vlog faculty member Linda Bilmes, the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Senior Lecturer in Public Policy, explains what reconciliation is, how Congress has historically used it, and how it may be misused. This piece was originally published in The Conversation.
The word “reconciliation” sounds benign, even harmonious.
But in Washington, D.C., reconciliation refers to a potent legislative shortcut that allows the party in power to avoid opposition and enact sweeping changes to taxes and spending with a simple majority vote. Democrats to pass the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. Reconciliation helped Republicans pass large tax cuts in 2017.
Reconciliation is also at the heart of the current budget debate, as Senate Republicans rush to advance their version of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” also known by its acronym OBBBA, which in May 2025.
I served as assistant secretary of Commerce for management and budget during the Clinton administration, when my colleagues and I helped forge bipartisan legislation that over four years, from 1998 to 2001. We were even able to pay off some debt.
But since 2001, the country’s fiscal situation has deteriorated significantly. And the reconciliation process has strayed from its original purpose as a mechanism to promote sound fiscal policy. Instead, it is now used to pass partisan legislation, often without regard to its economic impact on future generations of Americans.
Reconciliation 101
The reconciliation process , which was . It was designed to align policy goals with budget targets to help rein in deficits.
The rules specify that a bill using the reconciliation process must pertain directly to budgetary or fiscal matters, cannot change Social Security, Medicare or the budget process itself, or deliberately extend deficits beyond a 10-year window. As part of the process, the parliamentarian goes through each element of the bill and determines whether it meets the requirements, removing any that don’t.
In the Senate, reconciliation has special procedural advantages. . Conveniently for the party in power, the final bill can pass with a simple majority of 51 votes. This avoids the usual 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a filibuster.
Over its 50-year history, .
Reconciliation on rise as budget process breaks down
Over time, reconciliation has become the dominant method for enacting major tax and spending legislation, as the regular congressional budget process has broken down.
Since 1974, , near-shutdowns and short-term, stopgap “continual resolutions” instead of annual budgets, accompanied by .
With few other tools at its disposal, Congress to push through many pieces of major economic legislation, including the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts under President George W. Bush, the 2017 tax cuts during President Donald Trump’s first term, and the American Rescue Plan in 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 during the Biden administration.
However, reconciliation has significant flaws. Because debate is limited, senators often vote on bills over 1,000 pages long with little time to review the details. And once tax cuts are enacted under reconciliation, it is devilishly hard to get rid of them.
Given the compressed timelines and lack of transparency inherent in such huge, messy spending bills, it is fairly easy for lawmakers to slip in earmarks, tax loopholes and other extraneous items that that don’t get removed by the parliamentarian.
