Reconciliation

[Nbadan]

Since wing-nuts are using their usual fuzzy logic about reconciliation being the 'nukular' option, lets clear up the Faux air...

A reconciliation bill is a special type of bill. The full name is a “budget reconciliation” bill. It’s purpose is to combine into one bill the work of multiple committees that are changing federal spending and tax laws. It is an incredibly powerful tool that bypasses (1) and (2) above, but only for very limited purposes. Senators, and the Senate as a whole, value highly preservation of the unlimited debate and amendment rights of individual Senators, and so they allow these rules to be bypassed only for a specific purpose.

The House and Senate pass the budget resolution in the spring of each year. It is a budget blueprint which Congress imposes on itself, and which establishes the rules that limit how much various committees can spend in the legislation they produce. A budget resolution can contain one (or in rare cases, up to three) reconciliation instruction(s). Reconciliation instructions create reconciliation bills.

To oversimplify, you can use a reconciliation bill only to change spending, taxes, or the debt limit. The process was used initially to facilitate deficit reduction — various Senate committees are each given a deficit reduction target, and are “instructed” by the budget resolution to produce bills that reduce the deficit by those amounts. The Senate Budget Committee then packages all those deficit reduction bills into a single bill, and reports it to the Senate floor for debate, amendments, and voting, all under a fast-track process that limits the minority’s ability to filibuster or kill the bill by amendment.

*snip*

“Report” is the committee version of “pass.” When a committee is done debating and amending a bill, if a majority of the committee members support the bill, they vote to “report it out of committee.” The Senate occasionally passes a bill. A Senate committee reports a bill.

If the above example reconciliation instruction is followed, there will be three bills reported out of three committees. Each of these three bills will then go to the Senate Budget Committee, which checks the numbers to make sure each committee has hit its savings target. If they have, the Budget Committee puts all three bills into a single pile, puts a rubber band around the pile, calls it a new single reconciliation bill, and reports it to the Senate floor. As long as the committees have hit their savings targets, the Budget Committee does not have authority to change the substance of any of the component bills.

When the Senate Majority Leader starts debate on this reconciliation bill, there are strict limits, unlike for a normal bill:

* Debate and voting time is limited to 20 hours. There is a fixed back-end that guarantees a vote on final passage.
* Amendments must be “germane” to the bill. No going wildly off-topic.
* Amendments must not violate the Byrd Rule.

The first point means that a reconciliation bill cannot be endlessly debated (filibustered) or endlessly amended. This means there is never a need to invoke cloture to shut off debate or amendments, so the majority needs only 51 votes to complete and pass the reconciliation bill. In practical legislating, the difference between needing 51 votes and needing 60 votes is enormous.

Keith Hennessey

[Nbadan]

Reconciliation and the Byrd Rule...

From Senator Reid’s perspective, so far, so good. Before bringing the reconciliation bill to the Senate floor, I would expect that he would draft an alternative to the two bills, called a subs ute amendment. He would take components of the two committee bills and combine them in a way that best achieves his policy goals and, more importantly, maximizes his probability of holding 51 Democratic votes on the Senate floor. As long as he stays close to the confines of the two committee-reported bills, he has nearly complete freedom to draft the subs ute amendment any way he likes.

We learned in the first post that the reconciliation rules protect the bill from a filibuster and endless and non-germane amendments. If Senator Reid can hold 51 votes to defeat amendments, and to vote aye on final passage, then he’s home free. He has a further advantage in that the rules make it hard to add things to a reconciliation bill.

His problem is the Byrd rule. Any one Senator (presumably a Republican who opposes the bill) can surgically use the Byrd rule to remove sections of the bill. Senator Reid will need 60 votes to defeat each of these attempts, and there could be a lot of them. If Reid’s coalition is shy of 60 votes, the bill could end up being Swiss cheese by the end of the process and before Senate passage. The reconciliation bill that passes the Senate could contain enormous gaps from provisions stricken by skillful use of the Byrd rule.

We’re really down in the weeds, but this is critically important, so I’m going to dive a little further into the specifics of the Byrd rule and how it might apply to health care reform.

Keith Hennessey

[Nbadan]

Reconciliation and the Byrd Rule...

From Senator Reid’s perspective, so far, so good. Before bringing the reconciliation bill to the Senate floor, I would expect that he would draft an alternative to the two bills, called a subs ute amendment. He would take components of the two committee bills and combine them in a way that best achieves his policy goals and, more importantly, maximizes his probability of holding 51 Democratic votes on the Senate floor. As long as he stays close to the confines of the two committee-reported bills, he has nearly complete freedom to draft the subs ute amendment any way he likes.

We learned in the first post that the reconciliation rules protect the bill from a filibuster and endless and non-germane amendments. If Senator Reid can hold 51 votes to defeat amendments, and to vote aye on final passage, then he’s home free. He has a further advantage in that the rules make it hard to add things to a reconciliation bill.

His problem is the Byrd rule. Any one Senator (presumably a Republican who opposes the bill) can surgically use the Byrd rule to remove sections of the bill. Senator Reid will need 60 votes to defeat each of these attempts, and there could be a lot of them. If Reid’s coalition is shy of 60 votes, the bill could end up being Swiss cheese by the end of the process and before Senate passage. The reconciliation bill that passes the Senate could contain enormous gaps from provisions stricken by skillful use of the Byrd rule.

We’re really down in the weeds, but this is critically important, so I’m going to dive a little further into the specifics of the Byrd rule and how it might apply to health care reform.

Keith Hennessey

[Nbadan]

Public Option in and Consumer Protections out?

If Senator Reid wants to use reconciliation to pursue a 51-vote strategy:

* He will have to redraft certain provisions (like the public option) to maximize their chances of surviving Byrd rule challenges. This is relatively easy.
* He will have to assume that certain other provisions will get knocked out of the bill by the Byrd rule. I think the health insurance consumer protections fall into this category.
* He will have to make sure the bill bill does not increase the long-term budget deficit, in any year beyond 2014 or by more than $5 B in any of the four decades beginning in 2020.

This last one is difficult. Extremely difficult. It may be practically impossible.

The President told MSNBC yesterday that in September Democrats might abandon their bipartisan talks with Republicans and choose a partisan route. If they do go partisan, they can either use the reconciliation process or try to get all 60 Senate Democrats to support a single bill. The President and his advisors would be wise not to underestimate the difficulty of the reconciliation path.

Keith Hennessey

[Winehole23]

My understanding is that for reconciliation to occur, the House has to pass the Senate bill. Not a given, given the crappy public perception of the Senate bill.

A health insurance mandate that Americans lacking health care can't afford, and will be fined for for not paying, isn't a solution.

[spursncowboys]

Pelosi said she doesn't have to votes.

[Winehole23]

The votes?