WASHINGTON — Senate GOP leaders’ push to split up President-elect Donald Trump’s fiscal priorities into two filibuster-proof budget packages has a bigger tactical disadvantage for House Republicans than commonly understood: They’d likely have to vote on two budget resolutions, never an easy task even with bigger majorities.

A budget resolution is always the required precursor to budget reconciliation bills; the law requires both chambers to first adopt a joint blueprint with “instructions” to various committees to draft what would ultimately be stitched together as a reconciliation bill.

Under Senate parliamentary guidance from 2001, there’s a “three bites at the apple” precedent: Each budget resolution can only produce one bill for each of the three categories allowed — spending, taxes and changing the federal debt limit. Or they could bundle elements of the three buckets into one or two bills.

But there can’t be multiple reconciliation bills dealing with each topic; in other words, two separate bills changing tax laws can’t be spun out of a single budget resolution, and likewise for provisions changing spending levels.

This means the Senate’s two-pronged strategy of giving Trump an early victory on border security and defense spending before turning to tax cuts later in the year would have that extra procedural hurdle of requiring a separate budget resolution vote. That’s because virtually any tax bill GOP leaders bring to the floor using reconciliation procedures this year is also going to have an effect on federal spending.

Refundable tax credits including the expanded child tax credit that’s expiring Dec. 31, 2025, are classified as outlays rather than lost revenue, since they flow to taxpayers in excess of their tax liability. Lower marginal tax rates and a bigger standard deduction also impact outlays because they can wipe out tax liability for certain individuals and households.

For example, congressional scorekeepers found the 2017 tax cuts would increase outlays by $283 billion, mostly due to the child tax credit, doubled standard deduction and rate reductions. That spending was offset and then some by repeal of the 2010 health care law’s individual mandate penalty and repeal of personal exemptions.

On net, the tax law cut outlays by $194 billion, partially offsetting the $1.65 trillion estimated revenue loss and allowing the combined package to fit within the budget resolution’s $1.5 trillion deficit-increase limit.

With this year’s tax bill also likely to extend the child tax credit, bigger standard deduction and lower tax rates, there’s little chance tax writers can avoid their bill being “scored” with outlay effects, experts say. Accordingly, a second bill with spending effects would require a second budget resolution.

Even the seldom-used strategy of amending an initial budget resolution to add a new set of reconciliation instructions — which is allowed under Section 304 of the 1974 budget law, although frowned upon except in emergency circumstances — would still require a fresh round of voting in both chambers.

White-knuckle votes

Either way, it would bring the total number of exceedingly narrow party-line votes House GOP leaders are forced to whip to at least four — two budget resolutions and two reconciliation bills — while the “one big, beautiful bill” approach they favor would require only two votes.

Even those two votes are expected to be white-knuckle affairs for House Republicans, given they could have just one vote to spare if no Democrats join them to enact the GOP agenda. That all-in-one package is expected to include border security and immigration enforcement, increased defense spending, tax cuts coupled with social spending cuts and potentially an increase in the national borrowing cap.

Senate Republicans want a quick win on the border and military spending, recognizing that the rest of the package could take months longer to negotiate. Senate Budget Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has said he’s willing to write two budget resolutions this year to implement the full set of priorities, including the follow-up tax bill.

But the multiple budget approach has disadvantages for Senate GOP leaders as well: It would force senators to go through potentially four rounds of all-night “vote-a-ramas,” one for each budget resolution and resulting reconciliation bill.

Bush-era opinion

There’s precedent for two reconciliation bills affecting government spending stemming from one budget resolution: the 1997 balanced budget agreement implementing bills, one cutting spending and one cutting taxes. The tax piece included higher outlays from provisions affecting child tax credits and earned income tax credits.

But that was before the “three bites at the apple” guidance came in early 2001, when an all-GOP Congress was figuring out how to implement first-year President George W. Bush’s expansive tax cut plans.

House Republicans adopted a partisan budget blueprint calling for up to five reconciliation bills, including three tax bills. Then-Senate Parliamentarian Robert Dove rejected this approach when it landed in that chamber, advising Republicans that it would violate reconciliation rules.

House and Senate Republicans then dropped the multiple tax bill framework from the final budget resolution for fiscal 2002, paved the way for the a single measure which became the first major tax cut Bush signed in June 2001.

“I remember very well … when the House passed a budget resolution providing for multiple tax reconciliation bills. And the idea was the Senate was going to be dealing with these all year long, just one after another,” Dove, who died in 2021, recalled at a 2009 Senate Budget Committee hearing. “And I gave advice that that was not in order, that the Senate should only deal with one tax reconciliation bill.”

Then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., later fired Dove for this and other transgressions — which Roll Call first reported — but the parliamentary opinion has nonetheless stood the test of time, applying to spending bills as well as tax measures.

Only once since then have lawmakers enacted two budget reconciliation bills out of the same budget resolution — in 2006 — and they made sure that year’s tax bill had zero outlay effects so as not to run afoul of the “apple” test.

Elizabeth MacDonough, the current parliamentarian, hasn’t given any indication she’ll veer away from Dove’s precedent. Republicans could decide to ignore the parliamentarian’s guidance, though this would be akin to going “nuclear” and upending the Senate rule book protecting minority-party rights to open debate. And that’s something Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has said he won’t do.

It could all be a moot point if senators accede to House GOP demands for a single budget resolution and reconciliation bill. But so far the Senate isn’t willing to go along.

©2025 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Visit cqrollcall.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.