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A lot of argument is swirling around right now about budget reconciliation(not to be confused with plain old reconciliation, which is what the House and Senate do in conference committee to merge a bill that has passed each house in different forms) and if it should be used to pass healthcare. A lot of it is misinformation and I want to take some time to explain the process, the reason that budget reconciliation is there, what it is supposed to be used for, and what it is not supposed to be used for. I need to start though with how this country spends money. A pretty big chunk of our federal government runs on its own as a matter of law and doesn't need to be reauthorized year to year. Social Security and Medicare(among other things) are funded directly by statute. Money goes in, checks go out. That is mandatory spending. Discretionary spending is reappropriated every year. In this catergory are things like Defense, the Dept. of Commerce, the State Department, etc. Those departments are funded on a yearly basis through the federal budget. Here's how that process works: every February or March, the President submits a budget to Congress. Congress then takes that budget and marks it up in committee, amends it on the floor, reconciles it in conference, and pass a joint budget resolution. This resolution is not signed into law and has no legal force. No money is spent by it. The purpose it serves is to act as a guide for the appropriations process. In appropriations bills you can add anything you want, you can write a new law that has nothing to do with the budget, but provisions in appropriations are subject to points of order which force them to remain in line with the budget resolution and the Congressional Budget Act(which set up this whole process). Now the fiscal year for the United States Government begins on October 1. Appropriations bills are supposed to be done prior to this point. In reality, most bills take longer than that and in the interim, Congress will pass a continuing resolution to hold the government over until the new approriations bill is passed. Make sense? Congratulations, you just passed Federal Budgeting 101. Now on to the budget reconciliation process. in order to have a reconciliation bill you first need to add instructions to the budget resolution that call for it. Once that is done you have to wait until the new fiscal year begins. The purpose of a reconciliation bill is to reign in runaway appropriations and bring down the defecit. It provides a method for correcting "misjudgements" about how much things were going to cost or how much revenue would be generated. The way a reconciliation bill does that is by giving it privileged status on the Senate floor. Reconciliation bills have a limit of 20 hours of debate after which the bill must be voted on. On the flip side, a reconciliation bill must meet the standards set out in the reconciliation instructions AND the Byrd rule. A provision in a reconciliation bill is subject to a point of order under the Byrd rule if it meets any of the following five provisions: • do not produce a change in outlays or revenues;
• produce changes in outlays or revenue which are merely incidental to the non-budgetary components of the provision;
• are outside the jurisdiction of the committee that submitted the title or provision for inclusion in the reconciliation measure;
• increase outlays or decrease revenue if the provision's title, as a whole, fails to achieve the Senate reporting committee's reconciliation instructions;
• increase net outlays or decrease revenue during a fiscal year after the years covered by the reconciliation bill unless the provision's title, as a whole, remains budget neutral;
• contain recommendations regarding the OASDI (social security) trust funds. So the provisions have to fall within the jurisdiction of the committee it is coming out of, it must reduce the defecit, it has to be germane(relevant) to the overall bill, and it can't touch Social Security. If it does not, any senator may raise a point of order, which-if sustained by the Chair(the Vice President or the President Pro Tem) may only be waived by 3/5 of the Senate.
So I told you that it was meant to deal with runaway appropriations and miscalculations of revenue. Now lets look at what it has been used for: A couple of highlights here: COBRA was passed with Budget Reconciliation(Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act). SCHIP was passed with Budget Reconciliation. Medicare Part D was passed under Budget Reconciliation. Both the 2001 and the 2003 Bush Tax cuts were passed under Budget Reconciliation. How, you might ask, were all of these programs passed under reconciliation? Well, most of them fully complied with the Byrd rule. I would say that there were two(maybe 3) exceptions to that. The Bush Tax cuts in no way complied with the Byrd rule. They in no way reduced the defecit. Far from it, the tax cuts put a $1.8 trillion hole in the defecit. How could they possibly have passed? The Chair(A.K.A. Dick Cheney) simply overruled the points of order against it. In this area, the Vice President is "the decider." He says what complies with the byrd rule and what doesn't, and in Cheneyland, the Bush tax cuts didn't reduce the defecit. In fact they went so far as to fire the parliamentarian that told him that he was wrong. So given the history of budget reconciliation, lets look at how it is going to be used for healthcare reform. The Senate(the body that matters) has passed a comprehensive healthcare reform. If the House of Representatives wanted to they could pass that tomorrow and it would be over to the president's desk that same day. Unfortunately that bill doesn't really comply with some members of the house. They want a stronger bill. Everyone also wants to get rid of things like the "cornhusker kickback," and the "Louisiana purchase." The idea is to put these things, along with a few other tweaks to the Senate bill that will improve it, make it suitable to the House, and meet the requirements in the Byrd Rule. Then it can go to the President's desk. There are some that would argue for a public option(I would be one of them) to be put into the bill, but it seems like that is not in the cards for the current reconciliation bill at least. So here are the attacks that I have heard, which I think need to be rebutted: - "Reconciliation shouldn't be used for such a massive bill. We're dealing with 1/7th of our economy here. It was designed for budgetary procedures, and shifts in taxes, not for a massive government takeover of healthcare."
Wrong on all counts. First, Reconciliation was designed for, and has been used to pass all sorts of healthcare reform programs, as I explained earlier. In fact, save for Medicare, pretty much every major healthcare program has been passed through reconciliation. Second, reconciliation is not being used to pass a massive government takeover of healthcare. It is being used to tweak a bill that was already passed. Third, Reconciliation was used to pass the Bush tax cuts in direct violation of the Byrd rule by the same people complaining that its being used here when it does comply with it. - "Reconciliation is usually used in a bipartisan fashion. It should be used for that here too."
Nonsense. Utter nonsense. pretty much every reconciliation bill has been passed on a party-line vote, save for one or two crossover votes. - "This is a parliamentary trick. Its a power grab for the liberals that want to take over the healthcare system."
Well, you may have me here. This is a parliamentary maneuver, but so is a filibuster, so is objecting to a unanimous consent request to waive the reading of a bill, so is everything that happens in a parliamentary body. Democrats have the votes for it, a majority of the Senate wants to pass this, and there is a provision that allows them to do that. Get used to it. Why should Democrats be forced to bring a spork to a gunfight? - I've also heard attacks on the parliamentarian, suggesting that he might not be fair about his rulings on the Byrd rule.
This is ridiculous on so many levels. First off, the Parliamentarian so far has been ruthlessly fair, as has been every officer of the Senate. He is acting in a perfectly non-partisan fashion. Second, The whiplash of republicans on this issue must be painful. These clowns are the one that FIRED the parliamentarian when he was fairly ruling the Bush tax cuts to be out of order in a reconciliation bill. They have absolutely no room to complain when Democrats pass a bill that the man that the Republicans hired to replace that guy agrees with. How two-faced can you be? So in conclusion, Democrats are probably using reconciliation, they are using it for exactly the reasion it was created, and they are operating fully with the constraints of the Byrd rule. The repbulicans really don't have a leg to stand on with this. Democrats have the votes. Get used to it.
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