of the August Senate recess until the third week in August in order to allow more time for lawmakers to complete work on health care reform and other legislative issues.
“Also, (this is) due to this unprecedented level of obstruction that we have been experiencing,” McConnell said at a press conference. "For example, you may have noticed, we had to get cloture yesterday on a district judge in Idaho."
"As of June 28th, there were 178 presidential nominations up here and only 48 confirmed."
“We’ve got defense authorization, we’ve got debt ceiling, we’ve got the FDA user fee and other important legislation that we need to address. And we simply, as a result of all this obstructionism don't have enough time to address all of these issues between now and the originally anticipated August recess,” McConnell added.