The Senate on Thursday approved a Republican budget agreement that would balance the federal government’s budget in nine years without raising taxes in a vote that Republican leadership called a demonstration of the party’s ability to govern.
With the House having passed the agreement Thursday, both Chambers of Congress have now passed a spending blueprint for the first time since 2009.
The Senate voted for the resolution 51-48, with all Democrats opposed. Republicans Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky voted against the budget. Both senators are seeking the Republican nomination for the 2016 presidential election.
The fiscal 2016 budget resolution includes $5 trillion in planned spending reductions on health care and social insurance programs. By passing it through both chambers, Republicans will be able to follow a special procedure that will allow them to place a bill to repeal Obamacare on President Obama’s desk with only 51 votes in the Senate.
The budget itself does not go to the president for signing, and does not become law. Instead, it’s meant to set spending caps for the appropriations committees to follow in drafting spending bills.
“The reason to get this budget done is so that the appropriators can get started,” Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi said Thursday on the House floor.
Republicans face an enormous challenge in getting spending bills into law. President Obama has vowed to veto any spending bills that adhere to spending caps set in the 2011 Budget Control Act. Those caps were maintained in the GOP budget resolution.
Republicans also face internal disagreements about the cuts that would be forced by the caps, especially the ones applying to defense spending. Republicans in the House have struggled with the first spending bills.
But Republicans pronounced victory on clearing the first hurdle in the process of funding the government with final passage of the budget Tuesday.
Democrats, who decried the budget as regressive and slanted toward the wealthy throughout weeks of debate, withheld credit.
“They get to beat their ideological breast, show the far right they really mean it and then maybe we can go back to governing,” Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Tuesday during Senate debate.
