With the Senate hours into its "vote-a-rama" Monday on President Donald Trump’s "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," the sweeping budget reconciliation package chock full of cuts to taxes and social safety programs, CNN spotted one Republican senator bouncing a ball on the Senate floor in an apparent effort to stave off boredom.
“This is taking so long, I literally saw someone bouncing a ball there by the door to the Senate chamber,” noted CNN’s Brianna Keilar, who was speaking with CNN correspondent Lauren Fox, who identified the senator as Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK). “Killing some time there, bouncy bouncy.”
Debates on the megabill began early Monday morning and are expected to persist through the evening as Republican lawmakers work to meet Trump’s deadline for the bill’s passage by July 4.
“While this is all playing out in front of cameras, you see these votes happening on the Senate floor one after another, we are now at just under a dozen of these votes,” Fox told Keilar, reporting from Capitol. “Behind the scenes, GOP leaders are working furiously to make sure that they have the support they need when this vote-a-rama ends, when it comes down to that final and critical vote on Donald Trump’s agenda here in the Senate.”
Democratic lawmakers have remained vehemently opposed to the bill, and with increasing dissent manifesting among Republicans – some due to the bill’s cuts to Medicaid, and others over its increases to the federal deficit – major amendments are expected to be proposed throughout the day.
The apparent boredom Mullin displayed in his game of ball has apparently been bipartisan, with Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) complaining to reporters earlier Monday that he had “missed our entire trip to the beach,” and that he just wanted “to go home.”
