The bill is likely to be doomed in the Senate because of the final rulings of the parliamentarian. Tax credits for union-built electric vehicles, caps on out-of-pocket costs for Americans who need insulin, and some immigrants who came to the US illegally, could be in danger as the nonpartisan rules referee's scrubbing wraps up on dozens of policies currently in the legislation.
The Budget Chair explained in a recent interview that the Senate has two issues: no Republican support and no margin of error. On top of that, you have the parliamentarian determining what is in a sense germane and what is not. That makes it more difficult. A lot of people don't understand.
The core of the bill's immigration reform plan doesn't jibe with Senate rules for the special process the majority party is using, so several policies in the package have already been axed.
Manchin tends to get all of the credit for threatening popular provisions of the bill, like an extension of the child tax credit. The parliamentarian's office is one of the biggest hurdles for the social spending measure. Some in the party were disappointed that the immigration issue was not fixed before the budget reconciliation process was used to pass the legislation.
It is a very clumsy way to do something. If we're going to pass something significant, we have to use it.
The rules referee is charged with making sure that every piece of the social spending bill has a significant impact on federal spending, revenues or debt, and that the policies the bill makes don't outweigh their potential budget effects.
Multiple rounds of bad news for Democrats on immigration reform have been caused by the latter requirement. The parliamentarian nixed two earlier bids before her latest quashing of House-passed immigration language that would extend work permits and provide temporary deportation protection for certain people who came to the U.S. before.
She objected to an initial proposal that would provide a pathway to citizenship for people who are in the country illegally, as well as a backup plan that would change the date on a decades-old registry law to give more people a path to legal status. Senate Democrats disagree with the decisions of the parliamentarian, but they have no plans to try to overrule her.
The senator spoke during a press conference.
The Senate Judiciary Chair said his party is considering what options remain after the most recent immigration ruling.
With a slim majority in the Senate, Democrats have no real way to push through their desired policies that the parliamentarian nixes. Republicans faced off with the parliamentarian when they used reconciliation to pass their tax bill, and they say that each new ruling reminds them of the high price of the process.
"Seems like we have to learn the lesson over and over again, that there are limits in reconciliation, and that it should be the last resort instead of the first resort," said Roy Blunt.
The GOP had to rewrite their tax bill after the parliamentarian tossed a provision designed to win over Republican holdouts and prevent hundreds of billions of deficit spending.
The Republicans had a plan to repeal the health care law. The parliamentarian said the GOP's proposals to defund Planned Parenthood and ban coverage of abortion in insurance plans didn't comply with the same budget rules as this year.
The parliamentarian's feedback during the GOP's anti-Obamacare push was illuminating for lawmakers in both parties as they tried to gauge the limitations of budget rules.
Kennedy, a newly elected senator, said that all of them learned a lot about health care when they were addressing it.
Democratic leaders anticipate feedback from the parliamentarian's office on Biden's expansive social policy package, which includes proposals that would ding drugmakers for raising prices faster than inflation, and exclude students who attend for-profit universities from receiving a $550 increase in yearly aid under the Pell grant program.
Chris Van Hollen said it was crazy that we have a system where we have a carve-out for things that relate to the budget. The parliamentarian becomes the judge and jury.
This report was contributed to by several people.
