
Senate opens debate on Democrats' $3.5 trillion budget resolution and begins vote-a-rama
CNN
The Senate on Tuesday voted to open debate on a $3.5 trillion budget resolution and has now begun a series of votes on amendments that could go late into the night before final passage.
If both chambers of Congress adopt the budget resolution, then Democrats could draft a sweeping legislative package to advance many of their party's priorities -- on issues from health care to immigration to climate change -- that could be approved on a straight party-line vote and would not be subject to the filibuster's 60-vote threshold. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is now halfway toward his two-track goal of advancing both a bipartisan infrastructure bill, which cleared the upper chamber by a wide bipartisan majority on Tuesday morning, and adopting a budget resolution with reconciliation instructions, before the Senate bolts for its weeks-long summer recess.More Related News

More than two decades ago, on January 24, 2004, I landed in Baghdad as a legal adviser, assigned an office in what was then known as the Green Zone. It was raining and cold, and my duffle bag was thrown into a puddle off the C-130 aircraft that had just done a corkscrew dive to reach the runway without risk of ground fire. Young American soldiers greeted me as we piled into a vehicle, sped out of the airport complex and then along a road called the “Highway of Death” due to car bombs and snipers.












