Last week the House and Senate Budget Committees passed budget resolutions. The budget resolution is the first step in passing legislation using the reconciliation procedures. As it turns out, that requires the House and Senate to pass the same budget resolution, and the House and Senate are on very different pages.

As laid out by Jordan Haring in her latest, the House budget resolution is the president’s so-called “one big, beautiful bill” containing reconciliation instructions to 11 House committees that would allow up to $3.3 trillion of new borrowing, as well as border security and energy provisions. In contrast, the Senate resolution would be confined to border security and energy policies and contains reconciliation instructions to nine Senate committees that would allow up to $517 billion of borrowing. The two resolutions are summarized in the tables below.

The other big difference between the resolutions is that the House would raise the debt limit by $4 trillion. The Senate contains no provision to raise the debt limit. The resolutions have one thing in common, however: extremely optimistic timetables. The committees would have to report reconciliation legislation to the budget committee by March 7 in the Senate and March 27 in the House.

The next step is to consider the resolutions on the floor of each chamber. The House is in recess for 10 days, so the Senate has the chance to go first, perhaps even this week, thus kicking off the legislative aspects of the Trump domestic agenda.

Reconciliation Instructions in the House FY 2025 Budget Resolution

Source: House Budget Committee.

Senate Committee Reconciliation Instructions in the Senate FY 2025 Budget Resolution

Source: Senate Budget Committee.