Like a wrecking ball, the Trump administration has come into office with one clear aim: to destroy essential, popular programs that benefit and sustain all Americans to pay for extended tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy. 

Trump dealt the first blow with his illegal order to block funding to federal benefit and grant programs. And ever since, we’ve seen chaos ripple across the country. Despite pushback from the courts, many people, businesses, non-profits, and state and local governments, have been stuck in a vicious purgatory, unable to consistently access the funding they’re owed and are counting on to pay workers, deliver services, and keep the lights on. While some climate grants were recently unfrozen, funds for food assistance, education, clean energy, affordable housing, life-saving health research, and more were suspended—affecting red and blue states with equal cruelty. 

But that was just part one of the saga. Now, Republicans are trying to cut funding off permanently through a process called “budget reconciliation.” It might sound like a wonky and obscure term, but it’s the political tool that holds the keys to the MAGA plot to lock in control, cut vital resources from middle- and working-class Americans, and funnel it to Trump’s billionaire friends. And what plays out in this process will affect us all. 

Here’s what you need to know about this process, where things currently stand, why you should care, and what we can do about it. 

What Is Budget Reconciliation?

Budget reconciliation allows the majority party, currently Republicans, to pass legislation that affects the federal budget (think: taxes and spending) with a simple majority, avoiding the 60 vote minimum normally needed to overcome a filibuster in the Senate. In other words, Republicans are using the reconciliation process as an attempt to jam through their agenda without bipartisan support.

Historically, Republicans have used this tactic to pass tax cuts for corporations and the top one percent (under Bush in 2001 and 2003, and Trump in 2017), and Democrats have used it to pass legislation like the Affordable Care Act and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to support accessible healthcare, create jobs, lower prices, and spur American leadership in clean energy. Now, once again, Republicans are hoping to use reconciliation to re-up and expand tax giveaways for the wealthy, paid for by cuts to public goods like healthcare, climate resilience, clean energy programs, and food assistance. 

The first step in the reconciliation process is for Congress to pass a budget resolution. Here, the House and Senate outline how much to change the spending or revenue. This is not the final bill, but rather the parameters for spending. Think of it as a blueprint. Then, committees fill in the actual content, taking into account the maximum “cost” of the bill. Afterward, the committees mark up (review and modify) their respective bills, which are then combined into a single reconciliation process with the differences between the House and Senate bills reconciled. Finally, it gets signed into law by the president. 

The Senate proposed a two-step plan, with their recently passed first bill focusing on beefing up defense and border spending in the billions. It also has commiserate cuts to social programs and key pollution regulations, including eliminating the Methane Emissions Reduction Program (MERP). The Senate hopes to pass a second bill later this year that would extend the 2017 tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans.

Both the Senate and House approaches are undoubtedly harmful to communities, climate, affordability, public health, and more, but the primary difference comes down to timeline and scope.

The House’s approach is more expansive—a giant axe to programs across the board, including potentially repealing the clean energy tax credits. By virtue of it being one big bill, it creates much more immediate and sweeping harm to climate progress than the Senate’s bill, which targets critical IRA climate programs but leaves repealing the clean energy tax credits to its second bill. This makes the Senate’s version slightly narrower in scope and carrying a longer timeline. 

Both chambers need to be in agreement before any legislation can pass the finish line. Given the diverging approaches, we likely have a ways to go until Republicans come to a shared conclusion. But, in the meantime, Democrats, advocates, and the broader movement cannot sit on the sidelines with so many critical programs at risk. 

What Is the GOP Trying to Cut? 

While the budget resolution process lays out the upper and lower spending limits by committee, it doesn’t specifically list which exact programs are to be cut, nor by exactly how much. That being said, there are a lot of hints within the GOP’s House and Senate plans, along with what the White House has explicitly called for in its new agenda, including repealing programs, rescinding any unspent funds, and/or cutting tax credit and grant programs entirely.