The Senate adopted a fiscal 2025 budget blueprint early Saturday mostly along party lines after a debate that began the night before, teeing up the House for a climactic final vote next week.
Republicans beat back numerous amendments en route to adopting the measure on a 51-48 vote.
Rand Paul, R-Ky., voted “no” as he’s long promised due to the resolution’s allowance for raising the statutory debt limit by up to $5 trillion.
Maine’s Susan Collins was the other GOP “no” vote, having earlier expressed concerns about potential Medicaid cuts later in the reconciliation process but not saying how she’ll vote. Collins is up for reelection in 2026 in a Democratic-leaning state.
No Democrats voted for it.
GOP leaders survived a few close shaves on amendments along the way, losing the maximum three votes they could afford on their side on Democratic efforts to protect Medicaid from steep cuts. They didn’t need Vice President JD Vance to break any ties thanks to the absence of Patty Murray, D-Wash., who was with her husband as he received care in the hospital.
The debate got off to a late start, a little after 8 p.m. Friday, but soon picked up the pace and finished up a little after 2:30 a.m. Saturday. The House is scheduled to take up the resolution next week, before adjourning for a two-week recess on Thursday afternoon.
Assuming the House can adopt the resolution, committees in both chambers will finally have their marching orders to start drafting the “big, beautiful” budget reconciliation bill that party leaders have promised since before President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January.
The measure would include a massive package of tax cuts; increased military, border security and immigration enforcement spending; domestic energy incentives and the aforementioned debt limit boost. If the bill adheres to the budget’s instructions and doesn’t violate Senate rules governing what can be included, it will skirt a filibuster and allow passage on a simple majority.
“Tonight, the Senate took one small step toward reconciliation and one giant leap toward making the tax cuts permanent, securing the border, providing much-needed help for the military and finally cutting wasteful Washington spending,” Senate Budget Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said in a statement.
House-Senate differences
It’s no sure thing at this point the House GOP will be able to adopt the Senate’s revisions, which would allow for smaller spending cuts and larger tax cuts, paired with a bigger debt limit increase, than the House’s budget framework.
Already, a key Republican has come out against the changes, arguing the Senate budget is designed to allow the party to wriggle out from the spending discipline and lower deficits they’ve promised.
“If the Senate’s ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ budget is put on the House floor, I will vote no,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, an influential member of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, said Saturday. “Failure is not an option. And the Senate’s budget is a path to failure.”
The resolution’s instructions to committees would allow the Senate to draft a tax package that could add over $5 trillion to deficits in the first decade.
In a new twist on reconciliation, Senate Republicans are attempting to set the revenue baseline to zero for “current policy,” baking in $3.7 trillion in tax cuts enacted in 2017 during Trump’s first term. That would allow them to make those provisions permanent without the traditional need for offsets after the initial 10 years. The remaining $1.5 trillion would consist of new policies the president has talked about since his campaign, including exempting tips from income tax.
But House Republicans have had different ideas about how to structure the tax package, setting a ceiling of $4.5 trillion over a decade using traditional scoring rules. That means if the House approach wins out, Republicans would have to let some of the tax-cut extensions expire or consider unpalatable offsets.
In other key differences between the chambers’ reconciliation instructions, senators have set themselves a bare-bones floor for spending cuts, requiring just $5 billion in order to maintain compliance with the Senate’s “Byrd rule” that determines whether a provision can be more easily stricken from the bill.
The House, meanwhile has to find at least $1.5 trillion in cuts, or $2 trillion to maintain the full $4.5 trillion tax allowance.
And the House’s cap on a debt limit increase is $4 trillion, or $1 trillion less than the Senate’s.
Ultimately, what matters for maintaining the bill’s filibuster-proof privileges is compliance with the Senate’s reconciliation instructions. That’s exacerbated fears among House Republicans that the Senate will pass a larger tax-cut package and substantially smaller spending cuts, while raising the nation’s borrowing cap even higher, and force the House to swallow it.
In a tough statement released Saturday morning, House Budget Chairman Jodey C. Arrington panned the Senate blueprint as “unserious and disappointing.”
But the idea for now is just to unlock a process where the two chambers can start getting to work on the actual legislation, saving their differences to hammer out later. Arrington, R-Texas, hinted at a desire let the process play out in his comments Saturday, suggesting that the House will have some leverage on the final legislative package.
“I am committed to working with President Trump, House leadership, and my Senate counterparts to address these concerns and ensure the final reconciliation bill makes America safe, prosperous, and fiscally responsible again,” Arrington said.
Padded vote margin
Trump’s stated “complete and total support” for the reworked budget plan should help with House Republicans, as will a boosted GOP margin after the party won two Florida special elections and Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., backed out of her nomination to be U.N ambassador.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., can still only afford to lose three votes on his side, however, assuming all are present and voting. And he may need to navigate a tricky path through the House Rules Committee and the rule for floor debate, with no clear answers yet on how to deal with Florida GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s push to allow proxy voting for members on parental leave.
And once House and Senate Republicans can finally get down to business on reconciliation, there’s no guarantee of a speedy wrap-up by Memorial Day, as Johnson has said he wants. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said things won’t get any easier after the budget resolution is adopted.
“It is a miserable process and none of us look forward to it,” Rounds said.
That could become an issue for the debt ceiling; while the Congressional Budget Office sees August or September as the most likely deadline, the agency has also said Treasury borrowing capacity could be exhausted as soon as late May. The Senate’s reconciliation instructions built in a fail-safe, allowing them to spin off a separate debt-limit increase sooner if needed.
During the Senate’s “vote-a-rama,” Democrats highlighted issues where they see Republicans as most vulnerable politically: Trump’s tariffs that sparked a massive stock-market bloodletting this week; hundreds of billions of dollars in potential Medicaid cuts; and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency’s teardown of numerous federal agencies and tens of thousands of civil service jobs.
“It’s a brutal Republican pincer move: Donald Trump’s tariffs raise costs on one side, and Senate Republicans are cutting Medicaid and pushing billionaire tax breaks on the other,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the floor. “Tonight, Democrats gave Senate Republicans the chance to hit the kill switch on Donald Trump’s tariffs, on DOGE, on the attacks against Social Security and Medicaid and Medicaid. And at each opportunity they refused.”
Bipartisan pushback
Shortly before final adoption early Saturday, the chamber voted on a bipartisan amendment from Senate Finance ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., to strike the House’s requirement to cut at least $880 billion from programs within the Energy and Commerce panel’s jurisdiction.
House GOP leaders have been clear that Medicaid is on the table as part of that effort, which has made centrist Republicans and those with large Medicaid populations uneasy.
“Protecting families who count on Medicaid ought to go beyond party lines,” Wyden said in offering his amendment. “In that spirit, I hope the Senate will join Sen. Hawley and I, on a bipartisan basis, to finally take Medicaid off the chopping block.”
Senate Finance Chairman Michael D. Crapo, R-Idaho, urged rejection of the amendment. “Once again, a long list of fearful, dire consequences that aren’t in the bill,” he said. “President Trump’s been clear any reforms to Medicare or Medicaid must not reduce patient benefits.”
The amendment was rejected on a 49-50 vote, with Hawley, Collins and GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska crossing the aisle to support it.
Four other amendments saw three Republican defections:
- An amendment from Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., to create a “reserve fund” for legislation to prevent a “reduction in Medicaid funding that could lead to hospital closures, cost increases for individuals with other kinds of insurance, or higher rates of uncompensated care.” Hawley, Collins, and Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, voted with the Democrats.
- A motion to waive a GOP point of order lodged against an amendment from Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., that would create a 60-vote point of order against “legislation that would increase drug costs for seniors and people with disabilities on Medicare.” Collins, Hawley and Sullivan voted with the Democrats.
- An amendment from Andy Kim, D-N.J., that would create a reserve fund for legislation “relating to healthcare coverage, which may include legislation prohibiting a reduction in Medicaid and Medicare funding.” Collins, Hawley and Murkowski voted for it.
- An amendment from Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., to create a reserve fund for legislation “relating to reversing cuts to the Social Security Administration, which may include cuts ordered by the Department of Government Efficiency or any other cuts to seniors’ services.” Collins, Sullivan and Murkowski voted for it.
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