House and Senate GOP approved competing budget plans. Now comes the hard part.
House and Senate Republicans have voted to approve competing budget measures to pass portions of President Donald Trump’s agenda. Now comes the hard part.
WASHINGTON — House and Senate Republicans have voted to approve competing budget measures to pass portions of President Donald Trump’s agenda. And top GOP lawmakers insisted Wednesday they won’t accept the other chamber’s version.
Under the arcane process that Republicans are using, both the House and the Senate must approve the same budget resolution before they can formally craft a massive party-line bill that can evade the Senate filibuster and cut Democrats out of the process.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told GOP senators at a closed-door lunch meeting Wednesday that the House budget resolution approved Tuesday cannot pass the Senate in its current form, a source with knowledge of his comments told NBC News.
That’s a shared opinion among Senate Republicans, who spent the day pouring cold water over the House’s blueprint, which contains $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, a $4 trillion debt limit increase, hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending on immigration enforcement and the military, and spending cuts to offset some of the red ink.
“Short answer is likely no. Long answer is, hell no,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said when asked if the Senate should take up the House’s budget plan unchanged.
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