Umair
Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, has made preserving the institution of the Senate his signature issue since Day 1. And in his inaugural speech as leader in January, he called the filibuster “the Senate rule that today has perhaps the greatest impact on preserving the founders’ vision of the U.S. Senate.”
But as he maneuvers to push through President Trump’s domestic agenda, including a huge tax cut, he is making an end run around the filibuster through procedural sleight of hand, alarming members of both parties. Concern about the move among Republicans slowed the start of a heated debate this week on the G.O.P. budget plan, and could present a serious impediment to passing the tax and spending cuts the president and congressional Republicans are seeking.
“The question that I have is, does this take us to a place where we have eroded that aspect of the rule that has really kept us upright?” Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said. She was one of a group of Senate Republicans who pressed their leaders on Thursday for a better explanation of what their budget approach meant for the filibuster they have vowed to defend.
At issue is the Republican use of a complex process known as budget reconciliation to try to deliver trillions of dollars in tax cuts later this year. The process has been used extensively by both parties when they control Congress and the White House. It is the only way to shield major legislation from a filibuster, which requires 60 votes to overcome, and allow it to move through the Senate on a simple majority vote.
But the exception is intended to be narrow. In exchange for filibuster protection, lawmakers must follow a rigorous set of budgetary rules meant to ensure that the legislation in question will not add to the deficit.
The Senate parliamentarian is in charge of interpreting and enforcing those rules, and ordering lawmakers to strip out any provisions that do not comply. But this year, Senate Republicans are saying they will rely on their own interpretation of the budget rules where it concerns their tax cut plans, sidestepping the parliamentarian altogether.
They are doing so in order to claim that extending tax cuts enacted in 2017 and set to expire at the end of this year, a move estimated to cost about $4 trillion over a decade, would actually cost nothing because the tax cuts are already in place.
“The reconciliation bill anticipated by this budget violates the rules,” said Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee. “So now Republicans want to get rid of those rules.”
Even some Republicans worry privately that the proposal is deceptive.
Top Republicans dismiss the complaints, saying they are acting well within the budgetary law. Mr. Thune also said he found it rich that Democrats, who moved unsuccessfully in 2022 to gut the filibuster when they controlled Congress and the White House, were now accusing Republicans of undermining it.
“Democrats’ sudden concern for saving money and protecting the character of the Senate is touching,” he said on Thursday. “Who would have guessed that the party that was so eager to tear down a fundamental Senate institution mere months ago by killing the Senate filibuster would suddenly develop such a passionate interest in defending the character of the Senate?”
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and the chairman of the Budget Committee, said that the budget law guiding the debate clearly gave him the power to determine the budgetary base line — and that he had decided the cost of extending the tax cuts was zero.
“We ought to look at tax cuts realistically,” Mr. Graham said. “They add revenue. They don’t take revenue away. Do they mathematically pay for themselves? Some say yes, some say no. But I know they add revenue.”
Both he and Mr. Thune said Democrats used similar budgetary approaches in the past. The maneuver, Mr. Thune said, “is not some bizarre new gimmick.”
But Democrats who have overseen the budget in the past dispute the Republican claims and say their reconciliation bills were required to show reductions in the deficit.
“We paid for every bit of it,” said Kent Conrad, a former senator from North Dakota who served as the top Democrat on the Budget Committee for a dozen years. “We exerted fiscal discipline. What they are doing to suggest extending tax cuts doesn’t cost anything defies economic reality. This is one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated in the Congress of the United States.”
Democrats were planning to mount a procedural attack on the Republican plan in the budget debate expected to go into the weekend. But Republicans worded their plan to deny an opening for making a case to the parliamentarian in what Democrats saw as a ploy to avoid an adverse ruling.
That clash could occur later this year if Republicans manage to bring a tax bill to the floor — a dangerous point in the process since a loss by the G.O.P. would force them to start anew or overrule the parliamentarian. They say they are determined to avoid such a step, but steering around the parliamentarian would achieve the same result and would effectively amount to the use of what is known as the nuclear option — making a unilateral change to Senate practices through a parliamentary ruling.
With Ms. Murkowski and others raising concerns, Republican leaders on Thursday invited Martin B. Gold, a former Senate Republican counsel and expert in procedure, to meet with senators about the technical aspects of reconciliation. After hours of meetings, Republicans were able to assemble the votes to bring their initial budget reconciliation plan to the floor, though opposition could still surface.
The fear of Ms. Murkowski and those who share her view is that the power of the filibuster will be severely diminished if either party can simply jam its priorities into a reconciliation bill and bend the rules to push it through with a simply majority vote.
“It is the last wall standing here in the Senate,” she said of the filibuster. “If we’re not a body that is going to follow our own rules and the arbiter of our rules, which is our parliamentarian, then we really don’t have much left in terms of protections that distinguish this body from the House.”
