Washington-the Senate controlled by Republicans began a series of votes on Thursday in a party line vehicle to approve a budget plan of $ 340 billion designed to boost the funds for the immigration application efforts of President Donald Trump, the production of energy and the military.
They planned to grind him in a “vote-a-rama” that is expected to continue until the early hours of Friday morning. Finally, they hope to approve the measure along the lines of the matches. The Republicans have 53 senators and only one of them, Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., He voted against proceeding to the budget, along with all the Democrats.
“Without this bill approved,” said the president of the Senate Budget Committee, Lindsey Graham, RS.C., “there is no hope of obtaining money for the border.”
The Senate Plan conflicts with a budget plan that makes its way through the House of Representatives, which also includes a $ 4.5 billion tax cut and an increase in debt limit of $ 4 billion. Trump has supported the camera version, but the Republican senators have indicated that their version could be an support plan if the plan of the camera fails.
“For the colleagues of my house: we will all arrive together. If you can approve a large and beautiful bill that makes the tax cuts permanent, not four or five years, then we will all encourage here. I would please me more than speaker [Mike] Johnson can build the bill that President Trump wants. I want that to happen, but I can’t sit outside and not have a plan B, ”said Graham on the Senate’s floor on Thursday, before the vote began.
Paul said the budget contradicts the rhetoric of the Republican Party on the reduction of spending.
“If we were fiscally conservative, why would we not take Elon Musk and Doge’s savings and we would move it here and help with the border?” Paul said on the Senate’s floor. “Why would we be making a new bill to increase spending by $ 340 billion?”
According to the process, the rules of the Senate allow the members to propose an unlimited number of amendments.
Democrats sought to force Republicans to take difficult votes through amendments, that the majority party voted one by one. Many aimed to protect the benefits and programs that say the Republican party is pointing to cuts. An amendment proposed by the Senate Minority leader, Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., would have prohibited the bill to reduce taxes for the rich if even $ 1 is reduced from Medicaid, a medical care program for low Americans income.
He was rejected 49-51, with only two Republicans by joining the Democrats in favor: Senator Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Josh Hawley, R-MO.
If the Senate approves the budget resolution, it would instruct the committees to prepare legislation that satisfies their objectives, which can be accelerated on the floor and approved by a simple majority.
The measure seeks $ 175 billion for immigration and border application, at the request of the Trump Border Tsar, Tom Homan. And it demands to expand the military at $ 150 billion, even when Trump and Elon Musk say they want to reduce costs in the pentagon.
The “budgetary reconciliation” process allows members to avoid the threshold of 60 votes in the Senate, but limits the provisions for spending and taxes. Democrats can challenge the policies facing the limitations of the “Byrd rule” and ask the Senate parliamentarian to eliminate them.
For months, Republicans in the Chamber and the Senate have faced whether the party should try to approve Trump’s legislative priorities in a reconciliation bill or two.
But on Wednesday, Trump gave a complete support to the camera strategy, taking Truth Social to say that he wanted “a great project of beautiful law” and urging the Senate to pump the brakes of his impulse of reconciliation of two invoices. The camera plan requires a scanning package that includes the border application, the expansion of energy production and the renewal of Trump Tax cuts in 2017.
The Senate plan would be narrower and would not include renewing tax cuts that were a characteristic achievement of Trump’s first mandate. Instead, these tax cuts would come in a second reconciliation package at the end of this year, senators said.
If the Chamber and the Senate can reach the same page and approve an identical budget resolution, that would only be the beginning of a very long and complicated legislative process. In the camera, conservatives demand cuts of steep expenses, while the most moderate Republicans are scaring due to possible clippings to Medicaid.
“The budget resolution is only Patty Cake. The real work begins when you start assembling the bill and payment payments, ”said Senator John Kennedy, Republican of La-La, a member of the Budget Committees and Assignments. “The only prediction that I will do is that a reconciliation bill will not approve the Chamber or the Senate without substantial expenditure reductions.”
Vice President JD Vance, who met with the senators this week, said he believed that Congress is “on the way” to approve a reconciliation package in May or June, while acknowledging that it was an ambitious timeline.
“I think the president has learned a lot about how DC works. And I really talked to the president about this yesterday, and he told me: “Look, it is very rare that you can do two reconciliation law projects in a congress,” so he thinks we have to do a lot with that great bill Beautiful, ”said Vance during an appearance on Thursday at the conservative political action conference.
“It’s early, right? This takes time to build, ”he continued. “I think if you had a draft reconciliation of records, we would do this in May or June. I think we are on the way to do that. “
