Biden budget passes Senate by VP tie-breaking vote

The US Senate has passed a budget resolution that allows for the passage of Joe Biden’s $1.9tn (£1.4tn) Covid-19 relief package in the coming weeks without Republican support.

The vice-president, Kamala Harris, broke a 50/50 tie by casting a vote in favour of the Democratic measure, which sends it to the House of Representatives for final approval.

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The vote came at 5.30am on Friday at the end of a marathon Senate debate session, known among senators as a “vote-a-rama”, a procedure whereby they can theoretically offer unlimited amendments.

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Iowa’s Republican senator, Joni Ernst, raised an amendment to “prohibit the increase of the federal minimum wage during a global pandemic”, which was carried by a voice vote.

The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders said he still intended to support bringing the measure through: “We need to end the crisis of starvation wages in Iowa and around the United States.”

He outlined plans to get a wage increase, phased in over five years, included in a budget reconciliation bill. The federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour, and has not been raised since 2009.

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The House passed its own budget measure on Wednesday. Congress can now work to write a bill that can be passed by a simple majority in both houses, which are controlled by Democrats. Mid-March has been suggested as a likely date by which the measure could be passed, a point at which enhanced unemployment benefits will expire if Congress does not act.

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During the debate Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said “This is not the time for trillions more dollars to make perpetual lockdowns and economic decline a little more palatable. Notwithstanding the actual needs, notwithstanding all the talk about bipartisan unity, Democrats in Congress are plowing ahead. They’re using this phony budget to set the table to ram through their $1.9 trillion rough draft.”

  Guardian

Mitch McConnell needs to sit down and STFU. We're in the state we're in in no small measure because of his tenure as Senate Majority Leader.

And that federal minimum wage is disgraceful. I'd like to see Joni Ernst try to live on $7.25 an hour.

The amendment, like most during the Senate's hours-long vote-a-rama on the budget resolution, is non-binding. But a roll call vote would have forced Democrats to go on the record on increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour while they are still trying to figure out a policy that unifies their narrow majority.

Sanders, who has led the push to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour, quickly stood up to speak on the Senate floor, and in a twist, it wasn't to oppose Ernst's amendment, but to support it.

"It was never my intention to increase the minimum wage to $15 immediately and during the pandemic," Sanders said. "My legislation gradually increases the minimum wage to $15 an hour over a five-year period and that is what I believe we have got to do."

He added that was going to support Ernst's amendment "because nobody is talking about doubling the federal minimum wage during the pandemic."

  The Hill

Five years.

UPDATE:

The House has just passed the Senate-approved budget resolution, paving the way for the chamber to take up Joe Biden’s coronavirus relief proposal in the coming weeks.

The House voted 219-209 along mostly partly lines to approve the resolution as amended by the Senate. Jared Golden was the only Democrat to vote against the measure.

  Guardian