Senate GOP’s blueprint for Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ agenda includes tax cuts, border security and more — here’s what’s inside

Senate Republicans are poised to kick off the voting process for advancing the blueprint on President Trump’s “big, beautiful” agenda package on tax cuts, border security, energy production and more later Thursday evening.

The final vote on whether or not to adopt the measure is expected to take place on Saturday, and afterward, House Republicans will attempt to move it through the lower chamber next week.

Once all of that is completed, Republicans will finally unlock the Senate reconciliation process, which is the avenue they need to circumvent a Democratic filibuster to pass Trump’s marquee agenda package.

The blueprint, which is known as a budget resolution, provides a rough outline of the legislation Republicans are eyeing in the final agenda package, which they hope to get over the finish line by the end of May.

Here’s what it calls for:

New spending and taxes:

• $150 billion in additional defense spending over a 10-year period
• $175 billion in additional border security funding over a 10-year period
• $21 billion for environmental and transportation committees to identify over a 10-year period
• The ability to permanently extend the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act by tampering with the baseline ($3.8 trillion, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates)
• $1.5 trillion for Trump’s miscellaneous tax objectives, such as no taxes on tips, overtime pay and Social Security, as well as an increase in the state and local tax deduction (SALT).

Technically, the Senate blueprint allows up to $350 billion for border security (giving $175 billion each to the Senate Homeland Security Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee to figure out).

But a Senate spokesperson told The Post that while the two committees, which both have jurisdiction over the border, will each be given room to spend $175 billion apiece under the budget resolution — that’s only meant to give lawmakers “flexibility.” The “target number is $175 billion total” for the border.

While the overall goal is about $346 billion of new spending over the next decade between defense, the border and other items, the blueprint allows for almost $500 billion in new spending.

On taxes, the Senate is attempting to deploy an unusual accounting trick to make Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent. In the Senate reconciliation process, measures can’t increase the deficit past a 10-year window, due to the Byrd Rule.

But Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) would get the power to tamper with the baseline used to measure the bill’s impact on the deficit.

The Senate GOP’s blueprint allows him to effectively declare that the Trump 2017 tax cuts are the baseline, despite many of those provisions expiring at the end of the year.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) claims that Republicans consulted the Senate Parliamentarian on their plans. The Parliamentarian would be the one to shoot it down.

Spending cuts over a 10-year period

• $4 billion worth of cuts determined by the committees that deal with agriculture, energy, banking and health care police (Each of the four committees have to figure out $1 billion in cuts)

Includes the House GOP’s reconciliation instructions

Notably, House and Senate Republican negotiators were not able to hash out all of their differences on top-line numbers for spending increases and cuts.

As a result, the Senate’s budget resolution includes the House GOP’s initial reconciliation instructions for the Trump agenda package as well.

This includes its call for $1.5 trillion worth of spending cuts ($880 billion determined by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, $330 billion by the Education and Workforce Committee, $100 billion by the Financial Services Committee and $230 billion by the Agriculture Committee).

Republicans have been keen on unlocking the process to begin drafting the Trump agenda package and figure they can iron out differences between the two chambers later.

Debt ceiling

• $5 trillion increase to the debt ceiling

The debt ceiling had been suspended until Jan. 1 of this year but due to the Treasury Department’s extraordinary measures, Uncle Sam isn’t projected to run out of credit until the summer.

House Republicans had called for a $4 trillion increase in their budget resolution.

Impact on the deficit

Overall, the Senate budget reconciliation plan would allow up to $5.8 trillion of increases to the deficit over the next decade, according to an estimate from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

When accounting for how that could impact the interest on the debt, the plan has the potential to increase the deficit by another $1.1 trillion, bringing the total up to $6.9 trillion over the next decade, per CRFB.

How the Senate blueprint differs from the House

The House’s version sets the stage for a significantly smaller increase to the deficit than the Senate’s framework, which prioritized defense spending a touch more than border security.

Unlike the Senate version, the House did not lay down a clear path to extend the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. In fact, it didn’t clearly lay out a path toward enacting all of the tax cuts Trump wants.

The lower chamber’s blueprint also called for steeper spending cuts than what the Senate laid out.

Here’s what the House’s bill called for:

• $100 billion in additional defense spending
• $200 billion in additional border security spending
• Allows up to $4.5 trillion deficit increase for 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act extension and miscellaneous tax objectives, such as SALT no taxes on tips, overtime pay and Social Security
• Extension of 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is not guaranteed to be permanent
• Does not make enough fiscal space for all of Trump’s tax objectives without more spending cuts (but doesn’t specify which ones wouldn’t be included)
• $1.5 trillion of specified cuts and a broad goal of $2 trillion worth of cuts
• $4 trillion hike to the debt ceiling
• Up to $3.4 trillion overall debt increase, per CRFB

GOP leaders have repeatedly said their objective is to send the final Trump agenda to the president’s desk by Memorial Day.