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Senate Democrats blocked getting to a vote on an anti-human trafficking bill Tuesday after objecting to restrictions on funding for abortions. Democrats said Republicans put it in the bill without their knowledge.

The vote was 55 to 43, but needed 60 votes to pass. Four Democrats crossed party lines and voted with Republicans.

Partisan tensions rose in the days after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told CNN he would not schedule a vote for Lynch until an otherwise bipartisan human trafficking bill -- stalled over an abortion provision opposed by most Democrats -- passes the chamber. The delay may mean the Senate runs out of time to consider Lynch's nomination ahead of the two-week Easter recess, so she may not get a vote before mid-April.

The 159-day delay for a vote since Obama nominated her is the longest since 1985 when the Senate took more than a year to confirm President Ronald Reagan's nominee Edwin Meese, according to Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.

McConnell is expected to keep the bill on the floor for at least the rest of this week and try to build public and political pressure on Democrats to drop their objections to the abortion language.

READ: McConnell says no Lynch vote unless Democrats relent

The impasse comes at a time when Republicans in Congress are trying to show it can govern effectively after struggling last month to pass a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security.

In unusually harsh terms, White House spokesman Josh Earnest blasted McConnell's treatment of Lynch on Monday, calling the delayed vote "unconscionable" and saying his handling of the human trafficking legislation was a sign of "inept leadership."

"There's not a single legitimate question that has been raised about her aptitude for this job," Earnest said at the White House briefing Monday. "Instead, all we've seen is a bunch of political obstruction from Republicans that, again, does not -- does not speak well of Republicans' efforts to run the Senate in an effective fashion."

Even likely Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton weighed in, saying in a pair of tweets: "Congressional trifecta against women today: 1) Blocking great nominee, 1st African American woman AG, for longer than any AG in 30 years......2) Playing politics with trafficking victims... 3) Threatening women's health & rights."

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Lynch standoff continues

Democrats on the Judiciary Committee joined Republicans in voting to pass the bill, which would create a fund to help victims of human trafficking, out of committee. But when Democrats realized this week that the bill included a provision barring money from the fund from being used to fund most abortions, they reversed their position and repeatedly filibustered the bill.

READ: House GOP members threatening to take budget down

Now both parties are pointing fingers, with Democrats saying they were unaware of the addition of the abortion provision, and Republicans insisting they knew ahead of time.

An exasperated Sen. Dick Durbin put it succinctly in an interview with Politico this week.

"What do you want me to tell you? We missed it!" he said, asked why Democrats didn't catch the language. "It was an obscure reference. Clearly if it had been front and center, we would have caught it."

The snafu isn't all that unusual, however it highlights the age-old bipartisan practice of having the nerds do the legwork for the jocks, or the staffers parse bills for members of Congress.

Former Rep. Jim Moran, a Democrat from Virginia, said typically lawmakers either trusted their staff or each other to keep them informed on the specifics of legislation. But he noted that lawmakers don't intend to punt the hard stuff; rather, it's a necessary tactic to make a busy job more manageable.

"The reality is that members don't have the time to read all the bills that come to the floor," he said. "It really wouldn't be a particularly good use of their time, because they're busy in committee meetings and dealing with their staff and their constituents."

Jim Manley, a former communications adviser for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, said it was typical protocol for lawmakers of all stripes.

"The fact of the matter is, I'm not so sure how many members read bills. And I'm also not sure whether members should be spending that much time reading bills in the first place that's why God created staff," he said.

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Congress fails to do its homework (again)

WASHINGTON First, Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin accused Republicans of blocking an "important civil rights milestone" when they delayed the confirmation of Loretta Lynch for attorney general.

Later, on the Senate floor, Durbin accused Republicans of making Lynch "sit in the back of the bus when it comes to the Senate calendar."

In the meantime, black leaders had dialed into a conference call to warn that Republicans were stifling not just a nominee, but a qualified, black, female nominee. In the words of the director of the NAACP's Legal Defense and Educational Fund, "African-African American women are watching, and the civil rights community is watching."

Lynch, as Democrats have taken to saying, has been delayed longer than the last five attorneys general combined. That delay has fed right into a political campaign. On Wednesday morning, Washington Sen. Patty Murray and Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin assembled (on short notice) a justice league of women's rights activists to join the identity-politicking chorus. The latest delay was spurred by the bipartisan human trafficking bill, which hit a snarl this month when Democrats (they say) belatedly discovered an anti-abortion funding provision.

Joined by leaders of the National Organization for Women, Moms Rising, and the National Women's Law Center, Murray and Baldwin attacked Republicans for holding Lynch "hostage" by waiting until the passage of the trafficking bill to give her a vote.

"Democrats are ready," insisted Murray. "We want to help survivors of trafficking, and protect women's rights, and get our nominee for attorney general confirmed."

"Having snuck in a stealth anti-abortion provision, now they are trying to cram it down the throats of people," said Terry O'Neill, the president of NOW. Lynch "would be the first African-American woman attorney general of the United States. She is qualified. No one doubts her qualifications."

As the advocates talked, around the time that National Women's Law Center co-President Marcia Greenberger called for Lynch to be confirmed "for the sake of the country, for the sake of the children, for the sake of the women," the messaging standoff in the Senate reached a new peak of absurdity. Democrats want to confirm a nominee, and they may already have the votes to do so, with four Republican senators ready to vote with them.

Republicans want to pass the trafficking bill, with the abortion provision; they also think that the Democrats are being opportunistic about a provision they must have been blind to miss. In conversations Tuesday, they were confident that the politics of "blocking a human trafficking bill" would backfire on the minority party.

But even the Democrats who were comfortable supporting the bill pinned the blame for the standoff on Republicans. "When people of greater legislative acumen than I miss it, something's up," said Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat who usually tries to cast anti-abortion votes. "Other than what I've read, I don't know how it developed."

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Democrats see new 'war on women' in human trafficking, Loretta Lynch fights

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FILE: Nov. 13, 2014: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-K.Y., with GOP Sens. John Thune, S.D., and John Cornyn, Texas, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C.(REUTERS)

Senate Democrats on Tuesday blocked a bill meant to help human-trafficking victims over objections to a controversial abortion provision, fueling a standoff that in turn is delaying a confirmation vote for President Obama's attorney general nominee.

The flare-up is one of the more complicated disputes of the new congressional session. Democrats are objecting to the anti-human trafficking bill, which they initially supported, because it contains the abortion provision -- which would prohibit victim-restitution funds being used to pay for abortions. Democrats only recently noticed the provision, though it's been in the bill for weeks.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to advance the legislation on Tuesday, but Democrats would not help his party reach the 60-vote threshold to move forward.

The legislation was blocked on a 55-43 vote, with four Democrats joining Republicans.

The stand-off now has not only the trafficking legislation but also the AG nomination hanging in the balance. McConnell said earlier this week that the chamber wont have a final vote to approve Loretta Lynch as the countrys next attorney general until the human-trafficking legislation is approved.

That message was repeated Tuesday by bill sponsor Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn after the failed test vote.

Some groups want to turn this into an abortion issue, Cornyn said. Cornyn also accused Democrats of staging a fake fight for political reasons and said McConnell will continue to hold votes on the legislation until it is passed.

Both parties are now pointing the finger at each other over legislation that at one point was a bipartisan issue. The bill itself has 12 Democratic cosponsors, and all nine Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted in favor of the legislation early on.

However, Senate Democrats began to block the bill about two weeks ago upon learning of the abortion-money language.

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Democrats block anti-human trafficking bill, while GOP vows Lynch vote on hold until measure passes