Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell this past Thursday:

In fact, throughout this entire debate the two parties seem to have been guided by two different philosophies. The Democrats, it seems, decided on a random dollar amount of $900 billion, and have spent most of their time either defending it or adding to it. Republicans, on the other hand, have thought all along that what we really need to do is to identify the core problem first—and then see how much money it would cost to fix.

Today’s NYT:

Once the Senate votes, aides said, the first order of business in the bicameral talks will be to set an overall dollar figure and then begin to sort out the differences in spending and tax changes in the two measures.