Senate Republicans are on track to adopt their budget resolution in the early hours of Friday morning — a bid to show support for a “Plan B” if House GOP lawmakers can’t unite around their more expansive vision for a party-line package necessary to enact President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda.
Senators had voted on more than 10 amendments to their budget resolution before midnight, with plans to continue their “vote-a-rama” into the night. Democrats are using the marathon amendment process to score political points, hoping it will pay dividends in 2026.
“Families lose, billionaires win. That is the proposition at the heart of the Republican budget resolution,” the Senate Budget Committee’s top Democrat, Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, said on the floor. “We will see tonight that Democrats vote against irreparable increases in the deficit, and Republicans vote to explode the deficit.”
Democrats have so far used the amendment free-for-all to repeatedly force their GOP colleagues to go on the record against protecting Medicare and Medicaid. They also offered amendments on stopping hedge funds from buying single-family homes, supporting wildland firefighters and rehiring federal workers who have been fired in the first weeks of the Trump administration.
Senate Democrats will be able to hone their attacks on Republicans’ party-line ambitions later, when GOP leaders in the chamber craft the actual reconciliation bill to deliver on Trump’s biggest policy priorities. The budget resolution, just 62-pages long, merely lays out the framework for the final product, which would allow for $150 billion in new defense spending and up to $175 billion in new spending on border security, plus require billions of dollars in savings from education, labor, energy and agriculture programs.
“One can predict where they’re going based on the numbers that they’re providing. Sure does look like Medicaid cuts in what they’re pushing for, and not small Medicaid cuts either. Huge Medicaid cuts,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said in a brief interview.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer offered an amendment to block Republicans from enacting tax cuts if the GOP cuts even $1 from Medicaid. At one point, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) attempted to give Republicans some cover, putting forward his own amendment that would establish a deficit-neutral reserve fund relating to protecting Medicare and Medicaid. A Senate Democratic leadership aide was quick to counter, in a memo to reporters, that the proposal would in effect raise the age of Medicare eligibility and “carve out populations Republicans deem worthy and cut benefits for everyone else.”
Democrats also characterized the Senate Republican budget as a plot to bankroll tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, and even their GOP counterparts wanted to talk about taxes. But the plan doesn’t set up tax cuts, with Senate Republicans arguing that should be tackled later in the year in separate legislation.
“While we aren’t considering tax policy as part of this reconciliation package, it’s important to set the record straight at what’s at stake in the upcoming tax debate,” Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) said.
In some cases, Democrats were successful in getting Republicans to take the bait — to a point. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), for instance, backed Democrats in their attempts to allow floor votes on two amendments seeking to bar tax cuts for the wealthy in a final bill. Collins is a key target for Democrats in 2026, when she faces reelection.
While the budget measure GOP senators are working to adopt would lay the groundwork for a party-line package of energy policy, defense spending and border security investment, Trump is insistent on a more sweeping piece of legislation that also includes trillions of dollars in tax cuts. The House budget would lump all those priories together in what the president has called “one big, beautiful bill.”
Now the pressure is on House GOP leaders to show that they can rally enough support for that grander plan, which would require balancing the demands of fiscal conservatives with those of moderate Republicans unwilling to back deep cuts to safety net programs like Medicaid and SNAP food assistance.
Ultimately, Senate Republicans are bracing themselves for the distinct possibility they’ll have to do this all again in the not so distant future, if House Republicans are able to advance their own budget resolution next week that would achieve the more expansive bill Trump has explicitly endorsed.
But Republicans did have one diversion Thursday night: The intense USA v. Canada hockey game was playing on a television inside the GOP cloakroom.
