Vice President JD Vance, who arrived at the Capitol early Tuesday morning while the Senate works to pass the GOP megabill, told reporters that "we're going to find out" if the chamber will finish pulling the legislation together after a "vote-a-rama" that continued through the night.
His arrival comes as Senate Republicans still do not have the votes to pass the "one, big, beautiful" bill being sought by President Donald Trump, and after the vice president on Saturday played a key role in bringing together enough votes to advance the bill to the Senate floor, reports The Hill.
Vance, a former senator, has also been successful since taking office in persuading Senate Republicans to vote on difficult issues.
Late Monday night, Vance called for senators to "pass the bill."
He posted on X that he has seen many criticisms of the bill, but "most of them fail a very basic test: could those criticisms get 50 votes?"
He added that Trump told him earlier in the day that "for a good idea to become policy, it has to have the votes. Without the votes it's a useless idea on a piece of paper."
And if the "one, big, beautiful bill" fails, Vance warned, "taxes go up, and ICE doesn't get its enforcement help. The baseline here is not the status quo. The baseline is taxes go up in a few months and a lot of our progress at the border stops. Pass the bill. Pass the bill."
Meanwhile, the Senate on Tuesday broke the record for having the most "vote-a-rama" votes, starting to vote on its 45th amendment or procedural motion, reports Politico.
The former record was for 44 amendment votes offered during budget resolution work in 2008.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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