Senate seems designed to accomplish very little

As Democrats race to finish their marquee “Build Back Better” legislation, it’s worth noting how much their political ambitions have narrowed. Democratic lawmakers have nearly abandoned trying to solve many of the major social problems their constituents want them to address.

That’s not entirely by choice. It’s because of complicated Senate rules — rules that befuddled, frustrated voters might ultimately punish Democrats for abiding by.

The problem: We have a system of governance that nobody in their right mind would design.

In our system, a party can have unified control of government and an agenda supported by most voters. But unless it holds a supermajority of Senate seats, this supposedly powerful party still may not be able to pass its own priorities unless it pretends every single proposal is primarily about the “budget.”

Why? For most bills, Senate rules require 60 votes to cut off debate and bring the bill to a final up-or-down vote. That means having simple majority support for any given piece of legislation is often not sufficient; at least 60 votes might be necessary.

There are some paths out of this logjam. One that’s often attractive is a special process called “budget reconciliation.”

This process was established in 1974, and was intended to fasttrack high-priority budget bills and make it easier to reduce deficits. Under reconciliation, a simple majority of senators can pass certain bills — but only if those bills pertain to outlays, revenue or the debt limit. There are, as well, some other complicated criteria.

Sometimes there are disputes about whether any particular measure meets all the criteria. When this happens, the Senate parliamentarian is called on to interpret how the rules apply.

Nancy M. Preyor-Johnson’s column will resume Friday.

The result is that lawmakers work to make sure any measure they hope to pass produces a significant, budgetary change. At least, they tinker with the design so they can convince the parliamentarian their provisions are primarily budgetary. This is why many different versions of immigration reform, for example, have been plugged into Democrats’ evolving budget bill.

So the ability of a simple majority of elected officials to address societal problems is contingent on understanding these convoluted procedural rules. As in so many areas of U.S. government, power goes not to those with the best or most popular ideas, or even the most winning personality but to whoever can most creatively manipulate the rules.

What about pressing issues that can’t be disguised as budgetary in nature, such as ballot access, police brutality, reproductive rights? Oops, sorry, those things can’t be addressed at all.

This arcane set of constraints works out well for Republicans, even when the GOP holds power by fewer than 60 Senate votes, as was the case during the Trump era. Their main policy priority, after all, is tax cuts — an easy sell as a budgetary issue.

On the other hand, this is not a system that works well for a party in power that wants to do things other than narrow budgetary measures. Such as: the Democrats, right now.

Democrats do have some options for getting around these strict reconciliation rules if they want to pass some nonbudget priorities, says Zach Moller, an expert at the think tank Third Way. They could, for example, buck long-standing tradition and ignore the parliamentarian’s interpretation of Senate rules. But they might lose critical moderate Democratic votes for whatever legislation they’re trying to pass.

Needless to say: This entire process is super confusing. It’s challenging for even journalists to follow, and we’re paid to understand this stuff.

So imagine how difficult it is for regular voters to understand what’s going on. All they know is that Democrats have promised to do lots of big, ambitious things — and then, for opaque reasons, simply aren’t getting them done.

CATHERINE RAMPELL