House Republicans unveiled a long-awaited budget blueprint on Wednesday to tee up President Trump’s entire legislative agenda, while a Senate GOP committee advanced an alternative plan that begins with a smaller bite at the apple.
.The dueling budget resolutions present approaches to passing the Trump agenda through the partisan budget reconciliation process, allowing Republicans to avoid the threat of a Democratic filibuster in the Senate.
The House budget provides instructions for combining the president’s priorities into “one big, beautiful bill.”
It calls for up to $300 billion more for border security, immigration enforcement and defense, as well as a tax package with a net cost of up to $4.5 trillion and a $4 trillion increase in the statutory debt limit. The budget mandates those changes, which come with at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, but the legislation Republicans write can ultimately exceed that floor.
The Senate wants to split the Trump agenda into two reconciliation bills. Its budget would fund the first, which is focused on border and defense funding infusions. If the Senate gets its way, it would save the second measure for sweeping tax and spending cuts.
Both chambers ultimately must coalesce around one budget resolution to unlock the reconciliation powers before moving on to the much more difficult task of putting together the policies that will fulfill the targets laid out in the blueprint.
The resolution of Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, calls for $345 billion in new border and defense spending spread over four years. Other committees were instructed to provide offsets over that same period. Mr. Graham and his colleagues on the budget panel defended their decision to advance those priorities ahead of sweeping tax and spending cuts as they marked up the budget on Wednesday.
“The reason I want to start, and I want to start now, is because there’s a sense of urgency about the immigration plan of President Trump,” said Mr. Graham, noting that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is running out of money.
“To my colleagues in the House, I hope you can pass one big, beautiful bill,” he said. “But we’ve got to move on this issue.”
The Senate Budget Committee spent all day Wednesday debating its budget. Republicans defeated 42 amendments Democrats offered — primarily to dismantle the plan and substitute in their priorities — before the committee approved the budget resolution without changes on a 11-10, party-line vote.
House Republicans planned to advance their budget resolution through committee last week but were delayed by party infighting. That vote is scheduled for Thursday, the same day the Senate committee is scheduled to conclude its budget markup.
House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington, Texas Republican, released a plan Wednesday to find a compromise between debt hawks who demanded steep spending cuts and moderates who feared going too far and endangering politically protected programs.
Republican debt hawks, who sought deeper cuts of $2.5 trillion in exchange for their support of increasing the debt limit, were frustrated by the lower spending cut floor built into the plan.
Rep. Eric Burlison, a Missouri Republican, used the word “pathetic” as he argued that the proposed spending cuts over the next decade would fall short of the government’s increasing interest payments.
Some of Mr. Burlison’s hard-line House Freedom Caucus colleagues met with House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, to discuss the budget blueprint. They were tight-lipped about their feelings afterward.
The plan tries to meet the Freedom Caucus in the middle by setting a goal to reduce mandatory spending by $2 trillion. If lawmakers fall short of this mark, the House Ways and Means Committee must take a “commensurate” hit to its ceiling for the tax cuts.
Despite his broader disappointment, Mr. Burlison appreciated that caveat.
“We need to make sure that [the tax cuts are] paid for and we’re not exacerbating the deficit,” he told The Washington Times. “But I think if we can, you will definitely spur the economy, for sure.”
Tax writers were frustrated with the compromise to set the ceiling for the reconciliation package’s Ways and Means Committee portion at $4.5 trillion. To hold the net cost to that amount, the panel must find savings under their jurisdiction to achieve Mr. Trump’s tax priorities.
House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith, Missouri Republican, cited the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate that permanently extending Mr. Trump’s first-term tax cuts would cost $4.6 trillion as a reason for preferring a higher ceiling. The president wants to add more tax cuts that exempt tips, overtime pay and Social Security benefits from income taxes, which would cost trillions of dollars more over the next decade.
Ways and Means Committee member Max Miller, Ohio Republican, said the provision allowing for further restraints on the panel’s ceiling is “a needle in the chairman’s eye more than anything else.”
The speaker called the budget blueprint a “key first step” in passing Mr. Trump’s agenda but acknowledged continuing debates and struggles in the coming weeks.
“There’s still much work to be done, but we are starting on the right path,” Mr. Johnson said.
If the House Budget Committee successfully reports out its budget resolution on Thursday, it will only prolong the debate with the Senate about which approach is best.
The most significant disagreement to resolve is whether to proceed with the tax cuts now or later. Smaller distinctions between the two budget plans must be hammered out before lawmakers can proceed with a bill.
The chambers have a $50 billion gap in their visions for spending on national defense needs. The House set an upper limit of $100 billion, and the Senate capped it at $150 billion.
Both budgets provide enough spending room to meet the Trump administration’s request for $175 billion in border security and immigration enforcement funding, but the exact amounts differ.
The Senate budget provides for up to double the Trump request in giving the Judiciary and Homeland Security committees instructions for $175 billion each, but the goal is to provide flexibility so that they can end up at that amount collectively, not separately, Mr. Graham said.
The House budget is more prescriptive, telling the Judiciary Committee it can spend up to $110 billion and the Homeland Security Committee up to $90 billion, for a total of $200 billion.
The Senate plan instructs the Transportation Committees to contribute up to $20 billion to the Coast Guard to assist with border security and defense.
Another key difference is the timing of the new spending and offsets.
The Senate plan would allocate up to $345 billion in new border and defense spending over four years, with other committees instructed to provide offsets over that same period. The cost of new spending, tax cuts and offsets in the House plan is spread out over a decade.
Mr. Graham said the Senate intends to offset any new spending it approves, but House Republicans worry about the follow-through given his budget instructions set a much more flexible floor of $5 billion in cuts.
The chambers also have different committee deadlines to complete the reconciliation work. The Senate budget calls for committee submissions by March 7, and the House plan, a much heavier lift, allows until March 27.
In the Senate Budget Committee markup, Democrats offered a series of amendments to dismantle the Republican reconciliation instructions, but they were all defeated.
Democrats said their goal was to prevent Republicans from rolling back President Biden’s student loan forgiveness programs and climate initiatives and cutting health care and nutrition programs to pay for new spending.
“This is a great betrayal because President Trump campaigned on helping families,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley, Oregon Democrat and ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee.
• Lindsey McPherson can be reached at lmcpherson@washingtontimes.com.
• Alex Miller can be reached at amiller@washingtontimes.com.