Senate Republicans came back to Washington this week with a steep, uphill climb ahead of them: coming up with an Obamacare replacement package that could win the support of at least 50 of the chambers 52 Republicans. And that was before the president's son was reported to have met, during the the campaign, with a Russian lawyer touted as someone who was close to the Russian government and had dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Now, Senate leaders are scrambling to deliver on a 7-years-long campaign promise to remake health care in America, all while dodging questions about Russian intervention into the very election that gave Republicans control of the federal government. With a weakened White House and an unpopular bill to sell to the public, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., did the nearly-unthinkable on the Senate's first full day back from its July 4 recess: he delayed the August recess by two weeks.

The last time congressional leaders took such a schedule-disrupting action it was 1994. The reason? Then-President Bill Clinton hoped the extra time and pressure would nudge Congress to pass the health care reform spearheaded by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton. It didn't work and by the end of August, Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Tex. and then a presidential hopeful himself, declared "this is a dead body that they've been dragging around for the last two weeks."

No one's calling the current GOP effort dead just yet, but the health care plan is clearly on life support. Some ten Republican senators have expressed a reluctance to vote for the current package, which would make deep cuts to Medicaid. Medicaid pays for health care for the poor as well as for nearly two-thirds of people in nursing homes and people with opioid drug addictions, needs that affect red as well as blue states.

GOP negotiators sweetened the bill with a pot of money for opioid addiction treatment, but "that's not sufficient to win my support for the bill, although it's something I'm happy has been added to the bill," says Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine and one of the current bill's critics. "Minor changes and tweaks will not be sufficient to win my support for the bill," she added.

Adds Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., "I want to do the best we can, but the best we can is not on the table right now."

The situation, combined with the ongoing Russia investigations and revelations, has put both parties on the Hill in unusual positions, given their numbers. Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress and the White House and should be able, on paper, to deliver major legislation, look miserable. Democrats, both appalled at the behavior of White House officials and Trump family members and enjoying the political good luck it has brought them, are reveling in their dominant position on the health care debate.

GOP lawmakers scooted away from reporters asking about a meeting Donald Trump Jr. had with a Russian lawyer who, the younger Trump acknowledged in emails he himself tweeted out, had connections to a Russian government that supported Trump for U.S. president. (The lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, told NBC she was not, in fact, connected to the Kremlin.)

"I don't think that it's relevant to the Trump administration," says Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the chamber's most senior Republican. Asked directly if his "personal trust level" in the administration had changed, McConnell simply noted that the Senate Intelligence Committee is investigating the matter broadly.

Democrats, meanwhile, expressed worries that the younger Trump had behaved, at the least, with impropriety. "To go into that meeting was compromising. The proper thing to do would have been to notify authorities of this contact," says Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "I think it does cross a line of [a] foreign government trying to influence our elections, and that should have been turned over to law enforcement," Cardin says.

Standing Tuesday near the historic Ohio Clock outside the Senate chamber, McConnell was grim-faced as he announced the news that the Senate would stay in for two more weeks than scheduled so lawmakers could get their work done. He was followed by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., practically bursting as he blamed Republicans for having seven-plus years to come up with an Obamacare replacement, then producing something that has just a 17 percent approval rating from the public

"The problem the Republicans are having with health care is not time, it's the substance of the bill," Schumer told reporters. "They can spend two more weeks, two more months, two years. As long as this bill continues to cut taxes on the very wealthy and hurt working Americans, the bill's going to be as unpopular as it is today."

McConnell blamed Democrats for delaying the Senate by dragging out the confirmation process for President Donald Trump's cabinet nominees, a tactic McConnell said led to delays in getting lower-level nominees to the Senate for their approval. The delays, the GOP leader said, were an unfair attempt by Democrats to keep Trump from moving his agenda along. Democrats made similar complaints during the Obama era, when Republicans held up nominees to entities like the Centers for Medicaid and Medicaid Services (frustrating the implementation of Obamacare) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a body whose very existence the GOP opposed.

McConnell said he expected to have yet another version of the heath care bill to be available Thursday. After a "scoring" by the Congressional Budget Office (which predicts how many people would gain or lose insurance, and what the effect would be on the federal budget), the Senate will vote on the measure next week, McConnell promised.

But that deadline, like deadlines before it, remains ambitious. Trump, with low approval ratings and a burgeoning Russia controversy to handle, has little political capital. Senators have been badgered by protesters in their home states and in Washington. And even if the Senate were to approve its own package, the measure would face an uncertain future in the House.

As for missing the first weeks of August recess, perhaps it's a blessing for his GOP colleagues, Schumer joked. "If I were them, I wouldn't want to go home and face the voters either," he said. Staying a few more weeks may fix the problem – or, as in1994, delay the inevitable.