The Senate Budget: Even More Vague than the House

Senate Budget Chairman Mike Enzi released his budget proposal yesterday afternoon. The request follows yesterday’s proposal from House Budget Chairman Tom Price. The two requests are similar. Both would reduce projected spending by $5 trillion and balance the federal budget over the next ten years. Both budgets repeal ObamaCare, and neither includes reforms to Social Security. The big difference between the two is that the Senate version is even vaguer than the House version.

Like the House budget, the Senate budget includes Medicare reforms. It also includes a proposal that would cut $400 billion from Medicare over the next ten years, matching the level of cuts from President Obama’s budget request in February. The Senate version does not specify how it will cut $400 billion, other than stating that it “does not endorse the President’s specific policy proposals.”  The House plan at least it acknowledged how it would reduce Medicare spending (by using a premium support model to generate savings).

The Senate’s defense funding plan is also less clear than the House plan. Both keep the 2011 bipartisan Budget Control Act spending levels for the base defense budget, which is $523 billion for fiscal year 2016. The Senate budget includes an additional $58 billion in “emergency” defense funding, the same amount the president includes. While the House included $90 billion in “emergency” defense funding, the Senate includes a provision that would allow it to establish a “deficit-neutral reserve fund” for further increases in defense spending. That is budget-speak for an undisclosed amount of defense spending hikes, with some sort of spending cut elsewhere in the budget to offset the increase. So while the House plan appears more expensive than the Senate plan, the Senate’s total defense spending level for fiscal year 2016 isn’t obvious and could eventually be higher.

Overall, the proposals from Price and Enzi are similar. As the two chambers reconcile their proposals over the next several weeks, the negotiated budget should provide further insight into Republican spending priorities.