“You spend money like drunken sailors,” said South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, the top Republican on the Budgets Committee. “You are, I think, initiating the downfall of America as we know it. You are setting in motion a government that no one’s grandchild can ever afford.”
The proposed amendments, many of which were shot along party lines, were non-binding and aimed more at brushing up a political case against the most vulnerable Democratic senators to be re-elected in 2022 than becoming law. Some Republicans said the bulk of their proposals would wait for subsequent legislation to be ready before changes could actually be passed.
“The next vote-a-rama is the one that really matters because then you shoot live ammunition,” said Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Patrick J. Toomey. “So I’m much more interested in that than this one.”
The hour-long trajectory began with a vote that would ban funding or regulation to bring about the Green New Deal, with Wyoming Republican Senator John Barrasso declaring that such a provision “will reduce the quality of life for American people — millions and millions of Americans will suffer.”
“I have no problem voting for this amendment because it has nothing to do with the Green New Deal,” replied Mr Sanders. The amendment passed unanimously, with the legislation’s Democratic sponsors dismissing it as “a tired and failed Republican effort to throw speed bumps on the road to climate action.”
Democrats worked to stay in line to fend off many of the Republican proposals, including a stipulation by Republican Senator Charles E. Grassley, from Iowa, that would prevent changing the limit on how much taxpayers can deduct. of state and local taxes. Democrats from high-tax states, especially New York, New Jersey and California, have prioritized raising or repealing the cap, and a partial repeal is being considered for inclusion in final legislation.
