Democrats intend to take full advantage of this week’s budget votes to create headaches for Republicans.
“For the whole year, Mitch McConnell has shielded his members from voting to help the middle class, and we want to make sure the budget is an opportunity to say: Which side are you on?” said Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, outlining Democrats’ plans for the budget votes.
“He’s been pocket-vetoing all kinds of popular programs that we would like to see voted on … The days of shielding Republican members from voting for or against the middle class will be over when this budget comes to the floor,” said Schumer, the number-three Democrat in the Senate.
Senate procedure for budgets allows for unique opportunities for senators to offer amendments that all 99 of their colleagues will have to vote on.
Budget resolutions, which are agreements between the Senate and House, do not become law, and neither do amendments. But they can be used to highlight senators’ favorite issues or to get opponents to vote against popular measures.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who is the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, is planning to file several amendments early in the week and during an expected “vote-o-rama” that senators expect to begin Thursday evening and potentially last into early Friday morning.
The vote-o-rama begins when Senate consideration of the budget ends. At that point, senators can submit almost unlimited amendments in a succession of 10-minute votes.
Sanders does not plan to introduce a budget alternative to the GOP budget advanced from the committee by Chairman Mike Enzi, R-Wyoming. Instead, he’s planning amendments on top priorities throughout the week.
Having all 100 senators vote on the amendments, he said last week, puts them “on the record in terms of where they are, and it allows their constituents back home to know whether they’re going to stand with working families or whether they stand with millionaires and billionaires.”
This week, an aide said, Sanders intends to file an amendment to impose a “war tax:” Enacting always-popular higher taxes on millionaires to pay for military funding sought by Republicans. He also will file bills to raise taxes on profits held overseas by U.S. corporations to pay for $478 billion in infrastructure spending, along the lines of a policy President Obama has advocated, and to prevent cuts to Social Security.
“Many other amendments should be expected from our caucus to improve the crummy Republican budget resolution by creating jobs, equal pay for equal work, overturning Citizens United and undoing the worst parts of sequestration,” the aide explained.
Sanders described the planned Democratic amendments as ones that all have the “overwhelming support of the American people.” In other words, they are votes that will likely be featured in future attack ads against Republicans running for re-election in 2016.
McConnell will not be able to prevent Democrats — and Republicans — from filing virtually unlimited amendments.
In the last vote-o-rama, in 2013, senators offered more than 100 amendments and had 70 roll call votes in a marathon that ended just before 5 in the morning.
This year, there may be fewer simply because McConnell already has allowed senators to offer amendments on other legislation. For example, Democrats forced Republicans to vote down an amendment stating that climate change was a real phenomenon caused by humans in a vote on approving the Keystone XL pipeline earlier this year.
But Democrats are still likely this week to offer amendments on a wish-list of progressive priorities, including free community college, paid sick leave and added funding for preschool.
Those votes can cause political trouble for the other side or lead to real legislation in the future.
In 2013, Democrats offered an amendment forcing their Senate colleagues to vote on the House Republican budget written by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, which included a politically sensitive Medicare overhaul plan that many Senate Republicans had avoided endorsing.
That night also revealed bipartisan support for a repeal of the medical device tax. Getting rid of the tax is a now priority for the Republican Senate majority in the current Congress.
Getting members on the record for legislation is another reason to have the amendments, Sanders said. “To the degree that we pass resolutions, that we pass amendments — this will in the future be incorporated into real legislation.”
