“I don’t think any voter likes the idea that very wealthy people are going to get a tax break while they’re cutting Medicare,” Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen said. | Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo Dems look to make GOP squirm on budget

The Senate’s budget debate, typically jam-packed with a range of hot-button symbolic votes, could be a little more focused this time around.

That’s because Democrats are planning to concentrate later this week on the meat of the GOP proposal: Its greenlight for tax cuts for the wealthy that promise to balloon the deficit or put safety-net programs at risk.


The Senate’s budget process allows votes on any politically charged issue during a so-called vote-a-rama that often stretches into the night. But this time, Democrats aren’t expecting to stray from the tax bill that President Donald Trump and Republicans consider a must-pass priority.

Democrats are laying plans to put the GOP on the spot about potential cuts to Medicare and Medicaid to help pay for Trump’s much-talked-about tax cuts — a messaging tactic they hope can wound Republicans during the 2018 midterm campaigns.

“I don’t think any voter likes the idea that very wealthy people are going to get a tax break while they’re cutting Medicare, and that’s essentially the design of this bill,” Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, chairman of the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, said in an interview. “This is a disaster for the middle class and seniors.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday that his caucus’ budget strategy would focus on forcing Republicans on the record about “tax cuts for the rich, tax increases for some of the middle class,” as well as the deficit growth and entitlement cuts that could spring from the GOP’s fiscal blueprint.

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Democrats would “like to focus our amendments on those things, not a whole Christmas tree of everything,” Schumer told reporters.

There is little doubt the GOP budget will pass later this week, helping to unlock a fast-track procedure that allows Republicans to pass a tax reform measure with a simple majority and without Democratic votes.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is likely to oppose the budget and has already started to blame defense hawks in his own party for wanting to raise military spending. But other senators who had been viewed as potential swing GOP votes, such as John McCain of Arizona and Susan Collins of Maine, have since said they will support the fiscal blueprint.

And absences that could’ve complicated votes in both parties appear to be largely resolved.

Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), who has missed several weeks of Senate votes to recover at home because of medical issues, said in a statement Tuesday that he has returned to Washington. Meanwhile, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) — frequently away from the Capitol while on trial for federal corruption charges — told reporters in Newark that as long as the court proceedings conclude in time, “I certainly have the intention of going back and casting votes.”

So Democrats are using the upcoming marathon vote session to make political points.

They largely believe the Senate’s usual sprint through a grab-bag of amendment votes — many of them designed as attack-ad fodder for campaigns — isn’t necessary when Republicans are selling their budget as a way to push through tax cuts while avoiding a filibuster.

Democrats are eyeing 20 to 25 amendments to the GOP’s budget that target the “most vulnerable” pieces of the plan, according to a senior Democratic aide. And instead of filing hundreds of far-reaching amendments, Democrats will force Republicans to vote repeatedly on issues like Medicare and Medicaid cuts and increasing the deficit to pay for tax breaks.

The first Democratic amendment, from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, will target the GOP’s proposed $1 trillion cuts to Medicaid. The second will focus on the proposed $473 billion cuts to Medicare, from Sens. Bill Nelson of Florida, Stabenow and Sanders.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia will offer an amendment to prevent Republicans from adding to the deficit to pay for their tax plan — something that Democrats believe could be a winning argument for GOP fiscal hawks like Bob Corker of Tennessee.

“They either vote for our amendments or they really shouldn’t be paid attention to when they say they’re concerned about the deficit,” the Democratic aide said. “They really lose their credibility if they vote against amendments that would prevent them from increasing the deficit.”

Republicans are pushing hard on a tax overhaul to give Trump the first major legislative win of his presidency, and Democrats are determined to make it difficult for them.

“The tough vote is the budget itself,” Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii said in an interview. “You can’t get tougher than cutting Medicare by $473 billion. You can’t get tougher than cutting Medicaid by $1 trillion. You can’t get tougher than increasing deficit spending by $1.5 trillion.”

Republicans are almost “all going to be a ‘yes’ on that,” Schatz added. “Anything after that is superfluous.”

Democrats have released their own summary of the Senate GOP proposal, insisting that it slashes nearly $500 billion in Medicare and includes Medicaid cuts. How exactly the budget affects the mandatory health-care programs has not been specifically detailed by Republicans, although they reject the Democrats’ analysis.

“My Democrat colleagues want to try and find a clever way to make the false accusation that somehow through this budget Senate Republicans are cutting Medicare,” Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), the Senate Budget Committee chairman, said earlier this month. “Let me be clear: The budget we have put forward does not cut Medicare. Medicare spending increases every year.”

Yet Republicans acknowledge that their commitment to tax cuts calls for an acceptance of short-term deficit increases under the budget blueprint, which assumes the resulting economic growth would alleviate the long-term shortfall.

Democrats will also try to corner Republicans on potentially unpopular pieces of their tax proposal.

Several members plan to offer amendments that would block the GOP’s plan from repealing the estate tax and repealing the state-and-local tax reduction. Another would prevent any part of the GOP’s eventual bill from shipping jobs overseas.

Those votes, however, are likely to require 60 votes and be defeated.

Steering clear of a long, contentious vote-a-rama also promises to help Democrats avoid their own internal schisms. Liberals lambasted New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and other Democrats who opposed a symbolic amendment in January that would have allowed prescription drug imports from Canada, a rift that nudged Booker to negotiate on import legislation with Sanders.

Grass-roots activists on the left who helped Democrats maintain unity throughout this year’s arduous Obamacare repeal battles are rallying behind the budget strategy as a means to make the GOP’s tax plan as big a target as its health care plan.

Taxes and Obamacare repeal “are the same fight,” said Chad Bolt, policy manager for the liberal group Indivisible, because the Senate budget’s projected deficit spending promises to “unleash deep cuts to Medicaid.”

“The point we want to make is not terribly complicated,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “We want to make sure everybody knows what’s coming: A giant tax cut for the wealthy paid for by cuts in Medicare and Medicaid. I don’t know that we need two days to make that point.”