Budget Reconciliation Bills
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Background on Budget Reconciliation
If a budget resolution includes reconciliation instructions to change direct spending, revenue, or deficit levels by specified dollar amounts, the authorizing committees named in the instructions are required to develop reconciliation legislation—often during the same time frame the Appropriations Committees are assembling their appropriations bills.
Reconciliation mark-ups, where authorizing committee chairmen present draft legislative language for committee review and amendment, can be lengthy and challenging depending on the authorizing committees’ instructions. Moreover, because reconciliation bills are difficult to amend on the House or Senate Floor (due to germaneness and budget restrictions), reconciliation mark-ups at the authorizing committees are the best—and often the only—opportunity for Members or Senators to offer substantive amendments to reconciliation bills.
After the authorizing committees mark-up their respective legislative provisions, they are reported to the respective House or Senate Budget Committees where they are packaged, without change, into a single reconciliation bill for House and Senate Floor consideration, respectively. The Budget Committees often package the language with a separate title for each authorizing committee’s legislation. After the respective Budget Committees report their reconciliation bills to the full chamber, the bills are considered under special procedural protections set forth in the 1974 Budget Act. The special procedures are of particular importance in the Senate.
To explain the significance of budget reconciliation procedures in the Senate, it is necessary to understand how the Senate typically operates. The Standing Rules of the Senate generally protect the rights of all Senators to (1) engage in unlimited debate and (2) offer amendments without limitation.
Votes do not occur in the Senate until all debate on a matter is completed and all amendments have been offered. Consequently, opponents of a particular measure can block it by engaging in extended debate or continuing to offer amendments. A “filibuster” is simply the continuation of debate and amendments to prevent a final vote.
The only way to stop a filibuster in the Senate is by limiting debate and amendments with a procedure known as “cloture,” which requires 60 votes.42 In recent years, filibusters have been threatened more frequently—almost routinely—leading to the popular misconception that legislation in the Senate requires the support of 60, not 51 Senators.
The budget reconciliation process effectively short-circuits Senate rules and precedents because the 1974 Budget Act protects reconciliation Bills with (1) a strict 20-hour time limit on debate and (2) a germaneness restriction on the type of amendments that can be offered. The limit on debate means that reconciliation bills cannot be filibustered.
Consequently, no matter how controversial a reconciliation bill may be, passage in the Senate requires only 51 votes (or 50 when the Vice President is from the majority party), rather than the 60 votes required to invoke cloture and end debate on controversial non-reconciliation measures.
The “germaneness” restriction on amendments to reconciliation bills is also significant (though often overlooked). “Germaneness” in the Senate is much stricter than mere relevance. An amendment is germane only if it strikes a provision, changes a number, limits some new authority provided in the legislation, or expresses the “sense of the Senate.” Effectively, this means that most substantive amendments offered to a reconciliation bill on the Senate Floor are likely to be nongermane and can only be considered if the restriction is waived by a vote of 60 Senators. This dramatically elevates the importance of committee mark-ups where reconciliation language is originally developed.