The first of many, many votes expected during the Senate’s consideration of Democrats’ $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill began around 11 a.m. Friday, with a vote on the minimum wage. As of 9:11 p.m. Friday night, here’s how many votes the Senate had completed: Zero. The minimum wage vote was still open, and had become the longest known vote in Senate history.
Democrats were stalling to work out a big, predictable problem known as Joe Manchin.
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Democrats had been attempting all week to work out internal disagreements on the bill before it came to the floor. They reached a deal on (odd) new limits for direct payments. And on Friday morning, they announced they had reached a deal on enhanced unemployment benefits, trimming the weekly amount from $400 to $300, but extending the duration to October and saving people from surprise tax bills come April.
Senator Joe Manchin is about to make Joe Biden's life more difficult by voting 'no' on his nominee for director of OMB, which is a cabinet level position: AXIOS - Sen. Joe…
Last Updated On: Feb 18 2021 10:08 Gmt+3
Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar has suggested that Turkey and the U.S. could resolve their differences over his country’s procurement of Russian S-400 air defence missile systems by replicating what he called the “Crete model.” He was directly referring to Greece’s possession of older Russian S-300 missiles that have been based on Crete for years now.
“We’ve seen this before, whatever the model used for the S-300 on Crete, we’re open to negotiating,” Akar was quoted as saying.
Cyprus originally ordered those S-300s in the late 1990s to deter Turkish overflights of its airspace. Ankara threatened to destroy them if they were deployed on the divided island, sparking a major crisis. That crisis was averted when Greece agreed to take delivery of the missiles instead, putting them in storage on Crete. Athens did not activate the systems until a military exercise in 2013.