Border security, lower taxes, and a debt limit increase – can Trump have it all in one big, beautiful reconciliation bill? That has been the question of late, and congressional Republicans seemed uncertain in recent days whether it could – or should – be done all at once. With little in the way of direction from the president-elect himself, the GOP seems to have come up with a plan: try for one, settle for two if it doesn’t work out.
Understanding Reconciliation
Put simply, reconciliation is a special process that makes legislation easier to pass in the Senate. Rather than needing 60 votes in the upper chamber like regular legislation, a reconciliation bill just needs a simple majority of 51 – or a tie with the vice president, as the tiebreaker, voting to pass. Republicans shouldn’t have to rely on the VP, though, with a 53-47 lead in the Senate.
The idea here is that passing a budget is critical enough that it can’t be filibustered. Because of this very logic, however, and to safeguard the rights of the minority, the process can only be used to pass bills that change spending or revenues – and lawmakers are limited in what extras they can tack on.
Back in 2021, for example, Democrats in the Senate attempted to add amnesty for illegal aliens into a reconciliation package. As Liberty Nation News reported at the time, multiple attempts to pull this off failed because it wasn’t a budget issue. This restriction is what is commonly known as the Byrd Rule.
The leaders of the Republican majorities in both chambers are looking to use this process to get more funding to secure the southern border, renew tax cuts that are expiring this year, and approve an increase or suspension on the debt limit.
Hole in One?
The question now is whether this should all be squeezed into one bill or if there should be two reconciliation packages. Some senators suggested starting with a smaller bill focusing on border security funding, then tackling taxes and the debt ceiling later. Newly minted Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) initially seemed to prefer this path, but he has more recently indicated that he’s open to a single bill if that’s what the president wants.
Trump, for his part, did extol a potential benefit of the one-bill approach. In discussions with lawmakers Wednesday, January 8, the president-elect explained that combining everything into one package could incentivize those opposed to one part to sign the whole. For example, say there’s a Republican senator who doesn’t want to raise the debt limit or who takes issue with the specific tax approach but does want increased funding for border security. A senator might sign the whole bill just to get the part he or she wants.
The risk, of course, is that any holdouts might not want to pass one measure more than they want to pass another. In other words, this plan only works if the hypothetical senator wants money for the border more than they don’t want to increase the debt limit.
Ultimately, however, Trump said it didn’t matter to him if it took one bill or two. So long as it gets done, he’s willing to leave it up to Congress.
Death and Taxes
The Senate strategy, then, according to Thune, is to be ready but see what the House does first. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) believes a single bill will be the easiest option, but little has been agreed upon so far, even among House Republicans. Johnson has announced that he plans to have a vote sometime before April 3, so probably don’t expect a big, beautiful bill to appear much sooner than that.
Thune is willing to give the one-bill approach a try once it passes the House, but if that fails, he’s ready to negotiate a two-part package instead. Until then, as Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) pointed out, the upper chamber will be focused on confirming the president’s nominees. For now, it seems there remain more questions than answers. But, after all, as the saying goes, nothing in life is certain but death and taxes.
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