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OAN Staff James Meyers
8:25 AM – Friday, February 21, 2025
The Senate adopted a $340 billion budget blueprint on Friday morning that will help increase funding for President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement, energy production and the military.
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The Republican-controlled Senate vote came just before 5 a.m. ET after an all-night “vote-a-rama,” in which senators cast votes on 33 amendments over the course of a 10-hour span.
The final vote was 52-48, with Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), as the only Republican to join all Democrats in voting against the budget resolution.
“Without this bill passing,” said Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), “there is no hope of getting money for the border.”
With the passage, this now puts pressure on the GOP-controlled House, which plans on taking up its own competing budget resolution next week. In addition to money for the border, defense and energy, the version also includes a $4.5 trillion tax cut and a $4 trillion debt limit hike.
Meanwhile, Trump has endorsed the house version, which he calls “one big beautiful bill,” but GOP senators have alluded to a fallback plan if the House blueprint fails.
“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. Nothing would please me more than Speaker [Mike] Johnson being able to put together the bill that President Trump wants,” Graham said on the Senate floor Thursday, before voting began.
“I want that to happen, but I cannot sit on the sidelines and not have a plan B.”
However, Paul said the budget contradicts GOP rhetoric about reducing spending.
“If we were fiscally conservative, why wouldn’t we take the savings from Elon Musk and DOGE and move it over here and help with the border?” Paul said on the Senate floor before voting began. “Why would we be doing a brand new bill to increase spending by $340 billion?”
Under the process, Senate rules allow for members to propose an unlimited number of amendments.
Two amendments passed during the voting. One of them was proposed by Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), would create “a deficit-neutral reserve fund relating to protecting Medicare and Medicaid.”
The budget resolution instructs Senate committees to make legislation that satisfies its goals, which can be hurried through the floor and passed by a simple majority.
The latest measure will see $175 billion spent on immigration and border enforcement, which was requested by border czar Tom Homan. It also entails expanding the military by spending $150 billion.
In the House, conservatives are calling for steep spending cuts, as some moderate Republicans are skeptical due to potential cuts to Medicaid.
“The budget resolution is just patty cake. The real work begins when you start putting together the bill and the pay-fors,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., a member of both the Budget and Appropriations committees. “The only prediction I’ll make is that a reconciliation bill will not pass either the House or the Senate without substantial spending reductions.”
Vice President JD Vance said that he believes Congress is “on track” to pass a reconciliation package in May or June.
“I think the president has learned a lot about how D.C. works. And I actually talked to the president about this yesterday, and he said to me, ‘Look, it’s very rare that you can get two reconciliation bills done in one Congress,’ which is why he thinks we’ve got to do a lot with that one big beautiful bill,” Vance said during an appearance Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
“It’s early, right? This stuff takes time to put together,” he continued. “I think if you had a record-pace reconciliation bill, we would get this thing done in May or in June. I think we’re on track to do that.”
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