The Senate on Thursday took a procedural vote to advance a budget resolution to accomplish President Trump’s tax and energy agenda. The vote is the next procedural step in the “budget reconciliation” process.
House and Senate leadership have worked for weeks to reconcile differences between their budget resolutions, which each chamber has passed. The budget resolution agreed upon this week would provide an extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act as well as raising the debt ceiling and addressing various energy policies.
Budget resolutions are instructions to each Congressional committee outlining what must be included in the final reconciliation bill.
The 52-48 vote tees up weekend consideration of a budget resolution. While both the House and Senate have already passed their own budget resolutions, the one the Senate will vote on is the product of the negotiations between the chambers that have taken place over the last few weeks.
A few steps remain in the budget reconciliation process. The Senate will now allow 50 hours of debate on the resolution, followed by a “vote-a-rama” on any amendment any Senator wishes to put forward, followed by final passage of the resolution. After it is passed, the House must pass it, then work on crafting the final bill based on the budget resolution’s instructions. Once that is finalized, both chambers must vote on the negotiated bill.
The budget reconciliation process has strict rules that anything included in the bill must have a primary impact on spending and not just any policy provision can be included.
The process allows for passage of a bill along a simple majority, meaning Republicans could pass the final bill with a simple majority in the House and just 50 votes in the Senate.
