The Senate slogged through a long string of votes late Thursday and early Friday, with Democrats voting down most of the theoretically boundless string of amendments to their budget resolution. “The endurance round known as the ‘vote-a-rama’ is a time-honored tradition of the reconciliation process – the budgetary tool that Democrats are likely to use to drive the passage of [President] Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan without any GOP support, ” Politics explains.
Most of the votes were “Republicans forcing Democrats into nasty and uncomfortable votes on a variety of issues, while Democrats caused maximum pain by dragging out legislative torment”, Politics reports. But some amendments were passed with bipartisan support. For example, with one vote, senators voted in favor of an amendment by Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) to “ban the increase in the federal minimum wage during a global pandemic.” Raising the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour is one of the heavy burdens in Biden’s proposal.
“A federal minimum wage of $ 15 would be devastating to our hardest-hit small businesses at a time when they can least afford it,” Ernst argued on the Senate floor. The biggest proponent of the measure, chairman of the budget committee Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Shrugged and noted that his plan increased the minimum wage in five years, starting after the pandemic. “We need to end the starvation wage crisis in Iowa and around the United States,” he said, adding that he will do “whatever I can” to make sure the measure “is included in this reconciliation law. “
The minimum wage hike may be held back by other factors: Senator Joe Manchin (DW.Va.) is against, and it may violate the so-called Byrd rule limits on what can be included in reconciliation accounts. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) Said if it doesn’t get into this bill, Democrats will include it in other legislation.
The Senate also passed amendments to keep America’s Israeli Embassy in Jerusalem, prevent undocumented immigrants from receiving immediate stimulus checks, and – by a vote of 99 to 1 – restrict Biden’s $ 1,400 checks from going to “taxpayers with a higher income “. That proposal, from Manchin and Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine), didn’t specify income thresholds, and Biden’s proposal already includes phasing out household checks to $ 300,000 a year. Congress and the White House are negotiating the phase-out and cut-off points, and Biden will meet with Democratic leaders and committee chairmen Friday morning to discuss the COVID-19 bill.
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