After a lengthy Capitol Hill voting session on funding for immigration and national security agencies, tensions between two prominent Republicans — Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) and outgoing Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) — flared up. Thune argued that Cassidy dragged the session on longer than he needed to, and the Senate majority leader is now drawing criticism for his complaint. Thune’s critics are defending Cassidy, stressing that there’s nothing wrong with the Louisiana Republican expecting lawmakers to put in extra hours to get their job done.
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Punchbowl News’ Laura Weiss, early Friday morning on X, reported, “THUNE also took a swipe at GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy and Dems after 18-hour vote-a-rama. Cassidy spent hours & hours trying to find amendment language on ‘anti-weaponization fund’ at 50-vote threshold. ‘ “They spend — wasted 15 hours doing it. So you guys got to stay here for a long time and so did we. I mean, all these votes could have been held 12, 15 hours ago but that’s what drug this thing out for that long.'”
Responding to Weiss’ tweet, New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush made it clear that he had no sympathy for U.S. senators having to put in some occasional overtime.
“A lot of Americans are force to work multiple jobs in which double digit work hours are not just a twice a year interruption to a series of recesses,” Thrush posted on X.
The lengthy voting session that Thune complained about came to a conclusion early Friday morning when the Senate passed, 52-47, a $70 billion bill that, NBC News reports, “would fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol through the end of (President Donald) Trump’s term.”
The final vote came down along largely partisan lines, and Sen. Lisa Murowski (R-Alabama) was the lone GOP senator to vote “no” on the final package.
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According to NBC News reporters Frank Thorp V, Brennan Leach and Sahil Kapur, “The bill includes $38.6 billion for ICE, $22.6 billion for the Border Patrol, $5 billion for the Department of Homeland Security and $108.5 million for child exploitation investigations. It does not include security funding for the White House ballroom, or any guardrails on the creation of a pot of money seen by Democrats and some Republicans as a ‘slush fund’ to funnel taxpayer money to potentially pay January 6 rioters and other Trump allies.”
The reporters added, “The final vote, shortly before 5 a.m., followed an 18-hour ‘vote-a-rama’ during which senators could offer amendments. Senators from both parties proposed 29 amendments and motions before voting on final passage, with some Republicans supporting amendments that broke with Trump’s priorities.”
Cassidy kept the “vote-a-rama” going by sponsoring an amendment that called for the Trump administration to be blocked from reviving its $1.7 billion “anti-weaponization fund” — which the administration has reportedly abandoned, at least for now. Cassidy opposed the fund, and several Republican senators joining him in voting “yes” on the amendment: Murkowski, Maine’s Susan Collins, North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, Alaska’s Dan Sullivan, and Ohio’s John Husted. Most GOP senators, however, voted “no” on Cassidy’s amendment.
The Hill’s Alexander Bolton noted, “Cassidy’s amendment would have repurposed the anti-weaponization fund for the sole purpose of providing for law enforcement officers who suffered injury or economic loss while defending the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. It would have appropriated $100 million to pay claims to police officers and surviving family.”
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