GOP keeps budget options open

Congressional Republicans at their bicameral retreat on Thursday didn’t appear to nail down how to use the budget reconciliation process this year, but they said keeping options open is the best approach, said a GOP aide who attended the discussion. 

In their afternoon session in Hershey, Pa., House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.) outlined the budget process to his Republican colleagues, and reiterated spending cuts and an improving economy would balance the budget. 

Price’s Senate counterpart, Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), told members that his goal is to finish work on their budget resolution by April 15, the aide said. 

{mosads}Bill Hoagland, senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center, gave Republicans a crash course on the reconciliation process and its constraints. Hoagland previously served as staff director on the Senate Budget Committee for nearly 20 years and has been directly involved in the development of reconciliation bills.

The procedure has been used to usher through major policy changes and only requires 51 votes to pass in the Senate. Reconciliation bills, however, do require a presidential signature. 

Enzi told lawmakers that, if Republicans want reconciliation to be successful, it’s important to get it right, the GOP aide said. Both chairmen said they want to hear ideas from their conferences on the best approach.

In November, Hoagland told The Hill that it could be difficult for the GOP to repeal the entire healthcare law using reconciliation because he counted at least 27 points of order Republicans would need to change in order to clear the path for a reconciliation bill on ObamaCare. Changing each point of order would require 60 votes in the Senate, Hoagland said.

Instead, he suggested the GOP might be able to use the budget procedure to possibly reduce subsidies or change regulations associated with the healthcare law.  

The process was used to pass ObamaCare in the spring of 2010, and in the mid-1990s, the Senate pushed through then-President Clinton’s deficit reduction and tax package using reconciliation. The Senate also used the maneuver in 2001 and 2003 to pass then-President George W. Bush’s tax cuts.