See How Your Senators Voted on the Ryan/Murray Budget Deal Here!

The Senate voted today to end debate on the budget deal reached by Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA).  This tax-and-spend deal blows the top off of the budget caps set back in 2011, and raises taxes (or, if you prefer, fees), while claiming to reduce the deficit over ten years with mostly phony cuts that will likely never materialize. With the cloture vote passed, the Democrats can now pass this deal with a simple majority.

For a more detailed analysis of why this bill was a terrible idea, you can check out Julie Borowski’s post HERE.  

In order to pass cloture (ending debate), which requires 60 votes, a number of Republicans needed to vote in favor of this latest spending surge.  Although a number of establishment Republicans wisely shied away from this deal (e.g. McConnell, Cornyn, Thune), twelve Republicans voted for cloture. The final vote was 67-33 – you can see the official roll call vote HERE.

The 12 Republicans who voted to give up the budget caps and raise taxes were:

Lamar Alexander (TN)

Roy Blunt (MO)

Saxby Chambliss (GA)

Susan Collins (ME)

Jeff Flake (AZ)

Orrin Hatch (UT)

John Hoeven (ND)

Johnny Isakson (GA)

Ron Johnson (WI)

John McCain (AZ)

Lisa Murkowski (AK)

Rob Portman (OH)

Some of these Republicans may vote against the final passage of the bill tomorrow and claim that they didn’t support it, but as always anyone who votes for cloture knows that they are letting Harry Reid pass a bad bill with only Democrat votes. FreedomWorks has issued a Key Vote: NO on this budget deal, and we will score the cloture vote on our online Congressional scorecard.

***UPDATE*** 

The Senate voted to actually pass this legislation 64-36.  You can find the roll call for the final passage vote HERE.

Notably, three Republicans Senators (Alexander, Blunt, and Flake) voted no on final passage of this bill after having voted yes on ending debate.  This is the infamous tactic of being “for it before they were against it”, but don’t let these three fool you – they knew full well that voting for cloture allowed the Democrats to pass this bill with a simple majority.