Sens. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, and Jeff Sessions, R-Mobile, will emphatically vote “no” on the Ryan-Murray budget deal that skated through the U.S. House Thursday by a vote of 332-94.
Sessions, the top Republican on the Budget Committee, went a step further and said he and his Senate GOP colleagues will filibuster the deal.
Democrats concede they need Republican votes to get the deal through the senate. Not a single Senate Republican to this point has indicated they will vote in favor of the measure, not even the usual suspects like Sens. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina.
With 55 Democratic members of the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid will need to persuade at least 5 Republicans to break ranks and vote with him to get the deal passed through the upper chamber.
“We need Republican votes to pass the budget agreement. Period. We need at least five,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, the Senate’s second ranking Democrat. “There are not five Republicans who have announced they’re for it.”
The filibuster Republicans are planning will not be a “talking” filibuster like the ones Sens. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul led earlier this year. Rather, it is a procedural maneuver that will simply require the bill to get 60 votes to proceed to final passage.
“They’ll need 60 votes on cloture and 60 votes on the budget point of order,” Sessions told The Hill.
Many Senate Republicans cited the fact that the budget deal exceeds the Budget Control Act of 2011 as grounds for opposing it. The Budget Control Act capped 2014 discretionary spending at $967 billion.
Alabama’s House delegation voted in favor of the Ryan-Murray plan 5-1. Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Huntsville, was the only Alabama representative to vote no.
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