Reconciliation (U.S. Congress)

Reconciliation is a legislative process of the United States Senate intended to allow passage of a budget bill not subject to filibuster in the Senate. Reconciliation rules prohibit debate to exceed twenty hours under Senate rules. Reconciliation also exists in the United States House of Representatives. However, because the House regularly passes rules that constrain debate and amendments, the process has had a less significant impact on that body.

The process was created from the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 and first used in 1980. The reconciliation rule allows tax, spending, and debt limit adjustments. However, larger policy change are limited due to the Byrd Rule, named after Democratic Senator Robert Byrd, after an amendment added in 1990. The Byrd Rule prevents using reconciliation bills that include language "extraneous" to the budget.

One or multiple reconciliation bills can be passed in a given year with respect to topics of either spending, revenues, or debt limits. As an example, if a reconciliation bill impacts both spending and revenues, no further reconciliation on these topics can occur afterwords since the first reconciliation bill addresses both of these. Reconciliation may only occur once for each topic per year unless Congress passes a second budget resolution.

The reconciliation process arose from the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. Over time, it has developed into a procedure for implementing some policy decisions and assumptions embraced in a budget resolution in a way that was unforeseen when the Budget Act was enacted. Under the original design of the Budget Act, reconciliation had a fairly narrow purpose: it was expected to be used together with the second budget resolution adopted in the fall, was to apply to a single fiscal year, and be directed primarily at spending and revenue legislation acted on between the adoption of the first and second budget resolutions.

Although reconciliation was originally understood to be for the purpose of either reducing deficits or increasing surpluses, the language of the 1974 act refers only to "changes" in revenue and spending amounts, not specifically to increases or decreases. Per former Parliamentarian of the Senate Robert Dove,

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