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Senate Republicans to vote on budget plan permanently extending Trump tax cuts | National

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www.thecentersquare.com – Thérèse Boudreaux – (The Center Square – ) 2025-04-03 13:09:00

(The Center Square) – Through a newly-introduced amendment, Senate leaders have found a way to move the House’s budget resolution forward and make President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent.

The Senate’s amendment, set for a procedural vote Thursday, would subtract $3.8 trillion from the price tag by changing fiscal policy, authorize $1.5 trillion to fund other Trump tax goals, and raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion.

By adopting a current policy baseline, which treats renewing the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act as a continuation of current law rather than new policy, the Senate’s amendment zeros out the cost of extending the cuts and allows for them to be permanent. 

Lawmakers are still awaiting approval from the Senate’s parliamentarian to use the current policy baseline, but Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., forged ahead anyway, claiming that Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has the power to greenlight it.

“With the passage of this budget resolution, we unlock the ability for the appropriate Senate committees to fully fund our border needs for four years, provide much-needed financial relief to our military at a time of great danger, [and] make the 2017 tax cuts permanent to energize the economy,” Graham, who gave his approval Wednesday, stated.

The House’s original $4.5 trillion budget resolution, operating under a current law baseline, had priced extending the tax cuts for the next ten years at $3.8 trillion. It had instructed House committees to find at least $1.5 trillion to finance the costs, assuming that economic growth would offset the rest.

Normally, the chambers adopt identical budget resolutions giving House and Senate committees the same savings targets before moving forward in the budget reconciliation process. But Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., have decided the quickest way to enact Trump’s priorities is by taking a two-tier approach that saves the alignment and other details for later.

The new Senate amendment keeps the House’s deficit reduction instructions and instructs Senate committees to find at least $3 billion in cuts. The low floor will give the upper chamber flexibility to make changes once the compromise budget resolution passes both chambers and the actual writing of the reconciliation package gets going. 

In a social media post Wednesday, Trump said the Senate plan “has my Complete and Total Support” and declared that “Every Republican, House and Senate, must UNIFY. We need to pass it IMMEDIATELY!”

But Democrats, along with some Republicans in the Senate and many in the House, are less enthusiastic than GOP leaders. They point to alarming numbers from outside budget organizations like the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

According to the CRFB, adopting the compromise budget resolution could add anywhere from $45 trillion to $60 trillion to the national debt by 2055. 

House Budget Committee Ranking Member Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., accused Republican leaders of “blatantly lying” about the cost of the bill.

“The use of so-called current policy baseline is just D.C. jargon for the single most irresponsible tax bill in American history,” Boyle said. “This is the very same group that spent four years during President Biden’s administration pretending to care deeply about the deficit. Their hypocrisy is glaringly obvious.”

The amendment needs only a majority vote in the Senate to pass, but it remains unclear whether Thune will have enough Republican votes to do so.

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News from the South - Texas News Feed

Texas DPS continues to find missing children, arrest ‘most wanted’ criminals | Texas

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www.thecentersquare.com – By Bethany Blankley | The Center Square contributor – (The Center Square – ) 2025-04-26 12:39:00

(The Center Square) – Texas Department of Public Safety officers continue to find missing children and arrest those on its criminal illegal immigrant most wanted list.

With April being “Child Abuse Prevention Month,” DPS troopers have rescued more than 600 children through its Interdiction for the Protection of Children (IPC) Program, DPS said. IPC officers are trained “to identify victims of exploitation, missing children, crimes against children and high-risk threats against children,” DPS said.

Through Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security mission, Operation Lone Star, DPS troopers rescued more than 900 children illegally brought into the U.S. in Texas alone under the Biden administration, The Center Square reported.

So far this year, DPS and other agencies have arrested 21 Texas 10 Most Wanted fugitives, sex offenders and others, including six sex offenders and seven criminal illegal immigrants – with $25,000 in rewards being paid for tips that yielded arrests, DPS said.

One recent arrest was of a fugitive on Texas’ 10 Most Wanted Criminal Illegal Immigrants List, 46-year-old Mexican national Carlos Ortiz. He was arrested after DPS received a tip through Crime Stoppers.

Ortiz was wanted by authorities in Tarrant County since October 2024 on charges of continuous sexual abuse of a young child. He was arrested at an apartment complex in Haltom City by multiple authorities, including special agents from DPS’ Criminal Investigations Division, Haltom City Police and U.S. Marshals North Texas Fugitive Task Force.

Since 2008, Ortiz had been arrested in Tarrant County for assault causing bodily injury to a family member and driving while intoxicated, according to DPS records.

Another fugitive arrested on Texas’ 10 Most Wanted Criminal Illegal Immigrants List was 25-year-old Honduran national Anderson Ronaldo Reyes Giron. He was arrested in north central Austin and wanted by authorities in Travis County since February for deadly conduct (discharging a firearm) and in Williamson County since March on property theft charges.

He was first arrested under the Trump administration in January 2017 by U.S. Customs and Border Protection “for alien removal.” By August 2024, he was arrested by the Austin Police Department officers for deadly conduct (discharging a firearm) and subsequently bonded out of jail, according to DPS records.

Through the governor’s Public Safety Office, taxpayer money is allocated to Texas Crime Stoppers to offer cash rewards to anyone who provides information that leads to the arrest of one of Texas’ 10 Most Wanted Fugitives, Sex Offenders or Criminal Illegal Immigrants. To be eligible for cash rewards, tipsters must provide information to authorities by calling the Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-252-TIPS (8477), submitting a tip through DPS website or Facebook page.

“All tips are anonymous – regardless of how they are submitted – and tipsters will be provided a tip number instead of using a name,” DPS says.

As offenders are arrested and come off of the lists, others are added.

Two recent additions include U.S. citizens, Rondarrius Evans, 21, of New Boston, to the Texas 10 Most Wanted Fugitives List and Rodolfo Martinez Jr., 42, to the Texas 10 Most Wanted Sex Offenders List.

Evans is wanted by authorities in Bowie County since last August on two capital murder charges and drug charges. Martinez Jr. is wanted in Harris County since last November for indecency with a child by sexual contact.

Texas Crime Stoppers is offering cash rewards for tips that lead to their arrests.

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Poll: Independent voters turn against DOGE | National

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www.thecentersquare.com – Casey Harper – (The Center Square – ) 2025-04-26 10:00:00

(The Center Square) – A plurality of Americans say the Department of Government Efficiency is cutting too much, according to a new poll. 



Backing for cutting waste, fraud and abuse generally earns praise from Americans, but DOGE’s push for mass layoffs and shuttering entire agencies soured many voters.

The Center Square Voter’s Voice poll released this week asked registered voters about DOGE and found that 47% of those surveyed said “DOGE is cutting too much.” 

Another 28% said “DOGE is getting it right” while 12% said “DOGE is not cutting enough.” The remaining 14% are unsure. 



FNF TCS VVP DOGE cuts




Support for DOGE varies widely by political party. According to The Center Square’s survey, only 19% of Republicans say DOGE is cutting too much, while 48% said DOGE is getting it right. Another 18% said DOGE is not cutting enough. 

Democrats reported the opposite sentiment, with 75% saying DOGE is cutting too much and only 10% saying DOGE is getting it right while 5% said DOGE should cut more. 

Notably, 49% of “true independents” say DOGE is cutting too much, compared to only 15% who say DOGE is getting it right and 13% who say DOGE is not cutting enough. In this poll, true independents are independents who say they do not lean toward one party or the other. 

DOGE’s backers said cutting hard and fast was the only way to make a difference before the bureaucracy could respond, pointing to rampant federal fraud and abuse as well as the soaring national debt, which is approaching $37 trillion. 

Democrats blasted DOGE, saying the many of the services being were important and that DOGE leader Elon Musk and his DOGE workers had too much access to Americans’ private information. 

A separate poll question asked registered voters their feelings about Musk. The poll found 39% approve of Musk’s role with DOGE compared to 55% who disapprove. POlitical party makes a significant difference in this question as well, with 71% of Republicans approving of Musk, compared to only 10% of Democrats.

“What you see is Elon Musk has a worse favorability than Donald Trump,” David Byler, chief of research at Noble Predictive Insights, which carried out the poll, told The Center Square. 

“This is a consistent finding over polls, so having him as the figurehead is probably not helping,” Byler added.

Musk is reportedly pulling away from his heavy involvement with DOGE to focus on his private companies, including Tesla. 

The Center Square’s Voter’s Voice poll, conducted with Noble Predictive Insights from April 15-18, queried 2,527 registered voters. Of those respondents, 1,089 were Republicans, 1,187 were Democrats, and 251 were “True Independents,” which are independents who do not lean to one party or the other. The Center Square Voters’ Voice Poll is one of only six national tracking polls in the United States. It was scheduled to coincide with Trump’s 100th day in office, which is Tuesday, April 29.

The survey has a +/- 2.0% margin of error. 

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News from the South - Louisiana News Feed

Carbon capture hearings will hear from concerned residents, industry | Louisiana

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www.thecentersquare.com – By Nolan McKendry | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-04-25 16:45:00

(The Center Square) − Louisiana Rep. Joseph Orgeron, R-Jefferson, is taking a less cautious position on carbon capture — acknowledging local concerns while defending the role the technology can play in reducing industrial emissions.

Orgeron will vice chair a high-stakes showdown over the future of carbon capture in Louisiana at the House Natural Resources and Environment Committee on Tuesday, where lawmakers are set to hear a sweeping package of bills aimed at reining in the state’s growing carbon sequestration industry.

“I sympathize with those constituents who are looking for the opt-out option—to not have it in their parish,” Orgeron told The Center Square in an interview. “But I represent an area basically awash in hydrocarbon harvesting from the early ’50s, ’60s. We’ve had our environment kind of shared with the hydrocarbon harvesting industry, so we’re a little bit more open to it.”

Orgeron chairs the state’s Clean Hydrogen Task Force and has positioned himself as an advocate for low-carbon technologies that can reduce emissions without sidelining Louisiana’s traditional energy sector.

“In Louisiana, we have the hydrocarbons, like natural gas, that can then be cracked to make the hydrogen feedstock that’s needed,” Orgeron said. “And rather than release [the carbon] into the environment… basically capture that carbon and sequester it safely in underground pore space that we also have a large amount of.”

Still, he acknowledged the desire of some parishes to block carbon capture developments and said he would support local opt-outs — though not without consequence.

“They would have to relinquish any and all benefits, monetary benefits, that they may receive from the added space, the added industry… that may come from carbon sequestration in the state,” Orgeron said.

The legislation, driven largely by Republican lawmakers from western and central Louisiana, targets everything from eminent domain powers to public notice requirements, with an emphasis on strengthening landowner rights and local control.

Rep. Rodney Schamerhorn, R-Beauregard, said in a previous interview that past land seizures for projects like Fort Polk and the Toledo Bend Reservoir have left lasting scars in his region, fueling deep mistrust of new carbon capture initiatives. While many residents initially supported the technology, he said they now feel misled about its purpose and risks.

The committee will also take up House Bill 4 by Rep. Charles Owen, HB353 by Rep. Shane Mack, HB522 by Rep. Danny McCormick, HB568 by Rep. R. Dewith Carrier, and Senate Bill 73 by Sen. Mike Reese.

The wave of proposals comes amid mounting scrutiny of carbon infrastructure, particularly in light of a 2020 pipeline rupture in Satartia, Miss. that released a cloud of CO2 into a nearby town when a landslide hit, causing residents to collapse or suffer seizures from oxygen deprivation.

Industry leaders are pushing back.

“This is a business opportunity,” said Tommy Faucheux, president of the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association. “If we lose that, the investments — and the jobs — will go elsewhere.”

“These CCS projects and the associated development could transform communities in ways they’ve never seen,” Faucheux said. “We’re talking about economic development in parts of Louisiana that haven’t traditionally benefited from the oil and gas footprint.”

“The industry has been spending a lot of time engaging with communities, with land owners,” he added. “The companies want to work and come to agreements with all the landowners. They want to have conversations about pipeline routes, for instance. The use of eminent domain has not been something we’ve prioritized or really led with. I think it has been really more the exception than the standard.”

 

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