Budgets do not come from the White House. They come from Congress, and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democratic Party. They controlled the budget process for FY 2008 and FY 2009, as well as FY 2010 and FY 2011. That's three years!!
The procedure, known as "budget reconciliation," likely would limit the scope of the legislation. But it would also permit a bill to pass with a simple majority of 51 votes.
In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush, somewhat belatedly, got tough on spending increases. For FY 2009, though, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office.
At that time, they passed a massive ($730B) omnibus spending bill to complete the FY 2009 budgets. And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete FY 2009.
How The Budget Reconciliation Process Works
After Scott Brown's (R) win in Massachusetts' special election, Democratic leaders no longer have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and are weighing the use of arcane budget rules to pass at least part of the long-debated health overhaul package.
The procedure, known as "budget reconciliation," likely would limit the scope of the legislation. But it would also permit a bill to pass with a simple majority of 51 votes.
What Is Reconciliation?
Budget reconciliation, a provision of the 1974 Congressional Budget Act, is designed to force committees to make changes in mandatory – or entitlement – spending and revenues, such as Medicare. It was conceived by lawmakers as a way to bring down the deficit by easing the path for budget and tax deals.
The rules for budget reconciliation in the Senate restrict the procedure to provisions dealing with the budget. They also set strict protocols for consideration of the bills in both chambers. Under the procedures for reconciliation bills, debate in both houses is limited to 20 hours, and no Senate filibusters are allowed.
Congress has used reconciliation occasionally for non-budget legislation, including rewriting health care and welfare policy, as the Republican majority did in passing major welfare reform in 1996.
But the authors of budget reconciliation never envisioned the procedure as a fast-track system to enact complicated social policy measures. Indeed, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W. Va., the patriarch of the Senate and a master of its rules, helped design a set of six conditions under which any portion of a reconciliation measure could be deemed "extraneous" to the budget — neither adding to nor subtracting from the deficit — and could be excised unless it garnered at least 60 votes.
Resorting to budget reconciliation is the legislative equivalent of breaking out the heavy artillery in a pitched battle. Since the early 1980s, it has been used 19 times, primarily to steer controversial fiscal and budgetary policies through the Senate, including former President Bill Clinton’s fiscal 1994 deficit reduction and tax package and President George W. Bush’s major tax cuts.
Since filibusters, which take 60 votes to stop, are banned under the reconciliation procedures, Democrats could pass health reform legislation with a simple 51-vote majority. That would allow the Democrats to pass a bill without Republican support and even with a few Democratic defections.
