Friends,
The Senate voted on the cloture motion as it pertains to the Restaurant Revitalization Fund Bill (S.4008) which included The MUSIC Act today around 2 PM, the vote was whether or not to “move the bill forward and end all debate.” They needed 67 yes votes, and only got 53.
Thus, the cloture motion failed.
Had the cloture vote passed, the Senate would have then voted on the actual bill itself. When I hitched our bill to RRF several months ago it looked as if there was enough support for restaurants to get the bill passed, but that support has eroded recently.
There are two meanings to this vote.
From a pure technical point of view the bill could be raised and voted on in the normal fashion, with full floor debate, amendments, and such. That takes a lot of time. There is no time to address this. Someone would need to have the desire and will power to proceed on this path. I do not see anyone that will take that path. If there were not enough votes for cloture, there would not be enough votes to pass the bill.
The second, and probably the real meaning of this failure, is that the bill is dead. This vote was a clear sign that there is simply not enough support in the Senate for the RRF Bill. As stated before, only $5 billion dollars of the requested money was funded from old money. The other $43 billion dollars would have been new money, or debt, most likely.
This brings me back to the point I have made for months. Our best path is to get the Senate to pass The MUSIC Act by unanimous consent.
It will be 100% funded by the left over $2.2 billion dollars in the now shuttered SVOG fund. There is no opposition to this as there is no new money. We simply need the right moment to get the bill on the floor of the Senate. That is what we are and have been working toward for months.
Thank you for all you do and please do not give up.
The unanimous consent vote is still our goal.
I will be back with you when I have an update.
Thank you.
Onward and Upward,
Michael
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Michael T. Strickland
Bandit Lites, Inc.
Chair and Founder