Thune faces GOP divisions on critical budget resolution
Source: The Hill
04/04/25 1:30 PM ET
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) faces a number of divisions among Senate Republicans that could derail the Senate budget resolution, a measure that will be critical to passing President Trump’s legislative agenda later this year. Key points of contention include how to calculate the cost of extending Trump’s tax cuts, Medicaid cuts, defense spending and increasing the debt ceiling.
Republican Senate leaders intend to adopt a controversial current-policy baseline that would enable them to claim that extending the 2017 tax cuts won’t add to the deficit and open the door to making a signature Trump first-term accomplishment permanent. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) says he’ll go along with the current-policy baseline, but if it’s used he wants the cost of extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which expires at the end of this year, “paid for” with either spending cuts or other revenue-generating measures.
“You can use it, I just want it paid for it,” he said of the current-policy baseline. “We’ve got an incredible problem with our national debt.” But paying for an extension of the tax cuts with big spending cuts or other deficit-reducing strategies would appear to defeat the purpose of using the current-policy baseline in the first place, which is to make it easier for Republicans to permanently extend the expiring tax cuts without needing to include offsets within the bill.
Asked whether his call to pay for the tax cuts was flying in the face of the Senate GOP strategy, Cassidy replied: “No, we’re actually talking about different ways to pay for it. Much more aggressive.” A second Republican senator who requested anonymity voiced strong concerns about the plan to use the current-policy baseline to score the cost of a future budget reconciliation bill.
Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5232539-senate-republicans-budget-resolution/
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