WASHINGTON: US senators were in a marathon session of amendment votes Monday as Republicans sought to pass Donald Trump’s flagship spending bill, an unpopular package set to slash social welfare programs and add an eye-watering $3 trillion to the national debt.
The president wants his “One Big Beautiful Bill” to extend his expiring first-term tax cuts at a cost of $4.5 trillion, boost military spending and fund his plans for unprecedented mass deportations and border security.
But senators eyeing 2026 midterm congressional elections are divided over provisions that would strip around $1 trillion in subsidized health care from millions of the poorest Americans and add more than $3.3 trillion to the nation’s already yawning budget deficits over a decade.
Trump wants to have the package on his desk by the time Independence Day festivities begin on Friday.
Progress in the Senate slowed to a glacial pace Monday, however, with no end in sight as the so-called “vote-a-rama” — a session allowing members to offer unlimited amendments before a bill can move to final passage — went into a 13th hour.
With little sign of the pace picking up ahead of a final floor vote that could be delayed until well into the early hours of Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called for Republicans to “stay tough and unified.”
Vote-a-ramas have been concluded in as little nine or 10 hours in the recent past and Democrats accused Republicans of deliberately slow-walking the process.
“They’ve got a lot of members who were promised things that they may not be able to deliver on. And so they’re just stalling,” Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters.
“But we’re just pushing forward amendment after amendment. They don’t like these amendments. The public is on our side in almost every amendment we do.”
Given Trump’s iron grip on the party, he is expected to eventually get what he wants in the Senate, where Republicans hold a razor-thin majority and can overcome what is expected to be unified Democratic opposition.
That would be a huge win for the Republican leader — who has been criticized for imposing many of his priorities through executive orders that sidestep the scrutiny of Congress.
But approval by the Senate is only half the battle, as the 940-page bill next heads to a separate vote in the House of Representatives, where several rebels in the slim Republican majority are threatening to oppose it.
Trump’s heavy pressure to declare victory has put more vulnerable Republicans in a difficult position.
Nonpartisan studies have concluded that the bill would ultimately pave the way for a historic redistribution of wealth from the poorest 10 percent of Americans to the richest.
And cuts to the Medicaid program — which helps low-income Americans get coverage in a country with notoriously expensive medical insurance — and cuts to the Affordable Care Act would result in nearly 12 million more uninsured people by 2034, independent analysis shows.
Polls show the bill is among the most unpopular ever considered across multiple demographic, age and income groups.
Senate Democrats have been focusing their amendments on highlighting the threats to health care, as well as cuts to federal food aid programs and clean energy tax credits.
Republican Majority Leader John Thune can only lose one more vote, with conservative Rand Paul and moderate Thom Tillis already on the record as Republican rebels.
A House vote on the Senate bill could come as early as Wednesday.
However, ultra-conservative fiscal hawks in the lower chamber have complained that the bill would not cut enough spending and moderates are worried at the defunding of Medicaid.
Trump’s former close aide Elon Musk — who had an acrimonious public falling out with the president earlier this month over the bill — reprised his sharp criticisms and renewed his calls for the formation of a new political party as voting got underway.
The tech billionaire, who headed Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency before stepping down at the end of May, accused Republicans of supporting “debt slavery.”
He vowed to launch a new political party to challenge lawmakers who campaigned on reduced federal spending only to vote for the bill.
US Senate in final push to pass Trump spending bill
https://arab.news/57j6z
US Senate in final push to pass Trump spending bill
- The president wants his “One Big Beautiful Bill” to extend his expiring first-term tax cuts at a cost of $4.5 trillion
Bondi Beach shooting suspect conducted firearms training with his father, Australian police say
MELBOURNE, Australia: A man accused of killing 15 people at Sydney’s Bondi Beach conducted firearms training in an area of New South Wales state outside of Sydney with his father, according to Australian police documents released on Monday.
The documents, made public following Naveed Akram’s video court appearance from a Sydney hospital where he has been treated for an abdominal injury, said the two men recorded footage justifying the meticulously planned attack.
Officers wounded Akram at the scene of the Dec. 14 shooting and killed his father, 50-year-old Sajid Akram.
The state government confirmed Naveed Akram was transferred Monday from a hospital to a prison. Authorities identified neither facility.
The 24-year-old and his father began their attack by throwing four improvised explosive devices toward a crowd celebrating an annual Jewish event at Bondi Beach, but the devices failed to explode, the documents said.
Police described the devices as three aluminum pipe bombs and a tennis ball bomb containing an explosive, gunpowder and steel ball bearings. None detonated, but police described them as “viable” IEDs.
The pair had rented a room in the Sydney suburb of Campsie for three weeks before they left at 2:16 a.m. on the day of the attack. CCTV recorded them carrying what police allege were two shotguns, a rifle, five IEDs and two homemade Daesh group flags wrapped in blankets.
Police also released images of the gunmen shooting from a footbridge, providing them with an elevated vantage point and the protection of waist-high concrete walls.
The largest IED was found after the gunbattle near the footbridge in the trunk of the son’s car, which had been left draped with the flags.
Authorities have charged Akram with 59 offenses, including 15 counts of murder, 40 counts of causing harm with intent to murder in relation to the wounded survivors and one count of committing a terrorist act.
The antisemitic attack at the start of the eight-day Hanukkah celebration was Australia’s worst mass shooting since a lone gunman killed 35 people in Tasmania state in 1996.
The New South Wales government introduced draft laws to Parliament on Monday that Premier Chris Minns said would become the toughest in Australia.
The new restrictions would include making Australian citizenship a condition of qualifying for a firearms license. That would have excluded Sajid Akram, who was an Indian citizen with a permanent resident visa.
Sajid Akram also legally owned six rifles and shotguns. A new legal limit for recreational shooters would be a maximum of four guns.
Police said a video found on Naveed Akram’s phone shows him with his father expressing “their political and religious views and appear to summarise their justification for the Bondi terrorist attack.”
The men are seen in the video “condemning the acts of Zionists” while they also “adhere to a religiously motivated ideology linked to Islamic State,” police said, using another term for the Daesh Group.
Video shot in October shows them “firing shotguns and moving in a tactical manner” on grassland surrounded by trees, police said.
“There is evidence that the Accused and his father meticulously planned this terrorist attack for many months,” police allege.
An impromptu memorial that grew near the Bondi Pavilion after the massacre, as thousands of mourners brought flowers and heartfelt cards, was removed Monday as the beachfront returned to more normal activity. The Sydney Jewish Museum will preserve part of the memorial.
Victims’ funerals continued Monday with French national Dan Elkayam’s service held in the nearby suburb of Woollahra, at the heart of Sydney’s Jewish life. The 27-year-old moved from Paris to Sydney a year ago.
The health department said 12 people wounded in the attack remained in hospitals on Monday.
