House Republicans spent weeks in painstaking negotiations before delivering a budget blueprint for \u201cone big, beautiful bill.\u201d Now Senate Republicans are preparing to tear it apart.<\/p>\n

Despite a razor-thin 217-215 House vote Tuesday, GOP senators indicated Wednesday they would not accept Speaker Mike Johnson<\/a>\u2019s fiscal framework<\/a> as-is \u2014 heralding a rough road for President Donald Trump\u2019s legislative agenda on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say they want to start from scratch: Most Senate Republicans said Wednesday that they were prepared to switch to the House\u2019s one-bill approach after spending more than two months pushing a competing two-bill plan. But they want major, contentious changes to policy choices embedded in the House plan.<\/p>\n

Senate Majority Leader John Thune<\/a> called the House-approved product \u201ca first step in what will be a long process, and certainly not an easy one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senate Republicans are expected to discuss next steps during an already scheduled closed-door lunch with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles on Wednesday. Then Thune, Johnson and the heads of Congress\u2019s tax writing committees will head to the White House to discuss Trump\u2019s tax agenda.<\/p>\n

At a lunch earlier this week, Senate Republicans agreed there is still a lot of negotiating to do with their House counterparts on the Trump domestic policy agenda, which touches defense, energy, border security and an overhaul of the tax code. That includes further changes to the budget resolution, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t fit the president\u2019s plan in its current form, so we would have to make some changes,\u201d said Sen. Mike Rounds <\/a>(R-S.D.).<\/p>\n

Senate Republicans, who approved their own budget plan earlier this month, haven\u2019t yet decided if they will ask for a formal conference committee with their House colleagues or do an informal negotiation between the two chambers and the Trump administration, to try and come up with a compromise. Thune, in a brief interview, said that he was keeping \u201call the options available to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Immediately after the House approved its plan Tuesday, Thune called for any Republican tax bill to include a permanent extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. That was an implicit criticism of the House budget blueprint, which allows for $4.5 trillion in net tax cuts \u2014 which tax writers in both chambers say won\u2019t be enough to allow for TCJA permanency along with Trump\u2019s other tax priorities<\/p>\n

\u201cI know my Senate colleagues are committed to, as is the president, permanence in the tax situation. And we don\u2019t have yet in the House bill so we\u2019re going to work together in a cooperative way,\u201d said Sen. John Barrasso<\/a> (R-Wyo.), the No. 2 Senate Republican.<\/p>\n

Montana Sen. Steve Daines<\/a>, who led a Feb. 13 letter calling on Trump to make the tax cuts permanent, noted that he and Finance Chair Mike Crapo<\/a> (R-Idaho) met with Trump on Monday to urge him to make the expiring tax cuts permanent.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had Howard Lutnick, Scott Bessent on the phone strongly supporting permanence; Kevin Hassett strongly supports permanence,\u201d Daines said, referring respectively to the Commerce secretary, Treasury secretary and National Economic Council director. \u201cThe Senate\u2019s behind permanence. I think many in the House leadership will support permanence, as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just the tax extensions that get scrutiny from Senate Republicans. The House framework also includes a provision calling for a minimum of $880 billion in cuts from the committee overseeing some health care programs. Critics argue that it paves the way for deep cuts into Medicaid and other social programs \u2014 something some GOP senators strongly oppose.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere might be a lot of things\u201d we change.\u201cThere are going to be a lot of concerns over the Medicaid cuts,\u201d said Sen. Josh Hawley<\/a> (R-Mo.). \u201cI realize it\u2019s just a broad instruction to that committee, but I think there will be concerns about that and what that may lead to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some GOP senators last week helped reject a budget amendment from Sen. Rand Paul <\/a>(R-Ky.) that would have included a floor of $1.5 trillion in spending cuts \u2014 same as the House budget \u2014 hinting at the looming fight ahead between the two chambers.<\/p>\n

Hawley said he expected Republicans to support work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries but reject any cuts that would hit working Americans. Hawley added it was still to be determined how Senate Republicans address those concerns, but he suggested guardrails could be written into the final budget plan guaranteeing that spending cuts would be \u201cnot to include the following.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others, however, want even deeper cuts to spending. Sen. Ron Johnson<\/a> (R-Wis.) said the reductions set out in the House budget are \u201cjust not adequate.\u201d He said he wants to bring federal spending levels down to where it was before the 2020 Covid pandemic.<\/p>\n

Senate Republicans also aren\u2019t committing to keeping the House\u2019s planned $4 trillion debt ceiling hike. Some Senate conservatives have warned they won\u2019t support a budget resolution that includes a debt-limit hike, though most of the House\u2019s hard-liners ultimately accepted it.<\/p>\n

\u201cAcquiescing to a $4 trillion increase in the debt ceiling is for me a non-starter,\u201d said Paul, who voted against the Senate GOP budget adopted earlier this month. \u201cIt basically acknowledges that this year the government\u2019s going to be $2 trillion short.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, Senate GOP leaders are still discussing instead tying a debt ceiling increase to the government funding talks now underway \u2014 which would require Democrats to help support it. Raising the debt ceiling outside of reconciliation would also allow Congress to temporarily suspend the borrowing limit rather than engaging in the politically risky act of voting on a specific number.<\/p>\n

Ben Leonard contributed to this report<\/i>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"