“A Free-Range Chicken that Can Run Wherever the Majority Wants It To”: Budget Reconciliation and the Contemporary U.S. Senate
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Molly E. Reynolds
Abstract
Since its early uses in the early 1980s, the budget reconciliation process has played an important role in how the U.S. Congress legislates. Because the procedures protect certain legislation from a filibuster in the Senate, the reconciliation rules both shape, and are shaped by, the upper chamber in significant ways. After providing a brief overview of the process, I discuss first how partisanship in the Senate has affected the use of the reconciliation procedures. Next, I describe two sets of consequences of the contemporary reconciliation process, on negotiation and on policy design. I conclude with some observations about the relationship of reconciliation to the prospects for broader procedural change in the Senate.
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Introduction: Volume 19 No. 4: The US Senate
- Articles
- The Rising Electoral Role of Polarization & Implications for Policymaking in the United States Senate: Assessing the Consequences of Polarization in the Senate from 1914–2020
- Senate Republican Radicalism and the Need for Filibuster Reform
- The Distortions and Realities of the Senate’s Constitutional Purpose: Setting the Record Straight on “Senate Exceptionalism”
- “A Free-Range Chicken that Can Run Wherever the Majority Wants It To”: Budget Reconciliation and the Contemporary U.S. Senate
- Nomination Struggles in the Post-nuclear Senate
- Marching (Senate Style) Towards Majority Rule
- One Obstacle among Many: The Filibuster and Majority Party Agendas
- Get Out of the Way: Joe Biden, the U.S. Congress, and Executive-Centered Partisanship During the President’s First Year in Office
- Book Reviews
- Adam Hilton: Review of True Blues: The Contentious Transformation of the Democratic Party
- Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields: The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Introduction: Volume 19 No. 4: The US Senate
- Articles
- The Rising Electoral Role of Polarization & Implications for Policymaking in the United States Senate: Assessing the Consequences of Polarization in the Senate from 1914–2020
- Senate Republican Radicalism and the Need for Filibuster Reform
- The Distortions and Realities of the Senate’s Constitutional Purpose: Setting the Record Straight on “Senate Exceptionalism”
- “A Free-Range Chicken that Can Run Wherever the Majority Wants It To”: Budget Reconciliation and the Contemporary U.S. Senate
- Nomination Struggles in the Post-nuclear Senate
- Marching (Senate Style) Towards Majority Rule
- One Obstacle among Many: The Filibuster and Majority Party Agendas
- Get Out of the Way: Joe Biden, the U.S. Congress, and Executive-Centered Partisanship During the President’s First Year in Office
- Book Reviews
- Adam Hilton: Review of True Blues: The Contentious Transformation of the Democratic Party
- Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields: The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics
