[Cody-99]

>You can't pass a budget without a super majority in the Senate

Yes you can. It is called reconciliation and it was made for passing a budget with a simple majority. Problem is when republicans used it earlier this summer they didn't actually fund the government fully so now they need 60 votes.

[gruez]

>Problem is when republicans used it earlier this summer they didn't actually fund the government fully so now they need 60 votes.

How did the OBBBA get passed under reconciliation then? I thought the whole point was that bills could only pass via reconciliation if it didn't change spending/revenues?

[anonymars]

There were arcane rules. For example to pass the Shuttle-to-Houson bullshit (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45424822) they couldn't put money for a specific policy (move Discovery) but only set aside money for Texas to house a nonspecific vehicle, one that had flown to space. Etc.

See e.g. https://rollcall.com/2025/06/23/houston-we-still-have-a-prob...

Many of the other comments in the thread illustrate that you shouldn't trust proclamations on the internet, AI or otherwise. You don't ipso facto need 60 votes to pass every bill through the Senate. The reconciliation bill over the summer thus passed with solely Republican support.

[kemayo]

It's the opposite. Reconciliation lets you pass bills that only change spending/revenues, and isn't allowed to change policies which are revenue-neutral.

You might be thinking of how it's not allowed to create a deficit after 10 years, but that's traditionally done by just saying "everything here expires after 10 years" and then leaning on a later congress to extend it.

(It's a little more complicated, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconciliation_(United_States_... covers it.)

[gruez]

That still doesn't explain how the OBBBA passed but they can't use the same process to pass a debt limit increase. Do republicans want to add more stuff to the bill? Based on the wikipedia article it looks like it should be able to pass a bill that only raises the debt limit through reconciliation?

[kemayo]

They could have raised the debt limit through reconciliation, but this shutdown isn't about the debt limit. This is literally the bill saying what the budget for the next year is, without which the government isn't allowed to spend any money (as opposed to not having any money to spend when it's the debt limit).

I think the reason they can't use reconciliation for this is that the budget has to include discretionary spending, and reconciliation is only allowed to be used for mandatory spending.