Reconciliation is a “fast-track” legislative process that bypasses potential Senate gridlock and permits the passage of budget-related legislation by majority vote. It’s a hot-button issue now as the Senate grapples with health-care legislation.
“Although originally quite limited, the reconciliation process has morphed over time,” says Cheryl D. Block, JD, budget policy expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “Perhaps more than any other Senate matters, reconciliation puts the parliamentarian in the hot seat.”
Among the most controversial rulings, the Senate parliamentarian at the time, Robert Dove, determined that a reconciliation bill could be used to enact the George W. Bush-era tax cuts — for which the Senate Republicans did not have 60 votes — over Democratic objections that reconciliation was to be used only for budget deficit control.
According to Block, the parliamentarian’s job generally is bipartisan; the same parliamentarian often serves through many years despite changeovers in Senate control. Yet Dove was abruptly fired in 2001 after some reconciliation rulings that angered Senate Republicans.
“Most would agree that budget reconciliation was not a process intended for general health-care reform,” Block says. “On the other hand, reconciliation’s proper boundaries remain somewhat fuzzy, and statutory interpretations and parliamentary rulings have expanded its scope.
“Democrats now face a political quandary: Do they play the reconciliation game when it serves their purposes or not?” Block says. “The passage this term of health-care legislation, and perhaps the future of health-care reform more generally, now may turn on rulings of the current parliamentarian (Alan Frumin).” Frumin is in his second stint as parliamentarian, serving from 1987-1995 and from 2001 to the present day.
Reconciliation up close
The reconciliation process is an optional procedure designed to permit the budget committee to issue instructions directing individual congressional committees to increase or decrease spending or taxes so as to comply with the congressional budget resolution.
A reconciliation bill prepared in response to such instructions is subject to different procedural rules, which have greatest impact on the Senate side.
Rules for ordinary legislation in the Senate provide unlimited time for debate unless 60 Senators vote for cloture, thereby avoiding filibuster. In contrast, reconciliation bills have a limited time for debate and can be passed by majority vote without threat of filibuster.
Ordinary Senate rules also permit members to propose amendments from the Senate floor, whether germane or not. The reconciliation process, in contrast, includes various points-of-order against “extraneous” material.