Republican members of the Senate Budget Committee from left, Sens. Mike Crapo, Lindsey Graham, Pat Toomey, Ron Johnson, Bob Corker and David Perdue are pictured. Still, Republicans are far from sending tax legislation to President Donald Trump’s desk. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo Senate passes budget, clearing path for tax reform What matters, GOP critics say, are the few lines in the budget that direct tax-writers to start their work.

Senate Republicans on Thursday passed a budget measure that will unlock the route to a sweeping tax overhaul, giving the GOP a sorely needed victory after other pieces of their legislative agenda collapsed earlier this year.

After a significantly shortened vote-a-rama, the Senate passed the fiscal 2018 budget on a 51-49 vote. All Democrats opposed the measure, as did Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who had telegraphed his position for days.


The budget resolution does include a decade of proposed spending cuts and entitlement overhauls. But it’s largely seen as a shortcut to reforming the tax code, which Republicans have deemed a must-do after falling short on their attempts to repeal Obamacare.

“It clears the way for committees to continue their critical work to spur steady economic growth while providing legislative tools to advance tax reform,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said earlier Thursday. He called a tax overhaul “the single most important action we can take today to help our economy reach its full potential.”

Republicans are eager to speed up the timeline on tax reform, which the White House has indicated they would like signed into law by the end of the year. Key House and Senate lawmakers privately hammered out a compromise Thursday that would likely eliminate the need for a conference committee — buying Republicans at least a week to do more tax work.

One key change allows for higher defense spending without offsets, a way to win over House defense hawks, according to amendment text obtained by POLITICO. Under the amendment, the Pentagon's fiscal 2018 budget could be increased to $640 billion — without offsets — if lawmakers reach a deal to raise the current spending caps.

The Senate's milestone vote on a budget resolution unseals a powerful procedural tool that Republicans aim to use for once-in-a-generation tax reform. Under that process, known as reconciliation, the GOP tax bill could pass without a single Democratic vote.

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Still, Republicans are far from sending tax legislation to President Donald Trump’s desk. Neither chamber has produced a bill, although Speaker Paul Ryan is eyeing an ambitious “early November” vote in the House. And preliminary discussions have shown deep divisions within the GOP over specific provisions — such as eliminating the state and local tax deduction that has drawn the ire of blue-state Republican lawmakers.

Early Friday morning, Trump tweeted his praise of the Senate's vote, writing, "Great news on the 2018 budget @SenateMajLdr McConnell - first step toward delivering MASSIVE tax cuts for the American people!"

He followed-up several hours later with tweets highlighting the absence of Democratic support: "The Budget passed late last night, 51 to 49. We got ZERO Democrat votes with only Rand Paul (he will vote for Tax Cuts) voting against. This now allows for the passage of large scale Tax Cuts (and Reform), which will be the biggest in the history of our country!

But amid wrath from voters and donors about lack of progress on the party’s agenda, Republicans have warned that the party has to pull off tax reform or risk their majorities in Congress next November.

"This is the biggest hoax hatched upon the American people ever, that this budget process even exists," Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), a member of the Budget Committee told reporters Thursday. "The only thing about this that matters is preparation for tax reform."

The strenuous Senate ritual known as a vote-a-rama is largely used to push political votes and senators could take dozens, if not hundreds, of roll calls on the most quarrelsome political issues of the day.

But Democrats signaled earlier this week that they weren’t eager to stretch out the floor fight for Republicans to take a slew of painful amendment votes. Nearly 400 amendments were submitted as of Thursday afternoon, though a small fraction ultimately made it to the Senate floor.

In a victory lap on the Senate floor after the vote, Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi said the process marked “the least amount of votes in vote-a-rama that I think we’ve ever had,” said the Wyoming Republican.

As the last tranche of votes were teed up, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) urged all senators to stay in their seats to vote quickly “without going through the ridiculous vote-a-rama that we have done in previous years.”

During the voting session that ran just under six hours, lawmakers rejected amendments from Paul and Mike Lee (R-Utah) that aimed to repeal Obamacare, as well as another amendment offered by Paul that would slash discretionary spending by $43 billion, in a 5-95 vote.

But Democrats mostly tried to put their GOP counterparts in the corner on tough political issues like plans for deficit-busting tax cuts or proposed tax breaks for wealthy Americans, or cuts in Medicare and Medicaid.

For instance, senators rejected, on a 47-51 vote, an attempt from Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) to block Republicans from adding to the deficit to pay for their tax reform plan, and an amendment from Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) to require a Congressional Budget Office score before voting on legislation. Few of the Democratic amendments attracted GOP defectors.



It will be the second budget resolution approved by the Senate this calendar year — an unprecedented move in recent congressional history. The GOP attempted the same budget maneuver in its unsuccessful attempt to repeal Obamacare with just Republican votes earlier this year.

Under the emerging plan that would avoid a House-Senate budget conference, House conservatives would have to swallow the Senate’s plan to grow the deficit. The House would also forfeit its calls for $203 billion in mandatory spending cuts, something McConnell has long ruled out. The Senate’s version proposes just $1 billion in new revenue.

Senate Republicans plan to bring in that additional $1 billion by opening up oil drilling in arctic wildlife reserves — against using the budget process to steamroll Democratic opponents.

The path to a compromise earlier looked contentious. The House’s budget writers, led by fiscal hawk Rep. Diane Black of Tennessee, drew out a legislative map that would require any tax bill to be deficit-neutral and to be coupled with billions in mandatory cuts.

Members of the Senate budget panel, by contrast, have given themselves much more flexibility. The Senate’s budget allows the GOP’s tax plan to add up to $1.5 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, which proponents say will allow for more aggressive tax cuts.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) has said he will not ultimately vote for a tax measure that adds to the deficit. Republicans control just 52 votes in the Senate — giving the GOP little breathing room to secure the simple majority needed to pass legislation using reconciliation, although the administration is courting moderate Democrats such as Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Joe Donnelly of Indiana.

Brian Faler and Kaitlyn Burton contributed to this report.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report mischaracterized how many Democratic amendments attracted GOP defectors. Few of the Democratic amendments attracted GOP defectors.