The first step in the budget process every year is the budget resolution, which sets overall spending and revenue totals. Though fundamentally nonbinding, the resolution does provide some procedural advantages to staying within its dictates. The resolution Republicans proposed for 2004 included a large $726 billion tax cut that Progressives and Democrats in general found wasteful in the midst of a soft economy and a nation girding for war with Iraq. Graham (D-FL) proposed an amendment that shrank the size of the cut to pay for an increase in the amounts allotted to debt reduction and a Medicare prescription drug benefit. Progressives supported the amendment because they opposed the tax cut and supported the uses to which the amendment put the money. As a result, they also opposed a Grassley (R-IA) motion to table (kill) this amendment. However, their opposition was not enough, the motion to table passed 55-44, and Graham's amendment fell.