As they promised to do, the Senate Democratic leadership moved from infrastructure directly into a “vote-a-rama” on the $3.5 trillion budget proposal and passed it in the early morning hours on a party line vote.
Punchbowl News breaks down all the overnight action:
🚨 Breaking overnight: The Senate passed the Democrats $3.5 trillion budget resolution, 50-49, just before 4 a.m.
Remember — the budget resolution provides instructions to the Senate committees to begin crafting a reconciliation bill that would include a big chunk of President Joe Biden’s agenda. The reconciliation package can pass on a majority vote in the Senate. The House will consider the budget resolution the week of Aug. 23, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced on Tuesday.
The vote was a significant win for Democrats and the White House. Schumer said the Democrats’ budget plan will “provide historic investments in American jobs, American families, and the fight against climate change.”
“It puts us on track to bring a generational transformation to how our economy works for average Americans,” Schumer said.
The Senate conducted a 15-hour “vote-a-rama” prior to passage with a record 47 amendments.
During that session, Senate Republicans — with support from Democratic moderates — were able to win votes on a number of non-binding amendments on volatile political issues, including Critical Race Theory, fracking, inflation, the Green New Deal, police funding, sanctions on Hamas, taxpayer funding of abortion and opposing tax increases on any American making less than $400,000 annually, among others. The House can accept those provisions, or it can move to strike the language and send the revised resolution back to the Senate, but that will slow the process down and could trigger another lengthy vote-a-rama. Senate Republicans were ecstatic about these political messaging victories, which they see being useful in the 2022 midterm elections.
Following the budget drama, Schumer successfully discharged S. 1 — a major Democratic voting right measure — from the Rules Committee. After that, Schumer asked for consent to bring up S. 2093, the revised For the People Act. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) objected. Schumer then asked to bring up S. 2670, the Redistricting Reform Act, which limits partisan gerrymandering. Cruz objected to that bill as well. Schumer sought consent to bring up S. 2671, the DISCLOSE Act, which requires additional campaign finance disclosure. Cruz objected, and then tried to bring up his own legislation that would eliminate contribution limits to campaigns. Schumer objected.
Before leaving the floor, Schumer announced the Senate would consider the compromise voting rights bill when the chamber returns from recess in September. This legislation has the support of all Democrats, but it will not pass due to a GOP filibuster.
The action didn’t stop there. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) asked for approval on dozens of foreign policy nominees, including some critical posts in Africa and Latin America. The Democrats noted that the Senate hasn’t confirmed a huge number of Biden’s ambassadorial nominees after more than 200 days in office, a break with previous precedent.
Cruz countered that the Biden administration “is in open defiance” of legislation calling for sanctions on Russia over the Nord Stream II pipeline and objected to the nominees.
The House has not passed a budget resolution yet. To use reconciliation requires a joint budget resolution, passed in both houses. Anyone know if Pelosi’s narrow majority will accept the Senate version?Report
I haven’t read anything that offers a strong insight. Pelosi has, historically, proven a pretty able cat-herder for her caucus and every Democratic congress critter knows a lot is hanging on what happens next.Report
This morning’s Washington Post reports that a group of nine Representatives are demanding that the trillion-dollar infrastructure bill be approved before moving on to the budget resolution.
If I recall the House rules correctly — probably not — and if there’s a bipartisan majority that wants to pass the infrastructure bill so that they know they have that available to campaign on, that majority can force Pelosi to bring the unmodified bill from the Senate to the floor for a vote.Report
Agreed. The question is are the nine reps posturing or will they actually join forces with all the GOP congresscritters to force a vote. Also important- are there less than 9 GOP congresscritters who won’t defect because they don’t want the infrastructure bill passed?
There’s a LOT of unknowns with regards to what’s actually going on behind the scenes with Pelosi and her caucus. I’m not ready to count her out- she’s a wily operator. Also I would have never predicted the infrastructure bill would be passed with 19 GOP votes.Report