A long-delayed series of Senate votes on amendments to a proposed $1.9 trillion spending bill finally began Friday night, slowed by a Democrat disagreement that prompted GOP Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn to declare Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had ''lost control.''
The vote-a-rama, a series of stacked votes in short succession, was delayed Friday morning by a move by Democrats to attract the vote of one of their own, Joe Manchin of West Virginia. The amendment, offered by Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., lowered the additional unemployment benefits from $400 per week to $300 per week, in exchange for extending the benefits through the end of September instead of mid-August.
The move was supposedly to placate the more moderate Manchin, who reportedly still hadn’t agreed to vote for the bill.
Manchin reportedly was curious about a proposal from Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, which would extend the $300 unemployment benefits until July 18. The suggestion amounts to a cut from both the Carper proposal and the House version.
<snip>
''Chuck Schumer has officially lost control,'' Blackburn wrote in a one-sentence comment posted on her official government web page.
The voting began when an amendment offered by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour was defeated.
Republicans in the Senate were attempting to derail the measure, including Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson’s motion to have the clerk read the entire 600-page bill.
https://www.newsmax.com/politics/blackburn-schumer-senate-vote/2021/03/05/id/1012736/
