“It is always good to have a series of insurance policies,” said Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, about the possibility that Democrats could duplicate last month’s party-line passage of the $1.9 trillion virus relief legislation, should they not be able to work out deals with Republicans.īut whatever strategy they employ, it is clear that the decision by the Senate parliamentarian to agree with Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, that a 47-year-old budget provision could be used more than once in a fiscal year widens President Biden’s path to enacting his infrastructure plan by shielding it from a filibuster. It is a means of weakening the filibuster without having to take the politically charged vote to do so.ĭemocrats insist that they have made no decisions about how to use the tool. With a ruling on Monday that Democrats can reuse this year’s budget blueprint at least once to employ the fast-track reconciliation process, Democrats can now conceivably advance multiple spending and tax packages this year without a single Republican vote, as long they hold their 50 members together.
Anna Moneymaker for The New York Timesĭemocrats might not have the votes to gut the filibuster, but they were just handed the procedural keys to a backdoor assault on the Senate’s famous obstruction tactic. “I always would prefer to do legislation in a bipartisan way, but we have to get big, bold things done,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader.
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