Senate parliamentarian could make or break Trump agenda

Senate Republicans are facing crunch time on a long-overdue budget resolution, which has divided their conference over the possibility of cutting Medicaid and adding language to increase the debt ceiling by as much as $5 trillion.

Whether they move on the bill this week could depend largely on a key ruling from Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has told colleagues that he wanted to get the budget to the floor this week, but that timeline is already slipping as GOP senators have yet to coalesce around the proposal, and it has yet to get the green light from the powerful parliamentarian.

Thune told reporters Monday that he’s not yet sure whether the budget will be ready to go this week, noting that the discussions with the parliamentarian are “ongoing” and he wants to make sure nearly his entire conference is “comfortable” with the plan.

“We want to get to it as quickly as we can, and I’m hoping that enables us to move on it this week,” Thune said.

But he cautioned that moving on the budget requires “having everything ready to go” and cited “the parliamentarian conversations” and “making sure we got everybody in a comfortable place with it.”

“It’s a process,” he said.

Some Senate Republicans, including Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), have made it clear they would not support big cuts to Medicaid that might threaten to reduce the program's benefits.

Meanwhile, Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Todd Young (R-Ind.) have raised questions about using a special budgetary scoring model to claim that extending President Trump's tax cuts won’t add to the deficit.

And Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has stated flatly that he won’t support adding language to raise the debt limit by up to $5 trillion unless that total is offset by huge cuts to federal spending.

The Senate and House must first pass a joint budget resolution to “unlock” the special budget reconciliation process, which will allow them to pass Trump’s agenda through the Senate with a simple majority.

If the Republicans don’t use the budget reconciliation process, they would need to muster 60 votes to overcome a Democratic filibuster. They currently control a 53-to-47-seat majority.

Senate Republicans are feeling pressure to move quickly as rank-and-file members, especially in the House, are growing increasingly impatient over the pace of Trump’s agenda.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has set the ambitious goal of getting “one big, beautiful bill” to Trump’s desk by Memorial Day at the latest.

“We just know what we need to do and we need to get it done sooner rather than later. The last time we did a budget resolution like this it was done before the president was sworn in, so we’re a little bit behind that schedule,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).

The Republican-controlled Senate adopted its budget resolution to repeal the Affordable Care Act — Trump’s first priority during his first term — on Jan. 12, 2017, days before Trump took the oath of office.

The process for laying the groundwork for a bill to secure the border, expand domestic oil and gas drilling, increase defense spending and provide more than $4 trillion in tax relief has taken considerably more time this year.

Thune privately told colleagues before the March recess that he thought Johnson’s initial timeline of getting a bill to Trump’s desk by Easter was highly unrealistic, according to Senate sources.

The biggest obstacle may be MacDonough, who is expected to rule on the question of whether Republicans can use a “current policy” baseline that would allow them to pass a bill to make President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent.

If defined as an extension of current policy, renewing the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would not be scored as adding to the deficit, which would have two big benefits for Republicans: It would allow them to make the tax rates permanent, and it would spare them the headache of coming up with spending cuts, or new tax revenue, to offset their cost.

If the parliamentarian rules Senate Republicans can use a “current policy” baseline, helping them to score an extension of the 2017 tax cuts as not adding to the deficit after 10 years, then they would not have to “sunset” or automatically end those tax rates after the 10-year budget window. That, in effect, would allow them to extend those tax cuts from Trump’s first term “permanently.”

Senate Republicans are citing the 1974 Budget and Impoundment Control Act to argue that Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has the power to determine the baseline for scoring the cost of the bill during the budget window — usually a period of 10 years — in the “out years” beyond that window.

But Democrats say that would be a violation of the Senate’s Byrd Rule. Specifically, they say it violates the test prohibiting legislation from adding to the deficit — either by increasing spending or reducing revenue — in the years beyond the budget window.

Under the Senate’s rules, legislation must comply with the Byrd Rule to be eligible for budget reconciliation protection. Otherwise, it faces a 60-vote hurdle.

Democrats argue the Republican plan to score the extension of Trump’s tax cuts as an extension of “current policy” that would not add to the deficit is a violation of the 1985 Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act, also known as the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act.

They argue that Section 257 of that law states that current law should serve as the basis for a budget baseline. Under current law, much of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would expire at the end of this year. Therefore, any extension of those expiring provisions would add to the deficit.

A Senate Democratic aide said the Republican plan to use a current-policy baseline to minimize the projected cost of tax cuts “conflicts with statutory directives” in the Balanced Budget Act and would undermine “40 years of Byrd Rule discipline.”

If the parliamentarian rules in favor of the Democrats, Republicans would have to acknowledge that extending the Trump tax cuts would add trillions of dollars to the deficit.

Such a ruling would also prevent them from claiming that extending the expiring 2017 tax cuts doesn’t affect revenue beyond the budget revenue, essentially forcing them to sunset those tax provisions to comply with the Byrd Rule and to avoid a Democratic filibuster.

Asked if he expected the parliamentarian to hand down a ruling anytime soon, Thune told The Hill on Monday: “I don’t talk a lot about the discussions with the parliamentarian, but they’re ongoing.”