WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans released a new budget blueprint Wednesday that would pave the way for $1.5 trillion in new tax cuts in addition to making President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent.
They hope to adopt the plan in the coming days to instruct committees to begin work a massive bill to pass Trump’s agenda on taxes, immigration funding and other priorities. Senate Republicans are using the budget “reconciliation” process to evade the 60-vote hurdle in the chamber, where they hold a 53-47 majority, and cut Democrats out of the process.
Republicans are using a controversial new accounting method known as “current policy baseline” to score the cost of a Trump tax cut extension at $0. Democrats have slammed it as “magic math” that papers over the multitrillion-dollar cost of extending those tax cuts and are exploring their options to challenge the approach.
The Senate GOP budget resolution includes a $5 trillion debt limit increase.
It is a revised version of a previous budget plan that excluded taxes. Trump has pressured Republicans to pass his agenda in “one big, beautiful bill,” aligning with the House’s approach.
“It is now time for the Senate to move forward with this budget resolution in order to further advance our shared Republican agenda in Congress,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said in a statement Wednesday.
Thune said the Senate parliamentarian has “reviewed the Budget Committee’s substitute amendment and deemed it appropriate for consideration under the Budget Act.”
But a spokesperson for Senate Budget Committee Democrats disputed that about the scoring method for Trump’s tax cuts, saying: “Any assertion that the Parliamentarian approved the use of a current policy baseline is false.”
The text was released after a group of GOP senators met with Trump, said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the chair of the Budget Committee. Graham and other Senate Republicans have moved much closer to the House's approach, though some differences will need to be sorted out in the final bill.
“Senate Budget Committee Republicans met today with the President. He is fully on board with the Senate’s proposal and process to cut spending,” Graham said in a statement.
The measure opens the door to a $150 billion increase to military spending and $175 billion more for immigration enforcement to help Trump carry out his mass deportation plan.
At the White House on Wednesday, Trump endorsed the Senate's plan and pushed the GOP lawmakers in attendance to pass the bill.
“That’s a nice group of people,” he said of the members of Congress. “But I won’t like them so much if they don’t get this bill done.”
The spending cuts set forth in the Senate budget are modest, totaling only a few billion dollars across several committees. GOP leaders stress that they are not targets but rather attempts to maintain flexibility if Republicans can’t find the savings they want.
“Senate Republicans are so hell-bent on cutting taxes for billionaires, they’re now willing to detonate the rules of the Senate, violate norms and traditions and break their word to get it done,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the floor Wednesday. “Republicans know their so-called ‘current policy baseline’ gimmick won’t likely fly. It’s hocus-pocus.”
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the ranking member of the Finance Committee, slammed the new budget proposal Wednesday.
“No amount of gaslighting from Republicans about the true cost of their tax plan, now upward of $5 trillion, can hide the fact that they 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,” he said in a statement.
