Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) says the House-passed budget resolution that is the key to unlocking President Trump’s agenda will need a “major overhaul” before passing the Senate.
Graham ticked off the problems with the House budget resolution before it narrowly passed the lower chamber Tuesday evening, 217-215.
“The tax cuts are not permanent, they don’t use current policy [budget baseline.] It would be a major overhaul,” Graham told reporters Tuesday afternoon.
The veteran South Carolina senator declined to comment further when asked about the topic Wednesday.
“Not right now,” he said when approached by reporters after meeting with Republican senators at the Capitol.
But other Republican senators echoed Graham’s view that the House-passed budget resolution needs to undergo major changes.
“We need to put the current policy baseline in and then we need to decide what, if any, additional tax policies need to be considered,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) said.
Asked if Senate Republicans would simply accept the House budget plan, Crapo responded: “Oh no.”
“I think everybody knows, now the work starts over here,” he said.
The House budget uses a “current law” budget baseline to score the cost of extending Trump’s signature Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which expires at the end of the year.
That approach has required House Republicans to come up with at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts to offset some of its projected budgetary impact.
Crapo wants to instead use a “current policy” baseline, which would not project an extension of existing tax policy as adding to the deficit.
“What we’re saying is we’re not going to raise taxes. So, is not raising taxes an increase in debt?” he said.
