Senate Republicans decided to leapfrog the House and get the budget ball rolling with their own plan to increase border security funding by $170 billion and military spending by $150 billion. Both spending targets would be spread out over 10 years.
The biggest problem is spreading the cash outlays out over a decade is that it doesn't matter if you still can't find the money.
“We’ve decided to front-end load security,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the chairman of the Budget Committee. “We want to make the tax cuts permanent. We’re going to work with our House colleagues to do that. They expire at the end of the year, but we have time to do that. It is the view of the Republican Senate that when it comes to border security, we need not fail. We should have the money now to keep that momentum going.”
So pass border security funding and an increase in military spending and leave things like renewing the tax cut and other intractable issues for later in the year.
How will we pay for the increases in funding? We'll figure it out, say Republicans. Eventually.
Graham thinks that at least some of the funds can come from an increase in domestic drilling. Otherwise, "we'll figure it out" is the best he's got for now.
“We’re going to make sure it’s paid for by taking money away from other parts of the government that are less worthy,” Graham said at a news conference this month. He added that he was directing four Senate committees to come up with “at least” $1 billion in cuts each that would help offset the cost of the bill in four years.
Finding "less worthy parts" of the government to cut may seem a simple task, but some Republicans have a different idea of what might be "less worthy" than Graham.
The president rejected the two-track approach that Graham outlined last week. But Senate Republicans say that their bill would give Trump a clean victory on an important issue: border security.
“President Trump’s actions are working — they are working so well that the Trump administration says it is running out of money for deportations,” said the number-two Republican in the Senate, John Barrasso of Wyoming, “Senate Republicans will act quickly to get the administration the resources they requested and need.”
The Senate bill is also a fallback strategy in case the House is unable to come together to pass Trump's "one, big, beautiful bill."
But their strategy is also a tacit acknowledgment of the treacherous path their party’s tax and spending package faces in the House. Senate leaders chose to plow ahead with their budget plan even after Mr. Trump endorsed the House’s one-big-bill approach on Wednesday, characterizing their measure as a fail-safe should the House falter.
“If the House can produce one big, beautiful bill, we’re prepared to work with them to get that across the finish line,” Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, said at a news conference on Wednesday. “But we believe that the president also likes optionality.”
The House’s budget plan lays out in greater detail where Republicans plan to find spending cuts. For example, the plan instructs the Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid, to come up with at least $880 billion in cuts — more than half of the reductions laid out in the budget outline.
The House will never come up with $2 trillion in "real" cuts. It will be done with smoke and mirrors as well as chewing gum and duct tape. They will cobble a pig in a poke together and call it a prom queen.
In short, Congress can't get there from here. They can't renew $4 trillion in tax cuts, eliminate taxes on tips and Social Security benefits, increase military spending and border security funding, and reduce our $2 trillion budget deficit to a manageable level. It's not going to happen.
DOGE is not going to save Republicans. Most of its "cuts" and "recisions" will have to be approved by Congress and may even be illegal in some cases.
This is not fiscally responsible. It's not even fiscally possible. The question I'm asking is: will we be any better off after the dust settles, the lawsuits are adjudicated, and Republicans face the reality that we're in a $2 trillion budget hole with no way to climb out of it?
