Senate Passes Revised Monstrous Tax and Spending Bill

With Vice President J.D. Vance casting the deciding vote, the Senate passed the latest version of its monstrous 887 page tax and spending bill under budget reconciliation rules.

Senators Susan Collins (R-ME), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Thom Tillis (R-NC) joined Democrats in voting against it, causing the tie vote that Vance broke. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AL) who recently said she might leave the Republican party and caucus with Democrats as an independent, voted the Republican party line after a sweetener was inserted into the bill for Alaska. In essence, she decided the bill’s passage.

The core of the bill remains taking financial support away from children, mothers, disabled people and the poor to give orders of magnitude more money to federal immigration agents, deportation, stripping of citizenship and punishment of immigrants, and to cement tax breaks for the wealthiest people and corporations.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill would raise federal deficits by nearly $3.3 trillion from 2025 to 2034. Republicans claim that is not true because their math ignores the impact of the tax breaks they created for the ultra wealthy.

The bill contains some eye-popping increases in funding:

• $51.6 billion to build a wall on the border, more than three times the budget for such a wall in Donald Trump’s first term
• $45 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities, a 265% increase
• $29.9 billion for ICE enforcement, three times the previous budget which ICE has blown through

In other words, together with Trump’s announced intention to strip naturalized citizenship and to deport citizens as well as immigrants, the bill would fund establishment of a police state.

As the result of the vote came in, Senator Angus King (I-ME) shouted at  Republican Senators, “Shame on you guys. That was the most disgusting vote I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Click here for more details about what is in the bill.