The Republicans in the Senate are trying to put together their version of the Trump administration’s priorities bill. They are using reconciliation which only has a 51 vote threshold for anything that directly ties to revenue and spending. The Senate Parliamentarian advises the Senate which items would likely be subject to a 60 vote threshold in a process known as the Byrd Bath. (Yeah, this is WEIRD). Lots of things have been designated as 60 vote items from the House version of the bill.
Another round of arguments were made on big policy items and the Parliamentarian is advising that payment for Cost-sharing reduction subsidies is out of bounds and the process of Silverloading is protected as a policy choice. This is FASCINATING.
The sixth set of Byrd droppings is out and WOW – huge and COSTLY loss for Republicans.
Loan repayment changes can only be for new borrowers, and they lost on CSRs, can’t add new Hyde language, plus other stuff.
By my rough calculations, this just cost Republicans $150 billion or more of their cuts
— Bobby Kogan (@bbkogan.bsky.social) June 26, 2025 at 12:30 AM
In February, we laid out the steps of how a reconciliation bill passes. We are still at stage 4 and 5
4. Senate looks at the House bill and laughs (this is only optional but frequently occurs) and writes its own draft bill
5. Senate submits its draft bill to the Senate Parliamentarian for the Parliamentarian’s advice on if the proposed bill follows reconciliation rules
lowtechcyclist
Thank you for reminding me of what CSRs are in this context. 🙂
narya
IMHO, the big question is whether they will just ignore what the parliamentarian says. What/who would stop them?
Ohio Mom
I’m glad to see David, I was wondering why we weren’t hearing from you, seeing that Republicans clearly have their knives out for the ACA.
I am not sure I follow what you are saying but as long as wrenches keep being thrown in this piece of shit bill, I am heartened.
Baud
@narya:
No one really. They have to stop themselves.
narya
@Baud: Yeah, that’s what I thought. It remains to be seen just how ugly this will all be. I’ve been lamenting with fellow Old People that we will not live to see the repairs of all of this damage, if, indeed, repairs can even start any time soon.
Baud
@narya:
We haven’t repaired the damage from Reagan. Every time we get a toe hold, the voters run to the Republicans (or stay home which is the same thing).
The Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights era all happened during the mid-second-half of the Century. So that pattern may hold.
narya
@Baud: Oh, you are sooooo right. I remember that election night–I was at Oberlin at the time, and the election watch party was more of a wake. It was grim.
Baud
Baud
@narya:
Oh God, you student council did so much damage to everything!
narya
I know. I was, indeed, on the student council, so . . . it’s all my fault.
David Anderson
@Ohio Mom: life has been messy but good
satby
@narya: The parliamentarian gives the Rs who know this bill as written will be fatal to their reelection cover to avoid some of the worst without directly defying the felon, so I’m skeptical they’ll try to ignore her rulings. She’s done them huge favors protecting them from their worst impulses
satby
@Baud: people don’t seem to realize (or remember) that Reagan’s administration gave us the initial undoing of the social contract. Which subsequent R administrations continued to chip away at ever since. All in a more effective and deadly version of Nixon’s Southern Strategy.
narya
@satby: That is my hope, definitely!
Baud
@satby:
Depends how you look at it. The old social contract required white male supremacy. So when that changed, Reagan came in and said, here’s your new social contract: Nothing, you get nothing!
lowtechcyclist
@satby:
Exactly. They don’t have the guts to stand up to Trump directly, but they can shrug and say “not our fault, the parliamentarian took that part out.”
Steve in the ATL
@Baud: thanks–I put it in my Outlook calendar for 35 years from now!
tobie
This is encouraging news. Senate Democrats have put up a fight for what can be included in the reconciliation package and it has borne fruit.
Sean Casten had a long post yesterday about one aspect of the Senate bill that made my blood boil. Apparently Susan Collins has asked for a carve out for rural hospitals, so Republicans are putting a $15 billion “rural hospital stabilization fund” into the bill. In principle there’s nothing wrong with this except that it’s not universal. Already overcrowded and underfunded inner city hospitals will be pushed to the breaking point but rural America will be saved.
cmorenc
@narya:
Here’s hoping that there are just enough R senators who view the Parliamentarian’s rulings as cover against having to vote for deeply umpopular items in the bill.
tobie
@narya: Apparently House Republicans are already pushing for the Senate Parlamentarian to be overruled. From Angry Staffer
mappy!
I wonder if blue states (some of them at least) reach a point where they decide to band together to create their own, self financed, networked, state based safety nets. State’s Rights after all. Right? That would financed by money raised in blue states that stays in blue states. That would be a contrast.
You butt heads with them or you go around them. Out Flank them. In return, maybe we get the best and brightest who leave red states…
WTFGhost
One famous example of the Senate not laughing was when Nancy Pelosi saved ObamaCare through regular order, providing the changes the Senate *could* make to reconcile their passed version, with the House. The Senate made those changes, and Republicans have been trying to take health care away from tens of millions of people ever since.
RaflW
@satby: I’ve also been seeing that experienced Senate Dems (and, presumably their staffers) have been doing serious amounts of work to find reasons for the parliamentarian to nix things. She makes the calls, but it sounds like there’s been a full court press to give her as many justifications to say no as possible.
This is where years of service matter. I won’t say that justifies staying for 3-4 decades or more, but it does speak to not having arbitrary, shortish term limits.
RaflW
@satby: I remember that Clintonian ‘triangulation’ helped further cut the already dented social contract.
I don’t think Mamdani is a magic sparkle pony, but I hope that he can be part of a new wave of Democrats who fully embrace and proudly run on the moral and ethical position that yes, I who have more do share responsibility for my neighbor. I can have good things, and it’s ok to want them for people who weren’t ever silver-spoon ‘lucky’.
chemiclord
@Baud: Right? Ask any black person living in a “hood” that was initially carved out by redlining how awesome the “New Deal” coalition was.
Maybe people would be a lot less shocked when black voters are wary at best of “progressives” who talk about courting “the white working class.”
chemiclord
@cmorenc: A lot of Senators, on both sides of the aisle, love the idea of being the “maverick” that can tank entire swaths of legislation based solely on their vote or a couple votes.
Thune only has a couple golden tickets to hand out here, and it sounds like he wants one of them. Don’t get me twisted, it’s absolutely possible this is all a shell game and the GOP will fall in line like Trump demands. But I’d say it’s about 50/50 that enough Senators will embrace their inner John McCain and give that thumbs down because they get off on that shit.
Ohio Mom
@Baud: That’s something to look forward to in a few decades, an upheaval resulting in lots of bloodshed and death — though admittedly relatively few people died in the Civil Rights era.
Also, just in time for Climate Change to really rev up. I’ll most likely be dead by then, thank the universe for small favors I guess.
tobie
@RaflW: The only thing I disagree with is the idea that Democrats have not been talking about the social contract at all. Heck, Hillary Clinton’s campaign slogan was “Stronger Together.” Obama got slammed for mentioning “redistributing wealth” to Joe, the Plumber. Why we hear some messengers and not others is unclear to me.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@RaflW: Democrats had lost the House for the first time in 40 years – blaming Bill Clinton is an easy reflex, but the political context matters. This was the era that gave us Newt and Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News. Let’s just say it could have been much worse.
Glidwrith
@tobie: That fund is supposed to replace $350 billion. $15 billion is a band aid on a throat cutting wound.
dnfree
@narya: That’s one of the aspects of this that makes me saddest—at my age, probably not living long enough to see things return even to where they were in 2016. I turned 70 early that year and contemplated all the progress in human rights I had seen on my lifetime—civil rights, gay rights, women’s rights, and increasingly transgender rights and religious freedom. Well…..
dnfree
@Ohio Mom: The “few people” who died in the civil rights era were mostly killed by white men who were then not brought to justice. Not to mention the many people killed before the civil rights era in lynchings and “race riots” where black communities were attacked by white mobs.