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.
The episode delayed even further what was anticipated to be a marathon session in the Senate, which had been predicted to last well into Saturday morning before the Democrat disagreement. The chaos drew fire from several senators, most notably Blackburn.
''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.
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