Reconciliation (United States Congress)
The procedure overrides the Senate's filibuster rules, which may otherwise require a 60-vote supermajority for passage.
[1] Because of greater polarization, gridlock, and filibustering in the Senate in recent years, budget reconciliation has come to play an important role in how the United States Congress legislates.
[5] As a result of this ruling, a revised budget resolution would need to be approved by a majority vote of the Budget Committee before proceeding to the Senate floor, or deadlocked with a tied vote and then brought to the Senate floor via a motion to discharge.
Considering the partisan nature of reconciliation legislation, it is highly unlikely that a member of the minority party will cooperate with the majority by providing a quorum on the Committee, thus practically limiting the majority of a 50-50 tied Senate to one reconciliation bill per fiscal year.
[6] Typically, the reconciliation process begins when the president submits a budget to Congress early in the calendar year.
[7] The reconciliation process has a relatively minor impact in the House of Representatives, but it has important implications in the Senate.
[16] In 2001, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott fired Parliamentarian Robert Dove after bipartisan dissatisfaction with his rulings, and replaced him with the previous Democratic appointee, Alan Frumin.
Schultze proposed that Congress create a new type of legislation, the "final budget reconciliation bill," to ensure that the various budget-related bills passed by each congressional committee collectively fell within the overall spending targets passed by Congress.
[20] Under the original design of the Budget Act, reconciliation was expected to apply to revenue and spending within a single fiscal year.
In addition to bypassing the filibuster, the reconciliation process allowed Congress to pass these spending cuts through a budget resolution and a single reconciliation bill, rather than through the traditional method of passing several bills addressing each area of spending.
[25] The reconciliation process remained an important tool of congressional majorities even after the passage of the Byrd Rule.
In 1996, he signed another major reconciliation bill, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996.
[19] In 1997, Congress passed the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, a reconciliation bill that reduced taxes and increased the federal budget deficit.
[30] Democrats won control of the presidency and increased their control over Congress in the 2008 elections, and newly inaugurated President Barack Obama and his congressional allies focused on passing a major healthcare reform bill in the 111th Congress.
[32] The original Senate bill was passed by the House and signed into law by President Obama as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA).
[31] In 2016, Republicans passed a reconciliation bill to repeal parts of the ACA, but it was vetoed by President Obama.
[37] Both houses of Congress passed a tax cut bill in late 2017, though the Byrd Rule required the stripping of some provisions deemed extraneous.
[40] The American Rescue Plan was a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package proposed by President Joe Biden to speed up the United States' recovery from the economic and health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing recession.
