Senate Republicans Will Make Any ‘Build Back Better’ Votes Painful for Democrats!!!

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview that he and other Senate Republicans will not allow the Democrats to pass any multi-billion-dollar "Build Back Better" (BBB) measure without a fight.

Last week, while fundraising and campaigning for Republicans in Iowa ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, Cotton told Breitbart News that if the Democrats bring up the Biden agenda bill for a Senate vote, Republicans in the Senate will be able to force a "vote-a-rama," in which they can force as many amendment votes as they want. Cotton hinted at some planned amendments aimed at making life difficult for Democrats, including measures aimed at Biden and the Justice Department's decision to hand out $450,000 checks to illegal immigrants separated from their families at the border due to former President Donald Trump's strict immigration enforcement measures.

"If the Democrats move forward with this enormous spending bill, we will have an opportunity to present a lot of changes to that bill," Cotton said. "I look forward to some of the vulnerable Democratic senators up for election next year having a vote on this very topic." "They will be forced to," I guarantee you.

"We can have as many amendments as we want for as long as we want," Cotton added, "and let's just say we have a lot on our chests." "There is no question that if they go with this reckless expenditure plan, we will force them to vote on amendments that, for example, would prohibit collusive litigation settlements for illegal aliens."

Cotton's threat comes after Biden signed his "Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework" (BIF) into law at a White House event on Monday. According to Breitbart News, the proposal was sold to the public as "infrastructure," but it actually contains very little "infrastructure" expenditures and much more radical leftist spending priorities.

While some establishment Republicans voted in favor of the first element of Biden's "infrastructure" agenda in both the Senate and the House — the bill Biden signed into law on Monday — no Republicans are expected to support this second plan, and Democrats will have to rally their entire conference to get it passed in the Senate. Given the tiny majority that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi enjoys, Democrats can only afford to lose a few votes in the House.

The White House claims that the second plan will cost $1.75 trillion, which is several trillion less than the original $3.5 trillion goal. However, some Democrats are concerned that the Biden administration and Democratic congressional leaders are using gimmicks to make it appear that it will cost less. The plan is anticipated to cost more than $4 trillion if all of the programs are financed indefinitely, according to some independent calculations, and the neutral Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is scheduled to produce a formal estimate by the end of the week.

Pelosi promised House action on BBB by this week to persuade hard-left progressive Democrats to drop their opposition to passing BIF without first passing BBB — they saw the BIF as a bargaining chip to force self-described "moderates" in their conference to support the even more radical broader agenda — However, several of those "moderates" released a statement saying their support is contingent on the CBO's analysis of the bill matching the White House's — an unlikely outcome given the economic gimmickry Democrats used to lower the top line — and the looming formal estimate could further derail action, pushing negotiations past Thanksgiving and into December.

If and when a bill passes the House, it must also pass the Senate before Biden can sign it into law, and because of a budget trick known as "reconciliation," Democrats can potentially move the bill through the Senate along partisan lines with just 50 votes, avoiding a Republican filibuster. If there is a 50-50 tie, Vice President Kamala Harris may vote to break the tie. However, in order to get there, the White House and Democratic congressional leaders must keep their whole caucus together and cannot afford any defections. That's why Cotton's point is so crucial: the more difficult the procedure, the more likely a defector will emerge.

Imagine Senators Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Cathy Cortez-Masto (D-NV), Raphael Warnock (D-GA), Mark Kelly (D-AZ), and Michael Bennet (D-CO), among others, being forced to choose between paying illegal aliens or paying families of American service members slain in the line of duty with government money. Alternatively, those same Democrats may be pushed to make other difficult decisions. Whether they opt to sell out their citizens to foreign lawbreakers for a radical cause or not, the campaign advertisements will write themselves.

Cotton said he constantly hears about the $450,000 payments Biden's Justice Department is handing out to illegal aliens in battleground Iowa, where recent polling has shown Trump trouncing Biden in a hypothetical rematch, and a vulnerable Democrat Rep. Cindy Axne (D-IA) walks the plank toward 2022, and Republicans aim to retain two other competitive House seats and a U.S. Senate seat.

Cotton told Breitbart News on Friday afternoon, "One thing I just heard at this lunch, for example, was folks continually bringing up Joe Biden's ridiculous notion to give illegal migrants $450,000 checks." "We only offer $100,000 to soldiers slain in the line of duty because of Trump's policies." The fact that our border is still completely open astounds us. To be honest, if we give these kinds of subsidies to illegal immigration, it would simply widen the gap."

When challenged about the payments, Biden initially denied them, but later learned that the Justice Department was providing them at the request of leftist organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

There's no doubt that the Department of Justice is still being run by the ACLU, who are going to give away millions and millions of tax dollars to people who have no right to be here in the first place as a result of collective lawsuits filed by the ACLU against all of their probably former coworkers. Isn't it ironic that they couldn't find illegals to deport them but can find them to pay them half-million dollar checks?"

Instead of paying settlements like this to illegal aliens, Cotton believes the government should pay more to the families of Americans who have lost loved ones as a result of crimes done by illegal aliens, as well as the families of American soldiers and women killed in action overseas.

"Where are the restitution payments for families whose loved ones have died as a result of illegal immigration crime?" Cotton remarked. "Where are the restitution payments for families who have lost a loved one as a result of a drug overdose caused by drugs imported from Mexico?" How can the Biden administration spend more than four times as much on illegal immigrant reparations as we do on our deceased soldiers? It's just that they're insane, narrow-minded ideologues."