Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) faces a number of divisions among Senate Republicans that could derail the Senate budget resolution, a measure that will be critical to passing President Trump’s legislative agenda later this year.   Key points of contention include how to ca lculate the cost of extending Trump’s tax cuts, Medicaid cuts, defense spending and increasing the debt ceiling. Republican Senate leaders intend to adopt a controversial current-policy baseline that would enable them to claim that extending the 2017 tax cuts won’t add to the deficit and open the door to making a signature Trump first-term accomplishment permanent. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) says he’ll go along with the current-policy baseline, but if it's used he wants the cost of extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which expires at the end of this year, “paid for” with either spending cuts or other revenue-generating measures. “You can use it, I just want it paid for it," he said of the current-policy baseline. "We’ve got an incredible problem with our national debt.” But paying for an extension of the tax cuts with big spending cuts or other deficit-reducing strategies would appear to defeat the purpose of using the current-policy baseline in the first place, which is to make it easier for Republicans to permanently extend the expiring tax cuts without needing to include offsets within the bill. Asked whether his call to pay for the tax cuts was flying in the face of the Senate GOP strategy, Cassidy replied: “No, we’re actually talking about different ways to pay for it. Much more aggressive.” A second Republican senator who requested anonymity voiced strong concerns about the plan to use the current-policy baseline to score the cost of a future budget reconciliation bill. Doing so would treat an extension of the 2017 tax cuts as an extension of the status quo that would not add to the deficit — at least according to the official cost projections of the Congressional Budget Committee and Joint Committee on Taxation. “At the moment, there’s a lot of concern about the issue of the parliamentarian and the score,” the GOP lawmaker said. “I think it would be terrible mistake to overrule [the parliamentarian] and do the nuclear option.” The budget resolution, which Senate Republicans unveiled Wednesday, includes language giving Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) the authority to set the budgetary baseline for a future reconciliation bill. Graham has said he plans to use a current-policy baseline. But Democrats are accusing Republicans of planning to break Senate rules and precedents. They argue that a “current-law” baseline has always been used to score the cost of legislation passed under budget reconciliation. Under current law, much of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is due to expire at the end of this year. Extending those tax cuts for nearly another decade would add an estimated $4.6 trillion to the federal deficit, according to a score based on a current-law baseline. Thune met with several Republican senators who had concerns about proceeding with the budget resolution Thursday. Those with qualms about elements of the budget resolution still voted to proceed to the bill, which will be subject to dozens of amendment votes before it’s expected to receive a final vote this weekend. The size of potential cuts to Medicaid is another major point of friction within the Senate GOP conference. Several Republican senators have stated clearly that they won’t support big cuts to Medicaid, which provide health care and nursing to hundreds of thousands of their constituents. While they are open to rooting out fraud in the system and adding new work requirements to the program, they are ruling out any cuts that would affect benefits. “I'm concerned about the instruction to the House Committee for $880 billion, it's the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House, which has jurisdiction over Medicaid, because I don't see how you can get to that amount without cutting Medicaid benefits,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told reporters. The Senate budget resolution includes language drafted by House Republicans instructing the House Energy and Commerce Committee to reduce the deficit by $880 billion, a target that policy experts say can’t be met without cutting deeply into Medicaid. “In my state, there are more than 400,000 Mainers that rely on that health care program. Our rural hospitals depend upon it as well, and they are really struggling because of actions and inactions by the state Legislature. So the last thing I want to do is cut Medicaid for vulnerable people who are disabled or seniors who cannot work,” she said. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) warned that cuts to Medicaid would threaten the financial viability of rural hospitals in Kansas. “I want to make certain that my colleagues know my view the value of making certain we do no harm to those in desperate need of health care in Kansas and across the country,” Moran said on the Senate floor. While he acknowledged that Congress should reform flaws in the system, he argued that the benefits from the program are critical to the survival of rural hospitals. “Our ability to maintain those hospitals and keep their doors open is a major priority for me,” he said, noting that rural hospitals in Kansas receive 9 percent of their revenue from Medicaid. Republican senators also have different ideas about how much the budget should call for increasing defense spending. The Senate Republican budget resolution instructs the Senate Armed Services Committee to increase defense spending by $150 billion. That spending target isn’t as high as what Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) called for last month. He wanted a defense spending increase “north of" $175 billion in the reconciliation package. Wicker told The Hill that he’s willing to go along with the $150 billion target for the sake of compromise. “It’s not enough, but it’s a big step. We have to make compromises,” he said. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a leading fiscal hawk, has pressed his Senate Republican colleagues to trim spending across the board, including defense spending. House Republican leaders called for a defense spending increase of only $100 billion in the House-passed budget resolution. The Senate measure retains the House-passed instruction to the House Armed Services Committee to increase defense spending by the lower amount, setting up a negotiation between the two chambers later this year. And Republicans senators disagree about how to handle the Senate budget resolution’s proposal to raise the debt limit by $5 trillion. Paul has said he will not vote to raise the debt limit by such a large amount. He has instead proposed raising the debt limit by only $500 billion, which would put pressure on Congress to immediately enact big spending cuts to avoid a default later this year. “We need Congress to uphold its promises to rein in spending. Call your congresspeople to say NO to $5T in new debt!” he posted on social platform X. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has warned that he will not vote to raise the debt limit later this year unless he receives assurances from Republican leaders to help the victims of radiation exposure in Missouri. He wants Congress to reauthorize and expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which expired last year. The Senate budget resolution is written broadly enough to secure 51 Republican votes. GOP senators voted 52-48 Thursday to proceed to the measure. Paul was the only Republican to vote “no.” But the challenge for Thune over the next 24 hours will be to keep his conference unified enough to defeat amendments that would create new divisions with the House. If Republican senators vote with Democrats to pass an amendment walling off Medicaid or other mandatory spending programs from significant cuts, it could set up a serious conflict with House Republicans. Thune told reporters at the start of the week that his top goal is to find 51 votes to pass a budget resolution and indicated that he’s not taking it for granted as a slam dunk. He said he wanted to make sure his Republican colleagues were in a “comfortable place” before moving forward with the budget. “The Senate is going to do what we can get 51 votes for here in the Senate,” he told reporters last week. He said that “hopefully” it would also get 218 votes in the House. He advised that the Senate was going to work its own will on the budget resolution, which means giving Republican senators a chance to shape the legislation, despite pressure from House GOP leaders for the Senate to simply adopt its version. “At some point the House is going to need us. If we’re going to win, we got to play on both sides of the ball,” he said. ...read more read less