Roy Blunt: “I would be glad to find out the substance of that meeting this morning. I doubt it was very substantive or could not…”

“I would be glad to find out the substance of that meeting this morning. I doubt it was very substantive or could not have been done yesterday. I think all the Members understand this discussion. I think the general coverage of Congress meeting for 5 days a week was a disservice to the institution. It is like assuming that a surgeon only does the surgeon's work when they are in the operating room. Another point that I believe I am helping my friend, the majority leader, make is, when we are in committee and not on the floor, that doesn't mean we are not working. When we are at home holding town hall meetings or meeting with constituents, or in my case, seeing how we are doing restoring power to 200,000 people that didn't have power in my district this week in weather that was between 6 and 26 degrees all week, it was impossible for me to be there today because I had to be here to cast a vote that could have been cast last night. I hope we all work hard. Certainly the majority has had the better of this argument so far because it is a lot of fun to talk about Members of Congress that don't work, or suddenly Members are working. Another thing I am going to tell my friend we are going to do, frankly, is keep track of how many hours we worked in essentially a 3- and 4-day week versus a 4- and 5-day week. So far, we are winning in hours of working on the floor. We worked hard; you worked hard. On the appropriations process, I would have liked to have finished that last year.…”