Senate Republicans are expected to vote on a budget blueprint this week to advance President Donald Trump’s first-year legislative priorities while saving key bill details for later.
Republican leadership in the chamber appears eager to make headway in enacting the president’s tax and spending priorities through the budget reconciliation process, which allows Senate Republicans to circumvent Democratic lawmakers’ filibuster. Though Senate Majority John Thune is expected to meet an April 11 deadline he set last Monday to pass a budget blueprint — the next step of the budget reconciliation process — House and Senate leaders are punting on addressing thorny details that could stall momentum as lawmakers look to advance Trump’s agenda in the coming months. (RELATED: Scott Jennings Says GOP Must ‘Come To Grips’ With ‘New’ Electoral ‘Reality’)
Republicans in both chambers of congress have not yet agreed on how much spending reduction should be included in a forthcoming budget bill and which programs to target for cuts.
The Senate GOP budget resolution is expected to include instructions for Senate committees to cut a minimum of $3 billion in federal spending, Punchbowl News first reported. The budget blueprint is also expected to leave House committee instructions in place to achieve at least $1.5 trillion in spending reduction.
The chambers’ diverging spending targets will have to be reconciled in the upcoming tax and spending bill Congress is currently negotiating.
Top House Republicans including Budget Committee chairman Jodey Arrington of Texas has called on the Senate to follow suit in slashing federal spending at similar $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion floors called for in a previous House budget resolution.
Senate GOP leadership has argued that setting a low spending reduction floor gives the upper chamber maximum flexibility to ensure compliance with the budget reconciliation process.
Setting a low minimum for spending reduction targets also gives leadership additional time to find consensus on how much spending to cut in a forthcoming budget bill.
“This [budget reconciliation process] enables us to do things at 51, but that means we’ve got to get all Republicans on the same page, and we’ve got Republicans in different places on how much deficit reduction can we do, and where do we do it,” Thune told Newsmax’s Greta Van Susteren on Friday. “In the tax area, there are people who have great ideas about things they want to do in terms of tax cuts, but it’s trying to marshal 51 votes in the Senate and 218 in the House … It’s got a ton of moving parts and [it’s] very complicated.”
Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson is advocating for the budget bill to put Congress on a path back to pre-pandemic spending levels, which could incur resistance from colleagues who are concerned that steep spending cuts could result in a reduction in entitlement benefits for their constituents. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri has suggested he would not support a budget bill that cuts Medicaid benefits while both of West Virginia’s GOP senators have voiced concerns about potential cuts to the entitlement program.
WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 04: (R-L) Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol on March 04, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)
Congressional Republicans will also have to achieve consensus on whether to make the 2017 Trump Tax Cuts permanent.
President Donald Trump has asked congressional Republicans to provide long-term tax relief for Americans by enacting a permanent extension of the expiring 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provisions that is slated to be a part of a forthcoming budget reconciliation bill. The House budget resolution that passed in February notably did not allow for tax cut permanence.
Senate GOP leadership is proposing to use a budget scoring approach known as the “current policy baseline” to allow for tax cut permanence in addition to enacting the president’s sweeping tax priorities, including no taxes on tips, overtime pay and Social Security benefits.
Using that accounting tactic would assume extending the expiring tax cuts does not cost anything since it’s a current policy. Employing a current policy baseline is facing skepticism from fiscal hawks and conservative lawmakers concerned that using the budget scoring approach will lessen the need for deficit reduction.
“If the Senate is simply using current policy to get tax cuts permanent while avoiding or skirting the responsibility to bring down spending commensurately, then that’s a non-starter,” Arrington told Newsmax on Sunday.
Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, an unelected official that interprets Senate rules, will have to sign off on the accounting tactic before Senate Republicans can include it in their budget resolution.
“[Current policy baseline] would be an honest approach,” Crapo told Fox Business’ Larry Kudlow on March 23. “We’re getting attacked, as you know, by saying that we’re using gimmicks to erase the score of the tax hike.”
“The reality is — and most Americans intuitively get this so easily — if we keep the taxes where they are, and don’t let them go up, and don’t let the tax cuts of 2017 expire, the revenue to the Treasury will be the same after the bill as it was before,” Crapo added. “There will be no reduction in revenue. Attackers are trying to say, ‘Well, you’re going to have a $4.3 trillion impact on our deficit.’ So, what they’re saying is, you’re not going to raise taxes by $4.3 trillion.”
Senate GOP leadership and key Senate Finance Republicans have suggested tax cut permanence is a must-have in a forthcoming budget bill.
Achieving a permanent extension of the expiring tax cut provisions is “a hill that I’m willing to die on,” Republican Montana Sen. Steve Daines told Punchbowl News on March 4.
“It’s critically important because if you tell somebody that your spending is good for four years or six years or then years, but not beyond that, that’s a little bit tough,” Americans for Tax Reform founder Grover Norquist told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. “If you’re building a building or a factory or new equipment, you people don’t make decisions when it’s uncertain what’s going to happen.”
“You have to get the parliamentarian to say this is okay,” Norquist continued. “Republicans in the Senate are saying we’re not even considering something that isn’t permanent.”
Failure to extend the Trump tax cuts will result in a tax increase for most U.S. households in 2026.
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