WHAT COMES NEXT?

The Senate’s 51-48 party-line vote on Thursday was just enough for the measure to squeak through the chamber. The legislation now heads to the House, which is expected to cast its vote on Friday.

Passage of the budget bill came after seven hours of back-to-back votes, part of a byzantine ritual known as “vote-a-rama” in the Senate. “The American people have called on Congress to act and finally bring relief from Obamacare,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

The Senate measure does not repeal the Affordable Care Act — technically speaking, it’s a budget with numbers that are effectively moot — but it marks a path forward for a party determined to replace Barack Obama’s signature policy achievement.

The budget tells four committees – two in the House and two in the Senate – to each write bills over the next two weeks that cut at least $1 billion from the deficit over a decade. From there, the House and Senate Budget committees will cobble the measures together into a mega-repeal package that will strike at the heart of the 2010 health care overhaul and presumably delay when the changes go into effect for up to several years.

GOP leaders chose the arcane budget process to repeal Obamacare because it unlocks a procedure that enables them to act with only 51 votes in the Senate instead of the usual 60. The math is critical since there are 52 Republican senators, but that also means that leaders can afford to lose only two party members before their dream of repealing and replacing Obamacare is shredded.