After months of delays and almost seven hours of continuous voting, the Senate adopted an amended budget early Saturday morning, sending the blueprint back to the House, where lawmakers might just make more changes and send it right back.
The Senate voted 51-48, with 51 Republicans in favor of the budget and 46 Democrats opposed. (Republican Sens. Rand Paul and Susan Collins joined Democrats in opposition to the budget. Sen. Patty Murray was absent.)
The whole process was a battle. The vote-a-rama started just after 8:00 p.m. on Friday and didn’t wrap until just before 3:00 a.m. But beyond some votes on a Friday night into early Saturday morning — with Democrats trying to make the whole process as physically and politically painful as possible — the entire reconciliation ordeal has been, to this point, a slog.
Republicans have tried for months to get on the same page as their House GOP counterparts. This budget, adopted in the dead of night, is the closest they’ve come to an agreement. But they are still a ways off.
House Republicans are expected to return Monday and quickly try to take up the Senate-adopted budget. Speaker Mike Johnson has already said he expects his chamber to have changes for the blueprint, which will serve as the roadmap for an eventual reconciliation bill.
The hope is that, once the House makes some changes, they can send it back to the Senate for final approval. (The Senate could always make some changes of its own and ask the House to be the chamber swallowing a compromise.)
With all of those steps to go before Republicans even begin drafting their reconciliation bill, lawmakers will be hard-pressed to stay on schedule. Speaker Johnson has said he wants the two chambers to agree on a budget before lawmakers leave for a two-week Easter recess, and he wants to have final passage of the reconciliation bill by Memorial Day.
But Republicans in both chambers are in a political tug-of-war. Some Republicans in the House and Senate are hesitant to support a budget that threatens Medicaid. Sen. Lisa Murkowski was on the fence about the Senate’s budget, though she ultimately supported it. At no point did Collins commit to voting for the bill, and, ultimately, she opposed it. And Sen. Josh Hawley said he would only vote to advance the budget after he talked with Donald Trump and clarified that the president would not sign a reconciliation bill into law that cuts Medicaid.
That position is in direct opposition to the one that House conservatives have already staked out. They want to see steep cuts to Medicaid, and they have suggested they won’t support a reconciliation bill — or a budget — that doesn’t include massive reductions.
It’s a sticking point that still has to be sorted out, and everyone is counting on Trump to strongarm the other faction into supporting the final product.
When the House sent the Senate its budget in February, some House Republicans insisted the Senate adopt the blueprint as is. That didn’t happen. Now there’s a similar situation playing out in the other chamber. Senators insist that their budget is already the product of compromise and that the House should just adopt it.
But there are a number of sticking points making it hard for House Republicans to swallow.
For one, at the heart of the Senate’s budget, there are provisions to make current tax rates permanent. Republican leadership decided earlier this week that it would not pursue the parliamentarian’s approval to use a “current policy baseline” during reconciliation. They claim that decision is under the purview of Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham, and that the parliamentarian shouldn’t have a say over how the legislation is scored.
Historically, lawmakers have used a current law baseline for reconciliation bills, which in this instance would take into account that the tax rates are expiring and would cost about $4 trillion to extend.
By using a current policy baseline, Senate Republicans are claiming the fiscal impact of their bill is hardly anything, while some House Republicans consider the Senate’s baseline just an accounting gimmick that hides the deficit impact of the bill so lawmakers can avoid making spending cuts. Rep. Chip Roy has called the current policy baseline strategy “fairy dust.”
That standoff will be a key one between the two chambers. But coming up with savings — particularly savings that the Senate will agree to — will be a real challenge.
While Senators are moving ahead with their plan, for now, the parliamentarian could always rule against the decision later. That would force Senate leadership to either overrule the parliamentarian — which Majority Leader John Thune has cautioned against — or recalibrate how Republicans can make the tax cuts permanent.
But budgetary gymnastics aren’t the only concern for fiscal hawks in the House. The Senate increased the debt ceiling number from $4 trillion to $5 trillion in their budget. The $1 trillion boost is supposed to mean that the debt ceiling won’t need to be addressed again until after the 2026 midterms. Most Republican senators think that’s common sense to avoid a political headache just before election time. House members seem less enthusiastic about approving $5 trillion in more debt.
And then there are the overall spending cuts. The Senate’s targeted savings is roughly $1.2 trillion less than the House’s number, which was $1.5 trillion.
Lawmakers also have to contend with the possibility of some Republicans using the reconciliation bill as a rare opportunity to make policy.
During the vote-a-rama, Democrats sought to divide Republicans. At some points, they succeeded. Amendments to rebuke DOGE for cuts to the Social Security Administration and FEMA received Republican backing, though not enough to be adopted. Democrats also offered amendments related to Signal-gate and tariffs. Both failed without Republican support.
But the potential Medicaid cuts were the most glaring redline for some Republicans.
The very first amendment of the night was from Sen. Dan Sullivan. The Alaska Republican proposed “strengthening and improving” Medicare and Medicaid “for the most vulnerable populations.” The amendment was adopted, 51-48, largely along party lines, with Democrats accusing Republicans of intending to cull Medicaid rolls.
But one Medicaid amendment may signal future problems for Republicans with reconciliation. The proposal was to delete instructions for the House Energy and Commerce Committee to find $880 billion in savings. Democrats charge that it’d be impossible to find that amount in savings without cutting Medicaid.
Three Republicans — Hawley, Murkowski and Collins — joined Democrats on the amendment, which still failed, 49-50.
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Ben T.N. Mause is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Ursula Perano is a reporter at NOTUS.