McConnell will not bring budget resolution to the floor

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says he will not bring a budget resolution to the Senate floor this year, even though Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) says he plans to put one together.

McConnell said Congress will instead stick to the spending caps agreed to last year with President Trump.

“I can’t imagine that we can reach an agreement on a budget with this particular House of Representatives,” McConnell told reporters, referring to the ideological gulf between himself and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

“We’ve got the caps deal in place. We negotiated it last year. It’s good for the second year and we’ll comply with that,” he said.

Trump signed a two-year budget deal in August that suspended the debt ceiling through July 2021 and raised military and domestic spending by $320 billion over two years.

McConnell made his comments a day after Enzi said he would put together a budget resolution for fiscal year 2021.

“I will do a budget,” Enzi said Monday evening on the Senate floor.

The last time the Senate passed a budget resolution was in October 2017, when they needed to set up a special procedural fast-track for tax reform legislation. They passed another budget resolution earlier that year to use the same procedural track to circumvent a filibuster of health care legislation.

When Republicans were in the minority, McConnell vowed that Senate Republicans would pass budget resolutions if they gained control of the majority.

“The law requires us to pass a budget. And it’s stunning, as Sen. [John] Cornyn [R-Texas] pointed out, that we’re now a thousand days since we last passed a budget. I don’t think the law says, pass a budget unless it’s hard. So I think there’s no question that we would — we would take up our responsibility,” McConnell told reporters in January 2012.