Budget reconciliation, in plain terms

Why it exists

Reconciliation was created to make it possible to bring spending and revenue law into line with a budget the Congress had already agreed. The privileged treatment was the mechanism: limited debate, so a minority could not block implementation of a budget the majority had adopted.

How a bill gets there

It begins with a budget resolution containing reconciliation instructions. Those instructions name committees and give each a fiscal target — reduce the deficit by this much, or produce this much in savings — and a deadline.

The committees report legislation meeting their targets. The Budget Committee packages the results into a single bill, which then moves under the expedited rules.

What the expedited rules do

In the Senate, debate on a reconciliation bill is limited to twenty hours. Because debate ends by rule rather than by cloture, there is nothing to filibuster, and the bill passes with a simple majority.

The amendment process at the end of that period is unusual enough to have its own name — the vote-a-rama — in which senators offer amendments in rapid succession with almost no debate.

The catch

Because the procedure exists to carry out budget decisions, provisions that are not primarily budgetary can be challenged and struck under the Byrd rule. A provision whose fiscal effect is merely incidental to a policy change does not survive.

Waiving the rule takes sixty votes, which is precisely the threshold reconciliation exists to avoid. So a successful challenge is effectively final, and the drafting of these bills is shaped throughout by what is expected to survive.