Senate's $3.5T Budget Includes Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants

Senate Democrats, led by Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., unveiled their $3.5 trillion budget proposal and among the most progressive items in the bill includes increasing the number of available green cards and amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Among the toplines in an official fact sheet on the largest spending package in U.S. history, was a line item, reading the budget "provides green cards to millions of immigrant workers and families," The Washington Free Beacon reported.

Sanders tweeted that piece of the package in a series of tweets, too, Monday morning:

"We will bring undocumented people out of the shadows and provide them with a pathway to citizenship, including those who courageously kept our economy running in the middle of a deadly pandemic."

Among the other items supported with the "human infrastructure" spending Sanders hailed in the tweets:

• Climate change.
• Wealth tax increases.
• No tax increase for families making less than $400,000, and claiming they "will, in fact, receive one of the largest tax cuts in American history."
• Making permanent Child Tax Credit payments of $300 per child – which are currently being sent through the end of the year under the American Rescue Plan in March.
• A 7% of income limit on child care.
• Universal pre-kindergarten for every 3-and-4-year-old.
• Guarantee paid family and medical leave.
• Negotiation of prescription drug prices and covering dental, hearing, and vision care for seniors.
• Affordable housing investment to help homeless crisis.
• Provide seniors living care at home.
• Bolster unions throughout the U.S.

The budget reconciliation package will need the support of every Democrat and Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tiebreaking vote in the 50-50 Senate – and losing no more than three House Democrats in a slight majority there – sometime this fall.

"At its core, this legislation is about restoring the middle class in the 21st Century and giving more Americans the opportunity to get there," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a letter to his colleagues that unveiled the plan.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said Republicans will not provide any votes to extend the borrowing cap. But in a statement Monday Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urged lawmakers to "come together on a bipartisan basis" to avert what would be "irreparable harm" to the economy and American families.

Senate debate on the budget resolution will begin as soon as the chamber approves a bipartisan $1.2 trillion package financing highway, water, broadband, and other infrastructure projects, which might come 11 a.m. on Tuesday morning.

Democrats' $3.5 trillion fiscal outline "will thrust the Senate into an ultra-partisan showdown over the staggering, reckless taxing and spending spree" they want, McConnell said last week.

President Joe Biden had once vowed not to sign the infrastructure bill unless it came with the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation packaged, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has said the House will not vote on the infrastructure measure until the Senate has also approved the as-yet-unwritten $3.5 trillion bill.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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