United States | News & Politics

For anyone unfamiliar with this malarkey: Reconciliation (United States Congress)

Budget reconciliation is a special parliamentary procedure of the United States Congress set up to expedite the passage of certain federal budget legislation in the Senate. The procedure overrides the Senate's filibuster rules, which may otherwise require a 60-vote supermajority for passage. Bills described as reconciliation bills can pass the Senate by a simple majority of 51 votes or 50 votes plus the vice president's as the tie-breaker. The reconciliation procedure also applies to the House of Representatives, but it has minor significance there, as the rules of the House of Representatives do not have a de facto supermajority requirement.

The Senate filibuster rules aren’t formal law. They’re rules the Senate imposed on itself over the last hundred years, and it can remove them just as easily. Both parties want these supermajority rules because they don’t want to pass bills that aren’t bipartisan.

So Democrats would have to get 60 seats who never vote against their own party. But it doesn’t ever work that way because there are always some rotating villians in those seats. If necessary, they’ll use other dirty tricks, for instance the Parliamentarian, who blocked a minimum wage increase in 2021. Congress is Kayfabe.