“Reconciliation is weird. First, Congress needs to adopt a budget resolution (which it doesn’t always do) laying out tax and spending priorities for the future. These resolutions are not laws, the president doesn’t have to sign them, and they pass by simple majority vote. Then with a budget in place you get to write one — but only one — bill that aims to “reconcile” national tax and spending priorities with the framework laid out in the budget. This reconciliation bill cannot be filibustered. It also cannot change Social Security, or otherwise make big legislative changes that are not directly focused on the budget.
At Vox, we have often focused on the limits the reconciliation process places on what can be achieved on climate policy or aspirations for Medicare-for-all. A reconciliation bill also can’t increase the budget deficit over the long run.
But while these limits are very real, they also do open up some fairly large horizons.”
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“a reconciliation bill can do the following:
- Increase the generosity of the social safety net
- Raise taxes on the rich
- Impose the tax increases after the safety net increases, generating short-term stimulus”
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“Consider the following ideas Biden has embraced:
- Creating a new universal child allowance to help parents and slash child poverty.
- Creating a fully funded rental housing voucher program to ensure that every family that needs help gets it.
- Expanding the Affordable Care Act to cover millions more and make coverage more generous for those who get it.
- A climate plan that centers investments in clean energy, rather than taxes on dirty energy.
- A huge increase in funding to low-income school districts.
Biden does not need to treat these ideas as separate from the short-term need to stimulate the economy. He can simply do all five of them, and throw in a short-term boost to unemployment insurance and state/local budgets and some cash for specific public health interventions. Then the long-term increases in spending can be offset by enacting his proposed tax increases on the rich. That will ensure the deficit falls over the long run. But since the short-term deficit is not a problem and the whole idea is to stimulate the economy, the tax cuts can be delayed until 2023.”
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“To get it done, Biden needs to convince members of Congress that it’s in their collective interest for him to have a successful presidency with a roaring economy and real accomplishments. And if they don’t want to curb the filibuster, they need to get the job done with a massive reconciliation bill.”
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“if Biden thinks that his personal charm can bring back the low-polarization Senate he remembers from his service there in the 1970s and ’80s he’s mistaken. And if he genuinely tries to do that, he’s setting himself up for catastrophic failure. Times have changed, the media has changed, institutions have changed, and incentives have changed. The good old days aren’t coming back.
Still, Biden can break the toxic allure of obstruction by refusing to be obstructed.”
https://www.vox.com/21499869/joe-biden-stimulus-reconciliation