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The Senate has completed one of its lengthiest — and most interestingly named — processes: the “vote-a-rama” for a budget resolution.
It’s happened a handful of times in the past decade or so; this time, it’s part of Democrats’ bid to either pass President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid stimulus plan or push Republicans into a more conciliatory position for a bipartisan proposal.
As the name suggests, this effort involves lots and lots of back-to-back floor votes, and marks the next major step in advancing a budget reconciliation bill that would enable Democrats to approve their version of Covid-19 relief unilaterally. Typically, most bills require 60 votes to advance in the Senate, but budget bills only require 51. By using budget reconciliation to pass Covid-19 relief, Democrats would be able to move everything from $1,400 stimulus checks to enhanced weekly unemployment insurance payments single-handedly, even if Republicans don’t sign on.
Although there’s still the possibility of a bipartisan deal on Covid-19 aid, Democrats have gone ahead and initiated the reconciliation process, since it’s possible GOP lawmakers stand firm and refuse to back an ambitious package.
Before Democrats can get to writing this bill, however, both the Senate and the House need to approve a budget resolution, with the vote-a-rama serving as an opportunity for every senator to introduce amendments to this measure. The final resolution — which passed the Senate Friday morning along party lines — effectively serves as an outline for what the final bill could look like.
McConnell’s office outlines 5 GOP vote-a-rama priorities, including amendments that would:
— Caitlin Emma (@caitlinzemma) February 4, 2021
— Prohibit stimulus checks to illegal immigrants
— Reduce $$ to states that have an active investigation into nursing homes for underreported deaths
Now that the vote-a-rama is over, the path to writing the Covid-19 relief bill and moving forward with budget reconciliation is effectively cleared.
What’s next
After the Senate approves the budget resolution, the House also needs to pass this measure, so that Congress can get started on writing the budget bill. Here’s what comes next in that process:
- The House must approve the same budget resolution as the Senate: Both chambers of Congress must approve the budget resolution for the process to move forward and for lawmakers to start crafting a budget reconciliation bill. Since Democrats have House and Senate control, the lower chamber is poised to approve the final version that the Senate passes as soon as Friday.
- Once both chambers approve the resolution, lawmakers can begin writing the bill: The resolution directs House and Senate committees to write the bill, and to ensure that it includes the provisions of Biden’s Covid-19 package.
- Congress then votes on the final bill: This final budget bill can pass with just 51 Senate votes as well, giving Democrats the opportunity to pass it unilaterally. Democrats are aiming to approve the legislation ahead of a March 14 deadline, when the current enhanced unemployment benefits are scheduled to expire.
The politics of the budget reconciliation process, briefly explained
Democrats are starting the budget reconciliation process at the same time that Biden is negotiating with Republicans and Democrats alike on the parameters of his Covid-19 relief package.
Republican senators who want to work with Biden have proposed a counteroffer of $600 billion — which is nowhere near what the administration wants.
“There’s obviously a big gap between $600 billion and $1.9 trillion,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Monday. “Clearly, [Biden] thinks the package size needs to be closer to what he proposed than smaller.”
With reconciliation as a backdrop, the message to Republicans is: You can either negotiate something closer to what we want or we’ll pass it anyway on a party-line vote.
Democrats in Congress and the White House say they want bipartisan talks to continue. But many are also wary of negotiations dragging out for months like they did during the Obama years, wasting precious time to stimulate the economy.
Working toward a bipartisan deal — or at least trying to — is part of Biden’s nature, but it’s also good politics. By negotiating directly with moderate Republicans, Biden is also trying to keep centrist Democrats like Sens. Joe Manchin (WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) happy. Helping Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer keep his caucus in line may be just as important, if not more so, as finding areas of common ground with Republicans. Democrats are holding on to their Senate control by a single vote; they have no room for error even with a simple majority vote.
“Any senator who’s willing to act contrary to their leadership has power,” former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota told Vox.
This is the latest time the budget reconciliation process has been used
Back in 2017, congressional Republicans were the ones making fast use of the budget reconciliation process.
With unified control of the White House and Congress, Republicans used reconciliation twice: once in their unsuccessful attempt to overturn the Affordable Care Act, and once in their successful passage of a $1.5 trillion tax cut bill that slashed the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, among other things.
In other words, as much as Republicans are grumbling about Democrats using budget reconciliation now to potentially pass more Covid-19 relief, they’re familiar practitioners themselves.
If Democrats ultimately do use reconciliation to pass Biden’s Covid-19 relief plan, it likely won’t be the last time they use it. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has already floated it as a possible vehicle to pass large portions of Biden’s yet-to-be-released economic recovery plan, which will likely include an infrastructure package, among other things.
Still, there will likely be a lot of other items on the new president’s to-do list that can’t be passed with budget reconciliation. For instance, Biden has already introduced an immigration bill as another top priority of his administration. He’ll either have to compromise with Republicans on a number of other issues or Senate Democrats could blow up the filibuster — which is looking unlikely.
“If they want to get it moving fast, work with us on a bipartisan solution, and then use your political muscle with reconciliation later on,” Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski (AK) told Vox recently. “But at least show evidence of the value of working together. If we move toward reconciliation, I wonder what signal that sends to those of us who want to try to advance solutions that might not be 100 percent solutions but are 80 percent solutions.”
