Senate Democrats have tried multiple times to have a meeting with their GOP counterparts and the Senate parliamentarian to decide the crucial procedural question of whether extending President Trump’s expiring 2017 tax cuts adds to future federal deficits.
And Republicans so far have “flat out refused” to have any such discussion, they say.
The partisan battle over how to “score” the budgetary impact of making Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent could determine whether Senate Republicans would need to rewrite the sprawling 940-page bill on the Senate floor.
Democrats must decide whether to force Republicans to obtain a parliamentarian ruling on the Senate floor Monday on whether making the 2017 Trump tax cuts permanent would violate Senate rules.
An adverse ruling on the issue could derail the bill, but Republicans are confident that won’t happen.
Democrats say Republicans are trying to dodge Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough from ruling on whether the tax portion of the “big, beautiful bill” exceeds the reconciliation package’s deficit target for 2025 to 2034 and whether it increase deficits beyond 2034.
Democrats think that if MacDonough weighs in on the subject, she would rule that Senate precedent requires that changes in tax law be scored on a “current law” baseline.
Such a ruling would show extending the Trump tax cuts permanently violates the Senate’s Byrd Rule.
A person close to the conversation said that Senate Budget Committee Republicans “flat out refused” to meet with the parliamentarian to talk about what baseline should be used for Trump’s big, beautiful bill.
Democrats “asked that this be adjudicated by the parliamentarian,” and Republicans “have refused, basically saying they can do what they want,” said the source familiar with the behind-the-scenes debate.
Democrats brought up the issue at the start of the “Byrd bath” process for the bill.
Senate Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) again tried to meet with Republicans this past week to discuss the budget baseline with the parliamentarian, and Republicans once again declined to participate, according to the source.
The Byrd Rule determines what legislation is eligible to pass the Senate with a simple-majority vote and avoid a filibuster.
It states that legislation passed on the reconciliation fast track must comply with the reconciliation instructions, and it requires that the legislation not increase the deficit in fiscal years beyond the budget window.
Merkley on Sunday circulated a letter he received from Congressional Budget Office Director Phillip Swagel stating that the Finance portion of the GOP megabill would increase the deficit by nearly $3.5 trillion over the 2025-2034 window, exceeding the target set by the reconciliation instructions.
Swagel also told Merkley that the Finance text would “increase deficits in years after 2034.”
That would appear to violate the Byrd Rule and subject the entire bill to a 60-vote, point-of-order objection.
Republicans, however, say that the parliamentarian doesn’t have a role in judging how much the tax portion of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would add to the deficit within the bill’s 10-year budget window or whether it would add to deficits beyond 2034.
They argue that Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has authority under Section 312 of the Congressional Budget Act “to determine baseline numbers of spending and revenue.”
Ryan Wrasse, a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), pointed to a Budget Committee report published when Democrats were in the majority in 2022 stating that the Budget Committee, through its chair, makes the call on questions of numbers, not the parliamentarian.
Graham received a letter from Swagel on Saturday stating that the Finance Committee’s tax text does not exceed its reconciliation instructions or add to deficits after 2034 when scored on the “current-policy” baseline that Graham wants the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) and CBO to use.
Taylor Reidy, a spokesperson for the Budget panel, asserted on the social platform X that “there is no need to have a parliamentarian meeting with respect to current policy baseline because Section 312 of the Congressional Budget Act gives Sen. Graham — as Chairman of the Budget Committee — the authority to set the baseline.”
Senate Democrats, however, argue that a current-policy baseline has never been used for a budget reconciliation package before and that directing how the JCT and CBO score a bill violates the spirit of the Byrd Rule and Section 313 of the 1974 Budget Act, which determines what can get into a reconciliation package.
Democrats note that conservative Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a fiscal hawk, compared the “current-policy” baseline to “fairy dust” if it’s used to argue that extending tax cuts doesn’t add to the deficit.
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