The move is a major concession for House Budget Chairman Diane Black, who pitched her own budget as the GOP's most conservative plan in 20 years. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images House to vote Thursday on Senate budget

The House is slated to vote Thursday to formally back the Senate’s budget resolution, fast-tracking the GOP’s effort to advance a tax overhaul with a simple majority in the Senate.

House Republicans are expected to easily clear the fiscal 2018 budget, despite the fact that the upper chamber's version is not as fiscally conservative as the plan the House advanced earlier this month.


With passage, Republicans would unlock the powerful legislative tool known as reconciliation, which replaces the Senate's 60-vote threshold with a simple majority in some circumstances.

The Rules Committee is scheduled to meet Tuesday to set parameters for considering the budget. If the House quickly wraps up other work, floor debate could begin as early as Wednesday, with a vote on final passage postponed until Thursday.

The House GOP conference tentatively agreed Sunday to take up the budget the Senate passed last week — rather than try to reconcile differences through a conference committee — to save several weeks of legislative work.

The move is a major concession for House Budget Chairman Diane Black, who pitched her own budget as the GOP's most conservative plan in 20 years.

To pay for a tax overhaul, the Senate budget would allow for the addition of up to $1.5 trillion to the federal deficit. In contrast, the House’s plan would require the tax reform bill to be deficit neutral and would force Congress to find more than $200 billion in savings from changes to mandatory programs like Social Security and Medicare — provisions considered a non-starter for Senate Republicans.

