$5.8 Trillion Budget Resolution One Step Away From Adoption
By Thérèse Boudreaux | The Center Square
(Worthy News) – Republicans in the House narrowly cleared a procedural hurdle to tee up a final vote on the Senate’s amended budget.
The House passed the first version of the budget in February, which extended President Donald Trump’s tax cuts for ten years, and then sent it to the Senate.
The Senate then passed a similar version, with the notable difference of making President Donald Trump’s tax cuts permanent, but changed the accounting of the spending so that costs much less on paper.
Unlike the House’s original budget resolution, which had priced a 10-year extension of President Donald Trump’s tax cuts at $3.8 trillion, the Senate’s budget framework assumes the extension will cost nothing.
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, Senate Republicans drastically reduced the amount of spending cuts they’d need to make in order to offset the plan.
Three Republicans broke with the party in a 216-215 vote that set the stage for the House to adopt the Senate’s amended budget resolution. If enough Republicans vote in favor of final passage, the chambers can finally move forward in the next step of the budget reconciliation process to fulfill President Donald Trump’s tax, border, and energy agenda.
The next step will involve combining the House and Senate bills, which means agreeing on where the specific cuts will be made to help pay for the tax cuts.
The trio of Republican holdouts — Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., and Mike Turner, R-Ohio — are concerned that the Senate-amended budget resolution will explode the deficit. Turner, however, says he will vote yes on final passage.
House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, called the Senate’s amendment “unserious and disappointing.”
“It is critical that the reconciliation bill be guided by the House’s resolution framework. Otherwise, we risk adding trillions of dollars to the debt,” Arrington said prior to the vote. “As we unlock the reconciliation process, we must hold fast to the principles established in the House’s budget resolution.”
Outside fiscal organizations like the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget say the actual cost of the Senate’s resolution hovers around $5.8 trillion.
Fiscal hawk Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, voted to move the resolution forward but said he “cannot support the current Senate Budget plan,” because while the House’s blueprint is “arguably budget neutral,” the Senate’s “math does not add up.”
Democrats, all of whom voted no, are concerned primarily about potential cuts to entitlement programs like Medicaid.
“The reckless Republican budget scheme will slash nutritional assistance for working families and make the largest cut to Medicaid in history, all so they can give massive tax breaks to billionaire donors like Elon Musk,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries stated.
But House Rules Committee Chair Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., called Democrats’ claims about program cuts “lies.”
“This is more than a budget. It’s a blueprint to take our country back,” Foxx said. “We’re done playing defense. It’s time to lead, fight, and win, all for the American people.”