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HOW DO YOU ASK A MAN TO BE THE LAST TO DIE FOR THE BYRD RULE?
Deep in this article on the Obama administration's unwillingness to rule out reconciliation comes the common recitation of constraints reconciliation would impose on any bill. Policies passed under the expedited process expire after 10 years and have to be deeply linked to the budget and tend to eliminate administrative language. A health care bill going through reconciliation would look a lot stranger than a health care bill passed through the normal process.
Which isn't to say that non-budget bills never travel through reconciliation. George W. Bush used reconciliation for tax cuts, ANWR drilling, Medicaid cuts, Medicare tax changes, trade authority, and much else. Judd Gregg -- now the Senate's leading reconciliation skeptic -- voted for every single one of these initiatives. Under Clinton, reconciliation was used to reform welfare, balance the budget, and, by the Republicans, to enact the Contract With America (Clinton vetoed).
The restrictions on what reconciliation can consider are not really intrinsic to the process. Rather, they're a function of the so-called "Byrd rule," which limits reconciliation to legislation that changes spending, forces neutrality outside the 10-year window (that's why Bush's tax cut are set to expire this year), and imposes all manner of restrictions on it. If not for the Byrd rule, you could basically do anything under reconciliation. In practice, it would merely take a majority of senators on the Budget Committee to dismantle it. If that was done, reconciliation would make the Senate an effective 50-vote institution, just as the filibuster made it an effective 60-vote institution.
Is that likely? Probably not. But these rules were made by man, not God. Hell, they weren't even made by the founders. Robert Byrd is still a senator! If the Democrats decide passing health reform or averting climate change is more important than respecting rules passed by their elderly colleagues, then they can change the rules.
COMMENTS (9)
Be careful what you ask for.
What goes around....comes around and the Democrats will not stay in power forever.
Posted by: El Viajero | March 18, 2009 3:43 PM
Ezra, how long did it take you and Robert Gibbs to come up with this idea in your "nonpartisan echo chamber"?
Posted by: Anonymous | March 18, 2009 3:46 PM
Ezra's being lazy. He is right that Byrd Rule makes budget reconciliation nearly impossible for Obama's more contentious policies but to just say well "[congress] can change the rules" is a cop-out.
Really, congress can change the rules? How? With only 50 votes?
Posted by: gordon gekko | March 18, 2009 4:02 PM
I see that the deputies from Red State and National Review have arrived to deliver their wisdom (aka: gooper talking point B.S).
Evan Bayh's new group of Blue Dogs With No Name in the Senate make the reconciliation thingy almost moot. They can't extract their moderation without a 60 vote requirement.
Even if Bayh folded (a not unexpected thing from such an insipid creature), Dems are the neighborhood software team playing the NY Yankees from the GOP. No contest. No guts, no glory.
By the time we get close to floor votes on Health Care and Carbon Caps, the Obama party will be in shatters over financial incompetence.
Laugh at this one today from the FED FOMC:
the Committee sees some risk that inflation could persist for a time below rates that best foster economic growth and price stability in the longer term.
They can't even use the word deflation! It is now 'below rates that best foster growth...'
We are one sick puppy litter, folks. The Vet died, the puppies' mother was kidnapped by Wall Street, and the family is on the street corner asking for spare change. The pups are home alone.
Posted by: JimPortlandOR | March 18, 2009 4:02 PM
Really, congress can change the rules? How? With only 50 votes?
At the start of a new Congress, they can change the rules with 50 votes. But since they ratified the Byrd rule and the cloture rule and everything else, I'm not sure why anyone would expect them to suddenly change the rules now. Maybe in 2011.
Posted by: Steve | March 18, 2009 4:06 PM
Ego Bayh is more important!
Posted by: Obama -- Not as Tough as the Steelers | March 18, 2009 4:29 PM
In practice, it would merely take a majority of senators on the Budget Committee to dismantle [the Byrd Rule].
What is the basis for this statement? It appears to me that the Byrd Rule is a standing rule of the Senate, and that it would take a 2/3 vote to change such a rule.
Posted by: John | March 18, 2009 11:34 PM
El Viajero: "Be careful what you ask for.
What goes around....comes around and the Democrats will not stay in power forever."
Yeah, the Democrats should just give up on passing a progressive agenda, because someday the Republicans might be able to pass their agenda. Scary! We had better rely on fear of the future to guide us, rather than doing the right thing now.
It's precisely because the Dems will likely not control Congress forever that they need to accomplish as much as possible as soon as possible.
Posted by: Mark | March 19, 2009 7:49 AM
We should increase the threshold for the filibuster back up to 100 where it was originally. Paradoxically this would weaken the filibuster because if senators didn't let bill they didn't like come to a vote nothing would pass. Either the filibuster would stop being used or pressure would mount to do away with it. Moreover if Democrats increased the threshold to 100 they couldn't be accused of abusing their power.
Posted by: Craig McGillivary | March 19, 2009 8:32 AM