Senate Republicans adopted a fiscal blueprint Saturday for President Donald Trump’s “one huge, stunning invoice.” What comes subsequent is anybody’s guess.
The Senate voted 51-48 on a price range decision that unlocks their means to go a party-line invoice later this 12 months that may mix an overhaul of the tax code with border, power and protection insurance policies. GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky joined all Democrats and unbiased in opposing the decision — although different Republicans nonetheless have considerations that may should be addressed earlier than passing the ultimate invoice.
Now the price range plan wants approval within the Home, the place Speaker Mike Johnson can solely afford to lose three Republicans with out having the whole effort unravel. Home fiscal hawks are displeased with the Senate’s framework and are threatening revolt.
“We’re not going to do that for a 3rd time,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) mentioned with a deep breath after he was requested concerning the Home threatening to alter the price range plan. “I assume it’ll go.”
Requested what he would say to Home Republicans, Majority Chief John Thune added: “The extra this drags on — the earlier we get to reconciliation the higher.”
Saturday’s vote is a win for Senate Republicans after weeks of inside wrangling since their first price range decision did not win over their Home counterparts. Each chambers should undertake the identical blueprint to get onto the work of drafting and passing laws to enact Trump’s formidable home agenda.
Thune additionally needed to navigate last-minute, lingering anxieties amongst a handful of GOP senators. They have been uneasy {that a} plan to sidestep getting the parliamentarian’s blessing for now on the guts of their tax plan might come again to hang-out them down the street.
Democrats, in the meantime, warned amid a market free-fall sparked by Trump’s tariffs that continuing along with his agenda would rapidly blow again on the GOP. “Republicans’ obeisance to Donald Trump’s more and more unpopular agenda will price them dearly sooner or later,” Senate Minority Chief Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) mentioned from the ground shortly after the decision was adopted.
Republicans nonetheless needed to run a gauntlet forward of Saturday’s closing vote, too. Democrats mentioned their technique was to place Trump’s agenda on “trial” and spent hours of ground time forcing votes on a slew of amendments designed to field Republicans in on points like Medicaid cuts, Trump’s tariffs and Elon Musk’s Division of Authorities Effectivity.
GOP senators additionally rejected a proposal from Paul to shrink the scale of the debt ceiling hike prescribed by the price range decision from $5 trillion to $500 billion.
Regardless of the hours of voting, getting the price range by way of the Senate was additionally the best a part of what Thune has described as a “lengthy and arduous” course of. And Republicans are absolutely conscious that the arduous work continues to be to return.
“The following one is the place the battle will probably be,” mentioned Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.).
The primary hurdle will come when Johnson tries to get the price range decision by way of his chamber with out making any modifications, expediting lawmakers’ means to start writing a reconciliation invoice and avoiding a state of affairs the place the Senate has to carry a 3rd vote-a-rama in as many months.
Members of Senate GOP management instructed their members this week that their understanding is the Home would undertake the price range decision with out modifications — although Johnson is going through pushback from a coalition of hard-liners, deficit hawks and tax writers who’ve points with the Senate’s price range decision and don’t wish to vote for it as-is.
“There may be important opposition to the Senate price range and it’ll not go subsequent week,” mentioned one Home Republican who was granted anonymity to talk freely.
Requested if Trump’s endorsement of the Senate plan would make any distinction, the Home Republican replied: “Did his endorsement change the textual content of the decision?”
Even when the Home manages to undertake the price range decision subsequent week, the 2 chambers face a chasm between their competing visions. In an effort to undertake a price range decision now and get the method shifting, Republican leaders punted a lot of their largest, and hardest, coverage choices to afterward.
This may solely delay the ache of resolving the totally different visions between the Home and Senate for a way a lot to search out in financial savings to offset the ultimate reconciliation invoice. The Senate price range plan solely requires a minimal of some billion in deficit discount, in comparison with the Home GOP’s promise to its members to hit $2 trillion.
The Home’s directions to its personal committees have additionally sparked heartburn within the Senate over fears amongst some Republicans that it could require cuts to Medicaid. An modification from Hawley and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to strip out the Home Vitality and Commerce $880 billion instruction failed, although Collins and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined Hawley to assist it.
A number of GOP senators have mentioned they received’t minimize Medicaid advantages or cut back the federal cost for Medicaid enlargement enrollees — even because the latter is being mentioned by Home Republicans as a possible strategy to pay for the invoice. And Hawley mentioned Trump personally reassured him Medicaid advantages wouldn’t get slashed, giving him the boldness to vote in favor of the price range decision.
On the similar time, Thune nonetheless must wrangle his personal deficit hawks, who agreed to vote for the price range decision after some in-person soothing from Trump however nonetheless need steeper cuts within the reconciliation invoice itself. Some Senate conservatives wish to go as excessive as $6.5 trillion in deficit discount — although GOP leaders are hoping they will dangle the promise of codifying different federal funding freezes and the clawbacks by DOGE as a mathematical sweetener.
After which there’s that controversial tactic to sidestep the parliamentarian on utilizing “present coverage baseline” — an accounting maneuver that makes it appear like extending the Trump tax cuts prices nothing, which some Republicans fear might later be deemed incompatible with Senate guidelines. Republicans might technically overrule the parliamentarian however a number of vowed this week they might not, indicating the controversial maneuver wouldn’t have the votes.
The Senate gave its tax writers a $1.5 trillion cap, in comparison with a $4.5 trillion cap for the Home. However the Senate committees are factoring in utilizing the present coverage baseline for extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, letting roughly $3.8 trillion depend as having no price ticket.
Sen. Invoice Cassidy (R-La.), in a speech shortly earlier than the Senate began voting, warned that utilizing a present coverage baseline set a “harmful precedent,” and indicated that whereas he would vote for the price range decision his assist for the reconciliation invoice was by no means assured.
“As a conservative, I do know typically that even if you happen to can open a Pandora’s Field, it’s higher to not,” Cassidy mentioned.
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report