Biden’s big bill: Two GOP strategists on how to kill it

The Conversation with Dasha Burns

POLITICO

News, Government, Politics

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🗓️ 5 August 2022

⏱️ 43 minutes

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Summary

The biggest remaining obstacle for the Democrats is now Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, who will continue to host Democratic and Republican aides behind closed doors today (no press allowed) to scrub the reconciliation bill for potential violations of the Byrd Rule. MacDonough broke the hearts of progressives on several occasions last year, including when she nixed the minimum wage from the Covid relief bill, which was passed using reconciliation, and rejected three different versions of immigration reform from the Democratic reconciliation bill that was eventually scrapped in December. Republican budget nerds reviewing the latest reconciliation bill still believe they can knock out certain provisions. On Thursday, for the latest episode of the Playbook Deep Dive podcast, we sat down with two of the party’s leading experts on the process: Eric Ueland, who spent 25 years in the Senate, including as staff director of the Budget Committee, and Greg D’Angelo, who spent nearly a decade on the committee. Ryan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Eric Ueland is a commissioner on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.Greg D'Angelo is a partner at the Nickles Group.Afra Abdullah is associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is producer for POLITICO audio.Brook Hayes is senior editor for POLITICO audio.Adam Allington is senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is executive producer for POLITICO audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	There's a scene from an old West Wing episode, slow news day, in which Toby's assistant
0:10.3	Marina sheepishly admits that she doesn't really understand the basics of a policy that
0:16.3	everyone in Washington is talking about.
0:19.4	Can I ask you a question?
0:22.5	What?
0:23.5	Well, there's something I don't understand about social security.
0:26.0	And you could be a member of Congress.
0:27.5	Well, all these reports say it's going broke if we don't fix it.
0:30.4	But if we all pay into it, why don't we just get our money back when we retire?
0:33.8	In Washington right now, the issue that insiders talk about every day, but are often too
0:38.5	afraid to admit they don't really understand, is reconciliation.
0:43.4	So every vote counts, every member knows they're that last vote, so everyone has a lot
0:47.7	of leverage.
0:48.7	It's a question of whether they use it, how?
0:52.6	I'm Ryan Liza, and this is Playbook Deep Dive.
0:58.2	You often see reconciliation described in articles using journalistic shorthand, like an arcane
1:05.1	budget process, or the complicated set of rules governing the legislative vehicle Democrats
1:11.0	are using to pass their most ambitious climate, tax, and health care legislation.
1:16.0	The language around reconciliation is studded with jargon, about bird baths and merely
1:22.4	incidental provisions.
1:24.4	The top experts on the process are a select group of Washington budget nerds, who all
1:29.6	know each other and become highly sought after when a reconciliation bill is going through
	...

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