WASHINGTON
— The Senate took a significant step toward rewriting the tax code on
Thursday night with the passage of a budget blueprint that would protect
a $1.5 trillion tax cut from a Democratic filibuster.
The
budget resolution could also pave the way for opening up the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil exploration by ensuring that
drilling legislation can pass with only Republican votes.
Despite
having full control of the government, Republicans have so far been
unable to produce a marquee legislative achievement in the first year of
President Trump’s tenure, putting even more pressure on lawmakers to
succeed in passing a tax bill. The budget’s passage could keep
Republicans on track to approve a tax package late this year or early in
2018.
As
early as next week, the House plans to take up the budget blueprint
that the Senate approved on Thursday by a 51 to 49 vote. Doing so would
allow for the tax overhaul to move ahead quickly.
Speaker
Paul D. Ryan will need most House Republicans to back the blueprint
without changes; in the Senate, Rand Paul of Kentucky was the lone
Republican to vote against the measure on Thursday, in protest of what
he deemed excessive spending. If House Republicans were to insist on
negotiating a compromise that melds the Senate and House budget plans,
tax legislation could be delayed.
The Senate approved the budget after a so-called vote-a-rama,
a legislative whirlwind in which amendments are considered one after
another. One proposal would have deleted language that could allow for
drilling legislation; the amendment failed, 48 to 52.
“The
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is one of the most pristine areas of
the United States, and we have been protecting it for decades for a
reason,” said Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington, the top Democrat on
the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
But
Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska and the chairwoman of the
energy panel, said erasing the language would “deprive us of a
substantial opportunity to benefit our country at the same time that we
care for our environment.”
In
Congress, the annual budget resolution provides an outline of federal
spending and revenues. The Senate’s blueprint, for the 2018 fiscal year
that began Oct. 1, claims to achieve a balanced budget within a decade,
assuming greater economic growth and using an accounting method that
excludes Social Security. In order to erase projected deficits, it calls
for trillions of dollars in spending cuts over the coming decade.
But the cuts exist only on paper, without legislation to achieve them.
Even
so, Democrats sounded the alarm, warning that the aspirational cuts in
the budget plan called for slicing more than $1 trillion from Medicaid
and about $470 billion from Medicare over a decade.
They
also lamented the approach that Republicans are taking on taxes, which
mirrors the strategy that they employed in their failed effort to repeal
the Affordable Care Act. On that matter, Republicans successfully laid
the groundwork for a repeal measure that could pass without any
Democratic votes, but party leaders could not ultimately get 50
Republican senators to agree on a health bill.
Though
Democrats have pleaded to have more say in the tax overhaul,
parliamentary language in the budget resolution would allow Republicans
to pass a tax bill without any cooperation from the minority party. The
tax measure could add as much as $1.5 trillion to budget deficits over a
decade.
“Passing
this budget is not a requirement for passing tax reform,” said Senator
Gary Peters, Democrat of Michigan. “Passing this budget is only a
requirement to pass a tax bill with as few votes as possible, without
input or buy-in from members of the minority.”
For
Republicans, the budget debate provided a moment to showcase their main
goal in the coming months: Approving an overhaul of the tax code for
the first time in decades, which they hope will lead to greater economic
growth.
The House approved its budget resolution, which had long been stalled, on Oct. 5.
The House budget also lays the groundwork for a tax bill, but, unlike
the Senate’s approach, it calls for the legislation to not add to the
deficit.
The
House budget resolution also seeks more concrete action when it comes
to cutting spending, instructing committees to come up with legislation
that would produce at least about $200 billion in savings.
The
chairwoman of the House Budget Committee, Representative Diane Black,
Republican of Tennessee, had seemed reluctant to jettison that piece of
the blueprint. “What part of ‘cut spending’ does @SenateGOP not
understand?” she wrote on Twitter last week. But Senate Republicans have shown no appetite to make spending cuts in tandem with the tax overhaul.
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