Senate Democrats hope to tie key immigration provisions to next reconciliation push - Page 2

Originally Posted by sk16

my question would be: who will be considered essential? the term has been "exploited" heavily to keep businesses who arent that essential open during the pandemic. the company I worked for, for example, falls within the category of utilities because we sell to that industry, and that was used to keep us open during the pandemic. will such broad intrepretation be applied in this case?

Originally Posted by Imthexman

The minum wage is different that the immigration bill, the reason it got rejected is because it violated the byrd rule and that is because the government was not going to directly spend or acquire any money due to the minumum wage increase but rather business(not the governmen) would have to provide the resources to make it happen.

Last time the senate took up the DA bill they added couple of billion dollars for border security, that itself would be actual federal spending money, simple fact. The senate could also consider the amount of taxes/welfare that the DA/CIR population would pay/cost the federal government and finally they could also consider the amount of resources (money) needed (new personnel, equipment etc..) to legalize all these people.

So would a DA or CIR bill qualify as a reconciliation bill? No doubt imo.

Tom cotton is even citing the amount of money the DA would cost the federal goverment and how much taxes these people would cost the America people, lol, this poor bastard doesn't even realize that he is actually helping this bill become a money bill and therefore suitable for reconciliation, how could he now object that this bill is not suitable for reconciliation (byrd rule) if he was the one who did the cost analysis hahaaha





Reference reading:


Some of the quotes below are directly from the senate.gov website:

What can the Senate pass with budget reconciliation?

A lot of things — so long as they affect federal spending and revenue. It’s called budget reconciliation, after all. Reconciliation was established as part of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, driven by lawmakers concerned about the growing federal deficit.

The provisions that are included in the reconciliation bill must then somehow change federal spending or federal revenue. Raising and lowering taxes, expanding subsidies for health insurance, and spending money on new infrastructure projects are some of the obvious, much-discussed ideas that could be included in a reconciliation bill.

A new DA/CRI bill would stipulate filing fees, penalty fees etc. just like our current immigration system, so there, that alone qualifies a DA/CRI provision for federal revenue; furthermore, the bill could also have spending provisions for additional border security, employment verification etc., so there, that alone qualifies for federal spending.

But even if a new DA/CRI bill does not affect spending and revenue it would still qualify to be included as a provision to the reconciliation bill because other sections of the reconciliation bill, such as the budget for the next congress fiscal year, will definitely have spending or federal revenue. This providing that the

Who decides what can be included in a budget reconciliation bill?

Unelected bureaucrats. Kidding — sort of. There are two important referees in the reconciliation process: the Congressional Budget Office and the Senate parliamentarian.

The CBO produces projections on how any legislation, including reconciliation bills, will affect the budget. Ordinarily, those projections have been the guidepost for whether a bill is meeting its reconciliation targets. If CBO says your bill costs $1.5 trillion, and the budget resolution passed to set up reconciliation said the bill was supposed to cost no more than $1 trillion, then you need to cut $500 billion out of the bill.

That may not necessarily be an ironclad rule, however: When Senate Republicans were using budget reconciliation to pass the tax bill in 2017, there was speculation they could use their own estimates if the CBO’s were not to their liking. (They ended up not needing to take such a drastic measure, though they still attacked the Senate’s nonpartisan experts and said the estimates were undervaluing how much their tax bill would spur the economy.)

And the CBO can be circumvented in other ways. In their 2017 bill, Senate Republicans allowed some tax breaks for individuals to expire so that their bill wouldn’t increase the federal deficit outside the 10-year budget window. However, no one at the time actually believed Congress would let those tax cuts sunset — i.e., hike taxes on people — when that deadline comes. It was a gimmick, plain and simple.

Aside from CBO, the Senate parliamentarian plays an important role in determining which provisions can be included in a reconciliation bill. The current parliamentarian is Elizabeth MacDonough, who has held that position since 2012 and is the first woman in the job.

There is usually one recurring gray area when making those calls: Is a policy’s budgetary impact “incidental” or not? If it is, under the Byrd Rule, it must be struck from the bill. Traditionally, the parliamentarian makes the final decision after they have heard arguments from both sides about the provisions in question. (It’s called a “Byrd Bath.”)