Congress

Senate stares down an all-nighter to approve a ‘Plan B’ budget Trump spurned

Published

2 years ago

February 20, 2025

Senate Republicans are embarking Thursday afternoon on an amendment free-for-all expected to keep lawmakers voting through the night — all to green-light a fiscal blueprint President Donald Trump doesn’t favor.

The budget measure the Senate is on track to adopt at the end of an arduous “vote-a-rama” sets a framework for a party-line package of energy policy, defense spending and border security investments. But Trump wants trillions of dollars in tax cuts rolled in, and so do Republicans on the other side of the Capitol.

After Trump publicly urged Senate Republicans this week to back off their approach, GOP senators are forging ahead with a budget they characterize as a fallback plan to deploy if Speaker Mike Johnson can’t rally virtually all of his conference’s 218 lawmakers around a budget setting up the one “big, beautiful bill” the president and House GOP leaders fancy.

“To my House colleagues, we will all get there together. If you can pass the ‘one big, beautiful bill’ that makes the tax cuts permanent — not four or five years — then we’ll all cheer over here,” Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on the chamber floor as he kicked off debate. “I want that to happen. But I cannot sit on the sidelines and not have a Plan B.”

The exercise is not without political cost — or lost sleep. To approve their budget plan, Senate Republicans will be allowing Democrats to offer as many amendments as they want as the minority party seeks to pin GOP senators on supporting cuts to safety net programs and tax perks for the nation’s highest earners.

Typically the Senate votes on around 40 proposed tweaks to a budget resolution during the protracted amendment spree. The last two times the Senate adopted a budget resolution, the “vote-a-rama” ended around 5 a.m.

“You can expect a late night with a lot of amendments to point out this whole painful exercise is being done to strip money out of the Treasury to give big favors to billionaires,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said in a brief interview.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer plans to offer an amendment that calls for repealing tax cuts for wealthy Americans and another that would block Republicans from enacting tax cuts under the plan if they cut Medicaid by even $1.

Other amendments from Senate Democrats will fall under three broad themes: stopping the Trump administration from dismantling federal agencies and freezing funding Congress already enacted; opposing tax cuts for the richest taxpayers; and blocking spending cuts that affect services like health care, housing support and food assistance.

Some Republican senators are going into the vote-a-rama with bad feelings, including Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who announced their opposition following Trump’s comments.

“I’m not voting for a budget framework that facilitates more taxpayer money to Ukraine. Period,” Hawley posted on social media this week.

Ultimately, the Senate’s vote to adopt the budget resolution won’t actually unlock the filibuster-skirting power Republicans want to harness to enact a package along party lines to deliver on Trump’s domestic agenda. To gain that “privileged” status for a final bill, both the House and Senate need to adopt identical budget measures, and whipping a fiscal framework will be a challenge in the House.

As House GOP leaders forge ahead with their grander vision for a party-line package that includes trillions of dollars in tax cuts, they are trying to manage opposition from vulnerable Republican incumbents uncomfortable with cutting safety net programs like Medicaid and SNAP food assistance by at least $1.5 trillion over a decade, as prescribed by the House’s framework.

Any concessions to appease swing-district Republicans are likely to cost House GOP leaders votes from fiscal hawks rooting for those cuts.

Congress

Chris Murphy plans midterm travel blitz, fundraising for Nixon in Florida

Published

3 hours ago

October 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Chris Murphy wants Democrats to go big for Angie Nixon in Florida’s Senate race — and he’s pushing to raise some “serious money” to help.

“I do believe that we’d make a big mistake if we slept on Florida,” the Connecticut Democrat told Blue Light News on Friday. “I know it feels like a longer shot, but I just think this year is looking exceptional.”

Murphy plans to hit the trail with Nixon as part of a campaign swing for Senate candidates over the next three weeks that will take him through North Carolina and Florida, as well as events with Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota and Chris Pappas in New Hampshire. Murphy will serve as a surrogate for El-Sayed in the spin room at his next debate, and said he’s “just a big believer” in the Michigan Senate nominee.

Murphy’s bullishness about a blue wave comes as Senate Democrats are pushing the boundaries of a midterm battle map that is shifting further into red territory. The Chuck Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC has dropped roughly $5 million apiece into Texas and Kansas over recent days, and the minority leader has included Kansas and Mississippi in his pitches to donors.

“If I were in charge, I would definitely put some resources in Florida,” Murphy said. “When you have an exciting candidate like this, it’s a good long-term investment” in growing Democrats’ activist base.

Still, Murphy stressed he’s “not making any formal recommendations” on where Schumer or top Democratic campaign groups should move their money.

“They’ve got so many mouths to feed,” Murphy said. “That’s why I’m going to try to step up and do some work on my own.”

Murphy, who is considered a potential 2028 presidential contender, has spread roughly $2.5 million across candidates, campaign arms and other organizations this cycle. That includes transferring more than $500,000 to Democrats’ three top campaign arms and 25 state parties.

Prominent Democrats have been ramping up their attention on Florida. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has funneled $250,000 toward Nixon’s campaign, along with other resources. Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) also told Blue Light News he hopes to campaign with Nixon.

But Democrats across suddenly competitive red states are clamoring for more cash and Florida is an expensive state, complicating the chances of a significant investment from national groups.

Nixon also faces an uphill battle against GOP Sen. Ashley Moody in the Sunshine State. A progressive state lawmaker, Nixon aligned herself with the Democratic Socialists of America over the summer in a state where many voters, especially those with ties to Cuba, reject such an ideology. Also, Republicans in Florida have a 1.5 million voter registration advantage over Democrats.

Congress

Democrats drop $5M into Kansas Senate race

Published

7 hours ago

October 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Democrats’ top super PAC is pushing into Kansas.

The Chuck Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC is launching a $5 million statewide television ad blitz starting Saturday through Election Day — the latest sign that Democrats believe the Senate map is shifting onto red turf.

SMP had signaled in recent days it could get involved in the race, telling Blue Light News late last month it was “actively thinking” about whether to wade into the state where Democrats haven’t won a Senate seat in nearly a century but where Adam Hamilton narrowly leads GOP Sen. Roger Marshall in recent polls. Internal SMP polling that found an increasingly competitive race factored into the group’s decision to spend. It will also run digital ads.

“The gap is closing in Kansas,” SMP spokesperson Lauren French said in a statement. “We are committed to ensuring families understand Marshall’s real record of making health care and basic goods more expensive for working Kansans.”

Republicans are scrambling to shore up Marshall. Senate Leadership Fund, a top GOP super PAC aligned with Republican leadership, has booked over $10 million in ads through Election Day in the state, per ad tracking firm AdImpact.

SMP’s first ad attacks Marshall for joining Senate Republicans in voting to table a Democratic-led amendment last year to release the Jeffrey Epstein files. The Senate later approved legislation to release the files by unanimous consent. It’s the latest in a slate of ads from Democrats hitting their Republican rivals over the late, disgraced financier and convicted sex offender. Marshall’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Senate Democrats’ plunge into the state comes as the midterm battle map is undergoing a major realignment. Georgia and North Carolina — primed to be two of the cycle’s premiere battlegrounds — are tilting left to the point where national Republicans are retracting spending in both states and Democrats are starting to follow suit, freeing funds on both sides to shift elsewhere.

Republicans are racing to reinforce incumbents across what was once safer red turf. SLF has also pledged $5 million to bolster Sen. Darline Graham in South Carolina.

Democrats, meanwhile, are starting to spend more in red states. SMP has dropped over $2 million on digital ads in Texas. Schumer, the Senate minority leader, has included Kansas and Mississippi in his pitches to donors.

Congress

House Democratic campaign arm says it needs $17 million, and fast

Published

7 hours ago

October 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is begging for resources, and setting a hard deadline for donors to give $17 million in order to compete in a handful of districts that Republicans carried easily in 2024.

DCCC Executive Director Julie Merz said the committee needs the cash influx by Oct. 22 in order to “to take advantage of the opportunities we have” outside of the core battlefield, according to a memo shared with donors on Friday and obtained by POLITICO.

If they don’t pony up, Merz warns, the party “could be leaving winnable races on the table.”

Democrats have been clear that they have a fundraising disadvantage this cycle, but they have so far been reluctant to place a specific dollar amount on their needs, making the DCCC’s memo Friday a particularly surprising outlier.

“Here’s the tough reality though: the Republican ecosystem has amassed a massive war chest that is significantly greater than ours and is spending it,” Merz says in the memo after arguing that the members of the committee “remain confident that we will win back the majority in 25 days.”

Specifically, Merz dedicates significant portions of the memo to four districts where the committee is desperate for more money in order to compete — all of which President Donald Trump won by double-digit margins in 2024:

— Florida’s 27th District (Trump +14.6)

— Nevada’s 2nd District (Trump +13.9)

— South Carolina’s 1st District (Trump +13)

— New York’s 21st District (Trump +20.7)

The fundraising disadvantage has created headaches for both House and Senate Democrats over where, exactly, to deploy the resources they do have.

The committee tells donors that their internal polling shows all of those races within reach, but that Republicans’ big cash advantages — especially in the Trump-aligned super PAC MAGA Inc. — will make it harder to win those and other reach seats.

Merz also name drops a handful of other deep-red districts that are “worthy of additional investment in this environment,” including seats held by GOP Reps. French Hill (R-Ark.) and Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), the chair of the Republican National Congressional Committee.

The NRCC was quick to mock the DCCC’s memo.

“No amount of money fixes candidates voters don’t want. These seats are staying red, and Republicans are on offense across the map,” NRCC spokesperson Mike Marinella said in a statement.