Senate GOP leaders will move as soon as Wednesday to begin advancing a budget plan — the next key step to unlock President Donald Trump’s massive agenda through a party-line bill.
Under the ambitious timeline being privately considered by Senate Majority Leader John Thune, the Senate would adopt its budget resolution before heading home for the weekend. A marathon vote-a-rama could kick off Thursday, though four people granted anonymity to disclose private discussions cautioned it could slip to Friday depending how quickly the chamber moves.
In order to make this work, the Senate parliamentarian will need to sign off on Republicans’ plans to use a tactic known as the current policy baseline, which will allow them to pursue trillions of dollars in tax cut extensions while claiming it doesn’t cost anything. Senators believe they could secure such a ruling from the parliamentarian as soon as Tuesday or Wednesday of this week, though the meeting has yet to be scheduled. This ruling is crucial because Republicans can’t finalize their retooled budget resolution until they know if their accounting gambit will be approved.
The aggressive push comes as Thune and his leadership circle are eager to show progress on the first step to advance their party-line bill that spans tax cuts, energy, defense and border policy. Thune wants to advance a new budget resolution that lets the House and Senate set their own spending cut minimums, punting fights to resolve differences on that and other major sticking points in the interest of both chambers adopting the same budget resolution before leaving town on April 11 for a two-week recess. Republican senators have been privately lobbying Thune to call a vote this week as White House officials exerted their own pressure in a recent closed-door meeting.
Before Wednesday, the “Big Six” budget negotiators — Thune, Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo, Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and top White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett — are likely to huddle Tuesday for their standing weekly meeting, according to three people with direct knowledge of the discussions. Senate Republicans will also discuss the path forward during their own internal meetings, including a meeting of Senate Finance Committee Republicans on Monday night and full conference lunch on Tuesday afternoon.
If the parliamentarian rules against Senate Republicans on using the current policy baseline, however, it would throw a wrench into this timeline. And GOP leaders are still working to shore up support for the plan, which is sparking alarm among some fiscal hawks in both chambers. With a 53-seat majority, Republicans can lose three of their own members and still let Vice President JD Vance break a tie. Thune has also not publicly weighed in on the timeline for next week – instead stressing he wants the budget adopted before the Easter recess.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said that he’s been privately lobbying Thune to put a resolution on the floor this coming week — even though he acknowledged that some of his colleagues haven’t committed yet to supporting it.
“The sight of the gallows concentrates the mind — you’ve just gotta make people vote,” he said. “I don’t think anybody is going to vote against it except one or two, maybe.”
The Senate’s budget resolution guidelines are expected to instruct committees to cut as little as at least $1 billion when lawmakers begin to draft legislation through the budget reconciliation process. That strategy would give senators a spending cut floor as low as $3 billion compared to the House GOP’s savings floor of $1.5 trillion. The Senate won’t alter the House’s instructions to its own committees, including leaving untouched the House GOP plans for the Energy and Commerce Committee to slash $880 billion from its jurisdiction — which has sparked worries among a segment of Republicans in both chambers that it will force deep cuts to Medicaid.
The Senate Finance Committee also isn’t expected to mirror the House Ways & Means Committee $4.5 trillion guidelines. The Senate wants to make the extension of Trump’s tax cuts permanent — but where lawmakers end up on their ceiling for the tax portion of the reconciliation bill will depend on the parliamentarian’s ruling this week. The Senate is also expected to include a higher defense number — $150 billion for its committee compared to the House’s $100 billion — and is eyeing a $5 trillion debt hike to get the party past the midterms without having to pursue a politically difficult fight with Democrats to avoid a default.
But Senate Republicans are facing some grumbling within their own conference over setting such a low minimum for its eventual deficit reduction targets. Some GOP senators, including normal leadership allies, are pushing to be more prescriptive in their instructions to committees to ensure they hit their eventual savings goals. Senate Republicans are discussing agreeing to an “aspirational” target for cuts of $2 trillion — in line with House Republicans — but won’t lock themselves into that in the budget resolution.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is part of a group of GOP senators that wants to go higher than the House’s $2 trillion spending cut floor. In order to support the budget resolution this week he wants an “ironclad” commitment from Senate leadership to establish a bicameral panel on the deficit and the budget — and is warning he will still demand higher cuts in the reconciliation bill itself later this year.
Meanwhile, even if Senate Republicans can advance the budget resolution by the end of this week, House GOP leaders are skeptical they will be able to finalize adoption of the reworked plan in their chamber by the time lawmakers leave for mid-April recess. Johnson has said he wants to get a reconciliation bill to Trump’s desk by Memorial Day.
House GOP fiscal hawks are warning the Senate’s incredibly low spending cut targets “will not be well received.”
Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.
Comments
Post a Comment