Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) this week forced a reading of the entire COVID-19 relief package on the Senate floor, which took up more than ten hours and didn't conclude until early on Friday morning.
However, CNN's Lauren Fox reported on Friday that Johnson's stunt backfired spectacularly, as it resulted in giving Republicans a far shorter period of debate for the bill.
"They finished in the middle of the night and in the end, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from the state of Maryland, rose to ask for some consent to restart this debate beginning at 9 a.m. today in the U.S. Senate," she said.
The key, Fox explained, was that Van Hollen asked for three hours to debate the bill instead of the expected 20 hours of time.
Johnson was not in the Senate at the time of Hollen's proposal and could not object to it — and so it was adopted.
"In the end, instead of having 20 hours of debate, because there wasn't a Republican there to object at the end of this process, they are now just going to have three hours of debate," she said. "Then they will start at noon with this vote-a-rama."
Watch the video below.
This is kinda funny, from CNN's @FoxReports:
— The Recount (@therecount) March 5, 2021
"Instead of having 20 hours of debate, because there wasn't a Republican there to object at the end of this process, they are now just going to have 3 hours of debate. Then they will start at noon with this vote-a-rama." pic.twitter.com/XgxLHYuzq0
