As Senate Republicans move forward with passing a narrow, party-line bill to fund immigration enforcement, Democrats are planning to put Republicans on the spot with a series of votes aimed at lowering the cost of living.
Republicans plan to pass the measure, which will provide three years of funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and parts of Customs and Border Protection, through reconciliation, a process that allows senators to push amendments relevant to the bill in a marathon voting session.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters on Wednesday that Democrats are seeking to use the “vote-a-rama” to divide Republicans and spotlight some of the GOP’s most unpopular policies by forcing a series of votes on affordability issues.
“You’re going to have lots of amendments,” Schumer said. “The focus of those amendments is to show the contrast. We are for reducing costs for the American people –– whether it’s housing, or whether it’s health care, or whether it’s electric costs, or whether it’s groceries or whether it’s child care, and they are funding a rogue police force that is not even popular with the American people.”
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Democrats’ focus on affordability comes as U.S. energy prices skyrocket and an end to the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran remains unclear. Ahead of the midterm elections, Democrats have focused their messaging on the high cost of living under President Donald Trump and a GOP-controlled Congress. Some Republicans are now worried the lack of affordability provisions in the bill could end up being a political mistake.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune had insisted that the bill remain “skinny” to ensure it could be passed quickly and without too much debate. But Republicans like Sen. John Kennedy, a longtime advocate of using the reconciliation process to promote party-line issues, said that strategy could end up being a liability.
“I understand where the leadership is, I would probably be doing the same thing if I were [them],” Kennedy said. “But this is going to be the last train leaving the station. And the cost of living is something that is on the minds of the American people, and they want us to address it.”
Though Schumer declined to share exactly how many amendments Democrats would put up ahead of the marathon voting session, Sen. Brian Schatz, the Democratic chief deputy whip, said that he hopes the series of votes will spotlight for voters what priorities are missing from the reconciliation bill.
“When you’re in the majority in the Senate, you get limited opportunities to use this unusual tool of reconciliation once, maybe twice in a year,” Schatz said. “And so it’s pretty significant that using this tool, they have decided to do exactly nothing about the cost of living.”
The budget resolution introduced to the Senate on Tuesday would direct up to $140 billion to fund the immigration enforcement agencies for years to come. Though the projected price tag of the package may be closer to $70 billion in the end, Sen. Patty Murray told reporters that her party plans to illustrate that number as an example of a stark refusal from Republicans to work on lowering costs.
“GOP senators are practically telling the American people in no uncertain terms, just a few months before an election, that Republicans don’t care about the cost of living,” Murray said. “They don’t care about lowering prices or making health care more affordable, or building more housing or expanding access to child care.”
Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that Democrats plan to focus on the cost of health care in particular during the voting marathon. Senate Democrats shut down the majority of the federal government for 43 days over the issue in the fall, making medical costs a major talking point in the lead-up to the midterms.
“Health care premiums have doubled or tripled, or worse, pricing millions out of their coverage,” Murray said. “So what are Republicans doing about all of that? Nothing. Their urgent, top priority this week is shoveling at least $70 billion at ICE and Border Patrol.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar echoed Murray, adding that Democrats plan to compare the price of some of these Democrat-touted spending measures –– lowering health care costs, building affordable housing –– with the cost of funding ICE and CBP.
“Do you want to put $70 billion into ICE, or do you want to help people afford their health care premiums with an extension of the tax credits?” Klobuchar told reporters on Wednesday. “Seniors, do you want to get free dental and vision and hearing through Medicare for a year, or do you want to fund this?”
In addition to the focus on affordability, Democratic leaders also said that they plan to hammer Republicans for using the reconciliation process to fund agencies unpopular with Americans.
Senate Democrats have blocked funding for the Department of Homeland Security for 68 days, following the killings of two American citizens in Minneapolis by immigration enforcement officers. During the lead-up to the vote on the reconciliation bill and during the vote-a-rama itself, Murray said that Democrats will also focus on highlighting Republicans’ unwillingness to reform the agency.
“Democrats have spent months at the table pushing Republicans to just do the right thing and pass truly basic reforms, things like judicial warrants or use of force standards,” Murray said. “Republicans in the White House agreed to a handful of reforms themselves, until they decided to abandon the negotiations and rejected doing any reform.”
Schumer said Democrats plan to slam Republicans for their unwillingness to compromise, flipping a common GOP-attack line that Democrats want to “defund the police.”
“What we want for Border Patrol and ICE is what every police department does,” Schumer said. “They don’t run around wearing masks, they don’t knock down doors without a warrant and they don’t come in and not tell local law enforcement what they are doing. They are the ones who are against a good, strong police force.”
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