Senate Democrats Unveil $3.5 Trillion Sanders-Schumer Spending Plan

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Senate Democrats on Monday released the full text of the $3.5 trillion budget resolution they’re seeking to pass this week on a party-line vote.

The proposal, introduced by Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY),  is separate from the 2,702-page, $1 trillion infrastructure bill the Senate is expected to pass on Tuesday. Democrats are seeking to pass the resolution using a parliamentary process known as reconciliation, which requires a simple majority of just 50 votes.

The legislation would include spending for items such as universal Pre-K for 3- and 4-year-olds and tuition subsidies for students at community colleges, making them free to attend. It would also provide permanent legal status to more than 10 million migrants, including farmworkers, laborers deemed essential during the pandemic, and so-called “Dreamers” brought to the United states as children.

“The $3.5 trillion Budget Resolution that I am introducing today will allow the Senate to move forward on a reconciliation bill that will be the most consequential piece of legislation for working people, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor since FDR and the New Deal of the 1930s,” Sanders wrote in a Monday statement. He added that it would be paid for by taxing “billionaires and large, profitable corporations.”

The resolution calls on committees to submit their reconciliation legislation for consideration by the full Senate by September 15. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), meanwhile, has promised to tie reconciliation to the infrastructure plan, saying she will not bring it up until the Senate successfully passes a reconciliation package.