ميسي باريس سان جيرمان.. وجهاً لوجه
The vote was 51-49.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) were the two Republicans who opposed advancing the package. Sen. Paul is against a provision that would increase the debt limit by $5 trillion, while Sen. Tillis is concerned that the legislation would reduce federal Medicaid funding for his state by $38.9 trillion.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) switched his vote from 'no' to 'aye,' and hesitant Senators Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) also supported advancing the bill.
The bill had suffered several significant setbacks in the days and hours before coming to the floor, at times appearing to be on shaky ground.
The vote itself was also full of drama.
Signs of trouble started to pop up 50 minutes after the vote opened when three GOP senators who had expressed misgivings about the bill — Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Lee and Scott — still hadn't showed up on the Senate floor.
Three other Republican senators, Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Johnson, announced well in advance of the vote that they would oppose the motion to proceed and could not support the bill in its current form.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) stood along the back wall of the chamber — appearing somewhat nervous — waiting for his missing colleagues to arrive on the floor.
Thune was surrounded by members of his leadership team, including Senate GOP Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), the deputy whip, and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), as he shifted his weight from foot to foot.
When Murkowski finally appeared on the floor, she was quickly surrounded by Thune, Barrasso, Graham and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), who barraged her on all sides with points and interjections.
Then Murkowski walked away from the leadership group and sat down next to Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy (R-La.) to have a quiet tête-à-tête.
Murkowski eventually voted in favor of advancing the measure, but the vote remained open.
Almost three hours after the vote began, Johnson, Lee, Scott and Lummis walked out of Thune's office with Vice President Vance and headed to the Senate floor to cast the final votes to advance the bill.
Earlier in the week, perhaps the most notable setback was a ruling by the Senate parliamentarian that a cap on health care provider taxes, which is projected to save billions of dollars in federal Medicaid spending, violated the Senate's Byrd Rule. GOP leaders were able to rewrite that provision for it to remain in the bill.
And the legislation appeared in danger moments before vote, when Sen. Tim Sheehy, a freshman Republican from Montana, threatened to vote against the motion to proceed if the bill included a provision championed by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) directing the Interior Department to sell millions of acres of public lands.
Sheehy agreed at the last minute to vote for the legislation after GOP leaders promised he would get a vote on an amendment to strip the language forcing the sale of public lands from the bill.
In the end, Thune pulled off a major victory by moving the legislation a big step closer to final passage.
Thune hailed the legislation Saturday as a 'once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver legislation to create a safer, stronger and more prosperous America.'
He cited $160 billion to secure the borders and beef up immigration enforcement and $150 billion to increase the Pentagon's budget, as well as an array of new tax cuts in addition to the extension of Trump's expiring 2017 tax cuts.
He pointed to the bill's elimination of taxes on tips and taxes on overtime pay for hourly workers, as well as language allowing people to deduct auto loan interest when they buy a new car made in the United States.
President Trump has set a July 4 deadline for Congress to get the bill to his desk.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) blasted his Republican colleagues for unveiling the 940-page Senate substitute amendment late Friday night, giving senators only a few hours to review the legislation before the vote.
'Hard to believe, this bill is worse, even worse than any draft we've seen thus far. It's worse on health care. It's worse on [the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.] It's worse on the deficit,' he said.
Schumer slammed Republicans for advancing the bill before having an official budgetary estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.
'They're afraid to show how badly this will increase the deficit,' he said. 'Future generations will be saddled with trillions in debt.'
A preliminary analysis by the Congressional Budget Office circulated by Senate Finance Committee Democrats Saturday estimates the bill will cut Medicaid by $930 billion, far more substantially than the legislation passed last month by the House.
Tillis cited the impact on Medicaid as the reason he voted 'no' on the motion to proceed, and plans to vote 'no' on final passage.
'I cannot support this bill in its current form. It would result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina, including our hospitals and rural communities,' he said in a statement.
'This will force the state to make painful decisions like eliminating Medicaid coverage for hundreds of thousands in the expansion population, and even reducing critical services for those in the traditional Medicaid population,' he warned.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a critical swing vote, said she voted to advance the legislation out of 'deference' to the GOP leader but warned that doesn't mean she will vote 'yes' on final passage.
She said that Senate negotiators improved the legislation before releasing it Friday but added that she wants to make additional changes.
'Generally, I give deference to the majority leader's power to bring bills to the Senate floor. Does not in any way predict how I'm going to vote on final passage,' Collins told reporters.
'That's going to depend on whether the bill is substantially changed,' she said. 'There are some very good changes that have been made in the latest version but I want to see further changes and I will be filing a number of amendments.'
Former senior White House adviser Elon Musk blasted the Senate bill on social media shortly before the vote, calling it full of 'handouts to industries of the past,' referring to the oil, gas and coal industries.
'The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country! Utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future,' he wrote on X, the social media platform he owns.
Schumer told Democratic senators before the vote that he would force the clerks to read the entire 1,000-page bill on the Senate floor, which is estimated to take up to 12 hours and delay the start of debate and the start of a marathon series of amendment votes, known as a vote-a-rama.
It's unclear whether Republican senators will keep the Senate in session overnight Saturday into Sunday morning to have the bill read aloud on the floor, an exhausting process for the Senate floor staff.
An overnight reading of the bill would leave the clerks and floor staff weary before senators are scheduled to hold 20 hours of debate on the legislation and then launch into a multihour vote-a-rama.
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Jazairess
2 days ago
- Jazairess
ميسي باريس سان جيرمان.. وجهاً لوجه
On Saturday, Senate Republicans narrowly voted to move forward with a comprehensive 1,000-page bill aimed at implementing President Trump's agenda, despite dissent from two GOP senators. The vote was 51-49. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) were the two Republicans who opposed advancing the package. Sen. Paul is against a provision that would increase the debt limit by $5 trillion, while Sen. Tillis is concerned that the legislation would reduce federal Medicaid funding for his state by $38.9 trillion. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) switched his vote from 'no' to 'aye,' and hesitant Senators Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) also supported advancing the bill. The bill had suffered several significant setbacks in the days and hours before coming to the floor, at times appearing to be on shaky ground. The vote itself was also full of drama. Signs of trouble started to pop up 50 minutes after the vote opened when three GOP senators who had expressed misgivings about the bill — Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Lee and Scott — still hadn't showed up on the Senate floor. Three other Republican senators, Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Johnson, announced well in advance of the vote that they would oppose the motion to proceed and could not support the bill in its current form. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) stood along the back wall of the chamber — appearing somewhat nervous — waiting for his missing colleagues to arrive on the floor. Thune was surrounded by members of his leadership team, including Senate GOP Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), the deputy whip, and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), as he shifted his weight from foot to foot. When Murkowski finally appeared on the floor, she was quickly surrounded by Thune, Barrasso, Graham and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), who barraged her on all sides with points and interjections. Then Murkowski walked away from the leadership group and sat down next to Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy (R-La.) to have a quiet tête-à-tête. Murkowski eventually voted in favor of advancing the measure, but the vote remained open. Almost three hours after the vote began, Johnson, Lee, Scott and Lummis walked out of Thune's office with Vice President Vance and headed to the Senate floor to cast the final votes to advance the bill. Earlier in the week, perhaps the most notable setback was a ruling by the Senate parliamentarian that a cap on health care provider taxes, which is projected to save billions of dollars in federal Medicaid spending, violated the Senate's Byrd Rule. GOP leaders were able to rewrite that provision for it to remain in the bill. And the legislation appeared in danger moments before vote, when Sen. Tim Sheehy, a freshman Republican from Montana, threatened to vote against the motion to proceed if the bill included a provision championed by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) directing the Interior Department to sell millions of acres of public lands. Sheehy agreed at the last minute to vote for the legislation after GOP leaders promised he would get a vote on an amendment to strip the language forcing the sale of public lands from the bill. In the end, Thune pulled off a major victory by moving the legislation a big step closer to final passage. Thune hailed the legislation Saturday as a 'once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver legislation to create a safer, stronger and more prosperous America.' He cited $160 billion to secure the borders and beef up immigration enforcement and $150 billion to increase the Pentagon's budget, as well as an array of new tax cuts in addition to the extension of Trump's expiring 2017 tax cuts. He pointed to the bill's elimination of taxes on tips and taxes on overtime pay for hourly workers, as well as language allowing people to deduct auto loan interest when they buy a new car made in the United States. President Trump has set a July 4 deadline for Congress to get the bill to his desk. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) blasted his Republican colleagues for unveiling the 940-page Senate substitute amendment late Friday night, giving senators only a few hours to review the legislation before the vote. 'Hard to believe, this bill is worse, even worse than any draft we've seen thus far. It's worse on health care. It's worse on [the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.] It's worse on the deficit,' he said. Schumer slammed Republicans for advancing the bill before having an official budgetary estimate from the Congressional Budget Office. 'They're afraid to show how badly this will increase the deficit,' he said. 'Future generations will be saddled with trillions in debt.' A preliminary analysis by the Congressional Budget Office circulated by Senate Finance Committee Democrats Saturday estimates the bill will cut Medicaid by $930 billion, far more substantially than the legislation passed last month by the House. Tillis cited the impact on Medicaid as the reason he voted 'no' on the motion to proceed, and plans to vote 'no' on final passage. 'I cannot support this bill in its current form. It would result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina, including our hospitals and rural communities,' he said in a statement. 'This will force the state to make painful decisions like eliminating Medicaid coverage for hundreds of thousands in the expansion population, and even reducing critical services for those in the traditional Medicaid population,' he warned. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a critical swing vote, said she voted to advance the legislation out of 'deference' to the GOP leader but warned that doesn't mean she will vote 'yes' on final passage. She said that Senate negotiators improved the legislation before releasing it Friday but added that she wants to make additional changes. 'Generally, I give deference to the majority leader's power to bring bills to the Senate floor. Does not in any way predict how I'm going to vote on final passage,' Collins told reporters. 'That's going to depend on whether the bill is substantially changed,' she said. 'There are some very good changes that have been made in the latest version but I want to see further changes and I will be filing a number of amendments.' Former senior White House adviser Elon Musk blasted the Senate bill on social media shortly before the vote, calling it full of 'handouts to industries of the past,' referring to the oil, gas and coal industries. 'The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country! Utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future,' he wrote on X, the social media platform he owns. Schumer told Democratic senators before the vote that he would force the clerks to read the entire 1,000-page bill on the Senate floor, which is estimated to take up to 12 hours and delay the start of debate and the start of a marathon series of amendment votes, known as a vote-a-rama. It's unclear whether Republican senators will keep the Senate in session overnight Saturday into Sunday morning to have the bill read aloud on the floor, an exhausting process for the Senate floor staff. An overnight reading of the bill would leave the clerks and floor staff weary before senators are scheduled to hold 20 hours of debate on the legislation and then launch into a multihour vote-a-rama.
Khabar Agency
04-06-2025
- Khabar Agency
US Congress Nears Move To Designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a Terrorist Organization
Momentum has built for the U.S. government to formally designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization in the weeks since President Donald Trump's Middle East trip, lawmakers and other sources familiar with the effort tell the Washington Free Beacon. While the parties involved iron out the final details, sources working on the effort said that lawmakers have multiple avenues to financially cripple the Muslim Brotherhood, a global Islamist organization that preaches terrorism against Israel, the United States, and Western governments. The recent push began building steam last month, when the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) held a closed-door briefing for congressional staff that "focused on developing strategies to ban the growing threat of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States," the group said in a press release. The Muslim Brotherhood is already designated as a terror outfit in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Syria, and Bahrain. But the United States has failed to follow suit, even though Congress attempted multiple times in the past. During Trump's first term in office, officials in both the White House and Congress began laying the groundwork to sanction the Muslim Brotherhood's global affiliates, but a formal designation never materialized. With Trump back in office and the GOP holding slim majorities in Congress, insiders say a fresh push to designate the Muslim Brotherhood would likely draw broad Republican support. It also has the important backing of key Arab allies that already identify the Brotherhood as a purveyor of violent extremism and discussed the issue during Trump's visit to the Gulf states. "There are several ways the U.S. designates groups as terrorists, and they do different things so Congress may have to choose between options, but momentum is building," said one senior GOP congressional source who works on Middle East and counterterrorism issues. "President Trump went to the Middle East and had an amazingly successful trip, in which he heard from our allies about their concerns—and most of those allies consider the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization." An Arab official agreed, saying many Arab states would like to see the United States take action against the Muslim Brotherhood. "Any of the countries in the Middle East who have already designated the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization would welcome the United States doing the same," the official told the Free Beacon. One method the United States could use involves classifying the Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), which would sanction the group's leaders and freeze its assets. A second option would see it added to the Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) organization list, which imposes similar financial penalties, according to those briefed on the effort. Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) has long sought tougher action against the Muslim Brotherhood and told the Free Beacon that now is the right time to get it done. "The Muslim Brotherhood uses political violence to achieve political ends and destabilize American allies, both within countries and across national boundaries," Cruz said. "The Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood is Hamas, a terrorist group which on Oct. 7 committed the largest one-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and which included the murder and kidnapping of dozens of Americans." The Brotherhood, Cruz argued, "used the Biden administration to consolidate and deepen their influence, but the Trump administration and Republican Congress can no longer afford to avoid the threat they pose to Americans and American national security." Rep. Ashley Hinson (R., Iowa), who sits on the House Appropriations Committee's Homeland Security subcommittee, said the Trump administration's ongoing efforts to target terror factions tied to the Iranian regime could provide the groundwork for an expansion that covers the Muslim Brotherhood's international affiliates. "[The] Muslim Brotherhood—or any terrorist organization, for that matter—should be designated as such," Hinson told the Free Beacon. "I'm thankful to the Trump Administration for defending the U.S. from our adversaries and brutal terrorists—something Biden failed to prioritize. Peace through strength is back in the White House, and we must continue signaling deterrence." A 2023 ISGAP report noted that when "Hamas was created, it designated itself as 'one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine.'" While the Brotherhood's Qatari branch was formally dissolved in 1999, its "ideology, network, and influence remain prominent in Qatar today, having developed a mutually beneficial relationship with the royal family."
El Chorouk
03-06-2025
- El Chorouk
The fragmentation of decision-making sources in Paris portends something more dangerous
The words and actions of the French authorities do not entirely align when it comes to relations with Algeria. While both French President Emmanuel Macron and his Foreign Minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, claim to be keen on relations with Algeria, other French institutions adopt a different approach, leading to doubts about the intentions of decision-makers in Paris. A statement from the Algerian Council of the Nation, headed by Mr. Azzouz Nasseri, addressed to its French counterpart following the latter's repeated provocations towards Algeria, confirmed that the French authorities do not intend to put bilateral relations back on track, as long as there are responsible parties in Paris working to sabotage these relations. When an Algerian stance is issued that sovereignly defends the Algerian state, voices rise in the former colony, condemning what they consider 'Algeria's insult to France,' a famous phrase uttered by French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau last January, when an Algerian national was deported outside the laws and diplomatic norms in force between the two countries, which are governed by bilateral agreements. Days after the French Senate received the terrorist fugitive from Algerian justice, Ferhat Mehenni, for the second time in less than a month, some French circles emerged lamenting what they claimed were the pressures faced by the French embassy in Algeria, exactly as happened after Algeria expelled 12 employees from the French embassy in Algiers, in response to the showy arrest of an Algerian consular official in Paris, outside of laws and norms. The French are now talking about pressures they claim their embassy and its annexes in Algeria are facing, in the latest leak from an unnamed French diplomat, reported by Le Monde on Tuesday, June 3, in an article titled: 'The French Embassy in Algeria is under pressure and restriction.' The French newspaper quotes the diplomat as saying: 'The Algerian authorities operate according to verbal notes, according to current diplomatic terms. Messages written by the embassy are sent to one entity, which is the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.' The same source claims: 'During periods of peace in bilateral relations, fax replies only arrived in half of the cases, without anyone knowing whether that was due to bad faith or simply due to local administrative shortcomings, so imagine what that means in times of crisis!' The same source also spoke about the isolation experienced by the embassy's economic center, 'Business France,' which has an office there. It is deprived, the source adds, of official relations, and therefore cannot organize professional meetings or discuss investment projects, while its role is limited to analyzing the development of the Algerian market without any influence on stakeholders, especially in light of economic deterioration and a 21 percent decline in French exports to Algeria in the first quarter of 2025. They also lament the halt of cultural activities affiliated with the embassy, the difficulty of obtaining visas for French artists wishing to perform in Algeria, and the restriction on the French language, through the shift to teaching medicine and pharmacy in English instead of French, and before that, the cessation of police and judicial cooperation between the two countries. However, they ignore the reasons that led to this situation, after the visit of French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot to Algeria on April 6, which had re-established bridges of communication between the two countries at all levels. The only entity that remained unaffected by the restrictions, according to Le Monde, is the French consulate, which continues to respond to civil status requests, ensure consular protection for French citizens, and process visa applications submitted by individuals, according to the diplomatic source, who warned that this crisis, if it continues, could lead to 'structural effects on the relationship between France and Algeria,' in his words.
