J. Scott Applewhite / AP
Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., a member of the Senate Budget Committee, heads to the floor during a series of votes at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 19, 2017.
Friday, Oct. 20, 2017 | 2 a.m.
WASHINGTON — The Senate took a significant step toward rewriting the tax code Thursday night with the passage of a budget blueprint that would protect a $1.5 trillion tax cut from a Democratic filibuster.
The budget resolution could also pave the way for opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil exploration by ensuring that drilling legislation can pass with only Republican votes.
Despite having full control of the government, Republicans have so far been unable to produce a marquee legislative achievement in the first year of Donald Trump’s tenure, putting even more pressure on lawmakers to succeed in passing a tax bill. The budget’s passage could keep Republicans on track to approve a tax package late this year or early in 2018.
The House plans to take up the budget blueprint, which the Senate approved 51-49, as early as next week. Doing so would allow for the tax overhaul to move ahead quickly.
Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin will need most House Republicans to back the blueprint without changes; in the Senate, Rand Paul of Kentucky was the lone Republican to vote against the measure Thursday, in protest of what he deemed excessive spending. If House Republicans were to insist on negotiating a compromise that melds the Senate and House budget plans, tax legislation could be delayed.
“This is the last, best chance we will have to cut taxes,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a member of the Budget Committee, who warned that the consequences would be ruinous if the party failed.
“That will be the end of us as a party,” he said, “because if you’re a Republican and you don’t want to simplify the tax code and cut taxes, what good are you to anybody?”
Trump took to Twitter shortly after 1 a.m. to congratulate the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, for a “first step toward delivering MASSIVE tax cuts for the American people!”
But Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the ranking member of the Budget Committee, declared the budget to be “extremely cruel,” and Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said it would burden the middle class.
“This nasty and backwards budget green-lights cuts to Medicare and Medicaid in order to give a tax break to big corporations and the wealthiest Americans,” Schumer said.
The Senate approved the budget blueprint after considering a flurry of amendments, a tedious process that gives the minority party an opportunity to force the majority to endure politically difficult votes. One Democratic amendment that was rejected sought to stop tax cuts from going to the top 1 percent; another would have restored cuts to Medicare.
Another amendment would have deleted language that could allow for drilling legislation; the proposal failed, 48-52.
“The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is one of the most pristine areas of the United States, and we have been protecting it for decades for a reason,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, the top Democrat on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
But Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, the chairwoman of the energy panel, said erasing the language would “deprive us of a substantial opportunity to benefit our country at the same time that we care for our environment.”
In Congress, the annual budget resolution provides an outline of federal spending and revenues. The Senate’s blueprint, for the 2018 fiscal year that began Oct. 1, claims to achieve a balanced budget within a decade, assuming greater economic growth and using an accounting method that excludes Social Security. In order to erase projected deficits, it calls for trillions of dollars in spending cuts over the coming decade.
But the cuts exist only on paper, without legislation to achieve them.
Even so, Democrats sounded the alarm, warning that the aspirational cuts in the budget plan called for slicing more than $1 trillion from Medicaid and about $470 billion from Medicare over a decade.
They also lamented the approach that Republicans are taking on taxes, which mirrors the strategy that they employed in their failed effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. On that matter, Republicans successfully laid the groundwork for a repeal measure that could pass without any Democratic votes, but party leaders could not ultimately get 50 Republican senators to agree on a health bill.
Although Democrats have pleaded to have more say in the tax overhaul, parliamentary language in the budget resolution would allow Republicans to pass a tax bill without any cooperation from the minority party. The tax measure could add as much as $1.5 trillion to budget deficits over a decade.
“Passing this budget is not a requirement for passing tax reform,” said Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich. “Passing this budget is only a requirement to pass a tax bill with as few votes as possible, without input or buy-in from members of the minority.”
For Republicans, the budget debate provided a moment to showcase their main goal in the coming months: approving an overhaul of the tax code for the first time in decades, which they hope will lead to greater economic growth.
The House approved its budget resolution, which had long been stalled, on Oct. 5. The House budget also lays the groundwork for a tax bill, but, unlike the Senate’s approach, it calls for the legislation to not add to the deficit.
The House budget resolution also seeks more concrete action when it comes to cutting spending, instructing committees to come up with legislation that would produce at least about $200 billion in savings.
The chairwoman of the House Budget Committee, Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn., had seemed reluctant to jettison that piece of the blueprint. “What part of ‘cut spending’ does @SenateGOP not understand?” she wrote on Twitter last week. But Senate Republicans have shown no appetite to make spending cuts in tandem with the tax overhaul.
