Kent Conrad: The Conrad Rule is the Answer to our Budget Reconciliation Woes
Kent Conrad is a former senator, former Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, and a director of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. He recently wrote an opinion piece for The Hill, an excerpt of which can be found below.
With the return of unified government in Washington, the Republican majorities in the House and Senate are getting ready to use one of the most powerful tools in the budgetary toolbox: budget reconciliation.
In doing so, the new majority will undoubtedly try to pack as many of its policy priorities as possible into this filibuster-proof legislative vehicle, thereby requiring only a bare majority in the Senate. But what they certainly shouldn’t do is use the reconciliation process to make our exploding national debt even worse.
Budget reconciliation, in simple terms, is a special legislative process created 50 years ago by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. This process provides Congress a simple-majority path to “reconcile” the proposed budget levels it seeks with the tax and mandatory spending changes necessary to achieve them. Historically, Congress has managed to use the reconciliation process to bring down the deficit. For example, the 1990 and 1993 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Acts each reduced deficits by nearly $500 billion over five years. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act is estimated to reduced deficits by more than $200 billion over 10 years.
Read the entire piece here.
Published works by members or staff of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget do not necessarily reflect the views of all members or staff of the Committee.
