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Good morning, Playbookers.

It's Wednesday, August 11th.

I'm Ruggumana Vallin, and this is your Politico Playbook Daily Briefing.

Early this morning, in a 50 to 49 vote along party lines, the Senate passed a $3.5 trillion

budget resolution that outlines the Democrats'

policy agenda. We stayed up late last night watching the Senate Vodorama. That's the long,

freewheeling debate over amendments to the budget resolution. In some ways, the Vodorama is,

uh, how should I put this? It's meaningless. The amendments, as well as the underlying resolution are all non-binding.

The exercise has become mostly about crafting language to put the other party in a bind,

but the process can be revealing.

There's kind of like a tit-for-tat quality to the proceeding that tests each party's

political debating skills.

This analogy isn't perfect, and it's about a week too late, so I'm not sure why I'm still using it,

but think of it like Olympic fencing.

You can't really hurt anybody, but you kind of just throw a lot of jabs here and there until

something sticks, you know?

Senator Chuck Grassley put forward an amendment to prevent any changes to the

salt deduction that, quote, mainly benefit the wealthy.

That's the state and local taxes deduction.

Not bad.

He hit a soft spot.

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