House Budget Committee approves resolution with reconciliation

The House Budget Committee on Thursday approved a budget resolution that includes reconciliation with $12 billion in aid to farmers.

The vote was 20 to 14, along party lines.

In opening remarks at the markup, House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, said that Reconciliation 3.0 is necessary because “we still have obstruction. I think as recently as two days ago, Democrats in the Senate said no collectively to what is historically a bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act, which basically are the policies that undergird the entire Pentagon and America’s military.

“They’ve also held up FISA, which is a critical tool for our intelligence agencies to protect the American people.

“I can keep going down the list, but the message is loud, and it is clear to me that we’re not going to get any help from our Democrat colleagues to do what I believe are two critical things to finish the fight that we said we would undertake for the people who gave us unified Republican leadership.”

But Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said that holding a vote on the reconciliation before the November election would be a “risky proposition,” Bloomberg Government reported in a password-protected article.

“The complex reconciliation process Republicans want to use for the bill requires so-called vote-a-ramas in the Senate in which Democrats could force politically difficult votes,” Bloomberg Government noted.