If the Senate congressman finds a clause that violates Byrd’s rule, it would be necessary for 60 senators to repeal that decision to maintain the irrelevant clause in the underlying bill, an extremely high hurdle to overcome. But an idea that is now being advanced by progressive activists is for Vice President Kamala Harris – or whoever is presiding over the Senate at the time – to simply ignore the parliamentarian’s decision and let the contested provision remain in the bill, a controversy movement that Senate experts say has not been employed since 1975 by then Vice President Nelson Rockefeller.
However, if Democrats go that route and ignore the congressman’s advice, it will cost them the support of at least Manchin – and potentially others, like Senator Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat from Arizona.
“My only vote is to protect the Byrd Rule: hell or high tide,” Manchin told CNN. “Everyone knows that. I’m fighting to defend Byrd’s rule. The president knows that.”
Asked if he told the president about his position, Manchin said bluntly: “Direct.”
The pressure to include an increase in federal wages to $ 15 an hour has become a delicate situation for Democrats, who seek to strengthen the huge economic bailout package in both chambers of Congress in the first week of March. The House Budget Committee is expected to bring together individual parts of the proposal in the coming days before sending the bill to the House floor, which is expected to approve the plan by the end of next week.
House budget chairman John Yarmuth, a Kentucky Democrat who supports raising the minimum wage, was skeptical on Tuesday that the hourly increase could survive the Senate’s strict budget rules, while Biden himself expressed serious doubts that he would survive in the Senate.
“I think the minimum wage is overkill to overcome Byrd’s rule,” Yarmuth told CNN, noting its impact on deficits after the next decade. “I’m just not aware of how they do it.”
Yarmuth said he expects his committee to vote to send the bill to the floor by the end of this week or on Monday, once his panel goes through its own process of approving the relief bill with the House MP to ensure that does not conflict with the budget reconciliation rules. Yarmuth added that House panels are already working privately to resolve differences with Senate committees in order to accelerate approval in both chambers.
“Our committees have been working with their committees all the time,” said Yarmuth.
If the massive measure is passed by the House next week, as expected, it will reach the Senate the following week. Since Democrats are using accelerated budget procedures, known as reconciliation, the measure cannot be obstructed, meaning that the bill can be passed by a simple majority of 51 senators – instead of the 60 votes normally needed to overcome any obstacles. in the Senate. With a 50-50 stalemate, Harris would cast the tiebreaker vote.
Since Democrats are using the budget reconciliation process, they must adhere to Byrd’s rule, named after the late Senator Robert C. Byrd, whose chairman Manchin now occupies.
Still, Sanders says he has lawyers and experts on Senate rules on his team who plan to argue for a favorable decision with Senate MP Elizabeth MacDonough.
“The only way to raise the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour now is to approve it with 51 votes through budgetary reconciliation,” said Sanders, who argued that a recent cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office reinforced his argument to keep the provision in charge.
On Monday, Sanders told CNN: “We are going to present our case to the congressman that we absolutely believe that raising the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour is consistent with the rules of the Senate and the reconciliation process.”