The Senate Budget Committee is marking up its its signature piece of legislation — the reconciliation-unlocking budget resolution — in its race against House counterparts to identify the best path forward for turning President Donald Trump’s policy ambitions into law.
While Congress has skipped a budget resolution in recent years, this year the measure is the centerpiece of Republican policymaking on Capitol Hill as the majorities in both chambers are hungry to uncork the power to bypass Senate filibusters and pass party-line bills to enact Trump’s domestic agenda.
Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) framed the Senate’s action Wednesday morning as a backup plan if House Republicans fail to move swiftly on their own proposal. Graham’s blueprint would first enact border security, defense and energy policy, before turning later to a second bill that would to extend the 2017 tax cuts Republicans passed during the first Trump presidency.
“To my Republican colleagues in the House, I’m pulling for one big, beautiful bill, but there’s a sense of urgency. I hope you will consider what we do if you cannot produce the one big, beautiful bill quickly,” Graham said as he opened his panel’s debate on the Senate’s blueprint.
While the Senate Budget panel began consideration of their slimmed-down, two-part reconciliation strategy, House Republicans released their one-bill fiscal blueprint in advance of a planned markup on their side of the Capitol on Thursday morning. It outlines at least $4.5 trillion in tax cuts while slashing spending by at least $1.5 trillion over the coming decade.
“I don’t view this as a competition,” Budget Committee member Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told his colleagues. “I know [House Speaker] Mike Johnson. I have complete confidence in Mike Johnson, and we should too.”
The Senate plan would allow for a $150 billion increase in defense spending and boost border security funding by $175 billion. It also includes direction to committees to find hundreds of billions of dollars in “savings” through spending cuts and new revenue, including cash from leasing federal land for energy projects.
Democrats are sounding the alarm, both about the Republican budget resolution but also about the impending deadline to avoid a government shutdown and the actions of Elon Musk’s team to slashing jobs and shutter entire sections of federal agencies.
“When do we have a hearing with Elon Musk? He seems to be central to this budget plan,” Senate Appropriations ranking member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said at the Budget markup. “He’s making big decisions about our country’s spending. And he’s not just doing it without Congress. He is doing it in spite of what Congress has already decided. We should not be giving up our power of the purse. We should be getting answers.”
Democrats and Republicans have filed nearly 200 amendments to the resolution, and the Budget panel’s meeting is expected to stretch into the evening as lawmakers consider scores of proposals.
