WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans unveiled their long-awaited budget blueprint for President Trump’s “big, beautiful” agenda Wednesday, moving ahead of the House to propose a $5 trillion increase to the debt limit and make 2017 federal tax cuts permanent.
The 70-page measure included key differences from the one adopted by the House in February, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) claimed it had been reviewed by the chamber’s parliamentarian, who has stymied similarly ambitious pieces of legislation in the past.
After the Senate passes the blueprint and syncs up with the House, it will unlock the process needed to actually start drafting Trump’s marquee agenda package — including the debt ceiling hike and tax cuts as well as border security, defense spending increases and energy reform.
“Republicans in the Senate and the House are committed to working with President Trump to stop Democrats from imposing an automatic $4 trillion tax hike on the American people at the end of this year,” Thune said in a statement.
“The Senate parliamentarian has reviewed the Budget Committee’s substitute amendment and deemed it appropriate for consideration under the Budget Act.”
Significantly, the House blueprint called for a $4 trillion increase to the debt limit, while the Senate’s version called for a $5 trillion increase.
The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget knocked the blueprint, saying in a press release: “Reconciliation should reduce deficits.”
“This budget would set the stage for the largest deficit increase ever — three times as large as the American Rescue Plan, four times larger than the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and 75 percent larger than all bipartisan COVID relief combined,” the release noted.
“And it doesn’t even attempt to match up its savings with the House’s hard-fought $2 trillion.”
The budget resolution also has a line item allowing a defense spending increase of $150 billion over the next decade.
It will still have to undergo the Senate parliamentarian’s vetting under the “Byrd Rule,” named for the late West Virginia Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd, which only allows reconciliation legislation to affect spending, revenues and the debt ceiling, not policy changes.
Critically, the Senate GOP’s measure has a provision that gives Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) broad power to set the policy baseline.
That means Republicans can assume that making Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent without offsets won’t add to the deficit, even if it actually will in reality.
“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, make the 2017 tax cuts permanent to energize the economy, and do what has been promised for decades: go through every line item of the budget to cut wasteful and unnecessary spending — hopefully by the trillions,” Graham said in a statement.
“Finally, Senate Budget Committee Republicans met today with the President. He is fully on board with the Senate’s proposal and process to cut spending.”
Senate rules require legislation passed through budget reconciliation — the avenue Republicans are using for Trump’s agenda package — can’t add to the deficit after a 10-year period.
By tampering with the baseline used to measure the impact on the deficit, Republicans will have a much easier time making Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent.
The budget resolution will kick-start the Senate reconciliation process, which will allow Republicans to pass Trump’s agenda by a simple majority and circumvent the 60-vote threshold to overcome a Democratic filibuster.
Back in February, Graham forged ahead with his own budget resolution plan that would’ve split Trump’s agenda package into two bills — one dealing with border security, defense policy and energy reforms, while the other would’ve dealt with tax reform.
At the time, it seemed questionable whether House Republicans could actually pass their preferred single-track plan. But days later, they did just that.
The two chambers stalled out for weeks trying to sort out their differences before ultimately settling on the House’s one-track approach.
Several hardliners in the House had been wary of going over $4 trillion. The debt limit, which restricts the country’s borrowing authority, is projected to become an issue in the summer, potentially by mid-July.
Republicans want to stuff a debt limit increase in the final Trump agenda package to avoid a nasty fight on a standalone version and risk giving Democrats leverage.
