House Republicans are steaming ahead with their megabill containing the bulk of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda. As of Tuesday morning, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is hoping to get the roughly 1,100-page bill through the House and over to the Senate before Memorial Day. It seems worthwhile, then, to pause and explain why Republicans are moving at such a breakneck speed to get through what’s known as the “budget reconciliation” process.
What is the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ Act?
When Trump was sworn in, congressional Republicans were divided on how to get his agenda passed. The Senate wanted two bills, dealing with everything but taxes first to ensure that a roadblock on one portion wouldn’t delay the entire package. House leadership wanted to do it all in one fell swoop, thinking that it would be easier to muscle through a single bill. Trump agreed with Johnson’s strategy, giving the bill its eventual name in the process.
The bill the House Budget Committee passed late Sunday is packed with GOP priorities, with an extension of trillions of dollars in tax cuts as the centerpiece. It also includes over a $1 trillion worth of cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and a major increase in funding for Trump’s deportation machine.
What is budget reconciliation?
Congress passed the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 to get a better overall grasp on how much money a greatly expanded federal government was spending each year. The newly created Budget Committees in each chamber would thereafter set a budgetary goal for the following years. As the Congressional Research Service put it, it’s usually “necessary to change existing revenue, direct spending, or debt limit laws to achieve those goals — to reconcile current law with the fiscal objectives of the budget.” Those changes get packaged together into a single budget reconciliation bill that must pass through both chambers before the president signs it into law.
What’s the advantage in using this process?
The biggest advantage comes in the Senate, where reconciliation bills are debated under a special rule set. The 20-hour time limit on debate means that the bill can’t be filibustered, effectively enabling it to pass with a simple majority vote. In practice, this means that reconciliation bills can be used to pass major legislation on a partisan basis if the same party controls both the House and the Senate.
How far are we into the budget reconciliation process?
The first step was cleared in April — after a few hiccups — when both chambers passed an identical budget resolution. Those resolutions came with reconciliation instructions to their respective committees about how much each was directed to spend or save. For example, the House Energy and Commerce Committee was instructed to find $880 billion in savings over the next 10 years, while the Senate Armed Services Committee was instructed to report changes that “that increase the deficit by not more than $150,000,000,000” over the same period.
Next, each of the committees named in the budget resolution produces a bill that fills in the blanks. Those policy debates can be contentious, as we saw in the intraparty debate over how much to cut SNAP and Medicaid. It took until last week for the House chairs to send their finished resolutions to the Budget Committee. Those were then bundled together to create the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that advanced over the weekend.
Is this process a workaround that always works?
Nope. Even though it effectively places the ball entirely in one party’s court, there are still plenty of elbows to be thrown. During Trump’s first term, an attempted repeal of Obamacare failed in the Senate despite being pushed through reconciliation. The same is true of former President Joe Biden’s major domestic agenda bill, the Build Back Better Act, which never even reached the Senate floor. It was a much-slimmed-down version — the Inflation Reduction Act — that finally managed to get to Biden’s desk using the same reconciliation vehicle.
Is there a downside for the House using this process?
Johnson’s choosing to package everything into a single bill is the definition of “high risk, high reward.” There’s little wiggle room for dissent thanks to the slim majority he holds, in which just four votes could derail the entire bill on the House floor. Add into that the competing interests between various factions in the GOP caucus, and it has been hard to balance priorities to the point that a bill can pass smoothly.
When a group of archconservatives briefly blocked the bill from passing the House Budget Committee last week, it was a flex to remind Johnson that they won’t go along to get along. The changes they’ve demanded — including moving up the timeline for cuts to Medicaid spending — risk alienating moderates who are wary about how that will play in next year’s midterm elections. There’s no guarantee that the bill will pass as written now, let alone once it gets through the Senate.
The cost of dodging the filibuster is a series of constraints on just what can be included in a Senate reconciliation bill. The so-called Byrd rule makes it so that everything in the bill must be about, well, the budget. In other words, only things that deal with raising revenue and spending can be part of the bill. The Senate parliamentarian makes the call on any challenges that are brought against specific provisions and whether they pass muster. Senate Democrats’ attempt to raise the federal minimum wage via reconciliation four years ago in the American Rescue Act ran into that exact wall during the “Byrd bath,” forcing the matter to be dropped from the final bill. The Senate also gets to make changes of its own to the House bill — and GOP senators have made clear that they intend to do so. The question then becomes whether whatever amended text sent back to the House will remain passable. An impasse between the two chambers would be relatively small potatoes if it weren’t for two upcoming deadlines. First, most of the 2017 tax cuts are due to expire at the end of this year, including those on the middle class. Second, and more pressing, Congress needs to raise the debt ceiling sometime this summer, and Republicans have intended to use this bill as their way of doing so. The next hurdle for the bill is the House Rules Committee, which is due to meet on Wednesday to shape how the bill will be debated on the floor. Since the Budget Committee couldn’t offer substantive changes, those amendments will be debated then. And there will be several of them, given the negotiations between conservatives and House leadership that led Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and three other committee members to stand aside to let the bill proceed. Exactly what those changes will be is anyone’s guess, as even House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, doesn’t seem exactly sure what the final bill will look like. “Deliberations continue at this very moment,” Arrington said Sunday night. “They will continue on into the week and, I suspect, right up until we put this big, beautiful bill on the floor of the House. We’re not going to disclose the deliberations. I’m not sure I could disclose all the deliberations.” That tracks considering how many provisions have been surprises to rank-and-file Republicans, even those on the committees that wrote it. But the rush to ram through this bill could still backfire on the GOP, as those same members will have to explain to voters exactly why the rich are gaining so much at the cost of their health care and other help they’ve come to rely on.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House. 
What happens when it reaches the Senate?
What’s next?
