Even with 60 votes labor reform would never happen in the senate.
Can reconciliation be used under the justification that a union movement would increase wages (by shifting them downward) and thereby tax revenues for regressive federal taxes?
Hmmm… IANAA (not american) but I suspect that the rule is direct change, not secondary effects. You can probably argue secondary effects for ANY change, which would mean that any alteration to any bill would have some indirect impact on revenues. Allowing the secondary effects would basically render the rule useless.
But… just because it’s stupid doesn’t mean politicians don’t do it that way.
I’m confused what you mean by “increasing wages by shifting them downward”.
For those unfamiliar with budget reconciliation, it’s a legislative manuever that limits debate in the Senate to 20 hours – therefore, it cannot be filibustered. However, any bill passed under budget resolution is supposed to be closely related to revenues and expenditures.
To ensure that, any bill considered under reconciliation is subject to the Byrd Rule, which defines six criteria that make a provision “extraneous” and therefore unfit for reconciliation. The most important criteria for our purposes is that a provision is extraneous if it, “produce[s] changes in outlays or revenue which are merely incidental to the non-budgetary components of the provision.”
Who gets to decide whether a provision is incidental? Any Senator can object to a provision under reconciliation as extraneous under the Byrd Rule. The Senate Parliamentarian would then rule on whether the provision was compliant with the rule. The Parliamentarian’s ruling can then only be overturned by a 60 vote majority of the Senate.
A labor movement would move wealth from the top wage earners (stockholders, CEOs, corporate profits) and move them downwards towards the laborers in the form of higher wages and benefits because threats of strikes would force those at the top to share more of the wealth with those at the bottom.
Because the taxes paid by laborers are different than the taxes paid by the people at the top (FICA, sales, property, etc vs corporate profit, income, dividend), could reconciliation be use because it changes the income of different groups who pay different kinds of taxes?
Your post was great up till the last two sentences.
First, parliamentarians don’t rule on questions of procedure, they merely advise. Only the presiding officer can make a ruling.
Second, a ruling on a point of order stands unless overturned by a simple majority – not a three-fifth vote, and certainly not a “60 vote majority.” A simple majority requires only that the yeses outnumber the noes (and that a quorum is present).
True about the Parliamentarian – the Chair rules based on the Parliamentarian’s advice, but I can’t think of an instance where the Chair has ever ruled contrary to the Parliamentarian.
As for the three-fifth vote, the House Rules Committee agrees with me: cite.
A parliamentarian will explicitly advise a certain ruling only when there is an unambiguous black-and-white answer. On such a politically charged question, the parliamentarian’s advice would likely consist of setting forth the applicable provisions in the statute and rules, and any precedents, with an analysis, so that the presiding officer is as fully informed as possible. That advice may shade one way or the other, but it would probably not say that the chair must rule one way or the other.
As to the three-fifth vote to sustain an appeal from a ruling, I stand corrected. I have found several authoritative secondary sources (including the one that you linked to) that confirm your answer, flurb. I am curious, though, about the source of this three-fifths requirement, since I don’t see it either in the statute or in the Senate rules.
My research tells me the Chair can overrule the Parliamentarian’s ruling at any time.
The answer can be found within another procedure, known as the Constitutional - or “Nuclear”- Option. Employing it converts a 60 vote supermajority requirem,ent into a 51 vote majority procedure.
- "the Senate majority would secure a ruling from the chair that Standing Rule XXII does not apply. The chair, likely the Vice President, would probably agree and rule in favor of the majority. The issue would then be brought to a vote, and the minority, probably through the Minority Leader, would note that the issue is debatable and, hence, also subject to a filibuster.
The parliamentarian, relying on Senate precedent, would agree. The chair would then recognize a non-debatable motion to table. At this point, the majority could overrule the anti-majoritarian precedent, uphold the ruling of the chair, and proceed to a final yea-or-nay vote on the original question by securing a simple majority vote in favor of the motion to table.
If all that seems complex, it is. But the basic import of such procedural maneuvering is that a simple majority of the current Senate can force a change in Rule XXII to reduce the supermajoritarian cloture requirement, thus making it possible to end debate by simple majority vote."*
(technically they would actually be declaring “Legisative entrenchment” - the prohibition to changing the rule- unconstitutional, a concept with ample precedent.)