Senate Should Not Undermine Budget Rules to Pass Tax Cuts

In developing a budget resolution, the Senate had considered adopting a “current policy baseline” to obscure nearly $4 trillion of borrowing over the next decade and to pave the way for up to $33 trillion of additional primary borrowing over the following two decades without technically violating the Byrd rule’s prohibition on increasing long-term deficits. It would be up to the Senate Parliamentarian to determine whether such a baseline is permissible under Senate rules.

According to press reports, Senate leadership may now pursue an alternative approach: allowing the Budget Committee Chair to unilaterally set the assumed fiscal impact of reconciliation legislation – effectively ignoring official cost estimates. In practice, this could mean assuming that a $4 trillion tax cut has little or no budgetary impact for enforcement purposes. The Senate majority may then be able to “table” any challenges against the use of this invented score. However, if the Parliamentarian were to rule this maneuver out of order, the Senate would need to ignore her ruling, overrule it, or replace the Parliamentarian to proceed.

The following is a statement from Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget: 

The ‘current policy’ gimmick was beyond troubling, and this is even worse. If the Budget Committee Chair can simply make up whatever numbers they want, where does it end?

This ‘make-your-own-score’ maneuver could effectively eliminate any meaningful budget enforcement. It would allow a simple majority to pass costly legislation – regardless of its fiscal impact – by pretending it costs nothing. That’s not budgeting; that’s fiction.  

Setting a precedent where a Senate majority can assign its own score to extend tax cuts opens the door to future majorities doing the same for student debt cancellation, Medicare for All, or any other costly priority. The sky is the limit.

Senators should think carefully about whether they want to dismantle long-standing budget rules and norms just to avoid finding some offsets or acknowledging they aren’t offsetting the tax cuts. This could completely undermine the reconciliation process and other budget enforcement, and could have consequences for years and decades to come.

The federal government is already on track to spend $86 trillion in outlays over the next decade, along with more than $20 trillion in tax expenditures. Lawmakers should focus on ways to extend tax cuts responsibly – whether by curbing spending, closing tax loopholes, or reversing recent executive actions – not by breaking the budget process.

There are plenty of options available to offset the tax cuts that don’t involve breaking decades-long precedent and jeopardizing all budget enforcement as we know it. 

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For more information, please contact Matt Klucher, Assistant Director of Media Relations, at klucher@crfb.org.