The Senate has kicked off “vote-a-rama” — the marathon of amendment votes on the Republicans’ domestic policy megabill.
The first vote wasn’t on adoption of a specific amendment, but instead on whether Republicans can use a controversial accounting tactic to zero out the $3.8 trillion cost of extending President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts in their massive domestic policy bill.
Republicans assert that Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has the unilateral power to change the accounting method to the so-called current policy baseline. Yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer moved to force a simple-majority vote on undoing the change; it’s expected to fail along party lines.
“Every senator will soon have an opportunity to reject this nonsense and vote for common-sense budgeting,” Schumer said on the floor Monday morning. “Americans will be watching.”
The vote has high stakes for Republicans because without the accounting change, Finance Committee provisions would increase the deficit by much more than the $1.5 trillion cap set out in the budget blueprint Senate Republicans adopted earlier this year.
Ahead of the voting, Senate Majority Leader John Thune underscored the need to address the expiring tax cuts: “This is about extending that tax relief, so the same people that benefited from it back in 2017 and for the last eight years don’t end up having a colossal, massive tax increase hitting them in the face come Jan. 1.”
The Senate will then move on to rapid-fire amendment votes from both Democrats and Republicans on curbing a key Medicaid funding mechanism, doubling the stabilization fund for rural hospitals to $50 billion, changing the bill’s artificial intelligence provisions and softening deep cuts to wind and solar energy.
“We will see, once and for all, if Republicans really meant all those nice things they’ve been saying about strengthening Medicare, about protecting middle class families, or if they were just lying,” Schumer said.
The votes are expected to go all day Monday and potentially into Tuesday morning. Vote-a-ramas are rarely held during daylight hours — majority-party leaders like to use fatigue as a weapon to bring things to a close — but Senate GOP leaders chose to give lawmakers a reprieve after multiple late nights.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s title.
