Senate Republicans are facing crunch time on a long-overdue budget resolution, which has divided their conference over the possibility of cutting Medicaid and adding language to increase the debt ceiling by as much as $5 trillion.

Whether they move on the bill this week could depend largely on a key ruling from Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has told colleagues that he wanted to get the budget to the floor this week, but that timeline is already slipping as GOP senators have yet to coalesce around the proposal, and it has yet to get the green light from the powerful parliamentarian.

Thune told reporters Monday that he’s not yet sure whether the budget will be ready to go this week, noting that the discussions with the parliamentarian are “ongoing” and he wants to make sure nearly his entire conference is “comfortable” with the plan.

“We want to get to it as quickly as we can, and I’m hoping that enables us to move on it this week,” Thune said.

But he cautioned that moving on the budget requires “having everything ready to go” and cited “the parliamentarian conversations” and “making sure we got everybody in a comfortable place with it.”

“It’s a process,” he said.

Some Senate Republicans, including Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), have made it clear they would not support big cuts to Medicaid that might threaten to reduce the program's benefits.

Meanwhile, Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Todd Young (R-Ind.) have raised questions about using a special budgetary scoring model to claim that extending President Trump's tax cuts won’t add to the deficit.

© The Hill