RECONCILIATION LIMITATIONS House Republicans outlined their ambitions this week for what they hope to accomplish in sweeping legislation next year that would skirt the Senate filibuster. But a parliamentary reality check looms. Welcome back to the arcane maze of reconciliation, the special budget power Republicans will attempt to harness next year to pass a partisan bill, or two, with a simple-majority threshold in the Senate, rather than bending policies leftward to attract enough Democrats for 60 votes.
Simple GOP goals like funding the border wall and vague promises to “drain the swamp” will be tested by the Senate’s strict constraints for the budget maneuver, including the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd’s rule that everything in a reconciliation package needs to have a “direct” impact on the federal budget. Given these parameters, Republican leaders on both ends of the Capitol are already trying to align their ambitions and construct arguments to convince the Senate parliamentarian their ideas are inbounds.
“The House obviously doesn't have to contend with the Byrd rule and all the restrictions that we have in the Senate when we think about what we can accomplish in reconciliation,” the Senate’s next majority leader, John Thune (R-S.D.), said this week. “So obviously, it's got to have a budgetary impact, but there are areas where we think we can demonstrate that it does.” Here are four ways reconciliation could get tricky next year: Border wall: House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) listed border wall funding among the GOP’s reconciliation goals this week. But the border wall is paid for through discretionary spending, the regular funding Congress controls through appropriations (which does have to clear a filibuster). Historically, that bucket has been off limits under the budget maneuver, while changes to mandatory programs, like Social Security and Medicare, are allowed.
“There’s a lot that they’re going to discover on the House side about the way reconciliation works on the Senate side,” Senate Budget Chair Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) told us this week. “And their choice is going to be to fit the bill within the reconciliation rules or to go back and again blow up the reconciliation rules, despite all their years of fussing about defending the reconciliation rules. We will see.” Tariffs: Advisers close to President-elect Donald Trump have been talking to top tax writers in Congress about counting tariffs to offset the cost of tax cuts under reconciliation, according to people familiar with the conversations. But GOP leaders are still trying to figure out whether House rules need to be changed to make that happen, according to people in the room during the closed-door conference meeting this week. Permitting: Right now, lawmakers from both parties are trying to strike a bipartisan deal before year’s end on permitting reform to ease the process of approving projects like building wind farms and oil pipelines. Some Republicans are also considering whether they could accomplish those policies through reconciliation next year, as House GOP leaders promise to use the budget maneuver to “unleash” American energy production. Convincing the Senate parliamentarian that changes to permitting rules have a direct effect on the federal budget could be difficult. When Republicans used their 2017 tax bill to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling, for example, they were forced to forgo language in the bill to ease environmental review. Immigration: Enhancing immigration enforcement also made the House GOP wish list Scalise laid out this week. And for a teaser on the limitations there, Republicans need look no further than the parliamentarian’s ruling in 2021, when she rebuffed Democrats’ attempts to use the budget process to enact a pathway to legal status for undocumented immigrants. — Jennifer Scholtes GOOD EVENING! Welcome to Inside Congress, the play-by-play guide to all things Capitol Hill, on this Friday, Nov. 22, as we celebrate the arrival of the 80-foot-tall Sitka Spruce that journeyed more than 700 miles by sea and more than 4,000 miles by truck to adorn the West Front lawn as this year’s Capitol Christmas Tree.
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