A little understood parliamentary trick called ‘budget reconciliation’ allows the majority party in the Senate to pass legislation with a mere 50 votes (plus the tie-breaking vote of the vice-president). Basically, there is a rule limiting debate on the budget which means that the budget cannot be filibustered. Bill Clinton used budget reconciliation to pass his tax hikes in 1993 and George W. Bush used the process to pass his tax cuts in 2001 and 2003.
Technically, you are not supposed to use the procedure to piggy-back controversial legislation onto the budget in order to get around the filibuster. There’s even a thing called the Byrd Rule which is supposed to prevent this from happening.
If the Democrats include a health care bill as part of the budget reconciliation process then the bill will be subject to a point of order that it is in violation of the Byrd Rule. Then it will be up to the parliamentarian to decide whether the Byrd Rule has been violated. If the answer is ‘yes’, then it takes 60 votes to waive the rule.
The trick, then, is to craft the health care portion of the bill in such a way that it does not violate the Byrd Rule, and part of accomplishing that appears to involve making the bill budget-neutral. I’d defer to David Waldman or others on the specifics, but that’s my non-parliamentarian take on it.
Without going into too much detail, Congress is passing its budget right now. The budget isn’t binding, but any changes between the proposed budget and the actual budget that emerges in the fall must be ‘reconciled’. There is currently a House version of the budget and a Senate version of the budget that are under consideration, and those, too, must be reconciled (like any other piece of bicameral congressional legislation). The House version includes a provision that would allow health care or cap and trade to be included later on when the budget reconciliation process takes place. The Senate does not include the provision, but it doesn’t matter.
All that matters is that one of the two versions included this provision. When the House and Senate get done passing their respective budgets, there will be a Conference between the House and Senate where a few select members of each body iron out one version of the bill. It is in that Conference where the provision for including health care and/or cap and trade must survive. If it does, then the Republican filibuster will be defeated and the Democrats will need only fifty of their fifty-eight (or fifty-nine) members to vote for Obama’s top priorities.
The biggest resistance to doing this end-around has been coming from conservative Democrats including the powerful chairman of the Budget Committee Kent Conrad and the even more powerful chairman of the Finance Committee Max Baucus. But they are now wavering. While they don’t like it…
Key Senate Democrats such as Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (N.D.) and Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (Mont.), however, say they do not want to poison the atmosphere in the upper chamber while there is still an opportunity to assemble a bipartisan coalition for a health reform bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said he is open to using reconciliation.
The House version of the budget resolution includes reconciliation, while the Senate’s does not. Both of those are expected to pass this week. When the two chambers combine their resolutions in the coming weeks, Democrats will have an ace in the hole because of the House’s actions.
…they are coming around.
The chairman of the Senate Budget Committee said Monday that if Republicans attempt this week to block a $3.55 trillion budget resolution that contains funding for the president’s health care overhaul, Democrats would likely submit a second resolution.
And, said Sen. Kent Conrad, the North Dakota Democrat who chairs the budget panel, the new proposal would contain a “reconciliation” provision, which would strip the minority party of its ability to filibuster the measure.
The maneuver would allow majority Senate Democrats to pass a budget with a simple majority vote — and without any Republican support.
Conrad had resisted including the reconciliation measure in the resolution his committee passed last week and sent to the Senate floor for debate this week.
“I don’t think reconciliation is the right way to write fundamental reform legislation,” he said Monday during a morning conference call with reporters before the Senate began debate on the measure…
…But Conrad warned that if there’s no Republican cooperation this week — “if it’s proved absolutely essential” — a second budget resolution that includes the controversial but common reconciliation provision would likely be sent to the floor.
“I would strongly prefer not to do it that way,” said Conrad, who predicted that Democrats would get some Republican cooperation this week.
“I believe there are a group of Republicans who fully intend to help write major health care reform legislation,” he said, “and I think we ought to engage them.”
In other words, Obama is going to get an up or down vote on his health care plan.