Brady Allardice
Today, February 2, the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate passed Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill, paving the way for the bill to be enacted into law in the near future. While many Americans are understandably excited by the prospect of much-needed aid coming their way, the method that the Congress used to pass this bill has drawn attention in the news. Budget Reconciliation, or simply, Reconciliation comes from the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, which allows Congress to consider changes to tax, spending, and debt legislation. This process was intended to allow Congress to adapt its spending priorities in response to the demands of the day and was mostly used to reduce spending in its early years. It has only been used 25 times since 1974 but has become an important tool in Congress’ ever-shrinking bill-passing quiver in recent years. This is because Reconciliation has one special trait that makes it extremely alluring to the majority party: its immunity from the Filibuster. Budget Reconciliation, once it gets to the Senate floor, only needs a simple majority. In 2017, Republicans used Budget Reconciliation to pass the 2017 Tax Cuts and famously failed in their attempt to use it to repeal the Affordable Care Act, with John McCain casting the deciding vote while battling with cancer.
As citizens and politicians alike becoming more entrenched in their political ideologies, the division among right has grown into more of a chasm. Throughout American history, compromise and bi-partisanship have been key to creating the laws that governm the United States, but now compromise and bi-partisanship is seen in as selling out to the other side. If you don’t believe me, just ask Liz Cheney, who was almost ousted from her party for voting to impeach Donal Trump. So instead of committing political suicide by trying to reach a bi-partisan deal, the Senate is left with two (three) options: remove/reform the filibuster or pass spending measures through Budget Reconciliation (or just do nothing and pass no bills). With the potential deciding vote, Joe Manchin, signaling he would be against removing/reforming the filibuster, Democrats are left only with the latter.
On its face, passing measures through Reconciliation doesn’t seem so bad. So what if Democrats use it instead of passing filibuster reform? Isn’t it effectively the same thing? Couldn’t each majority party just do this until the political animosity somehow dies down? At least we would have some form of a functioning government, you might say. Unfortunately, Budget Reconciliation is no magic pill; it comes with some pretty serious downsides. First of all, for each of the three mentioned topics under reconciliation (tax, spending, and debt legislation), Congress can only pass one Reconciliation per year (or two if no budget was passed for the year before, like in 2020). Second of all, Reconciliation can only change things that have to do with government spending. There are other rules, known as Byrd Rules, that further limit topics for Reconciliation, but I will not go into them here. These limitations mean that Congress cannot pass whatever they want in the way that they want, meaning that the bills that come from Reconciliation may not be able to directly address the issues that the Senate wants to address. Third of all, Budget Reconciliation requires no Presidential signature and cannot be vetoed by the President. This would completely change the basic structure of legislation in the U.S., effectively neutering the check on Congress’ power by the President. Despite its obvious flaws, it may beat the current alternatives in the political calculus done on Capitol Hill. If we start seeing this more frequently, which I suspect we will, Schoolhouse Rock better get on making a new song.
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