The GOP’s Performance Politics Failed To Stop Another Huge Win For the Biden White House

Photo: Andrew Harnik / AP

Just before 4 a.m. ET this morning, the Senate finally voted to pass a massive $3.5 trillion budget resolution, capping a week of big wins for the Biden Administration. After 14 hours of non-stop debate, in the end it came down to a party-line vote, 50-49, with one GOP senator absent. The budget resolution is a blueprint for a bill to be voted on later this year, and it now goes to the House for passage. Its approval in an evenly divided Senate was a critical step in a complex process called “budget reconciliation” in which the just-passed resolution contains “instructions” to Congressional committees to begin drafting up legislation to meet the broadly outlined priorities advanced by the Biden White House.

Those priorities include the most ambitious expansion of the social support network since the 1960s. The final bill would expand Medicare to cover vision and dental, mandate paid family medical leave, and reauthorize the child tax credit from the American Rescue Plan that cut childhood poverty in half in America. The blueprint also takes on climate change with some real teeth and proposes tax hikes on corporations and those making $400,000 or more a year to pay for it all.

Republicans, many of whom were supportive of the companion $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, were united in opposing the budget resolution, labeling it “socialist” and “far left.” But without the votes to block it (the budget reconciliation process is not subject to the filibuster rule), they could only offer up a series of amendments. That process, known somewhat derisively as the Senate Vote-a-Rama, was what kept the Senate working till near dawn as amendment after amendment was proposed and voted upon, with the Democrats swatting most of them down.

The Vote-a-Rama is an odd procedural relic that compresses the consideration of amendments into a series of votes held without debate because the time for debate has expired. This quirk permits senators, especially those in opposition, to offer “gotcha” amendments that, while nearly all advisory in nature and thus carrying no actual weight, can be used in political advertising against the other party. 

The GOP lined up amendments around police funding, immigration, Critical Race Theory (CRT), abortion and other red meat issues for their base that have very little to do with the budget. These amendments instead amounted to a test the political waters and provided a glimpse into how the GOP’s politics will look come election time. For example, two GOP-offered amendments around CRT and abortion passed 50-49 with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) providing the deciding vote. While many argue this proves Manchin is a disloyal Democrat, others shrug and argue that these non-binding votes are precisely where the GOP should not be permitted to score political points and write scripts for attack ads.

An amendment offered last night by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) was a prime example. The amendment broadly opposed defunding the police, but it backfired after every single Democratic senator voted in favor of it, depriving the Republicans of a key messaging point. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) taunted Sen. Tuberville for the unforced error, thanking him for giving Democrats a “gift" that would let Democrats “put to bed this scurrilous accusation that somebody in this great esteemed body would want to defund the police.” Booker said he wanted to “walk over there and hug my colleague.”

The budget resolution now needs to pass the House, which is coming back early from recess to begin work on it. Because the overall budget blueprint remains unchanged from what House and Senate leadership had outlined earlier, passage is expected in the House along a party-line vote. That will open up the longer process of budget reconciliation where the bill’s specific language is crafted by House and Senate committees controlled by the Democrats. 

The true test will come later this fall when, on the one hand, moderate Democrats like Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) who is on record as opposing the size of the bill but is open to compromise and, on the other hand, progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and the Congressional Progressive Caucus clash over amendments to the bill. In the end, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will need to work very hard to keep Democrats united without more than three defections in the House and without any defections in the Senate. 

And that will be no easy task. But if the White House and Congressional leadership have demonstrated anything so far, it is that they are very adept at navigating such perilous political waters.