After hearing praise for reconciliation on Olbermann, I went in search of its meaning, and found this interesting article from last March:
Could an obscure Senate rule free Barack Obama from the filibuster and enable health-care reform?
Ezra Klein | March 23, 2009 | web only
(snip)
When my former classmates at Santa Cruz talked about "reconciliation processes," they meant something that involved sharing feelings and listening openly and empathically to others. When congressional observers talk about the reconciliation process, they mean the budget reconciliation process. Originally a way to expedite the process of merging the first budget resolution the Congress passed at the beginning of each year with the second budget resolution it passed near the end, reconciliation has drifted far from its origins and now means one thing to both sides: 50 votes. No filibuster. That's the beauty of the reconciliation process: It restores the primacy of the up-or-down vote. In the "regular order" -- which is to say, the Senate's customary procedure -- the time for debate is unlimited, and if a minority of 40 senators refuses to stop talking, then you need 60 of them to invoke the rule that shuts the others up and allows the bill to come to vote. If you don't have 60 votes to break the filibuster, it doesn't matter if you have 50 votes to pass the bill.
The reconciliation process, by contrast, limits debate to 20 hours and bypasses the filibuster altogether. It was instituted to ensure that minority obstruction couldn't block important business like passing a budget or reducing the deficit. But it was misused. At least, Robert Byrd thought so. He saw all manner of "extraneous" amendments and legislation sneaking beneath the radar of the reconciliation process. Rather than being used to reconcile the budget or reduce the deficit, it was being used to short-circuit the filibuster (much, one might say, like the filibuster itself, which was being used not to lengthen debate on legislation but kill that legislation altogether).
(snip)
This, some suggest, is too easy. By making it likelier that legislation passes, it is contradicting the Senate's proud history of implacable obstruction to progress. "If we are going to preserve the deliberative process in this U.S. Senate," Byrd thundered from the floor, "which is the outstanding, unique element with respect to the U.S. Senate, action must be taken now to stop this abuse of the budget process." So he took it, introducing, in 1985, the first version of the Byrd rule. If you want to know why we do not today have a 50-vote Senate, the Byrd rule is the reason. The Byrd rule imposes a set of sharp constraints on the reconciliation process, limiting what is considered appropriate for reconciliation. The basic theory of the Byrd rule is that any legislation considered under the budget reconciliation process should principally affect federal revenues. A tax cut, for instance, can be considered under the reconciliation process. A new federal holiday cannot. But between those two examples sit crucial ambiguities.
The Byrd rule states that legislation is unfit for reconciliation if it "produce
changes in outlays or revenue which are merely incidental to the non-budgetary components of the provision." I asked Jim Horney, a budget expert at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, how you define "merely incidental." And what, exactly, is a "provision"? He sighed. A provision, he said, is "not defined anywhere. It goes well below a title or section of a bill and even below a paragraph. But exactly what it is nobody knows." And the Senate rules offer no more clarity on the definition of "merely incidental." Asked if anyone had developed an accepted meaning, Horney seemed almost apologetic. "No," he said. "Absolutely not."
The matter is not simply academic: The Byrd rule allows senators to challenge the acceptability of any provision (undefined) of a reconciliation bill based on whether or not its effect on government revenues is "merely incidental" (undefined). Thus, if you enter reconciliation with a health-reform bill, it's not clear what's left after each and every provision -- however that is defined -- is challenged and a certain number of them are deleted altogether: the tax portions, certainly. And the government subsidies. But is regulating insurers "merely incidental" to government revenues? How about reforming hospital delivery systems? How about incentives for preventive treatment? Or the construction of a public plan? An individual mandate? It's hard to say. The ultimate decision is left up to the Senate parliamentarian, whose rulings are unpredictable. Under George W. Bush, Republicans managed to ram tax cuts, oil drilling, trade authority, and much else through reconciliation. But they were as often disappointed: The GOP leaders fired two successive Senate parliamentarians whose Byrd rule rulings angered them.
(snip)
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_fifty_vote_senate
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
