(Bloomberg) -- House and Senate Republicans agreed on a unified budget plan Wednesday that would allow them to bypass Democrats and send President Barack Obama legislation to revise -- though not repeal -- his landmark health-care law.
The budget proposal, a non-binding document to be voted on in both chambers, is intended to reach balance in nine years. It spells out the Republican Party’s priorities by calling for more than $5 trillion in spending cuts and no net tax increases.
It raises defense spending in 2016 by boosting a war-funds account far above Obama’s request, a move some Democrats have called a gimmick.
“People might say this isn’t real,” Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama said this week, “but it does require you to lay out how you are going to manage the people’s money if you were given the power to do so.”
The measure would give Republicans a vehicle to go after Obama’s 2010 Affordable Care Act, which his administration said has extended coverage to 16.4 million previously uninsured Americans.
The U.S. Supreme Court plans to rule by the end of June on a lawsuit that could throw out most of the tax credits that are an underpinning of the law. If the justices do so in King v. Burwell, the entire law might crumble.
In that case, the budget agreement would let Republicans use a process called reconciliation to send revisions in Obamacare to the president without needing votes from Democrats.
Changing Obamacare
“I like that it created a situation in reconciliation, so depending on how King v. Burwell goes you can make some changes in Obamacare,” said Senator Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican.
The deal came together after Senator Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, said Wednesday he was dropping his opposition. He had contended that a spending-cut provision didn’t go far enough.
“There is no question this budget is far from perfect, but it is some progress,” Corker said in a statement. A day earlier he told reporters he was withholding support, which was needed to release the plan.
Both chambers adopted their own versions of the budget plan last month and conferees worked out the differences.
The unified budget, S.Con.Res. 11, endorses using $96 billion in emergency war funds to evade a limit on defense spending, while keeping in place caps on domestic programs. Later this week, the House plans to pass its first set of 2016 spending bills based on this plan.
Non-Defense Limits
Obama has said he wants a deal that raises both defense and non-defense limits.
A budget document is typically little more than an aspirational framework for spending. The most recent unified budget plan was enacted for fiscal 2010 when Democrats controlled both chambers.
The appropriations bills due at the Oct. 1 start of each fiscal year set the actual spending details for agencies and government functions.
This budget resolution is taking on larger ramifications because of the ability to use reconciliation procedures to keep Democrats from using the filibuster to block policy changes.
“This is a budget that’s disconnected from reality and it’s not a budget they intend to implement,” said Ed Lorenzen, a former budget aide for House Democrats.
“They’ll have the one bullet they have and fire it in the air to repeal Obamacare, then not do anything to actually move towards a balanced budget,” Lorenzen said. He is now a senior adviser at the nonprofit Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
House Version
The House version of the budget, adopted in March, contained more expansive reconciliation instructions that could have been used for an array of spending cuts, tax-law changes or revisions in entitlement programs such as Medicare.
The Senate’s plan, also adopted in March, avoided the House’s proposal to partially privatize Medicare. Senate Republicans, who are defending 24 seats in the 2016 election, succeeded in removing partial privatization of Medicare from the unified budget.
© Copyright 2025 Bloomberg News. All rights reserved.