The editors of the Wall Street Journal remark on the end run the Democrats are attempting around Senate rules:
Spending $3.5 trillion on a budget bill apparently doesn’t satisfy the progressive imperative. Democrats control the 50-50 Senate thanks only to the Vice President as tiebreaker, and they lack the votes to nuke the filibuster. Nevertheless, they insist that their mammoth budget bill must also include big policy changes, even if it takes bending Senate rules beyond recognition.
On Friday the Senate’s parliamentarian heard arguments from both sides on how much a reconciliation bill can rewrite immigration law. Democrats want to give green cards to as many as eight million people. Legalizing the so-called Dreamers who came here as children is a good idea on the merits, but is it a budget item? The obvious answer is no, and everybody knows it. Legalizing eight million people would have budgetary effects, but revenues and outlays are clearly beside the point.
Other non-budgetary matters embedded within the legislation include include measures to promote unionization or to encourage production of “clean energy”.
As I’ve said before I’m a ways and means sort of person and one of the things that bothers me about all of this is that it isn’t remotely democratic, either with a small or large “D”. The point man for the $3.5 trillion spending bill in the Senate is Bernie Sanders who still is not a Democrat. And a majority of a majority is not necessarily a majority—it may actually be a minority as it is in this particular case. If you’re going to wail and gnash your teeth because your political opponents are undemocratic, it behooves you to be democratic yourself and in this particular case the bipartisan support and, indeed, the Senate majority is on Joe Manchin’s side rather than Bernie Sanders’s.
