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After the House punted on a budget resolution, could the Senate go first?

After the House punted on a budget resolution, could the Senate go first?

The House Budget Committee has punted on marking up a budget resolution this week, delaying a key step toward passing President Donald Trump’s agenda. We scooped this for you in the PM edition Monday.

So what comes next? There are a few potential reconciliation scenarios, including the Senate moving first, which would be a real stunner. We’ll explain how that could happen.

House Republican leaders could continue to try to reach a consensus with conservative hardliners on the level of spending cuts, the critical dispute behind the internal GOP impasse over the budget blueprint. In-person meetings will resume today as House members return to Washington.

But the two sides are still pretty far apart at the moment. House GOP leadership initially pitched $500 billion in spending cuts, which hardliners balked at. Republican leaders came back with a slightly higher number of $700 billion, but fiscal hawks were still unsatisfied. Party leaders have tried to emphasize that these numbers are the floor, not the ceiling, of what they can achieve via reconciliation — but hardliners aren’t buying it.

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a House Freedom Caucus member who serves on the Budget panel, told us he wants at least $2 trillion in spending cuts — a figure most in the House GOP leadership believe to be an impossibility.

Norman also dismissed the idea of just marking up a “shell” budget resolution, which could be a potential compromise to get around the internal GOP disagreement and allow House Republicans to move forward in the reconciliation process.

But House Republican leaders have a difficult hand here. They’re limited in where they can cut, given Trump’s insistence that they don’t touch Medicare or Social Security (and reconciliation rules).

Top House Republicans are also trying to be sensitive to the moderates who could be vulnerable to political attacks over steep spending cuts to other social safety net programs.

Which brings us to the next potential scenario: the Senate grows impatient and moves first. Senate Republicans have already drafted a budget blueprint outlining a two-step process for reconciliation, putting a border security, energy and defense bill first and saving taxes and big spending cuts for later. And some Senate Republicans are already itching to get going, as we noted on Sunday.

The longer the House is at an impasse, the more pressure the Senate GOP may feel to take over and get the ball rolling on Trump’s agenda.

The House Freedom Caucus also prefers the two-bill approach. Trump has been generally agnostic on the process, though he’s favored a single package. But if the House continues to struggle, Trump may also get antsy and make a play call.

Given the legislative calendar and ambitious timeline that Speaker Mike Johnson has laid out to get reconciliation done this spring, leaders will have to make a decision pretty soon if they want to stick anywhere near that desired timeframe to deliver.

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Editorial photos provided by Getty Images. Political ads courtesy of AdImpact.