By LISA MASCARO and KEVIN FREKING
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senators are ready to stay up all night, launching a budget “vote-a-rama” late Thursday in a crucial, if dreaded, step toward unleashing a $340 billion package President Donald Trump’s team says it needs for mass deportations and security measures that top the Republican agenda.
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If ever there was a time to watch Congress in action this might be it. Or not. Senators will be voting in rapid-fashion for hours on one amendment after another diving into intricate policy details, largely from Democrats trying to halt the package. The end result will be a final push by the Republicans, expected in the early hours of the morning, to use their majority power to pass it on a party-line vote.
“What we’re doing today is jumpstarting a process that will allow the Republican Party to meet President Trump’s immigration agenda,” Senate Budget Committee chair Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said while opening the debate.
Graham said Trump’s top immigration czar told senators that the administration’s deportation operations are “out of money” and need more funding from Congress to detain and deport immigrants.
With little power in the minority to stop the onslaught, Democrats will instead use the all-night debate to force GOP senators into potentially embarrassing votes — including the first one, on blocking tax breaks to billionaires.
“This is going to be a long, drawn out fight,” warned Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer.
“Days like today, where we vote on amendments late into the night, go a long way in revealing where each party stands and who each party is fighting for,” the New York senator said. “Democrats are glad to have this debate.”
The package that senators are pushing forward is what Republicans view as a down-payment on Trump’s agenda, part of a broader effort that will eventually include legislation to extend some $4.5 trillion in tax breaks and other priorities. That’s being assembled by House Speaker Mike Johnson in a separate budget package that also seeks up to $2 trillion in reductions to health care and other programs.
Trump has preferred what he calls one “big, beautiful bill,” but the White House is open to the Senate’s strategy of working on the border package first, then turning to tax cuts later this year.
What’s in the Senate GOP package
The Republican Senate package would allow up to $175 billion to be spent on border security, including money for mass deportation operations and building the U.S.-Mexico border wall, in addition to a $150 billion boost to the Pentagon and about $20 billion for the Coast Guard.
But even if the Senate pushed the package to approval in the all-night session, there won’t be any money flowing just yet.
The budget resolution is simply a framework that sends instructions to the various Senate committees — Homeland Security, Armed Services, Judiciary — to hammer out the details. Everything will eventually be assembled in another package, with another vote-a-rama, down the road.
Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., the No. 2-ranking Senate Republican, said GOP lawmakers are acting quickly to get the administration the resources they have requested and need to curb illegal border crossings.
“The budget will allow us to finish the wall. It also takes the steps we need toward more border agents,” Barrasso said. “It means more detention beds… It means more deportation flights.”
Republicans insist the whole thing will be paid for, rather than piled onto debt, and they are considering various options with both spending cuts and new revenues.
The committees may decide to rollback the Biden administration’s methane emissions fee, which was approved by Democrats as part of climate change strategies in the Inflation Reduction Act, and hoping to draw new revenue from energy leases as they aim to spur domestic energy production.
Democrats are ready for battle
First up from Democrats will be a vote to prevent tax breaks for billionaires, according to a person familiar with the planning and granted anonymity to discuss it.
Democrats argue that the GOP tax cuts approved in 2017 flowed to the the wealthiest Americans, and extending them as Trump wants Congress to do later this year would extend the giveaway.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks to reporters after a closed-door strategy meeting at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Schumer launched a strategy earlier this week to use this first budget debate to focus on both the implications of the tax policy and also the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, which is slashing across the federal government.
It’s a better strategy for Democrats than arguing against tougher border security and deportations, which divides the party.
Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said the single biggest driver of the national debt since 2001 has been a series of Republican-led tax cuts.
“And you’ll never guess what our Republican colleagues on the other side of the aisle are focused on right now, nothing to lower the cost of eggs, it’s actually more Republican tax cuts,” Murray said.
She called the budget plan a “roadmap for painful cuts to programs families count on each and every day, all so they can give billionaires more tax cuts.”
Congress is racing itself
The budget resolution is setting up what’s called the reconciliation process, which used to be rare, but is now the tool often used to pass big bills on party-line votes when one party has control of the White House and Congress, as Republicans do now.
But Republicans are arguing with themselves over how to proceed. The House is marching ahead on its “big, beautiful bill,” believing they have one chance to get it right. The Senate views its two-bill strategy as more practical, delivering on border security first then turning to taxes later.
Budget rules allow for passage by a simple majority vote which is key in the Senate where it typically takes 60 votes to break a filibuster on big items. During Trump’s first term, Republicans used the reconciliation process to pass GOP tax cuts in 2017. Democrats used reconciliation during the Biden presidency era to approve COVID-19 relief and the Inflation Reduction Act.
Trump appears to be stirring the fight, pitting Republicans in the House and Senate against each other to see which one delivers fastest.
