Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has said he will follow the lead of Texas House Democrats and ‘leave town’ in order to block voting on President Biden’s $3.5trillion infrastructure bill.
It came after Senator Amy Klobuchar suggested that financial incentives for states to expand voting access could also be included in the infrastructure bill.
Graham said he was contemplating employing the tactic used by Texas Democrats who left the state to avoid backing GOP-engineered voting legislation.
The Democrats’ departure paralyzed the Texas state house as the legislature requires a quorum of two-thirds of lawmakers be present to conduct business.
The senator from South Carolina hopes other Republicans might follow his lead and abandon Washington to prevent the passage of President Biden and the Democrats’ new infrastructure bill.
But Graham’s threat is essentially empty, as the Constitution only requires a simple majority – or 51 senators – to be present to conduct business in the Senate. The Democrats currently have 50 Senators, so just one Republican senator would be needed.
Graham said that while he supports the $950 billion infrastructure plan for roads, bridges and ports, he explained to Fox News ‘the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package designed to pass without a single Republican vote is not infrastructure.’
Instead, he claims the bill is more a ‘a liberal wish list’ containing ‘all kinds of new social programs unrelated to infrastructure.’
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has said he will follow the lead of Texas House Democrats and leave town in order to avoid voting for Biden’s infrastructure bill
The $3.5trillion plan includes $600 billion in new spending on physical infrastructure and investment in climate change, health care and family-service programs sought by President Joe Biden.
The budget is also said to cover costs to expand Medicare, address childcare and education, all under the banner of ‘human infrastructure’ which Republicans say they will reject.
The rest of Biden’s ideas are being collected into the much broader multitrillion-dollar package that Democrats could approve on their own.
Graham says the only way to pay for such a package would be ‘through a massive tax increase.’
On Sunday, Senator Amy Klobuchar suggested that financial incentives for states to expand voting access could also be included in the infrastructure bill.
Democrats have been struggling to get their marquee election reform bill passed in an evenly split Senate, where Republicans remain unified in their opposition and rules require 60 votes to advance most pieces of legislation.
Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota who chairs the powerful Senate Rules Committee, said in an interview that the priority continues to be passing the legislation known as the For the People Act, which would usher in minimum voting standards in the U.S. such as automatic and same-day voter registration, early voting and no-excuse absentee voting.
On Sunday, Senator Amy Klobuchar suggested that financial incentives for states to expand voting access could also be included in the infrastructure bill. She is pictured last month
But Klobuchar noted that Democrats could also use the process known as reconciliation to advance financial incentives for states to adopt certain reforms.
Election systems have been designated critical infrastructure on par with the nation’s power plants, banks and dams.
‘You can do election infrastructure in there because that is part of infrastructure,’ Klobuchar said. ‘It´s no substitute for the For the People Act, but it is something we can start working on immediately and are working on right now.’
Pushing election-related measures into the infrastructure bill would be a high-stakes gambit with no guarantee of success.
Graham also noted that the Democrats were pushing to include an amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants.
‘If Democrats put legalizing illegal immigrants in that bill, you’re going to have a complete run on the border. It would lead to an invasion of illegal immigrants if we put amnesty in the $3.5 trillion bill so I’d do anything I could to stop that,’ Graham warned.
At least 58 Democrats left Austin to avoid the vote on two election bills, touching down in Washington D.C. on Monday evening in two private jets (pictured)
The large group of Texas Democratic lawmakers who fled their state on Monday to avoid voting on Republicans’ election legislation held a press conference outside the Capitol on Tuesday morning. The lawmakers broke out in gospel song ‘We Shall Overcome’
When asked if he would leave the senate in order to avoid voting, he confirmed that he would.
‘Hell yeah, I would leave. I would use everything lawfully in my toolbox to prevent rampant inflation,’ Graham affirmed as he encouraged his fellow GOP senators to follow suit.
‘To my Republican colleagues, we may learn something from our Democratic friends in Texas when it comes to avoiding a $3.5 trillion tax and spend package: Leave town,’ Graham said.
‘You’ve got to have a quorum to pass a bill in the Senate’ Graham added.
Democrats will seek to bypass a Republican filibuster by winning passage through budget reconciliation.
Under the congressional budget process, certain measures regarding revenues, spending and the debt can be approved with a 51-vote threshold, which is why Democrats are pursuing it.
The $3.5trillion plan includes $600 billion in new spending on physical infrastructure and investment in climate change, health care and family-service programs sought by President Joe Biden
Reconciliation, however, only requires a simple majority in the Senate. With the upper chamber at a 50-50 tie between Republicans and Democrats, Vice President Kamala Harris would cast the tie-breaking vote.
Under budget rules, Democrats could pass the proposal on their own in the evenly split Senate, without the 60 votes typically required.
But there’s a catch: The Senate´s nonpartisan parliamentarian can rule for the removal of any provision not directly related to the budget, or items whose budget impact is ‘merely incidental’ to their intended policy changes.
In the end, Democrats would not achieve their goal of federal standards through the infrastructure bill alone but could incentivize some states to move in that direction.
‘Money with incentives has passed before. So let’s see what we can get approved,’ Klobuchar said. ‘But again, that is only part of it. Look, it’s not the whole thing, right? But it’s a tool you don’t want to let go.’
Republicans are unified against the larger infrastructure package and the election bill. The say the latter represents a Democratic power grab that amounts to a federal takeover of elections, which are administered at the state and local levels.
Republicans last month blocked an effort to debate the bill, and Democrats will have to decide whether they want to change Senate rules to ultimately pass the bill.
Last week, dozens of Texas Democratic state lawmakers deliberately missed a special legislative session with the intention of breaking a quorum and blocking Republican efforts to fast track new election integrity bills, which Democrats had claimed were tantamount to voter suppression.
The Democrats’ departure paralyzed the Texas state house as the legislature requires a quorum of two-thirds of lawmakers be present to conduct business.
Graham went on, ‘If it takes me not showing up to stop the $3.5 trillion infrastructure package which has got nothing to do with infrastructure and is a tax and spend dream of the socialist left,’ he will do it.
Graham’s main worry is that the bill would cause inflation to soar ‘through the roof.’