With the presidential, bi-partisan health care summit rapidly approaching, anyone with a drop of political blood in their system has already heard the term “reconciliation” being tossed around as a way to ram the Democrats’ health care bill through Congress. This seems to have led to a lot of confusion and, very likely, deliberate obfuscation among the punditry class. Some Democrats are correctly pointing out that Republicans have availed themselves of the reconciliation process on many occasions in the past. Here are a few examples from the greatest hits list.
Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1980
Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981
Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982
Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1982
Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1983
Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985
Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1986
Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987
Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001
Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003
The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005
Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005
Careful readers will notice a recurring theme here. To help quantify precisely what that theme is, we should take a quick look at the actual definition of the reconciliation process, which you can find at www.senate.gov under the rules and procedures section. But here’s a short description:
A legislative process in the United States Senate intended to allow consideration of a contentious budget bill without the threat of filibuster. Introduced in 1974, reconciliation limits debate and amendment, and therefore favors the majority party.
A reconciliation instruction (Budget Reconciliation) is a provision in a budget resolution directing one or more committees to submit legislation changing existing law in order to bring spending, revenues, or the debt-limit into conformity with the budget resolution. The instructions specify the committees to which they apply, indicate the appropriate dollar changes to be achieved, and usually provide a deadline by which the legislation is to be reported or submitted.
In short, reconciliation is a valuable tool for taking a budget issue which both sides have, in large part, already agreed on and ironing out the differences in dollar amounts so the entire process doesn’t get bogged down over a billion dollars here and a hundred million there. Those saying that it should never be used are whistling past the graveyard, since it clearly serves an important function. But opponents of its use in the health care debate seem to be pointing out that it was not intended to be used in the proposed fashion.
Using reconciliation to summon into existence an entire new entitlement program or major change in government policy clearly is “unprecedented” as many have said. If this were a matter of both sides agreeing, for example, on having a public option, but couldn’t agree on exactly how much we were going to spend on it, then reconciliation would be a fine way to go to finish the process up. This is not, however, the case today.
Supporters of the increasingly unpopular health care reform proposals currently on the table should stop trying to hide behind this fig leaf and deal with the issue honestly. That’s not how the reconciliation process was intended to be used, and pretending that it is doesn’t do you any credit.