Rep. Emmer Updates Progress of Federal Budget Bill

(KNSI) – Some media reports from the past week have suggested a federal budget bill is in trouble, but legislators are offering a rosier assessment of its prospects.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, who represents a district that includes Benton County and St. Cloud, is confident the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ will pass, and soon. Emmer told KNSI Radio Tuesday that the chamber has returned to something closer to the traditional budgeting method rather than a one-year continuing resolution.

It involves nearly a dozen committees creating smaller budgets wrapped into a comprehensive spending plan. “The plan is that all 11 bills will go back to the budget committee, where they will take about half the day stitching together all the pieces to create the one ‘Big, Beautiful Bill.’ And we should be voting as early as Tuesday.”

The ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ would also extend the 2017 tax cuts passed during the first Trump administration. Assuming it gets out of the house, Emmer lays out what the reconciliation process would look like with the U.S. Senate. “We will make sure that it satisfies the Senate parliamentarian’s requirements, and it becomes a live exercise. And you’ve probably been following this. The President is — It appears that he has anointed Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, to shepherd this thing through the Senate, because he’s saying he wants it done by July 4th.”

Budget bills take only a simple majority to pass. Republicans have a slight advantage in both chambers of Congress.

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