Budget Resolution 2025: Unlocking Reconciliation and Shaping Fiscal Priorities

The U.S. Senate passed the Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2025 (H. Con. Res. 14, commonly referred to as the budget resolution) on April 5, 2025, followed by the U.S. House of Representatives on April 10, 2025. This unlocked the budget reconciliation process as laid out in the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act. A budget resolution is a required first step for Congress to pass annual spending bills, but it does not always happen. 

In recent years, budget resolutions have been used to unlock the reconciliation process and bypass the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster rule. The reconciliation process is a mechanism to pass major legislation that is primarily used when one party controls the House, Senate and the Presidency. Currently, Republicans are implementing this process to extend and expand expiring tax cuts, increase spending on border security and defense, reform U.S. energy policies and cut federal spending. 

A budget resolution must outline desired spending, revenue, debt and deficit levels for the federal government for a specified period, usually ten years. Usually, it also directs the Senate and House Committees to report legislation to reconcile these goals with the necessary changes in law. Then, the budget committee will wrap the individual bills produced by each committee into one omnibus reconciliation bill. 

The recently passed budget resolution, H. Con. Res. 14, instructs House Committees to cut at least $1.5 trillion in spending while allowing the federal deficit to increase by $3 trillion over the next ten years. The instructions for House Committees also tie $4.5 trillion in tax cuts to at least $2 trillion in spending cuts. If House Committees fall short of the targeted $2 trillion in spending cuts, the $4.5 trillion tax cut allowance will be reduced by the amount of the shortfall. 

The instructions for the Senate Committees do not provide a similar provision tying spending cuts to tax reductions, but they do allow for an additional $1.5 trillion in new tax cuts. Senate instructions also make use of a scoring method referred to as current policy baseline, which sets the cost of extending the 2017 tax cuts to zero. In addition, the instructions for the Senate Committees require at least $4 billion in spending cuts and allow for an increase in the deficit of $2 trillion over ten years.  

The charts below illustrate the disparity between the House and Senate Committee instructions.  

The House and Senate will need to resolve these differences before they can deliver on President Trump’s agenda. House Committees began reconciliation markups immediately after returning from the April district work period. Senate Committees have not yet scheduled any markups on reconciliation, and it is unclear if they will do so, or if they will instead work off legislation sent to them by the House. The current stated goal is to have a reconciliation bill on the President’s desk by July 4^th. 

About the author:  Shirley Speidell is the Government Affairs Director for Strategics Consulting, Centralina’s federal government relations consulting firm. For more information, visit www.strategics.consulting.