How Reconciliation Became Washington’s Biggest Budget Loophole 

Congressional Republicans seem poised to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill, a megabill containing President Trump’s top legislative priorities. 

The House passed a version earlier this month that experts say will add anywhere from $1.7 to $3 trillion to the deficit over a decade.

The Senate’s version of the One Big Beautiful Bill could push that number up to $4 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan government agency whose projections are usually accurate.  

With the U.S. already $37 trillion in debt and facing a dangerous debt spiral, these figures are simply unsustainable.  

But while the topline numbers may be bigger than usual this time around, the One Big Beautiful Bill is just the latest in a concerning trend: abusing the reconciliation process to enact a new President’s priorities on a party-line vote.  

Reconciliation is a special type of legislation that can’t be filibustered by the minority party in the Senate. Reconciliation was designed to have a narrow focus on deficit reduction and bringing mandatory spending in line with the annual budget resolution. 

The very first reconciliation bill, passed in 1980, was less than 100 pages long and reduced the deficit by a modest $8 billion ($5 billion in spending cuts, $3 billion in increased revenues). It passed Congress with broad, bipartisan support.  

Flash forward to today, the reconciliation bills are completely unrecognizable: thousands of pages long, trillions of dollars added to the deficit, and passed strictly along partisan lines.

These megabills seem to cover everything except deficit reduction: tax cuts (for individuals, corporations, tips, and overtime), green energy subsidies, healthcare, infrastructure, education, immigration enforcement, AI regulation… none of these issues are going through the typical legislative process. 

In the past, Presidents had to use their mandate and political capital to win over 60 votes in the Senate, often cutting deals across party lines. Now, they just jam everything into a reconciliation bill. 

The reconciliation process has become a shortcut around the hard work of consensus-building. The One Big Beautiful Bill is just the latest example. The only question is whether it will be the last.