Today's Edition
WASHINGTON (Reuters)
The U.S. Senate approved a Republican budget blueprint early on Saturday that aims to extend trillions of dollars worth of President Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts and sharply reduce government spending.
The vote, following an all-night legislative session, unlocks a manoeuvre that will allow Republicans to bypass the Senate's filibuster and pass the tax cuts later this year without Democratic votes.
Non-partisan analysts say the measure if enacted, would add about $5.7 trillion to the federal government's debt over the next decade. Senate Republicans contend the cost is $1.5 trillion, saying that the effects of extending the existing tax policy that was scheduled to expire at the end of this year should not be counted in the measure's cost.
The measure also aims to raise the federal government's debt ceiling by $5 trillion, a move Congress has to make by summer or risk defaulting on $36.6 trillion in debt. It aims to partly offset the deficit-raising costs of tax cuts by cutting spending. Democrats have warned that Republican targets would imperil the Medicaid health insurance program for low-income Americans.
Republican Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, warned that allowing the 2017 tax cuts to expire would hit Americans hard.
"The average taxpayer would see a 22% tax hike. A family of four making $80,610, the median income in the United States, would see a $1,695 tax increase," Graham said. The 2017 cuts, Trump's signature legislative achievement in his first term, cut the top corporate tax cut to 21% from 35%, a move that is not set to expire.
The balance of the cuts, for individual Americans, was set to expire, a decision made to limit the 2017 bill's deficit-raising effects.
"The Republican bill that now sits before the Senate is poison," Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, of New York, said on Friday. "But as Americans learn that Republicans are doing it simply to give tax cuts to the ultra-rich, an electric shock is going to go through the American people."
