Byrd Bath
How an obscure Senate procedure is making Trump's budget bill less big and the politics behind it less beautiful
I try to stay out of the weeds of legislative decision-making, but in the case of the budget bill that’s slogging through the reconciliation process, it’s worth taking a couple of minutes to see how the Senate parliamentarian is picking apart provisions in the bill that the Senate hopes to approve this week.
The procedure in question is formally called the Byrd Rule, named after the late West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd. The rule prohibits any provisions that do not directly address revenue or tax policy from being included in legislation that goes through the reconciliation process. Any provision excluded by the Byrd Rule is subject to regular Senate procedures, which allow for a filibuster. The purpose is to prevent the majority party from using reconciliation to circumvent the filibuster on items that aren’t germane to the budget.
It’s up to the Senate parliamentarian to decide what’s acceptable and what isn’t, and the minority party can level specific challenges and make the case for why provisions should be struck from the legislation. If the parliamentarian rules that a provision violates the Byrd Rule it has to be stripped from the bill. Colloquially, this process is called the Byrd Bath. You have to trust me that I didn’t make that up.
The bill that Donald Trump calls big and beautiful has been undergoing a Byrd Bath this week, and the water pressure from the bath is shrinking it down to size.
According to Axios, quite a few items have been deleted from the bill as of yesterday morning. These include:
A provision that would create a framework for the sale of federal lands.
A provision to pass food aid costs on to states by forcing them to share expenses for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. [NOTE: A revised version of this provision may be approved by the parliamentarian and returned to the bill]
Proposed restrictions on the ability of federal courts to issue nationwide injunctions and temporary restraining orders.
A GOP proposal to hollow out funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and a plan to slash pay for staff at the Federal Reserve.
An effort to repeal an EPA rule limiting air pollution emissions of passenger vehicles.
A provision allowing project developers to bypass judicial environmental reviews if they pay a fee.
A modified version of the REINS Act, which would increase congressional power over major regulations.
Language to expand state and local officers’ ability to carry out immigration enforcement and limits on grant funding for “sanctuary cities.”
While the removal of these items makes this monstrosity of a bill less awful, it also creates political problems for a Republican conference that is trying to hold on to enough of its members to get the legislation through the Senate and House. Every deleted provision upsets the delicate balance of interests that have been assembled to get the bill this far. Recall that the original House version made it through by only one vote.
In the short run, changes to the bill are jeopardizing the Republican goal of getting it to Donald Trump’s desk by July 4. In the long run, the Byrd Bath is complicating the process of aligning whatever the Senate passes with what the House is willing to accept, because ultimately they have to approve the same language.
When I was in Washington a few weeks ago on the day the House approved their version of the measure and sent it to the Senate, I spoke with a senior aide to a Republican congressman who told me that the House had already been tipped off about how much of the bill was likely to wash away in the Byrd Bath. It was a pretty high percentage. This suggests House Republican leaders understand the Senate is likely to return legislation that doesn’t have some of the provisions that helped them cobble together a winning coalition.
What they do about this depends on the details of the final Senate bill and how completely Republicans cave under pressure from the White House.
Ultimately, the pressure to come to an agreement and get legislation to Trump’s desk may be unbearable for Republicans, and they’ll find a way to pass . . . something. But the trouble they’re having is emblematic of what happens when Congress is trying to move legislation that the public does not want.
Polling makes clear that this legislation isn’t just unpopular—it’s poisonous. As we discussed on Monday, it would be the most unpopular major legislation of the past 34 years. And with the featured Medicaid cuts promising to hurt Republican base voters, you almost have to scratch your head and ask if they’re thinking through the political costs of what they’re trying to accomplish.
At a closed meeting of Republican Senators yesterday, North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis—arguably the most vulnerable Republican incumbent—warned his colleagues that Medicaid cuts could do to their electoral prospects what Obamacare did to Democrats in the 2010 midterms, when they lost 63 House seats and six Senate seats. And while controversial, Obamacare at the time wasn’t as unpopular as what Republicans are cooking up this week in the Senate.
No amount of cleansing in the Byrd Bath will alter this political reality.
Thanks for the concise outline of what will hopefully be lost in the upcoming budget Bill. I appreciate it. Keep up the good work.
I have the growing sense that Republicans will just plow forward and pass the budget, ignoring its unpopularity with voters in favor of Trump's desires. It defies even survival instinct. A true "drink the Kool-Aid" moment in the cult that runs our federal government.