On The Money: Senate starts hours-long slog on $3.5T Democratic budget plan after passing bipartisan infrastructure bill

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THE BIG DEAL—Senate starts hours-long slog on $3.5T Democratic budget plan: The Senate has kicked off an hours-long slog as Democrats try to pass a budget resolution that is a first step toward their $3.5 trillion spending plan. 

• Senators are at the start of what is expected to be an hours-long vote-a-rama, where any lawmaker can force a vote on anything they want.  
• Hundreds of potential amendments have already been filed. 
• Republicans are expected to force dozens of messaging votes letting them highlight key areas of opposition to the massive spending plan, which Democrats are expected to try to pass without GOP votes later this year. 

“We’re going to argue it out right here on the floor at some length. Every single senator will be going on record over and over and over. Senate Republicans will be bringing forward commonsense amendments that represent what Americans actually want and actually need,” Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.). The Hill’s Jordain Carney tells us what to expect.

Senate passes $1T bipartisan infrastructure bill in major victory for Biden: The vote-a-rama began after a decidedly different affair with the Senate passing the bipartisan infrastructure bill by a solid 69-30 margin. Nineteen GOP senators voted with all Democrats to pass the legislation, a significant win for President Biden and the first step on his top legislative priority.

• The bill is now heading to the House, where it faces an uncertain future and skepticism from progressives. 
• Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has vowed she won’t take it up until the Senate passes the second part of its infrastructure two step, the sweeping $3.5 trillion spending package that includes Democrats’ top priorities.

But the Senate’s passage of the bipartisan measure on Tuesday gives a victory to Biden and the centrist-minded group that led the legislation. 

“This is transformational. I know compromise is hard for both sides. But it’s important, it’s necessary for democracy to be able to function,” Biden said in prepared remarks from the White House.  “So I want to thank everyone on both sides of the aisle for supporting this bill. Today, we proved democracy can still work.”

LEADING THE DAY

Progressives turn up heat on Biden over student loans: Progressives who have spent months pushing President Biden to cancel billions of dollars in student debt are now targeting the end of a federal pause on loan payments as a deadline for White House action.

Biden on Friday extended a freeze on student loan bills until Jan. 31 but said it would be the last time the Education Department renewed a pause on payments that’s been in place since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. While the president won praise from some Democrats, he also raised the odds of a fierce intraparty debate spilling over into an election year by pushing the student loan repayment cliff into 2022.

• Democratic lawmakers and activists who support executive action to wipe out much of the $1.6 trillion in federal student debt are pressuring Biden to act before roughly 43 million Americans must resume paying off their loans.
• But Democratic leaders—including Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.)—are divided on the issue and it’s not clear how much of a political boost it could give the party on whole.

I break it down here.

GOOD TO KNOW

• Congress is barreling toward a high-stakes showdown over the nation’s borrowing limit, with neither party ready to blink.
• Cryptocurrency futures trading platform BitMEX agreed to pay $100 million Tuesday to settle charges brought by two federal financial regulators.
• Investment banking company Citigroup is requiring its workers to be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus before returning to the office amid the spread of the highly infectious delta variant in the U.S. 
• Congressional Democrats this week introduced legislation that seeks to ensure large U.S. corporations pay their “fair share” of taxes, a measure that they’d like included in the reconciliation package they hope to pass without Republican buy-in, in order to raise revenue. 

ODDS AND ENDS

• Theater chain AMC said Tuesday it will accept bitcoin, along with Apple Pay and Google Pay, for payment by the end of 2021.
• The National Security Agency has awarded a cloud computing contract worth up to $10 billion to Amazon, Nextgov reported Tuesday.