WASHINGTON — House Republicans narrowly advanced their long-awaited budget resolution on Tuesday, overcoming the first procedural hurdle to approve trillions of dollars in spending to advance President Donald Trump’s agenda.
Lawmakers adopted the budget resolution in a 217-215 vote, just barely clearing the majority threshold needed in the lower chamber. The vote came just hours after the spending package looked to be in peril as a handful of Republicans said they would oppose the resolution on the floor.
The passage was not without its own dose of drama. After days of talking with holdouts, the bill’s future remained unclear as lawmakers convened on Tuesday evening.
House leaders kept an unrelated procedural vote open for more than an hour and 10 minutes to stall for time as they continued negotiations on the floor. After that, top Republicans decided to pull the bill from consideration altogether.
Less than 15 minutes later, the vote was back on.
House GOP leaders abruptly called lawmakers back to the floor just after 7:45 p.m. ET, sending members into a flurry to return to the House chamber in full numbers.
All House Republicans were present on the floor before the brief intermission and Democrats had only one absence: Rep. Raul Grijalva, who has been dealing with a cancer diagnosis. That gave the House GOP only a one-vote margin.
To underscore how seriously Democrats were taking attendance, Rep. Brittany Pettersen, D-Colo., made a surprise return to the floor to oppose the proposal. Pettersen had a baby last month and has since been on maternity leave and unable to travel.
Rep. Kevin Mullin, R-Calif., was also present for the vote despite being absent earlier in the day. Mullin has been recovering from knee surgery.
But Republicans managed to flip enough holdouts at the end of the day, with only one “no” vote: Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who opposed the bill because he believes it did not do enough to address the deficit.
House budget resolution: What’s in it?
The reconciliation bill seeks to allocate trillions of dollars to extend the tax cuts passed in Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — a proposal approved by most in the GOP conference but initially met with skepticism by some fiscal hawks.
Under the resolution, the House Ways and Means Committee would be given $4.5 trillion to extend the tax cuts. Details on how that money would be allocated is not yet clear and does not need to be decided until committees begin drafting the bill.
In exchange, committees will be tasked with finding at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade.
Specifically, the Agriculture Committee is instructed to find $230 billion in cuts over the next 10 years; Energy and Commerce to find $880 billion; Education and Workforce to find $330 billion; Financial Services to find $1 billion; Natural Resources to find $1 billion; Oversight to find $50 billion; and Transportation to find $10 billion in cuts.
The bill would then allow for a $300 billion increase in mandatory spending, split between the committees on Homeland Security, Judiciary and Armed Services.
Additionally, the bill would approve a $4 trillion increase of the debt ceiling — a key element that aligns with demands from hardliners on the conservative House Freedom Caucus.
The budget resolution does not approve cuts right away. Rather, it only kick-starts the reconciliation process, which allows the majority party to expedite certain legislation related to taxes, spending, or the debt limit. Now that the resolution has been adopted by the House, it must now be approved by the Senate before individual committees can proceed.
What’s next?
It’s not yet clear when the Senate will move forward with a vote of its own — and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters on Tuesday the resolution may need some changes before it can be approved. For example, some Senate Republicans have pushed to make the Trump tax cuts permanent, which the current House resolution does not do.
“There are adjustments that are going to have to be made before it eventually is something that we can both — the House and Senate — can act on, that the president will sign into law,” Thune said. “So, it’s an iterative process, with lots of steps along the way, none of which are going to be easy.”
Once a resolution is passed by both chambers, individuals can then get to work finding the spending cuts laid out in the budget instructions. Once committees are finished, members will be tasked with compiling their proposals into one massive package that party leaders hope to vote on within the next two months.