Members of the Senate are back in Washington, D.C., after spending a bit of time back in their districts. And now it’s their turn to dig into the GOP’s big tax and spending bill.
This isn't hitting the Senate as a normal bill, which basically requires the support of at least sixty senators to pass. Instead, it's being treated as a "reconciliation package," which means it could pass the Senate with a simple majority.
But there are rules for what kinds of things can go into reconciliation packages, including a big one called the Byrd rule. Pushing legislation through Congress using reconciliation lets it get around the filibuster, the 60-vote requirement for regular bills and shortens floor debate. But?
“Then you need to make sure that it’s actually budgetary … that any policy you're making in these laws are directly tied to a budgetary impact, and … cannot be, quote, unquote, merely incidental to the policy you're trying to effectuate,” said Laura Dove, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
That’s the Byrd Rule, named for the late West Virginia Democratic Senator Robert Byrd.
It means you can’t just say, “Hey this will cost money or save money, so let’s throw it in the package.”
“You need to have a really good argument for why there's policy in there, and it has to be strictly necessary,” Dove said.
Now, the Senate is going through the House bill, looking for anything that might violate the Byrd rule, “section by section, line by line, word by word,” said Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress.
“Both Democrats and Republicans,” he said, “are going through the entire bill and scrubbing it, prepping for their arguments before the parliamentarian.”
The Senate parliamentarian is the arbiter of what does and does not make it through the so-called “Byrd Bath.” (Congress does love its puns.)
And the advice she gives, which Senate leadership usually takes, can drastically shape the final version of the bill, said Sarah Binder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
“The Byrd rule is just one of the very few things remaining that protect the rights of individuals and minority party senators when Congress moves on these major landmark pieces of legislation,” she said.
Folks are already flagging some major policies in the reconciliation bill as possible violations:
The ban on states regulating artificial intelligence, the move to block federal courts from enforcing contempt rulings, and some tax provisions that look like retaliation. Those are just the kind of policies a Byrd bath can potentially wash away.
