Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren boglebam here. Passing new legislation in the US
Speaker 1: can be well difficult, to say the least, and when
Speaker 1: there's a Congress that's all but deadlocked because of razor
Speaker 1: thin majorities in the House and Senate, that makes passing
Speaker 1: big budget legislation even more problematic. That's where reconciliation comes
Speaker 1: into the picture. Budget reconciliation is a way for Congress
Speaker 1: to pass major funding bills, which are notoriously difficult to pass,
Speaker 1: especially when there is a very evenly divided Senate. It
Speaker 1: was created by the Congressional Budget Act of four as
Speaker 1: a way to quickly advance these tax and spending bills.
Speaker 1: With reconciliation, the party in control of Congress can pass
Speaker 1: funding legislation in the Senate, things like taxes, spending, and
Speaker 1: debt limits, with a simple majority that is either vote
Speaker 1: or fifty votes and the Vice president's tie breaking vote
Speaker 1: without the threat of a filibuster. It takes sixty votes
Speaker 1: to defeat a filibuster. The Congressional Budget Act also limits
Speaker 1: Senate debate on the bill to twenty hours and limits
Speaker 1: debate on the compromises between the two houses to ten hours,
Speaker 1: which helps the Senate expedite and pass reconciliation bills much faster.
Speaker 1: And to start the process, Congress agrees on a budget
Speaker 1: resolution that includes a reconciliation directive four specified committees. These
Speaker 1: directives instruct the committees on how much to increase or
Speaker 1: decrease spending in revenue or how to limit the debt ceiling.
Speaker 1: It also provides a deadline for completion. A Congress doesn't
Speaker 1: tell the committees how to hit the reconciliation target, just
Speaker 1: to hit it. Once the various committees complete their tasks,
Speaker 1: the House and Senate budget committees combine the recommendations into
Speaker 1: a single omnibus bill, the Reconciliation Bill, and then the
Speaker 1: House and Senate vote. Both must obtain a majority to
Speaker 1: pass the legislation. Reconciliation bills can include spending changes two items,
Speaker 1: such as Medicare, Medicaid, federal civilian and military retirement benefits,
Speaker 1: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program a SNAP formerly known as
Speaker 1: food stamps, and farm programs. The Social Security is untouchable.
Speaker 1: The reconciliation rule allows bills that raise the deficit, but
Speaker 1: only for ten years. The Trump tax cuts were passed
Speaker 1: fire reconciliation, though the Senate allowed some of the tax
Speaker 1: cuts to expire so the bill wouldn't increase the federal
Speaker 1: deficit past that ten year window. In addition, the Bird Rule,
Speaker 1: named for the late Senator Robert Byrd, who served as
Speaker 1: the Democratic Senator for West Virginia for fifty one years,
Speaker 1: is intended to keep extraneous policies from being included in
Speaker 1: budget reconciliation, and basically it keeps senators from sneaking non
Speaker 1: budgetary items into reconciliation. It's up to the Senate parliamentarian
Speaker 1: to decide what is and isn't extraneous to the reconciliation.
Speaker 1: Important to note, reconciliation can only be used once perfect
Speaker 1: school year, and only to change or reconcile laws related
Speaker 1: to taxes and spending. Since reconciliation was first introduced in
Speaker 1: the Congressional Budget Act of nineteen seventy four, it's been
Speaker 1: used twenty one times. Some of its notable uses were
Speaker 1: the Trump tax cuts in seventeen, the Bush tax cuts
Speaker 1: in two thousand one and two thousand three, Pluton's welfare
Speaker 1: program in ninet and major deficit reduction bills in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties and nineties, the reconciliation process was also used
Speaker 1: to pass parts of the Affordable Care Act or a
Speaker 1: c A. In and in one, reconciliation was used to
Speaker 1: pass President Joe Biden's one point nine trillion dollar COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen relief package. Today's episode is based on the article
Speaker 1: Reconciliation and Bass tracks massive budget bills through Congress on
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com. Written by Patty rasmusin brain
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Speaker 1: stuff works dot Com and is produced by Tyler Clay.
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