National overview
Democrats flirt with destroying another Senate’s handrail
Senate Democrats considering destroying another set of Senate rules may want to heed the words of English lawyer and chancellor Sir Thomas More to his son-in-law centuries ago: And Richard, if you cut down all the trees, where would you hide? when the devil comes to you? The then senator Harry Reid started this arrangement of the rules in 2013. He uses the ‘core option’ to lower the voting threshold for confirmation to stack the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Senator Mitch McConnell increased by using the same standard to confirm Supreme Court nominees. Since majority leader Chuck Schumer is playing with the idea of inflating the legislative filibuster as well, he may be ready to unravel another important – if lesser-known – Senate government in the pursuit of a comprehensive bill on COVID relief under the terms of “Budget Reconciliation.” We are talking about the Byrd rule (named after the late Senator Robert Byrd), which limits the ability of the majority to fill extraordinary legislative items in the budget proposals and still pass it by a simple majority vote during the process. Senator Byrd saw the danger of using reconciliation, which limits amendments and debate, to pursue broader, non-budgetary legislation out of the ordinary. As a defender of the right of all senators to debate and amend legislation, he has attached these restrictions to the reconciliation process. This is for the better: the Byrd rule protects social security from the reconciliation process, for example, while limiting committees to proposals in their jurisdiction and requiring the budgetary relevance of any proposal considered under this process to be more than ‘merely’ coincidental ‘. is. What this means is that important legislative policy changes can only be made when all senators have the right to fully debate and amend legislation – and to make a filibuster. Reconciliation “streamlines” otherwise the process at the expense of the minority. Today, fueled by anger and revenge, Senate leaders give nothing for the reasons behind the rules; they just want to get their legislation through as quickly as possible. Most attention has been paid in recent weeks to the minimum wage of $ 15 in the COVID relief package. It hardly meets the reconciliation standard on its own, but there will also be other violations of the Byrd rule in the bill that the House will send to the Senate. That is why the Senate Democrats can break the pursuit of Senate rules. As described by parliamentary expert Martin Gold, there are two ways to achieve this. First, there is the more purposeful attack on the Byrd rule. Say Vice President Harris is the chairman when a senator raises a point of order against, for example, the minimum wage increase. The Senate MP recommends that this particular section of the Reconciliation Bill be repealed. Despite all the evidence and precedents that the division is out of order, the VP is definitely different. Now the division takes only a simple majority to pass. However, if a senator who supports the Byrd rule disputes the president’s decision, a majority of 60 votes will be needed to dominate Harris. This is a high bar. Here, the President’s ruling, which would probably exist, changes the precedent so that any other item in the bill that violates the Byrd rule can be accepted according to the new standard just set by the Vice President. Republicans would have liked it when they wanted to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, but they respected the Senate rules that protect the rights of the minority. This limited surgical cessation of the Byrd rule would disrupt the precedent forever. Meanwhile, there is a broader attack that can be implemented. In this scenario, the majority leader addresses the chairman and says that renouncing the Byrd rule only involves a simple majority vote. It is clear under the rules and precedents that this is untrue. If the chairman decides that it takes 60 votes to renounce the Byrd rule, the majority leader then appeals the ruling of the chairman, who takes a simple majority vote to reverse. Bingo – the protection of the Byrd rule is dead, and it now only takes a simple majority vote to place any legislative proposal the majority wants in the budget reconciliation bill, to circumvent legal debate and amendment. The result of this action will threaten any rule in the Senate. If the majority wants to get rid of any rule at any time, they just need to appeal the president’s ruling and scrape together a simple majority – to silence the opposition and impose their will on the American people. At one time, the US Senate was called the largest deliberative body in the world. As envisaged by Thomas Jefferson, there were rules that protected the minority and enabled thorough debate. Unfortunately, the current Senate majority seems to care little about the precedents set by the U.S. Senate. But some warning on their part can be a good thing; it is known that tables turn.