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The Senate will return to Washington next month facing a breakneck schedule with a slew of unresolved issues, including healthcare, defense and the budget.  Republicans kicked a vote on repealing and replacing ObamaCare until after the July 4 recess, hoping to buy themselves more time to overcome the impasse between moderates and conservatives.  But the move adds another piece of legislation to what was already expected to be a jam-packed laundry list and a tight floor schedule.  The Senate will likely leave town for the weeklong break on Thursday after spending two days eating through floor time on a nomination

It now looks like a vote on the Senate Health Care bill won’t happen until senators return from their upcoming July 4 recess. Democratic Senator Jon Tester, who has criticized the bill, hosted a Facebook live town hall Tuesday night and fielded questions for an hour. He says the hardest hit Montanans are those in their 50s and 60s, as well as the working poor. “I think there will be a lot of arm twisting over the next few weeks trying to get people to vote for this bill. It does some pretty bad things,” Tester said. “It imposes an age tax on folks in

Montana’s Republican Sen. Steve Daines said in a call with constituents Wednesday night that Medicaid expansion, which now covers about 79,000 around the state, would likely end in 2019 regardless of a U.S. Senate bill expected to terminate the program by 2026. When Montana chose to join with 31 other states and expand Medicaid coverage to the working poor in 2015, the Legislature included a sunset clause that requires lawmakers in 2019 to reassess the program. Daines said he spoke Wednesday with state Sen. Ed Buttrey, R-Great Falls, who helped craft the expansion bill, and Buttrey said he didn’t think

Republican Sen. Steve Daines has reiterated his invitation to Environmental Protection Agency’s top administrator Scott Pruitt to visit a Superfund site in Montana. Daines first gave the invitation to Pruitt in February at the time of Pruitt’s confirmation hearing. Pruitt, so far, has not taken Daines up on that offer. When he visited a Superfund site since becoming EPA’s top administrator, he instead visited a site in Chicago that is contaminated with lead. But in a letter Daines gave to Pruitt after Pruitt’s hearing before the Senate subcomittee on appropriations for the environment and other agenices Tuesday on Capitol Hill

The Senate’s health-care bill could go down in flames any number of ways. And after a nonpartisan congressional report estimated Monday the Senate bill could cause 22 million more people to lose their health insurance over the next decade while raising out-of-pocket costs for elderly and low-income Americans, it’s at risk of death by half a dozen mini fires. Here are the five factions in the Senate that are coalescing against this bill and could make it a very real possibility that it fails, perhaps even before leaders bring it to a vote this week 1) The no-repeal, no-deal faction Think of this group