Here is why reconciliation won't work

Human Events ^ | 03/02/2010 | vanity

[GilGil]

"Making the reconciliation process even more unwieldy and exhaustive is the rule that senators may offer an unlimited number of amendments which could work to the GOP’s advantage, legislative strategists said."

[Tatze]

And if the House passes the Senate bill first, then its a done deal, with or without any changes via reconciliation.

In fact, at that point, we may want reconciliation to make the horrendous Senate bill more palatable, however slight it may be.

[caww]

Ok..so the reconciliation bill has whatever modifications in it that “they” drew from Bos and the originial senate bill, as well as perhaps suggestions from the republicians?

Whose the “they” determining these modifications? and are the Rep’s sitting in on bringing that together before it’s taken to the house or senate?

[OldDeckHand]

"Whose the “they” determining these modifications? and are the Rep’s sitting in on bringing that together before it’s taken to the house or senate?"

Because Budget Reconciliation must begin in the House, the House leadership (Pelosi) will assign to a committee (or committees) the responsibility for writing such provisions and cobbling them together into one bill. This will probably be the House Finance Committees. Once it's written, it will be voted out of committee - not using the normal procedures, but the special Budget Reconciliation Procedures. That bill will be adopted my a motion on the Senate floor, and such an adoption would pass on a simple majority vote.

It then faces 20 hours of debate on the Senate floor. At the end of 20 hours - theoretically - the Republicans could offer an endless amount of Amendments. But, the President of the Senate - Joe Biden - can rule unilaterally that each of those Amendments is dilatory. How long can this go one? This is the $64K question. No one knows, because it's never really happened before, at least not like this. The President of the Senate has NEVER asserted himself into the Budget Reconciliation process, so no one really knows how it's going to work.