On Wednesday, April 2, 2025, Senate Republicans unveiled their budget resolution, which serves as a framework for an eventual reconciliation bill. This is the first step in the budget reconciliation process, which allows Congress to enact legislation with a simple majority—instead of a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate—as long as it adheres to certain rules.
Many of the details will be filled out in the coming weeks and months, but the budget resolution text as well as public statements by members of Congress indicate that Senate Republicans want to dole out tax giveaways that would cost more than $5 trillion while cutting Medicaid and cutting food assistance—all while increasing the deficit by at least $3.8 trillion over 10 years. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), extending the expiring provisions of the Trump tax cuts would significantly increase debt and lower Americans’ wages while raising borrowing costs for U.S. households by increasing interest rates on car loans, credit cards, student loans, and mortgages.
Statements from Republican senators, as well as language in the budget resolution, indicate they plan to break the rules of the Senate to achieve passage.
Senate Republicans plan to invent their own cost estimates
The problem at hand is that Senate Republicans want to cut taxes by at least $5.3 trillion over the decade, but they want to pretend doing so costs only $1.5 trillion by abusing Section 312 of the Congressional Budget Act to have the Senate Budget Committee create its own cost estimate—sometimes reported as “Graham’s discretion,” in reference to Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Doing so would break multiple Senate rules.
There are a number of different paths Senate Republicans could take to break their rules, but all rely on the Senate Budget Committee inventing its own cost estimates to assert the $5.3 trillion in tax cuts only cost $1.5 trillion, rather than the normal procedure of using official scores from the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT). This would allow the majority to avoid two different provisions of the Byrd rule for reconciliation: 1) the prohibition on deficit increases beyond the 10-year budget window and 2) the prohibition on committees from violating their reconciliation directives.
Fabricating cost estimates has, notably, never been used to adjudicate violations of the Byrd rule prohibitions on not complying with committee instructions or on creating long-term deficits. Whether the budget committee has that power is a question for the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, who has previously expressed skepticism that the committee should be able to invent its own scores to avoid those provisions of the Byrd rule.
The Republican budget plan would increase deficits by trillions of dollars while taking away Medicaid and food assistance
Senate Republicans are seeking to permanently extend the expiring provisions of the tax cuts in the 2017 Trump tax law at a cost of $3.8 trillion over 10 years and many trillions more beyond the first 10 years, disproportionately aiding the wealthiest Americans. Senate rules prohibit incurring costs beyond the first 10 years with only 51 votes—as opposed to 60 votes. Rather than look for ways to pay for these extensions, however, Senate Republicans are looking to break their own rules.
Beyond extending the expiring provisions of the 2017 Trump tax cuts, Senate Republicans are also looking to enact other new tax cuts that would cost $1.5 trillion over 10 years and increase spending on defense and immigration enforcement by $342 billion over that same period. House Republicans have signaled their intent to cut $880 billion in Medicaid and $230 billion in food assistance for low-income households over 10 years. While Senate Republicans have been deliberately vague about their plans, they have signaled intent to fully offset this new $1.8 trillion in costs.
Even if they are able to fully offset the new costs, the reconciliation package overall would increase deficits by $3.8 trillion over 10 years and much more in the years beyond the next decade. This would increase the ratio of debt to gross domestic product (GDP) by nearly 50 percentage points by 2054, pushing the ratio above 200 percent. (see Figure 1)
Inventing cost estimates invites further abuse
Congress should be able to increase deficits if it wants to, but it should do so according to established, agreed-upon rules in a transparent, rational, and consistent manner. By inventing its own cost estimates, the Senate Budget Committee is diametrically opposing that principle and making a nullity of budget enforcement rules.
This time around, the majority is creating its own cost estimates to pretend that it’s costless to extend expiring tax provisions—that $3.8 trillion in tax cuts are free. This concept is ripe for abuse. In the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, Congress temporarily enhanced unemployment insurance on a bipartisan basis. In the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, Democrats extended that enhanced unemployment insurance, though at a lower rate. Should that have been free to extend? Should it be considered deficit reduction because it was extended at a lower rate? If Congress were to enact one month of Medicare for All, could it later assert that extending it in perpetuity is free?
Of course, inventing cost estimates on the spot allows for much more abuse than pretending that continuing temporary provisions should be thought of as free. It could be used to assert that any legislation the majority supports is free—or even reduces the deficit. It could be used to speciously say repealing the estate tax raises $17 quintillion or that funding universal preschool reduces outlays by $73 quadrillion. In other words, it could be used to say that every provision the majority likes saves money and every provision the majority dislikes costs money and has a point of order against it.
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Abandoning scoring is functionally identical to eliminating the filibuster
Those examples are limited to inventing numbers, but what the Senate majority is purportedly contemplating conceptually goes far beyond cost estimates. Some senators have said they intend to have the presiding officer of the Senate allow the budget committee to fabricate numbers without the Senate parliamentarian ruling on whether Senate rules allow that. In other words, the presiding officer would determine the Senate rules on the spot. This could be challenged by the minority party, but it takes 51 votes to successfully appeal the ruling of the chair, meaning that a willing majority can uphold the ruling of the chair, breaking and inventing new rules on the spot if it wants to.
Senate procedure allows the presiding officer to ignore Senate rules, and it allows a simple majority to appeal any decision. But while doing so would follow Senate procedure, it would still break the plain text of Senate rules that are in writing. And while Chairman Graham claims the Congressional Budget Act gives him the power to invent his own cost estimates, no amount of hand-waving can make trillions of dollars of tax cuts disappear. Yet the majority has signaled it will do so to avoid the rules of reconciliation written into statute.
The majority is creating its own cost estimates to pretend that it’s costless to extend expiring tax provisions—that $3.8 trillion in tax cuts are free.
Going down this road is functionally identical to eliminating the filibuster. Not only could the tactic be used to circumvent the numerical limitations in reconciliation; it could be used to circumvent prohibitions on cutting Social Security in reconciliation or to circumvent prohibitions in reconciliation on nonbudgetary provisions and provisions whose budgetary impacts are merely incidental to the underlying policy. In other words, it means that anything could be done in reconciliation, and therefore, anything could be done with a simple majority.
In this instance, the policy Senate Republicans are pushing for is something that would cut taxes disproportionately for the wealthiest Americans while taking away Medicaid and food assistance and adding $3.8 trillion in deficits over 10 years—and much more in the years beyond that.
The authors would like to thank Emily Gee, Lily Roberts, Madeline Shepherd, Colin Seeberger, and Shannon Baker-Branstetter of the Center for American Progress for their thoughtful comments.