The Senate took an initial vote Thursday to advance a budget blueprint for enacting President Trump’s agenda, with all but one Republican unifying around the outline for sweeping tax and spending cuts.
The support had not been guaranteed when Senate Republicans first started hashing out their plan to provide differing instructions to Senate committees for how to approach the tax and spending cuts than the House provided its panels.
Fiscal hawks were worried the blueprint would not provide adequate guarantees the budget reconciliation bill it sets up will cut deep into federal spending, while a few other Republicans had concerns it could go too far in allowing cuts that could affect popular programs like Medicaid.
Leadership had to balance the concerns of the competing GOP factions, while also worrying about the strict Senate rules that guide the reconciliation process they are using to skirt a filibuster and pass the president’s priorities along party lines.
Mr. Trump helped woo most Senate fiscal hawks with private commitments to pursue steep spending cuts that will bring spending below pre-pandemic levels. He echoed that with a public call to “right-size the budget” as he endorsed the blueprint that lawmakers will use to draft “one, big beautiful bill” encompassing his agenda.
Ultimately, only one Republican, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, could not be swayed to support it.
Thursday’s procedural test vote advanced, 52-48.
The Senate will now proceed with up to 50 hours of debate on the budget before beginning a “vote-a-rama” in which senators can offer unlimited amendments. Most are expected to come from Democrats who oppose the Republican agenda.
Sen. Jeff Merkley, Oregon Democrat and the Budget Committee’s ranking member, said the amendments will share the big theme of “families lose, billionaires win” under the GOP plans, while hitting on more specific issues of concern.
“We’ll do a lot about the health-care heist and the impact on Medicaid,” he said, adding that his party will highlight potential cuts to other programs as well. “We’ll undoubtedly spend a significant amount of time on the massive amount of debt they’re creating and their effort to hide it from American people.”
The budget provides lawmakers with parameters they must follow in drafting the reconciliation legislation that Republicans say will extend and expand upon Mr. Trump’s first-term tax cuts, fund border security and defense needs, restore American energy dominance, cut wasteful federal spending, and raise the debt limit.
Mr. Paul opposed the budget because it calls for a $5 trillion increase in the debt limit, borrowing that indicates the GOP plans will not do enough to get spending under control.
A few Republicans did not make up their minds until the last minute but sided with Mr. Trump and GOP leaders.
Sen. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican, voted “yes” despite reservations that the budget changes did not remove an instruction requiring the House Energy and Commerce Committee to find $880 billion in savings, an amount that ensures some spending reductions would come from Medicaid based on the limited number of mandatory spending programs in the panel’s jurisdiction.
“I’m not going to vote for Medicaid cuts,” he said amid his waffling Thursday over whether to advance the budget.
The Senate left all of the House’s instructions, which call for a minimum of $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years, but gives its committees a much lower floor of $5 billion.
That’s designed to ensure they don’t run afoul of the Senate reconciliation rules that provide no room to fall short of its committee targets.
“We’re not going to shoot ourselves in the foot,” said Senate Budget Chairman Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican.
He predicted Republicans will ultimately find trillions of dollars in spending to cut but that they need flexibility to ensure they can get enough votes to pass the bill.
“We’ll cut spending until you run out of votes,” Mr. Graham said.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, Louisiana Republican, worried the budget blueprint did not call for enough spending reductions to pay for the tax increases it would allow. He does not buy into the “current policy” baseline Senate Republicans are using to exempt the cost of extending tax cuts that are already in law, but voted to advance the budget nonetheless.
“The debt is incredible and it’s getting worse, and it’s going to start negatively impacting people’s lives,” Mr. Cassidy told The Washington Times.
The near-perfect unity was a good sign for Republicans trying to rally around the president’s agenda.
The final reconciliation bill will be more difficult to hash out.
Fiscal hawks agreed to back the budget based on commitments the reconciliation package will include the trillions in cuts needed to reduce federal spending to pre-pandemic levels.
“We don’t have all fiscal hawks in our conference, but they’ve been working with me, and the White House has worked with me and the president’s going to work with me,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Republican. “I pretty well got everything I want at this point in time. Now we just have to do all the work.”
Mr. Johnson said Senate, House and White House leaders have agreed to his suggestion to go line-by-line through the budget to identify places they can cut.
Sen. Rick Scott, Florida Republican, also said the president’s personal commitment to reduce spending to pre-pandemic levels pushed him to support the budget plan.
“I like what the president is saying. I like what [Majority Leader John] Thune is saying; he’s committed to pre-pandemic levels,” he told The Times.
Sen. Mike Lee, Utah Republican, cited the president’s commitment to balance the federal budget, along with the fact that the blueprint for the reconciliation bill is not the finished product, as reason for his support.
“It’s what opens the starting gates for us to start working on reconciliation,” he said. “Even though there are things in it that are not how I would have written them, I think it’s a good thing to open that gate.”
Mr. Lee also secured commitments for a package of regulatory reforms, some of which may have to move outside the reconciliation process because they may not fit within the parameters for the filibuster-proof process.
