We're one step closer to that devastating, reverse-Robin-Hood Republican MAGAt budget bill becoming law:
The Senate took a big step toward passage of President Donald Trump’s sweeping legislative agenda on Saturday after several key Republican holdouts voted to advance the $4 trillion package that includes tax cuts for the mostly wealthy as well as major cuts to safety net programs.
The vote on the motion to proceed squeaked by in a 51-49 vote, with Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) joining all Democrats against the measure.
Republicans are moving the bill under a special, fast-track process known as budget reconciliation, which only requires 51 votes instead of the usual 60. Trump has said he wants the bill on his desk by the July 4 holiday, and GOP lawmakers in both chambers of Congress are racing to meet his deadline.
After some uncertainty about whether GOP leaders would indeed have the votes to proceed on Saturday, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), two holdouts on provisions in the legislation cutting Medicaid, announced they were ready to move forward.
Hawley, who repeatedly argued against cutting Medicaid, cited a $25 billion fund in the bill that will benefit rural hospitals in his state and a one-year delay in imposing some cuts to Medicaid as reasons why he ultimately came around to supporting it.
“I’m going to spend the next however long, trying to make sure that the cuts that we have are successfully delayed and never take place,” Hawley told reporters on Saturday. “You cannot take away health care from working people. And unless this is changed going forward, that is what will happen in coming years.” [Ed.: remember, when their lips are moving, they're lying]
The legislation also includes new “work requirements” for nondisabled adults ― the largest Medicaid cut in the program’s history that is estimated to kick millions of Americans off their health insurance plans. All Republicans supported those provisions.
Collins, meanwhile, said her vote to advance the bill on Saturday was made under procedural grounds and did not mean she would ultimately support it on final passage. The Maine Republican, who is up for reelection next year, said she wanted to see “substantial” changes, including to provisions dealing with Medicaid and federal food assistance.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) also voted to advance the bill after holding the chamber in suspense for an hour about how she intended to vote. She did so after intense cajoling from Vance and several GOP leaders on the Senate floor.
The Senate’s draft of the bill, which isn’t final and could change, initially included a controversial plan from Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) to sell over a million acres of public lands across 11 states in the American West. Several GOP senators threatened to vote against the bill in opposition to Lee’s plan, forcing him to ultimately announce that he was pulling the scheme on Saturday evening.
What next? A short delay:
That didn’t stop Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) from throwing up roadblocks, however. The New York senator announced that he would force the Senate clerks to read the entire bill in the chamber ― a lengthy process that’s typically waived with bipartisan support ― to give the American public time to digest it fully.
“Republicans won’t tell America what’s in the bill so Democrats are forcing it to be read start to finish on the floor,” Schumer wrote in a post online. “We will be here all night if that’s what it takes to read it.”
The reading of the 940-page bill could take over 15 hours, delaying a vote on final passage. In 2021, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) forced a reading of Democrats’ 600-page American Rescue Plan, which took nearly 11 hours but ultimately didn’t stop its passage.
A final vote on the bill is expected sometime on Monday. It must then get approval from the House, where a group of Republican lawmakers are threatening to vote no due to its cuts to Medicaid and its effect on the deficit.
Something tells us Chuck could have done more to delay in the leadup to this were he not a dyed-in-the-wool Senate institutionalist. But for now, let's let the MAGAt Republicans get the "credit" they deserve for this unpopular monstrosity.
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