Senate Republicans early Friday pushed through a deficit-cutting 2016 spending blueprint, staking their position on taxes, spending and entitlements as the newly-minted majority.
The legislation passed by a vote of 52-46, with no Democrats backing the plan.
Republican senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky voted against the budget.
It marks the first Senate-passed spending blueprint for Republicans who retook the majority in January – the first time since 2006.
“It’s a balanced budget with a focus on growth, common sense, and the middle class,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said.
Democrats, in their opposition to the GOP budget, said the Republicans’ spending plan is only meant to benefit the wealthy — claiming it fails to close tax loopholes that help the rich while cutting spending on social services for the poor.
“Republicans, with two-thirds of their cuts to low-income Americans would not plug one single loophole for corporations and the rich,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said “And I mean the mega-rich. Not a penny.”
The Senate’s approval follows Wednesday’s passage of a GOP-authored House budget resolution, also along party lines.
Both the House and Senate spending plans have key similarities, including $5 trillion in spending cuts over a decade, a provision to repeal the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, and an additional $38 billion in defense spending tapped from a special overseas war fund. Both plans also convert Medicaid in to a block grant program.
But the two chambers did not pass identical plans.
When Congress returns from a two-week recess, House and Senate lawmakers will merge the two plans in a compromise measure, which could then pave the way for the GOP to include a provision to repeal the health care law.
One big difference between the two budgets concerns Medicare.
In the House bill, Medicare would be transformed into a cost-saving voucher program, but the Senate bill does not include this reform, with GOP lawmakers fearful of altering the entitlement in the face of a tough 2016 re-election map for many of them.
The Senate budget passed after a day-long vote on dozens of amendments from both Democrats and Republicans, including a measure authored by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash, to require more employers to provide paid sick leave for workers. The amendment passed with the help of 15 Republicans, many of them up for re-election in 2015.
The Senate also passed an amendment by Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., that would require health insurers to reveal how much monthly health insurance premiums are impacted by Obamacare taxes.
The Senate rejected many other amendments, including a proposal by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to raise the minimum wage by a “substantial” but unspecified amount.
Unlike their counterparts in the House, Senate Democrats did not put forward their own budget plan for the chamber to consider. Instead, McConnell put President Obama’s $4 trillion spending bill on the floor for a vote.
The measure failed 98-1.
The sole “aye” vote was cast by Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del.
