Will the GOP finally propose Obamacare replacement?

The budget released by Senate Republicans on Wednesday instructs two top committees with healthcare jurisdiction — the Finance Committee and the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions — to propose measures by July 31 that would reduce the deficit by $1 billion.

The plan doesn’t include any details or specific recommendations for what those proposals should include. And it excludes the Medicare reforms proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., that were included in the budget released by House Republicans a day earlier.

But the Senate budget does set a deadline for lawmakers to put forward some sort of GOP plan to replace President Obama’s healthcare law that Republicans have hated for years.

Meanwhile, attempts in the House to present a unified Obamacare replacement have lacked teeth. When Republicans voted to repeal Obamacare in February, they included language instructing committees to put forward a replacement but didn’t say when it must be finished.

Last year, then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor told his conference they’d get a chance to vote on a replacement to the healthcare law. But then Cantor lost his re-election bid, and that promise went by the wayside.

Both the House and Senate budgets say they’d repeal Obamacare, opening the door for Congress to repeal the law with just 51 votes in the Senate. If both chambers agree to the same budget, they can pass it with a simple majority and send it to Obama’s desk.

Before that happens, GOP majorities in both chambers will have to overcome some differences in healthcare and other policy areas. While the House budget calls for the Ryan Medicare plan, the Senate version leaves that out but does create block grants for Medicaid and combines it with the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Neither one specifies how they’d replace Obamacare, although in the past Republicans have proposed many individual health reform ideas.