Reconciliation was established in 1974 to make it easier for Congress to adjust taxes and spending in order to reconcile actual revenues and expenditures with a previously approved budget resolution. Thus, at the end of the year, if Congress found that it was running a budget deficit higher than previously projected, it could quickly raise taxes or cut spending to bring the budget back into line. Debate on such measures was abbreviated to just 20 hours (an eyeblink in Senate terms), and there could be no filibuster.
As Robert Byrd, (D-W.V.), one of the original authors of the reconciliation rule, explained, Reconciliation was intended to adjust revenue and spending levels in order to reduce deficits...it was not designed to
restructure the entire health care system. He warns that using reconciliation for health care would violate the intent and spirit of the budget process, and do serious injury to the Constitutional role of the Senate. In fact, in 1985, the Senate adopted the Byrd rule, which prohibits the use of reconciliation for any extraneous issue that does not directly change revenues or expenditures. Clearly, large portions of the health care bill, ranging from mandates to insurance regulation to establishing exchanges, do not meet that requirement.
With Republicans threatening to challenge any provision that violates the Byrd Rule, Democrats have been contemplating a variety of ways around it, including having Vice President Joe Biden, in his role as president of the Senate, overrule the nonpartisan Senate parliamentarian. But no vice president has overruled a parliamentarian since Nelson Rockefeller in 1976, and doing so now, in defense of a bill opposed by 58 percent of voters, risks a significant backlash.
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