Or lack thereof. Wisconsin far-right Ayn Rand-loving Congressmember Paul Ryan has castigated House Democrats for not passing an annual budget resolution.
He is more correct than he knows.
Without a house budget resolution, you can’t have a general Congressional budget resolution. Without a general Congressional budget resolution, you can’t have reconciliation instructions. And without reconciliation instructions, you need 60 votes to pass anything through the Senate, given the GOP’s current unprecedented obstructionism.
You want a jobs bill? You need a budget resolution. You want a climate bill? You need a budget resolution. Reconciliation can’t do everything; according to the conventional interpretation, you can’t just throw general appropriations into a budget bill. But it can do a lot. Increase the Earned Income Tax Credit; extend unemployment insurance; give relief to hard-pressed state budgets (by changing Medicaid rules, for example).
Dave Leonhardt has a nice piece today, echoing the complaints of The Shrill One, about the seeming insistence on returning to the 1930’s. That would be a disaster on so many levels. But the best way to avoid it is a budget resolution.
The Democrats need one. Now.
Jon Walker was all over this at FDL about 2 months ago.
I wonder how reconciliation will play out in the future. How important was Senator Byrd in interpreting the Byrd Rule?
Just wanted to point out that Paul Ryan’s district has the highest unemployment in Wisconsin.
Or alternatively you could break the back of the filibuster threat, by actually making the filibuster happen a time or two. But we wouldn’t want to inconvenience 51 Democratic Senators for like 4 whole days in a row or anything.
“Or alternatively you could break the back of the filibuster threat, by actually making the filibuster happen a time or two.”
No. You break the back of the filibuster by getting a ruling from the President of the Senate, Joe Biden, holding that the fact that the Senate “may determine the rules of its proceedings” means that the Senate may, in fact, determine the rules of its proceedings. More specifically, the Constitutional rule that the Senate “may determine the rules of its proceedings” takes precedence over any Senate rules about how legislation is to be considered, and that Constitutional provision may be invoked by a majority of a quorum of the Senate, at any time, to change Senate rules.
Sebastian H -
Robert Johnston is right; you’re going to need a parliamentary ruling to do this. Under current rules, you can’t make Senators actually stand there and filibuster: the 1975 deal reduced the cloture requirement to 60, in exchange for a virtual filibuster rule. But you are right on the need to change the rule.