Republicans of the US Senate approve Budget Frame after Night Voting

Washington (AP) – Republican senators promoted a budget frame of 340,000 million dollars for its early approval on Friday, exceeding a session that lasted all night and the Democratic opposition. It is a step towards the release of money that Trump’s government says he needs for mass deportations and border security that lead his agenda.

The vote, which lasted hours, was a feared but crucial part of the budgetary process, in which the senators considered one amendment after another, most of them of Democrats trying to stop it. But the Republicans enforced their majority power to approve the package in a mostly partisan vote, 52-48, with all the Democrats and a republican senator against.

“What we are doing today is to initiate a process that will allow the Republican Party to comply with the immigration agenda of President Trump,” said Lindsey Graham, president of the Senate Budget Committee, Republican for South Carolina, when opening the debate.

Graham said the main immigration manager of President Donald Trump, Tom Homan, informed the senators that government deportation operations are “without money” and need more funds from the congress to stop and deport migrants.

With little power in the minority to stop the assault, the Democrats used the night debate to force Republican senators to vote in potential uncomfortable decisions, including the first, on blocking tax exemptions for billionaires. This was rejected for procedural reasons. The same happened with many others.

“This is going to be a long and prolonged fight,” warned Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer from New York. Hours later, Schumer said that “it was only the beginning” of what could become a debate that lasts months.

The package is what Republicans consider an initial payment on the Trump agenda, part of a broader effort that will eventually include legislation to extend about 4.5 billion dollars in tax exemptions and other priorities. This is being assembled by the president of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, in a separate budget package that also looks for up to two billion dollars in reductions for medical care and other programs.

Trump has preferred what he calls a “great and beautiful bill”, but the White House is open to the Senate’s strategy to work first in the border package and then address the tax cuts later this year.

At the beginning of the vote, the president gave his approval, publishing thanks to the leader of the majority of the Senate, John Thune, “and the Republican Senate, for working so hard to finance the Trump border agenda.”

Republican senator Rand Paul, from Kentucky, was the only Republican who voted against.

What is in the republican Senate package?

The Senate Republican package would allow to spend up to $ 175,000 million on border security, including money for mass deportation operations and the construction of the border wall between the United States and Mexico, in addition to an increase of 150,000 million dollars for the Pentagon and about 20,000 millions for the Coast Guard.

But there will still be money flowing, since the process has several steps ahead. The budget resolution is simply a framework that sends instructions to the various Senate Committees – National Security, Armed Services, Legal Affairs – to elaborate the details. Everything will eventually be assembled in another package, with another vote later.

Senator John Barraso, Republican by Wyoming, the second most rank in the Senate, said that Republican legislators are acting quickly to provide the government with the resources they have requested and need to stop illegal crosses on the border.

“The budget will allow us to finish the wall. It also takes the measures we need to have more border agents, ”said Barraso. “It means more detention beds … It means more deportation flights.”

Republicans insist that all this will be paid, instead of accumulating in the debt, with possible cuts of expenses and new income.

The committees are expected to consider to reverse the Methane emissions rate of the Biden Government, which was approved by the Democrats as part of the climate change strategies in the inflation reduction law, and hope to obtain new income of energy leases while seeking to boost national energy production.

An amendment that was accepted after several hours of debate was actually a republican effort to defend against criticism that the package would be financed by cutting security network programs. The amendment of Senator Dan Sullivan, Republican by Alaska, said that Medicaid and Medicare would be strengthened during the budget process.

The Democrats presented a series of amendments

The first of the Democrats was a vote to prevent fiscal exemptions for billionaires, an amendment that was repeated in several ways throughout the night.

The Democrats argue that the Republican tax cuts approved in 2017 benefited the richest Americans, and extend them as Trump wants to do the congress later this year would prolong the gift. Although the amendments for billionaires failed, they obtained some republican support. Senan Susan Collins de Maine voted in favor of several of them, and Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri voted in favor of another.

Schumer launched a strategy earlier this week to use the budget debate to focus both on the implications of fiscal policy and in the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) of the Trump Government, which is cutting throughout the federal government.

It is a better approach to the Democrats to argue against a stricter border security and deportations, which divides the party.

In total, senators processed almost three dozen amendments on the reversal of Doge cuts, the protection of federal workers to be fired, ensuring the support of the United States to Ukraine while fighting Russia and others.

Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the most rank Democrat in the Senate Budget Assignments Commission, said that the main promoter of the national debt since 2001 has been a series of tax cuts led by Republicans.

“And you will never guess what our Republican colleagues are focused on the other side of the hall at this time, nothing to reduce the cost of eggs, they are actually more republican tax cuts,” Murray said.

He described the budget plan as a “map for painful cuts to programs on which families depend every day, all so that they can give more tax cuts to billionaires.”

Congress hasten itself

The budget resolution is configuring what is called the reconciliation process, which used to be rare, but now it is the tool that is often used to approve large bills with partisan votes when a party has control of the White House and the Congress, as Republicans have now.

But Republicans are discussing each other on how to proceed. The camera advances with its “great and beautiful bill”, believing that they have an opportunity to do it well. The Senate sees its strategy of two bills as more practice, first complying with border security and then addressing taxes later.

The budget rules allow approval by a simple majority, which is key in the Senate, where 60 votes are normally required to break a filibuster on important issues. During Trump’s first mandate, Republicans used the reconciliation process to approve the republican tax cuts in 2017. Democrats used reconciliation during the presidency of Joe Biden to approve COVID-19 and the inflation reduction law .

Trump seems to be fanning the fight, facing Republicans in the camera and the Senate to each other to see which of them he delivers faster.

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Darlene Superville, journalist from The Associated Press, contributed to this office.

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This story was translated from English by an AP editor with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool.