The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy offers two very different points of view on the reconciliation issue. This is worth your time if you are trying to sort out this complicated issue. Here is the link to their web page and the articles http://www.fed-soc.org/publications/pubid.1792/pub_detail.asp We have reprinted with the Federalist Society’s permission the introduction below.
Reconciliation and Congress
New Federal Initiatives Project
March 10, 2010
Brought to you by the Federalism & Separation of Powers Practice Group
There is a lot of discussion right now about the use of “reconciliation,” a mechanism for enacting legislation to carry out the budget resolution that cannot be filibustered in the Senate, to enable enactment of health care legislation. As part of our New Federal Initiatives Project, we asked Martin Gold, a partner at Covington & Burling and one of the country’s leading experts on congressional procedures, for a paper discussing the issues that this raises. The views set out in this paper are his own, not those of the Federalist Society. For a competing take on these issues, see “Reconciliation for Health Care Should Not Be an Issue” by Stanley Collener, a contributing writer for Roll Call who for most of his career worked on budgetary issues.
Related Links
| –”Reconciliation and Health Care” by Martin Gold, March 10, 2010 |
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| –“Reconciliation for Health Care Should Not Be an Issue” By Stan Collender, April 21, 2009, Capital Gains and Games |
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Editor’s Update 3-15-10: House File 2700 (the Capital Investment Bill totalling nearly $1 billion ) was sent to the governor last week despite clear warnings to keep it around $725 million and focused on priorities such as veterans, military, and public safety. Over the weekend, Pawlenty did what the DFL apparently could not do and trimmed it down to about $680 million. A majority of House Republicans, lead by House Minority Leader Kurt Zellers, had asked the governor in a letter to cut spending to $200-250 million (down to only “critical” construction projects) to bring the DFL to the negotiating table later in the session. The letter said such a move would show the DFL that ”it is NOT OKAY to whip out the credit card for a sculpture garden, for civic centers, for shade trees and for the rest of their out-of-touch spending.” The DFL conceded last week that it expected significant cuts, sending it to the governor’s desk after failing to negotiate a compromise last week. The tone of the governor’s letter is similar to a letter one might find from an exasperated parent to an out of control college student: he basically says, I told you what I expected and you ignored me (again). He noted that the bill exceeded the budgeted capital investment by about $275 million. “The DFL-controlled legislature seems incapable of prioritizing projects or simply sayng no. So I have done it for you.” You can read the governor’s letter detailing the cuts at MinnPost : 
