Almost immediately after Election Day 2024, as Republicans celebrated the fact that they would control the White House and both chambers of Congress, GOP officials began preliminary discussions — not just about what they wanted, but also about how they’d get it.

Not surprisingly, congressional Republicans settled on a strategy based on the budget reconciliation process — a process that would allow GOP senators to circumvent Democrats and pass a bill through majority rule, without the possibility of a filibuster — but they also knew they had a myriad of tactical and substantive variables to consider, as well as a series of choke points.

If the party had chance of passing an ambitious, far-right package — what President Donald Trump has repeatedly referred to as a “big, beautiful bill” — it would have to first approve a Republican budget plan. As NBC News reported, House GOP lawmakers have now checked that box.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., muscled a revised budget blueprint needed to advance President Donald Trump’s agenda through the House on Thursday. … The vote was 216-214, with just two Republicans — Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Victoria Spartz, R-Ind. — joining all Democrats in opposition. Trump had endorsed the budget plan, which the Senate adopted it last weekend on a narrow 51-48 vote.

This outcome was by no means a given. Indeed, the night before House Republicans passed their budget resolution, GOP leaders tried to pass the identical plan, but they failed in the face of a far-right rebellion.

House Speaker Mike Johnson vowed to try again the next morning, and after an evening of arm-twisting, the Louisiana Republican and his party succeeded. A conversation between far-right House members and Senate Majority Leader John Thune reportedly helped advance the process, with the South Dakota Republican offering assurances about GOP senators’ commitment to deep cuts to federal spending.

As recently as Tuesday, House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris said there was no point in having the president call him to encourage him to support the party’s budget. Trump, the Maryland Republican said, should “spend time with people whose minds he might change. He’s just not going to change my mind.”

Two days later, Harris voted for the bill he said he’d oppose — as did a dozen other House conservatives who said the plan didn’t go far enough to specify the kind of spending cuts Freedom Caucus members wanted to see.

In the short term, the fact that the budget plan is now done has no immediate impact on policy. This is a blueprint, not a law — budget resolutions don’t even go the White House for the president’s signature — and by most measures, it’s the easiest part of the reconciliation process.

For all intents and purposes, this measure was about Republicans simply unlocking their own door, clearing the way for them to begin work in earnest on their radically regressive vision.

But that’s not to say it’s unimportant. On the contrary, as Sharon Parrott, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted in a statement, “The budget plan that House Republicans passed today paves the way to take Medicaid health coverage and food assistance through SNAP away from millions of people, to partially pay for huge tax giveaways for wealthy households and businesses that will drive up deficits and fiscal risk.”

Parrott’s point about tax giveaways was of particular interest, because while much of the focus of late has been on the brutal spending cuts that GOP lawmakers have in mind, just as notable is the scope and scale of the tax breaks that Republicans intend to include in their reconciliation package. The New York Times published a good summary of this over the weekend, after the Senate passed the same blueprint that just cleared the House:

On paper, the new Senate budget outline allows for $1.5 trillion in tax cuts, a seemingly modest amount. But that figure disguises an additional $3.8 trillion for extending the 2017 tax cuts that Senate Republicans also want to include in the bill, which they argue should not show up as a cost on the federal balance sheet. The 2017 tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of the year, so an extension must be included in their bill, but Republicans have said that they will steer around budget rules and declare the move cost-free. The real size of the tax cut envisioned in the Senate outline is therefore roughly $5.3 trillion over a decade.

GOP lawmakers labeled the tactic the “current policy baseline,” which is an anodyne name for an absurd maneuver. In fact, The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell, an MSNBC host, called the partisan gambit “Orwellian,” adding that Republicans have decided that the party will “control how math works,” deeming trillions of dollars’ worth of tax cuts have no cost at all — because they say so.

Ordinarily, when members are going to rely on the reconciliation process, the budget resolution would have to go through the parliamentarian’s office, but in this instance, Republicans decided not to bother.

It’s just as well: Elizabeth MacDonough, the parliamentarian, likely would’ve told GOP leaders they had to honor arithmetic, and by all appearances, that’s just not part of their plan.