CNN
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Republicans and Democrats grew weary in the early hours of Wednesday morning on Capitol Hill as they slogged through at-times contentious debate over provisions in President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending cuts package.
The House Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce panels held marathon sessions overnight, while a third committee, Agriculture, paused late Tuesday night and was set to convene later in the morning.
Each committee is ultimately expected to move elements of the broader bill one step closer to a full floor vote in the chamber. If that goes as planned, House Republicans believe they’ll be on track to take up what the president has dubbed his “one big, beautiful bill” in a floor vote by Memorial Day, a target that even some members of the GOP conference once described as overly ambitious.
House Ways and Means, the GOP’s powerful tax-writing panel, clocked nearly 18 hours of debate before advancing the tax portion of Trump’s agenda Wednesday morning.
Lawmakers at times shared personal stories as they argued for changes to the measure, which failed amid GOP opposition.
Democratic Rep. Gwen Moore of Wisconsin argued Republicans wanted to pay women to have children but wouldn’t “feed the ones we have.” An amendment being offered by a member of her party, Moore said, was “about the 17 million children like me.”
“I was smart, intelligent, but I went to school every day and ate the crumbs and the garbage off of kids’ plates until I got brave enough one day to stand in line and demand something to eat. … What’s up with this Charles Dickensian attitude that you know you gotta work, somebody’s got to have income before we can help kids?” she said.
In one brief bipartisan moment of levity in what was otherwise a deeply partisan hearing, Republican Rep. Blake Moore of Utah dozed off in his seat just before 5 a.m. Wednesday. A colleague on the panel had to gently wake him up to record his vote.
Massachusetts Rep. Richard Neal, the top Democrat on the committee, ended the vote on their portion of the bill by pleading the panel start in the morning next time.
“We should start at 9 a.m. … This is the longest in 33 years I have ever been in this room at any one time for a markup,” he remarked.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee, meanwhile, has shown no sign of slowing as Democrats continue to hit Republicans with emotional stories from their constituents about Medicaid.
In a contentious moment overnight, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez charged that she “will not yield to disrespectful men” after Republican Rep. Randy Weber of Texas asked her to yield her time following an exchange over addressing the camera instead of members of the panel.
“There are 13.7 million Americans on the other side of that screen there. Hello, hello, I’m talking to you because I work for you,” Ocasio-Cortez said as she waved to the camera.
“They deserve to see what is happening here because there are plenty of districts, including Republican ones, where 25% of your constituents are on Medicaid, 40% of your constituents are on Medicaid.”
“I will not yield because it was a terribly disrespectful comment, and I will not yield to disrespectful men,” she said.
The exchange came as Ocasio-Cortez posed a question about work requirements and how those having miscarriages might be affected.
The panel’s record for a markup – set in 2017 – is 27 hours.
