Why reconciliation bills are always a mess
By Michael Jones
This week was supposed to be a big one for House Republicans. Three committees that are responsible for most of the $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and $1.5 trillion in spending cuts were set to publicly debate and approve their portions of a megabill built around President Donald Trump’s legislative priorities.
But late last week, Republican leadership abruptly postponed the markups to buy time for behind-the-scenes negotiations, hoping to make the politics of slashing Medicaid and SNAP to extend tax cuts for billionaires and big corporations less toxic.
“The American people overwhelmingly detest the fact that House Republicans have behaved as nothing more than a rubber stamp for Donald Trump’s extreme agenda,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said after the markups were delayed. “As a result, the GOP is panicking. House Democrats will keep the pressure on until the MAGA extremists pull down this budget once and for all.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) accused Republicans of fighting with themselves as their leadership struggles to get on the same page in both chambers.
“It’s no wonder Republicans are in such disarray,” Schumer said on the Senate floor last week. “Why? Because their policies are so unpopular with the American people. Democrats are united in our mission: to lower costs for families, protect their health care [and] defend American democracy.”
The delay jeopardizes Speaker Mike Johnson’s Memorial Day deadline for House passage, which is now just three weeks away—and raises doubts about whether Republicans can even craft a bill that satisfies their competing demands.
It also highlights why these megabills—made possible under a 1974 budget law—are so notoriously difficult to pass, no matter which party is in charge.
For starters, the process is brutally complex. The House and Senate must each adopt a budget resolution with reconciliation instructions directing committees to produce legislation that meets spending and revenue targets. Once those pieces are assembled, the final bill heads to the Senate for a vote-a-rama—a chaotic, amendment-packed session I’ll get to below. Any misstep along the way can derail the entire effort.
Reconciliation rules are also strict. The most infamous is the Byrd rule, which bars non-budgetary provisions from being included. The Senate parliamentarian enforces it during a “Byrd Bath”—a quiet but powerful process that can gut major provisions. (In 2021, for example, Democrats tried to include a minimum wage hike in a reconciliation bill, but the parliamentarian ruled it out of order.)
Since reconciliation bypasses the filibuster, all eyes turn inward. Leaders must unify every faction of their party—moderates and hardliners alike. A few holdouts could tank the whole thing. Right now, House and Senate Republicans are working under different instructions, and they’ll need to reconcile those differences before final passage. There’s also the issue of scarcity. Congress typically gets one shot at reconciliation per year, so leaders face a high-stakes triage game: What gets in, what gets cut, and what’s worth fighting over.
Even without the power to filibuster, minority parties can still exploit reconciliation’s internal challenges to their advantage.
Democrats have used press conferences, floor speeches, and interviews to highlight the rift between fiscal hawks and blue-state moderates in the Republican Party. It’s the same playbook Republicans used during the 2021 Build Back Better talks, when they amplified divisions between then-Sen. Joe Manchin and progressives in order to weaken Democratic leverage.
One of the minority’s sharpest tools is the vote-a-rama. After formal debate ends, senators can introduce unlimited amendments—many designed not to pass, but to force tough votes, create wedge issues, or produce campaign fodder. These sessions often stretch into the early morning hours, testing stamina in a chamber where the median age is 65.
Republicans have used vote-a-ramas to float amendments on police funding, immigration enforcement, and gas taxes. In February and March, they defeated a series of Democratic amendments on health care, housing, and energy costs—while narrowly fending off a push to block proposed Medicaid cuts—illustrating how the process often serves more as political theater than policymaking.
With thin margins, Jeffries and Schumer have publicly and privately urged moderate and vulnerable Republicans to oppose or water down the bill. Even one defection could be fatal for the majority party.
And while both parties use reconciliation when they hold power, the minority almost always questions its legitimacy, accusing the majority of using the process to jam through unpopular policies under the guise of budgetary procedure.
Democrats say the disconnect couldn’t be more obvious between the GOP’s agenda and President Trump’s campaign promise to lower costs on day one. While Republicans are racing to finalize a sprawling party-line budget bill, they’re also dedicating floor time to codifying Trump’s executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” To Democrats, it perfectly encapsulates GOP priorities: performative patriotism over practical governance, and political theater over bipartisan progress on issues that could become law.
Meanwhile, even rank-and-file members are bracing for a messy week ahead.
“Who knows,” one House Democrat told me when I asked for a preview of what’s to come. “They don’t have their shit together so it’s going to be chaotic, irrational and slow.”
Michael Jones is an independent Capitol Hill correspondent and contributor for COURIER. He is the author of Once Upon a Hill, a newsletter about Congressional politics.
