U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., right, and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., hold a press conference on the Republican budget resolution at the U.S. Capitol on April 10, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

This story was updated at 11:54 a.m. EDT.

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Republicans adopted a budget resolution Thursday, clearing the way for both chambers of Congress to write a bill extending 2017 tax cuts and bolstering funding for border security and defense, though the blueprint set vastly different targets for spending cuts.

The cliff-hanger 216-214 vote followed a tumultuous week on Capitol Hill. Far-right members of the GOP Conference said repeatedly they wouldn’t accept the outline, since it requires the House to write a bill that cuts spending by at least $1.5 trillion, while senators set themselves a floor of $4 billion in cuts.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., was forced to postpone a floor vote on the budget resolution on Wednesday evening. But Johnson was able to secure the votes needed after he and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., announced Thursday morning that they were in agreement about meeting the higher threshold for spending cuts.

Johnson said both chambers of Congress “are committed to finding at least $1.5 trillion in savings for the American people, while also preserving our essential programs.”

“Many of us are going to aim much higher and find those savings because we believe they are there,” Johnson said. “We want to make the government more efficient, effective and leaner for the American people. And I think that will serve every American of every party. And we’re happy to do that.”

Despite the difference in reconciliation instructions, Thune said the Senate is “aligned with the House” when it comes to cutting spending over the next decade.

“The speaker has talked about $1.5 trillion,” Thune said. “We have a lot of United States senators who believe that is a minimum.”

Thune added he believes it’s time for Congress “to get the country on a more sustainable fiscal path and that entails us taking a hard scrub of our government and figuring out where we can find those savings.”

Democrats, and some centrist Republicans, have expressed deep concerns the House’s instructions require the Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid, to cut at least $880 billion.

The panel, which also oversees Medicare and other programs, could not recoup that level of spending without pulling hundreds of billions from Medicaid, the state-federal program for lower-income Americans and some people with disabilities.

The budget resolution has been endorsed by President Donald Trump, who’s repeatedly urged the House to adopt the measure. “Great News! “The Big, Beautiful Bill” is coming along really well. Republicans are working together nicely. Biggest Tax Cuts in USA History!!! Getting close. DJT,” Trump posted on social media Thursday morning prior to the vote.

Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie and Indiana Rep. Victoria Spartz were the only members of the Republican Party to vote against approval.

“If you were trying to hasten financial collapse of our country and bribe voters to go along with it, the strategy wouldn’t look much different than what Congress is doing today,” Massie wrote on social media. “The big beautiful bill cuts taxes while keeping spending on an increasingly unsustainable trajectory.”

Spartz wrote in a social media post of her own that the reconciliation instructions “we voted on today are still setting us up for the largest deficit increase in the history of our Republic, & opening up a ‘pandora’s box’ by changing accounting rules to hide it.

“In good conscience, I couldn’t vote YES.”

Only a beginning

The House adopting the 68-page budget resolution only marks the start of the months-long journey of writing and voting on the reconciliation package.

Republicans hope to use that bill to permanently extend the 2017 tax law, increase spending on border security and defense by hundreds of billions of dollars and rework energy policy.

The budget resolution includes different budget targets for many of those goals, and for raising the debt limit. It calls on the House to increase the country’s borrowing authority by $4 trillion, while the Senate’s instructions say that chamber would lift the debt ceiling by up to $5 trillion.

Writing the various elements of the reconciliation package will fall to 11 committee chairs in the House and 10 committee leaders in the Senate, as well as Johnson, Thune and a lot of staffers.

In the House, the Agriculture Committee needs to slice at least $230 billion; Education and Workforce must reduce spending by a minimum of $330 billion; Energy and Commerce needs to cut no less than $880 billion; Financial Services must find at least $1 billion in savings; Natural Resources has a minimum of $1 billion; Oversight and Government Reform has a floor of $50 billion; and the Transportation Committee needs to reduce deficits by $10 billion or more.

Four Senate committees — Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry; Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs; Energy and Natural Resources; and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, or HELP — must each find at least $1 billion in spending cuts over the 10-year budget window.

House committees that can increase the federal deficit include the Armed Services Committee with a cap of $100 billion in new spending, Homeland Security with a $90 billion ceiling for new funding for programs it oversees, Judiciary with a maximum of $110 billion and Ways and Means, which can increase deficits up to $4.5 trillion for tax cuts.

Senate committees also got instructions for increasing the deficit, which will allow them to spend up to the dollar amount outlined in the budget resolution. Those committees include Armed Services at $150 billion; Commerce, Science and Transportation with $20 billion; Environment and Public Works at $1 billion; Finance with $1.5 trillion in new deficits, likely for tax cuts; Homeland Security at $175 billion and Judiciary with $175 billion.

The back story

If the process to reach agreement on a final reconciliation package is anything like the path to adopting the budget resolution, it will be long, winding and filled with drama.

The Senate voted for a completely different budget resolution in February that would have set up Congress to enact Republicans’ agenda in two reconciliation bills instead of one.

Budget Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., referred to the reconciliation instructions in that budget proposal as “Plan B.”

That tax-and-spending blueprint would have had lawmakers first write a bill increasing funding for border security and defense, and rewriting energy policy, before debating another bill later in the year to extend the 2017 tax law and cut federal spending.

The House voted about a week later to approve its original budget resolution, but not without a bit of theatrics.

Johnson didn’t originally have the votes and opted to recess the chamber before calling lawmakers back about 15 minutes later to approve that version of the budget resolution.

The Senate made changes to its reconciliation instructions in the House-approved budget resolution, before voting to send it back across the Capitol for their colleagues to vote on final approval, which they did Thursday.

Politically difficult votes ahead

Each time the Senate voted on a budget resolution it undertook a marathon amendment voting session, known as a vote-a-rama, where lawmakers stay on the floor overnight to debate various aspects of the outline.

Senators will need to undertake one more of those when they debate the actual reconciliation package later this year, though the stakes will be much higher.

The budget resolution is a blueprint for how Congress wants to shape tax and spending policy during the 10-year budget window. It’s not a bill so it never becomes law. And it contains no actual money, it’s simply a plan for how lawmakers want to structure policy.

The reconciliation package, once written, will have the chance of becoming law, so any amendments offered during the Senate’s vote-a-rama will carry greater weight than the proposals voted on when the chamber took up the two budget resolutions.

Democrats will have an opportunity to challenge centrist GOP senators on whether they support or want to remove every single policy that Republicans put in their reconciliation package.

That could create real issues for GOP leadership if they include tax policy or spending cuts that cannot garner the backing of senators like Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, Maine’s Susan Collins and others.

The final reconciliation package will need support from nearly every Republican in Congress. GOP leaders will not be able to lose more than three House lawmakers or three Republican senators, under their very slender majorities. 

Four or more Republicans opposing the reconciliation package in one chamber, either because it cuts too much spending or doesn’t cut enough, would likely prevent it from becoming law. 

The U.S. Capitol, as seen on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson postponed a vote on the budget resolution that was supposed to take place Wednesday, as he tried to get the support of far-right members of the party who object because it won’t go far enough to achieve their goals of slashing government spending.

Johnson, R-La., said he hoped the House would be able to vote on the tax and spending blueprint Thursday, before leaving town for a two-week recess, though he didn’t rule out setting up a conference process with the Senate, or changing the budget resolution and sending it back across the Capitol.

“We are working through some good ideas and solutions to get everybody there,” Johnson said. “It may not happen tonight, but probably by tomorrow morning.”

Johnson’s comments came after he huddled behind closed doors for about an hour with more than a dozen far-right House Republicans who believe the budget resolution doesn’t require the Senate to cut enough spending.

“We want everybody to have a high degree of comfort about what is happening here,” Johnson said. “And we have a small subset of members who weren’t totally satisfied with the product as it stands. So we’re going to talk about maybe going to conference with the Senate, or adding an amendment. But we’re going to make that decision. We are going to continue to move forward. This is all positive.”

The House and Senate are far from agreement on how much to reduce federal spending later this year when they write the reconciliation bill.

The House instructions call on numerous committees to cut spending by at least $1.5 trillion, with more than half of that deficit savings coming from the committee that oversees Medicaid. Those instructions would likely lead to hundreds of billions in federal funding being pulled from the program, though Republicans insisted during floor debate they were only looking to address waste, fraud and abuse.

The Senate has given itself a floor of $4 billion in spending cuts, which could lead to substantial deficit increases. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget released analysis last week, showing the reconciliation package could bolster deficits by up to $5.8 trillion during the next decade.

Trump lobbying, last-minute drama

House debate, which took place before the vote was delayed, followed days of lobbying by House GOP leaders and President Donald Trump, who urged holdouts to adopt the budget resolution during a campaign fundraising dinner Tuesday evening.

“I think we are there,” Trump said. “But just in case there are a couple of Republicans out there, you just got to get there, close your eyes and get there. It’s a phenomenal bill. Stop grandstanding, just stop grandstanding.”

That didn’t sway everyone, however, leading Speaker Johnson to pull about a dozen of the far-right members off the floor Wednesday evening just as the House was supposed to move on to the budget vote.

The rest of the chamber’s lawmakers waited on the floor for more than an hour as the group huddled nearby.

Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry, South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett and Texas Rep. Chip Roy were among the members to get summoned off the floor by Johnson.

Scalise pleads to ‘get America back on track’

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., called on Republicans to adopt the budget resolution earlier in the day during floor debate, saying it “just opens the door to” using the complex budget reconciliation process to enact their agenda.

“The process where 11 of our committees here in the House will go to work to start making improvements in so many areas to get America back on track,” Scalise said. “And ultimately, that’s why we all come here. We come here to solve big problems. We deal with small issues too. But every now and then — and it’s not often — you deal with a big issue that can actually improve the lives of families all across this country.”

Budget Committee ranking member Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., said members of his party wouldn’t allow the parts of the 2017 tax law that benefit the middle class to expire at the end of the year, rejecting claims from GOP lawmakers.

“If you’re a middle-class American, if you are in the 99%, you will not see your taxes go up next year,” Boyle said. “There is no question about that. What is at issue is the tax cuts for multimillionaires, billionaires and big corporations.”

Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Lloyd Smucker said he couldn’t vote to approve the budget resolution since the Senate’s instructions for spending cuts were “not acceptable.”

“To me, it’s important we have the guardrails in the initial resolution,” Smucker said, before encouraging House leaders to amend the budget resolution to increase the amount of spending cuts the Senate must implement.

“I can’t vote on this bill as it is, but there’s a path forward here and that is very, very important,” Smucker said.

Roy of Texas also spoke out against the budget resolution, saying the Senate’s instructions didn’t go far enough to reduce deficits.

“The Senate sent over a joke. And we’re going to capitulate to the Senate, knowing full well that the Senate instructions carry the day,” Roy said. “And we’re going to be sitting there in a reconciliation debate, where we’re going to end up on the short end of the stick. But worse, the American people are going to end up on the short end of the stick because it absolutely increases deficits. No one can deny it.”

Roy added that members of Congress should “pass a math test” because the numbers in the budget resolution didn’t add up.

Lengthy struggle

Republican leaders have struggled for months to get the vast majority of their members on board with the outline.

Even if the House finally approves the resolution, Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., have months of work ahead of them as committees begin writing and debating their sections of the reconciliation package.

The budget resolution tasks 11 House committees and 10 Senate panels with meeting vague budget targets. Committees either have a minimum amount of spending to cut or a maximum amount of deficits they can create.

The House and Senate are relatively aligned on some of those targets, though they are far apart on spending cuts and potentially tax policy.

In the House, the Agriculture Committee needs to slice at least $230 billion; Education and Workforce must reduce spending by a minimum of $330 billion; Energy and Commerce needs to cut no less than $880 billion; Financial Services must find at least $1 billion in savings; Natural Resources has a minimum of $1 billion; Oversight and Government Reform has a floor of $50 billion; and the Transportation Committee needs to reduce deficits by $10 billion or more.

The Energy and Commerce Committee’s instructions have been a central issue for Democrats, and many centrist Republicans, who are concerned that Medicaid, the state-federal health program for lower-income people, will be a target for hundreds of billions in cuts.

Four Senate committees — Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry; Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs; Energy and Natural Resources; and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, or HELP — must each find at least $1 billion in spending cuts over the 10-year budget window.

House committees that can increase the federal deficit include the Armed Services Committee with a cap of $100 billion in new spending, Homeland Security with a $90 billion ceiling for new funding for programs it oversees, Judiciary with a maximum of $110 billion and Ways and Means, which can increase deficits up to $4.5 trillion for tax cuts.

Senate committees also got instructions for increasing the deficit, which will allow them to spend up to the dollar amount outlined in the budget resolution. Those committees include Armed Services at $150 billion; Commerce, Science and Transportation with $20 billion; Environment and Public Works at $1 billion; Finance with $1.5 trillion in new deficits, likely for tax cuts; Homeland Security at $175 billion and Judiciary with $175 billion.

House instructions call for the reconciliation package to raise the debt limit by $4 trillion while the Senate’s plans say lawmakers can raise it by up to $5 trillion.

Slim majority

Assuming the House adopts the budget resolution, GOP leaders will need to keep nearly all of their members supportive during the next couple months as those numbers turn into tangible policy proposals.

House Republican leaders can only lose three members on party-line votes, given their paper-thin 220-lawmaker majority.

The same number of GOP senators can vote against the final reconciliation package as long as Vice President J.D. Vance casts the tie-breaking vote.

Any more Republicans opposing the package would prevent it from becoming law.