WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell will return to work at the U.S. Capitol on Monday, nearly six weeks after a fall in a Washington-area hotel and extended treatment for a concussion.
The 81-year-old veteran senator from Kentucky has been recuperating at home since he was discharged from a rehab center March 25th. He fell after attending an event earlier that month, injuring his head and breaking a rib.
He visited his office on Friday, the first time since his injury, and is expected to have a full schedule of work in the Senate this week.
“I really want to go back to the Senate on Monday”, McConnell tweeted Thursday. “We have big issues to address and big fights to win for Kentuckians and the American people.”
McConnell returns to the Senate ahead of a busy stretch in which Congress will have to figure out a way to raise the nation’s debt ceiling and to negotiate additional aid for the Ukrainian war, among other political matters. And he returns when several other senators have been out for medical reasons, raising questions about how much the Senate will be able to accomplish in the coming months with a 51-49 party split.
Already, the absence of the Republican leader, along with those of the Democratic senators. Diana Feinstein and john fettermanamong others, they have added to the lethargic rhythm of the Senate in the first months of the year.
Unlike the past two years, in which Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was able to push through key elements of President Joe Biden’s agenda with the help of a Democratic-led House, the Senate has slowed down significantly. with the Republicans now in charge of the House. And the absences have made even simple votes like nominations more difficult.
An immediate question for McConnell upon his return is whether to help Democrats temporarily replace Feinstein on the Senate Judiciary Committee as he continues to recover in California from a case of shingles. Democrats have grown increasingly frustrated as the Democrat’s more than six-week absence from the panel has stalled confirmation of some of Biden’s and Feinstein’s nominees. has asked for a short-term replacement in the committee.
However, the Democrats cannot do that, no help from republicans, since the approval of the process would require 60 votes in the Plenary Session of the Senate. Republicans have so far been silent on whether they will oppose it.
It is unclear when Feinstein, 89, will return to Washington. His office has so far refused to say.
Also returning to the Senate Monday is Fetterman, who was hospitalized for clinical depression in February. He was treated for six weeks at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and his doctors say his depression is now “in remission.”
Fetterman’s announcement that he would be admitted to hospital earlier this year came after he suffered a stroke last year and has struggled with auditory processing disorder, which can make someone unable to speak fluently and quickly process a spoken conversation into meaning. The 53-year-old Pennsylvania Democrat now uses devices in conversations, meetings and congressional hearings that transcribe spoken words in real time.
In a statement when he was freed from walter reed Late last month, Fetterman said the care he received there “changed my life.”
“I am excited to be the father and husband that I want to be, and the senator from Pennsylvania that he deserves,” said Fetterman, who won accolades for your decision to seek treatment.
When McConnell visited his office in the Capitol on Friday, video captured by NBC News showed him entering the building without help as aides stood nearby.
This was McConnell’s second serious injury in recent years. Four years ago he tripped and fell at his Kentucky home, causing a broken shoulder that required surgery. The Senate had just entered a summer recess and he worked from his house for a few weeks while he recuperated.
McConnell had polio in his early childhood and has long acknowledged some difficulty climbing stairs as an adult.