House GOP leaders had a brief scare last week when they had to go back and fix several pages in their mammoth budget reconciliation bill that passed before Memorial Day.
That “privilege scrub” process, necessary to preserve a reconciliation bill’s filibuster-proof status in the Senate — is often confused with the “Byrd rule” — which restricts what can be included in a reconciliation bill in the Senate — as the two sets of limitations often overlap.
But unlike the Byrd rule, provisions found to be “fatal” after a privilege scrub can be the death knell for partisan reconciliation bills. If fatal provisions aren’t removed before the bill comes to the Senate, the entire package would revert to a regular bill subject to unlimited debate and 60-vote procedural thresholds.
