Republican-controlled Senate approves budget plan
WASHINGTON — The Republican-controlled Senate voted 52-46 along party lines early Friday morning to advance the first Republican budget in nearly a decade.
The ten-year fiscal blueprint achieves balance in ten years with deep spending cuts and no new taxes. It also calls for full repeal of President Obama's health care law and increased Medicare savings.
The contours of the 2016 campaign season took shape throughout the lengthy Thursday debate, where senators powered through a marathon session of votes on politically charged amendments to the GOP's 10-year budget proposal. The voted concluded at 3 a.m. Friday.
Republicans offered amendments to increase defense spending, subject lawmakers' salaries to spending caps, and undermine President Obama's health care law.
Meanwhile, Democrats countered with amendments to raise the minimum wage, mandate paid sick leave and increase protections for pregnant workers.
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Unlike in the House, where GOP leaders allow a limited number of votes on competing budgets, the Senate process allows for a "vote-a-rama" where any senator can offer an amendment to the budget resolution until debate is exhausted and a final passage vote is called.
Hundreds of amendments were offered to this year's blueprint, authored by new Budget Chairman Mike Enzi, R-Wyo.
Enzi spoke with pride of the deliberative process. "That's the way we do it in the Senate," he boasted on the floor.
It's also the way to score political points or advance an agenda, as the budget resolution is non-binding and serves largely to put lawmakers on record on often controversial policy positions.
Democrats have derided the GOP budget as draconian for its $5 trillion in cuts called for over the next decade drawn largely from domestic programs Democrats support.
"They do everything that we should not be doing, and they don't do what we should be doing," said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who is mulling a 2016 presidential run for the Democratic nomination.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., offered an amendment that would require employers with at least 15 employees to allow their workers to earn up to seven days of annual, job-protected paid sick leave. It sailed to passage with a filibuster-proof 61-39 margin. The amendment passed with the help of several GOP senators up for re-election in 2016 in potentially competitive races, such as Sens. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Mark Kirk of Illinois.
The budget also provides a platform for prospective 2016 candidates to throw down markers on their policy issues. GOP Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky authored competing amendments on defense spending.
Rubio, a defense hawk, sought to increase defense spending above the $96 billion sought for the upcoming fiscal year, but it failed 32-68. Paul, a deficit hawk, also offered an amendment to increase defense spending, but require it be offset with spending cuts elsewhere — something the Republican budget doesn't do. It also failed, garnering only four votes in favor, although Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., notably sided with his state's junior senator.
Sen. David Vitter, R-La., who is running for governor this year in his conservative home state, offered an amendment for a cause he has long championed to end subsidies to congressional employees to buy health care.
Passage of the budget itself is a political test for Republicans, who are in control of both chambers of Congress for the first time since 2006. Party leaders have pledged to pass a budget this year to make good on their campaign promises, and Enzi said they intend to approve a joint budget resolution with the House by the statutory April 15 deadline.
The House approved its budget on Wednesday. While the two chambers overlap on many issues — they both achieve balance within a decade, raise no new taxes, and beef up defense spending — they will also have to resolve discrepancies in how they envision overhauling entitlement programs like Medicare to reach a final deal.
Republicans control 54 seats in the Senate and can only afford three defections on final passage, as no Democrat will support the Republican budget.
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