Washington – The Senate led by the Republicans voted Thursday 52-48 to start the debate on a budgetary plan for a package of several dollars to adopt the agenda of President Donald Trump.
The measure requires a sharp reduction in tax and an increase in expenditure for the application of immigration and an expansion of the Pentagon, as well as reductions in unpertified expenditure and a debt limit of 5 billions of dollars. It is likely to considerably increase the budget deficit.
Each Republican voted for the measure, with the exception of Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Democrats voted unanimously against this.
“The Senate budgetary plan gives us the tools we need to make our shared priorities, including certain permanent tax reductions, energy expenditure reductions, historical investments in defense, the border and much more,” Trump wrote on social networks on Wednesday.
Thursday’s vote launched up to 50 hours of debate, followed by an unlimited amendment process before a vote on the adoption of the budget plan planned for this weekend. Democrats intend to offer changes to put the Republicans in a political obligation, such as prohibiting tax reductions for rich wages and MEDICAID prohibition cuts.
“You will see a lot of amendments after Donald Trump and the Republicans on a whole bunch of questions where they promote billionaires and against families,” said the head of the Senate minority, Chuck Schumer, DN.Y. told journalists.
Republicans, who control 53 votes to the Senate, are likely to reject democratic amendments and approve the budgetary resolution at the end. If the Chamber adopts the same measure, this would ask the committees to start working on the bill which can bypass the threshold of 60 voting from the Senate and eliminate Democrats from the process.
The Republicans indicate in the budgetary plan that they plan to use an accounting method to mark the permanent cost of the tax cuts from Trump 2017 to $ 0, after it was estimated at $ 4.6 billions of dollars in a letter Thursday by the Budget Office of the Non -Savory Congress and the Joint Tax Committee.
The plan allows 1.5 billion of additional dollars of tax cuts in addition to this, which gives the committee committee of the finance committee to decide where these cuts are made. GOP senators told NBC News that they could use this to continue Trump’s other proposals, such as advice taxes.
“This would be things that the president has spoken – like the advice tax, things like that. Perhaps other things we think,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Rs.C., president of the Senate budget committee. “Make the economy of the economy will help. The determination of the reference base is my work, not that of others. ”
The budgetary plan also opens the way to $ 175 billion in new funds for the application of immigration to make a mass expulsion and an increase of $ 150 billion to military spending.
The big open question is how the Republicans will spend and what they will go after. The measure provides only a few billion dollars in expense reductions, a derisory sum compared to tax cuts and the increase in expenses that require it.
“I think that when it comes to reducing spending, we are not going to go after the benefits of Medicaid – I agree with this – but there are a lot of things we can do,” Graham told journalists on Thursday, approving “a work requirement for valid people” on Medicaid.
“We are going to cut, I think, billions of dollars in spending,” he said, without being precise about how.
The budgetary resolution also provides for an increase in the debt limit of 5 billions of dollars before a deadline this year to act or risk a defect on American debt.
The vote was slightly delayed on Thursday while the head of the majority of the Senate, John Thune, Rs.d., met in private certain senators who had “questions” on the “process” of what then comes, according to Senator John Kennedy, R-La.
“I know there are senators who have more questions. But we have been doing it since January, and the side of the gallows concentrates the mind,” said Kennedy, adding that he had advised Thune to call the vote. “The only way to concentrate some senators is to concentrate, and then they have three choices: they can vote yes, they can vote no, or they can skip the rail and run.”
Senator Mike Rounds, RS.D. said that leadership “did not twist, but they – some people wanted to make sure they understood how the process worked” and, therefore, the vote “took a little more time to do it”.
Democrats, who do not have the votes to arrest him unless four or more republican people hope to make it a politically painful vote for the majority party.
“The work of the Democrats over the next 36 hours is to hold the feet of the Republicans in Fire, to force them to tell the truth about what they want to do in the American economy and what they believe that equity is, and it is a country that works for a handful of billionaires and leaves others to eat dirt,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. “Democrats are in this fight all along. We are ready to leave. “
