After hours of consideration, the House Budget Committee passed a budget resolution on Thursday night that would allow Republicans to begin the process of legislating a massive major fiscal overhaul that includes tax cuts.
The Budget Committee voted 21-16 to pass the resolution after a marathon markup that stretched 12 hours. Republicans were threading a needle with the resolution, given some Republican lawmakers’ demands for deeper spending cuts and concerns from some centrist members about the depth of cuts to major programs like Medicaid.
The House GOP is in a tricky spot because the party can’t afford to lose votes on the resolution, given the slim majority in the lower chamber. The difficulty advancing the budget blueprint is a preview for what will likely be months of wheeling and dealing during reconciliation, a legislative process that allows for bills to bypass the filibuster and pass with only a simple majority in the Senate.
As passed out of committee, the budget resolution includes a $1.5 trillion floor for spending cuts with a target of $2 trillion in spending cuts and would allocate $4.5 trillion on the deficit cap for the House Ways and Means Committee, which will be tasked with extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and tacking on new tax cut provisions that were promised by President Donald Trump.
It additionally increases the debt ceiling by $4 trillion.
“This budget resolution is more than numbers on a ledger, it’s a blueprint for restoring America’s security, prosperity, and leadership in the world,” Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX) said during his opening remarks. “It’s a promissory note for our children to preserve the land of liberty and opportunity by safeguarding it from an unwieldy government and the unbridled spending, taxing, and regulating that threatens to destroy it.”
A key amendment that was passed allows Arrington to increase the cap on the deficit hit from the tax provisions if offsetting spending cuts are made elsewhere.
