The Senate released a budget resolution on April 2 as part of a compromise with the House of Representatives, as Republicans look to enact President Donald Trump’s agenda.
Both houses of Congress must pass an identical budget resolution to begin the process called budget reconciliation. This mechanism allows for measures related to taxing, spending, and the national debt to pass without facing the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate that applies to most legislation.
It instructs both the House and Senate to reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion over a decade and make Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent.
However, the resolution also has different instructions for the House and Senate. It instructs the House to put forth a reconciliation bill that raises the debt ceiling by as much as $4 trillion, while for the Senate, it is $5 trillion.
The measure calls for the House to allocate $100 billion for defense, while it calls on the Senate to put forth $150 billion.
The resolution instructs the House to put forth $90 billion toward homeland security, while it calls for the Senate to put forth $175 billion. The reconciliation bill is expected to include border security measures.
Another disparity is that the House calls on its Energy and Commerce Committee to find $880 billion in cuts, while the Senate instructs its Energy and Natural Resources Committee to find $1 billion in cuts.
The House has come under fire as critics say that the amount of spending reduction will force lawmakers to make cuts to Medicaid. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said that only waste, fraud, and abuse will be cut from the entitlement program.
These differences would give the House and the Senate flexibility in proposing drafts of reconciliation bills. An identical one would need to pass both chambers to get to Trump’s desk.
In February, the House and Senate passed different budget resolutions.
The budget resolution gives the committees in the House and Senate until May 9 to put forth their recommendations to their respective chamber’s Budget Committee.
The House version included instructions for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and for reducing the deficit by $1.5 trillion—both over a decade. It also called for a $2 trillion increase in the debt ceiling.
The Senate version called for $175 billion for defense, $150 billion for border security, and reducing the deficit by $4 billion—all over 10 years. It did not include instructions for tax cuts.
In a statement, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said the budget resolution would “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.”
On the other side, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, which will play a main role in putting forth tax cuts, said that Republicans “want to pay for handouts to billionaires and corporations by kicking millions of Americans off their health insurance, driving up child hunger and wiping out hundreds of thousands of jobs.”
