February 13, 2025
Politicians talk a lot. But I always say – you need to really be paying attention to what they do. And the republicans in the House and Senate are now actually doing a lot fulfill President Trump’s big campaign promises. And the plan – right now – is to do it without democrats.
So – first – the facts are this. The House Republican conference released what’s called the budget resolution. The Senate also released a budget resolution. The budget resolution is basically a blueprint, a guide – a document that outlines the financial goals and policies that the House and Senate want to accomplish. In this case – let’s not mince words – these are trump’s policies and goals. So what do the house republicans want to see? According to their newly released budget resolution — trillions of dollars in spending cuts all kinds of programs you may use and departments you may rely on, $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and an increase of $4 trillion to the debt ceiling. I’ll break all that down for you in a second – but first you need to understand that the budget resolution is really the first step in the process. Once the House and Senate pass the same budget resolution, then each body crafts spending bills – that ultimately become the law. Those spending bills meet the goals outlined the budget resolution….reconciling the blue print with how they’re going make it happen. That is called the reconciliation process.
Here’s the thing about reconciliation. While there is a limit to the types of provisions that can be passed through reconciliation – once it clears that hurdle – the bill does not require 60 votes in the Senate. It just requires a simple majority – which becomes increasingly more appealing to Senate Republicans because they have 53 members. So they could easily pass their agenda with only republican votes and could even spare two republican votes. Look – the 119th congress is not the first one to use the reconciliation process to pass controversial or single-party legislation. Democrats used reconciliation to pass some parts of President Obama’s affordable care act and republicans used reconciliation to pass Trump’s tax cuts back in 2017. This is not unusual. But that doesn’t make it any less controversial.
Ok – one other thing I want to make clear before I tell you exactly what house republicans are proposing…there is a huge discrepancy between what house republicans want to do and what senate republicans want to do. The House Republicans are on this track to ultimately pass this massive reconciliation bill, that includes the kitchen sink and the Senate wants to instead split their priorities into two bills. The Senate budget resolution focuses on border security, energy policy and defense and leaves the tax cut and debt ceiling provisions for another time. Now – having one bill or two is going to be a major hurdle to getting anything done and that is something house and senate republicans are going to have to work out on their own. And I say that because they are absolutely doing this on their own. They are not negotiating with democrats at all – and that’s because Republicans control both the house and the senate. So technically they don’t have to. But the flip side to that is — they’re going to have to probably pass this on their own and getting all House and Senate Republicans to agree to the same thing is not going to be easy.
Ok – here is the house budget resolution. It outlines five general goals: (1) reduce federal spending; (2) expand American energy production; (3) lower taxes that discourage work, savings, and investment; (4) deregulate the economy and enact reforms to diminish bureaucratic red tape; and (5) eliminate barriers to work so more Americans enter (or reenter) the job market. It would allow the debt ceiling to be increased by $4 trillion–if you don’t know what that’s about – I have lots of videos to help you understand the debt ceiling. But the fact is increasing the debt ceiling does not authorize new spending – it just allows the treasury department to pay the bills that congress racked up.
The budget resolution lists each of the house committees and says how much that committee needs to either reduce or incase the budget for the departments they oversee. Let’s start with the committees that get to increase the budget of their respective departments…
- The armed services committee which oversees the department of defense, so the pentagon, all the military departments and the intelligence agencies…house republicans say that budget can increase $100 billion over the next 10 years.
- The homeland security committee which obviously oversees the department of homeland security which includes border security can increase their budget by $90 billion over the next 10 years.
- The judiciary committee which oversees, the department of justice, it’s enforcement actions and its legal cases can increase their budget by $110 billion over the next 10 years
- And here’s the big one – the house ways and means committee can increase the budget by $4.5 trillion over the next 1o years. That is to account for the tax cuts that president Trump campaigned on and republicans are trying to pass. Things like no tax on tips, no tax on social security, lowering the tax rate for big corporations and extending trump’s tax cuts from 2017 that are set to expire this year…those things cost money. So $4.5-trillion is what republicans are allocating for – it could end up being more or less.
Ok – so you’re probably like – what’s all this spending? I thought republicans were all about cutting the spending. I’m getting to it. We don’t have specifics of how exactly they want to achieve the numbers I’m about to share with you, but they have to cut something to offset the cost those huge tax cuts. The current goal under this budget resolution is to cut between one-and-a-half and two-trillion dollars in spending over the next 10 years. Here’s what they’re proposing.
- The big one– the energy an commerce committee must find $880 billion to cut out of its budget. This committee oversees Medicaid. And that’s probably where a lot of these cuts could come from. This committee also oversees consumer protection agencies, commerce, business, food and drug safety, air quality, environmental issues.
- The agriculture committee which obviously oversees agriculture, but also forestry, nutrition departments and water conservation must find $230 billion dollars to cut
- The oversight committee has to find $50 billion dollars in cuts.
- The transportation and infrastructure committee has to find 10 billion in budget cuts and then financial services committee and natural resources committee each have to find $1 billion in cuts over the next 10 years.
Now – this could all change. All these numbers could be different in the end but the priorities are very clear and those are probably not going to change. We’ll get more details on exactly how republicans in the House and the Senate plan to make these cuts and what exact programs we’re talking about cutting as the days go on. But this is happening now and it’s moving fast.
Read the House GOP budget resolution here.
Read the Senate GOP budget resolution here.
