After four years, the Senate finally has a budget.
The Democrats’ $3.7 trillion budget passed just before 5 AM on Saturday after a long night of votes on dozens of amendments.
The vote was 50-49 with four Democrats bucking the party, all of them up for re-election in 2014 in conservative leaning states — Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR), Kay Hagan (D-NC), Max Baucus (D-MT), and Mark Begich (D-AK).
“While I am happy that Congress is finally talking seriously about our fiscal crisis, this budget didn’t go far enough,” Begich said in a statement. “Alaskans expect us to finish the job and make this staggering deficit manageable. Passing this problem off to our children is not an option.”
The budget includes $100 billion of immediate infrastructure spending designed to boost the economy and raise $975 billion over the next decade through tax reform, which would eliminate various loopholes and tax expenditures.
Amendments during the so-called “vote-a-rama” ranged from Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) call for Senators to donate 20 percent of their pay to charity if they did not complete a budget, which passed on a voice vote, to an amendment by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) that would permanently bar illegal immigrants from ever receiving health care under Medicaid or the Affordable Care Act. The Sessions amendment failed 43-56.
The Senate had not passed a budget in the previous four years, relying on a series of alternative spending bills to fund the government instead. The Republican-led House agreed to raise the debt ceiling temporarily in January under the condition that the Senate pass a budget through the usual legislative process. Next up, the Senate will have to reconcile their own budget with the House’s own budget, which gets rid of the deficit entirely by 2023 through major cuts to domestic spending and entitlements.
