Senate Republicans unveiled a proposed budget on Wednesday afternoon, just one day after House Republicans did the same.
Like the House GOP budget, Senate Republicans included language that would replace Obamacare and provisions to balance the budget.
However, it includes very different budgeting mechanisms to get around the defense budget cuts under sequestration – the across-the-board spending cuts triggered by a budget agreement reached after the debt ceiling standoff of 2011.
The Senate’s proposed budget cuts were less severe than those proposed by the House on Tuesday. While the House’s budget would cut $5.5tn in spending over 10 years, the Senate’s would cut only $5.1tn.
As a result, under the Senate plan, the federal budget would only be balanced in 2025, one year later than the House plan.
The Senate plan also does not include controversial provisions to voucherize Medicare. Although this proposal is quite popular among conservatives, it is considered politically dangerous; a number of GOP senators in swing states are already concerned about their re-election prospects in 2016.
Congress has had great difficulty passing a budget in recent years and instead has funded the government through a series of continuing resolutions. In the unlikely event that a compromise can be reached that will satisfy both House and Senate Republicans, Barack Obama has repeatedly pledged to veto any bill that repeals the Affordable Care Act, his signature healthcare reform.
But if Republicans in both chambers do a reach a consensus on a budget, which would involve a number of difficult compromises on issues like defense spending, it would allow a bill to be passed via the “reconciliation” process.
Under Senate rules, this means a simple majority is needed and a budget can’t be filibustered and held to the 60-vote super majority threshold normally needed to end debate.
As a result, it would allow the GOP to claim that both chambers of Congress had supported the repeal of Obamacare and depict the White House as the only remaining obstacle to finally getting rid of the Affordable Care Act.
On Wednesday morning, Senate Majority Mitch McConnell offered his preview of the Senate budget. In a statement, the Kentucky Republican said the Senate budget “controls spending, reduces the deficit, and improves programs like Medicaid. It’s a budget that will support economic growth and more opportunity for hardworking families while protecting our most vulnerable. And it is a budget that would allow us to repeal and replace a program that hurts the middle class — Obamacare.”
Democrats declared the Senate budget dead on arrival. In a statement, Pennsylvania senator Bob Casey attacked the GOP’s plan as “equally as extreme as the one released by the House, and which doubles down on policies that will undercut the middle class and impede growth”.
These proposed congressional budgets come several weeks after the White House proposed its own budget in late February.
Like the GOP’s proposed budgets, the Obama administration’s $4tn proposal is very unlikely to become law.
