I have heard the term, but please explain “budget reconciliation” for me and any other uninformed readers. I hope you’re right!
Budget bills are mandated by the constitution to originate in the House but a lot of times an elite Democrat controlled senate will pass a bill that ‘suggests’ this and that, and the House and Senate meet together in smaller reconciliation sessions with representatives from both sides meeting to hammer out the “budget law” the House will vote on (formally now ‘originating’ it) and the Senate voting to approve.
A sleazy effing process IMO, and it is fraught with overdone tradition and contemporaneous ‘rule changing’ by despots in control of the Senate or House (and I mean DEMOCRATS when they control one part of Congress).
I remind everyone that NOT ONE REPUBLICAN VOTED FOR OBAMACARE.
By Senate Rules, it only takes 51 votes to 'giterdone' using budget reconciliation, becasue that is how it was passed.
For laws to pass the senate, before they even vote on it there is a “cloture vote” to declare that the debate is over.
Based on senate rules, this vote requires a 60 majority instead of 50.
Budget reconciliations only require a 51 vote majority for cloture. A tie means the VP casts the deciding vote.
This way, they don’t tie up money going out the door w/the more stringent requirement. (It would be a lot harder to payoff their constituents otherwise).
Knowing that they’d never get 60, the dems put commie care in a budget bill, making a 50 vote requirement.
The “nuclear option” is where the senate rules committee changes the rules to make the cloture vote 50.
They originally made it 60 so that not every single statute from a prior administration would get repealed every time there was an opposing congress taking over.
McConnell has already sworn off the nuclear option and reconciliation path which is why Trump needs to beat him up.
Wiki has a reconciliation article. In a nutshell, it’s reconciling an already approved vote with minor changes when it’s sent back to the house. Dems slipped in major changes to enact commie care that way.
So say something passes the house, senate rejects it but agrees to have it modified (with greater than 50 but less than 60 votes). House passes this modified critter and poof we are now a communist country.
The budget is not subject to filibuster... So Obamacare was passed by attaching it to the budget otherwise MA Senator Scott Brown would have been the 41st vote against it at the time.
Paul Ryan has been clear that a repeal of Obamacare would be passed as part of a budget... Not subject to filibuster