Ocasio-Cortez chased McConnell around Capitol as shutdown drags on
By Marisa Schultz
January 16, 2019 8:16pm
WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had four freshman congresswomen chasing him all around the Capitol Wednesday, including New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
But the GOP leader evaded the new Democratic reps who visited his Capitol office, cloakroom, Senate floor and then took the subway to another office building suite.
“He seems to be running away from us,” said Ocasio-Cortez, 29, the youngest female member of Congress in history who represents parts of the Bronx and Queens.
She was joined by Reps. Jahana Hayes of Connecticut, Lauren Underwood of Illinois and Katie Hill of California, who said they represent an activist freshman class who won’t sit still as the record-breaking partial government shutdown continues.
They are frustrated the House has passed multiple bills to reopen the government for some 800,000 unpaid federal workers, but the Senate has refused to take them up.
“At this point, the only thing left is for us to make noise and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Hill said after they dropped off a letter signed by 38 House freshmen to McConnell’s office asking him to call a vote.
“Eight-hundred thousand people don’t have their paychecks,” Ocasio-Cortez added. “So where’s Mitch?”
McConnell has stood firm that he won’t bring legislation to the floor for a vote unless President Trump will sign it. Trump hasn’t budged from his position that he wants border barrier money included to reopen the government, which the House bills do not support.
“We’re all behind the president,” McConnell said last week after Trump visited Republican senators at the Capitol. “We think this border security issue is extremely important to the country.”
McConnell’s staffers accepted the letter the new reps authored and said they’d pass it along to the leader.
McConnell spokesman Don Stewart rejected the notion that the leader was hiding from the freshman reps.
“No, he was not,” Stewart said. “I’m not even sure he had advance notice they were coming.”
Stewart said McConnell has been busy with meetings, votes and other obligations throughout the Capitol everyday.
He said the new members were told after their first Capitol office visit that McConnell wouldn’t be on the Senate floor or in his second office but went there anyway.
https://nypost.com/2019/01/16/ocasio-cortez-chased-mcconnell-around-capitol-as-shutdown-drags-on/
