On Friday evening he delivered when he helped break an eight-hour stalemate between centrist Sen. Joe Manchin
Under the deal, laid-off workers will receive $300-a-week federal unemployment benefits on top of their state benefits until Sept. 6. And the first $10,200 in unemployment benefits received in 2020 will be tax-free for households with less than $150,000 in annual income.
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Democratic senators say Biden was “very involved” in trying to mediate. They say that Biden, who served in the Senate from 1973 to 2009, called Manchin directly to get him to support a compromise proposal backed by the rest of the Democratic caucus.
“President Biden has been very involved as you would expect him to be,” said a Democratic senator familiar with the negotiations.
The vote was finally closed at 10:53 p.m.
It took Schumer, with the help of President Biden, nearly nine hours to negotiate a deal with Manchin. But even then, they had to wait for the legislative text to be drafted and for a cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.
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The vote broke the record set on June 28, 2019, when senators kept a vote on an amendment to the annual defense authorization bill open for 10 hours and eight minutes to accommodate Democratic presidential candidates who participated in a debate in Miami.
The Senate floor was largely empty for hours as different Democratic senators presiding over the chamber held open a procedural vote on an amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders
In order to get the bill through the Senate without additional changes, Schumer will need to hold his entire caucus together. Most amendments are expected to only need a simple majority, meaning that for Republicans to make changes to the bill they would only need to pick up one Democratic senator.
Republicans were able to make several changes to a budget resolution earlier this year, including support for the Keystone XL pipeline and language preventing stimulus checks for undocumented immigrants, though Democrats voted to strip out those two changes at the very end.
Republicans are expected to file hundreds of amendments, though staffers have estimated that only dozens would actually get roll call votes during the Senate session.