Republicans could try to pass multiple significant measures such as comprehensive tax reform and repealing Obamacare using a special budget procedure that allows Congress to pass legislation with only 51 votes in the Senate.
The reward would be the ability to put multiple GOP priorities, possibly in the form of separate bills, on President Obama’s desk, relieving pressure on a conference that has been torn between several legislative goals.
Asked Tuesday if the Republicans currently working on the budget in a conference committee were considering multiple reconciliation bills, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss, a member of the committee, said, “It is certainly an issue that has arisen, yes.”
The committee is working toward resolving differences between the House and Senate versions of the GOP budget, which Republicans hope to finish by the end of next week. The conference report, if passed by both chambers, would not be sent to the president for signing, but instead would set general spending levels for appropriations committees.
Passing a budget resolution with what are known as reconciliation instructions, however, allows for the possibility of submitting legislation for expedited consideration to each chamber’s floor.
In the Senate, debate on reconciliation bills is limited, meaning that senators cannot filibuster the legislation. Normally, legislation requires 60 votes in the Senate to end debate and overcome a filibuster.
In the past, the reconciliation procedure has been used to pass big-ticket items over the objections of the minority party. Reconciliation was used in the final passage of Obamacare in 2010 and in the passage of the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003.
Republicans have several priorities that different members have said that they would like to use reconciliation to pass.
Some Republicans would like to use the process to force Obama to veto a measure repealing Obamacare, which would in effect be a messaging exercise.
Others, however, have argued that reconciliation should be used for substantive legislation that could become law, such as comprehensive tax reform.
Wicker on Tuesday reiterated the view of some members that reconciliation instructions should be used for the GOP response to the King vs. Burwell case being weighed by the Supreme Court. The court’s ruling could result in people losing federal subsidies for health insurance in 37 states that have federally-run Obamacare exchanges. Republicans have said they would like to have legislation ready in that event to provide an alternative to Obamacare for those people.
Although it’s commonly thought that the reconciliation process only allows for one measure to be passed with 51 votes in the Senate, Republicans in fact could pursue multiple objectives.
One way would be through a single reconciliation bill that included multiple measures. Senate Republican aides said the number of reconciliation instructions has not been determined, but that there will most likely be multiple instructions to different committees. Those committees would produce legislation that would be funneled to the House and Senate budget committees and packaged into a reconciliation bill, which then would work its way through the legislative process as a privileged motion.
Republicans also have the option of passing up to three reconciliation bills under commonly accepted parliamentary procedure, said Richard Arenberg, an adjunct professor of public policy and political science at Brown University and a long-time Senate aide.
Under the Byrd Rule governing reconciliation, the process can be used only for budgetary measures, and non-budget-related items can be stripped out.
Three separate kinds of budgetary changes can be addressed by legislation, according to a Congressional Research Service study: Spending, revenue and the federal debt limit.
Parliamentary procedure has been interpreted to allow for potentially one bill for each of those purposes, Arenberg told the Washington Examiner by email.
“I would not consider three reconciliation bills as abuse if they met the requirement that one was a revenue bill, one was a bill affecting outlays, and the third set the debt limit,” he said.
That means that Republicans could pass up to three bills using reconciliation, if they structured them properly, without provoking a major fight over parliamentary procedure.
Nevertheless, some budget members have expressed skepticism of how much is achievable with the process.
“The reconciliation power has limits,” Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said at the outset of the budget process in March. “And you can’t do everything you like to do with reconciliation.”
