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FY 2022 Budget Reconciliation Resource Page

Details on the history and status of the FY 2022 Budget Reconciliation

Aug 8, 2022 | 7 min read | Print Article

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TrackerFY 2022 Budget Reconciliation Resource PageDetails on the history and status of the FY 2022 Budget Reconciliation

July 28, 2022

In the late evening of July 27, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced they reached agreement on text for a budget reconciliation deal. The 725 page bill, titled the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, includes a number of provisions related to climate change, healthcare spending including prescription drug pricing reform and an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies, and revenue increases from changes to tax law. Summary documents provided by Congress indicate the bill would raise $739 billion in revenue and direct $433 billion in spending to climate or healthcare investments. The remainder, more than $300 billion, would be used for deficit reduction.

Current legislative text and summary documents provided by Senate Democrats can be found below.

Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (legislative text, 725 pages)
Summaries

***July 14, 2022***

In early July, citing high inflation, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) announced he would not support a broad reconciliation package that included climate spending and tax breaks or tax increases on the wealthy and corporations. He did leave open the possibility of supporting a package that includes various health care-related provisions including enabling Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices.

Even after this announcement, negotiations over a new bill to replace the Build Back Better Act, or several bills with individual components of the Build Back Better Act, are ongoing. The current opportunity for a reconciliation package expires at the end of the fiscal year of the budget reconciliation instructions, September 30, 2022. After September 30 a reconciliation package would require Congress to adopt another budget resolution containing reconciliation instructions.

***December, 2021***

In late December 2021, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) announced he would not support the current version of the Build Back Better reconciliation bill, halting the measure’s progress in the Senate.

***December 17, 2021***

The Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources chaired by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) released draft text for its section of the reconciliation bill. A TCS statement on the release can be found here, analysis of the oil and gas provisions of the draft section can be found here. Several other Senate committees also released drafts of their respective sections of the bill. The text and score of each draft Senate section is available here.

***November 19, 2021***

The House passed the reconciliation bill, H.R. 5376, the Build Back Better Act. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a full budget score of the bill on Nov. 18.

***November 3, 2021***
House lawmakers released an updated reconciliation package after additional negotiations. Along with this legislation (Rules Committee Print 117-118) the House Committee published a “comparative print” for the bill. In this document, the Committee provides a line-by-line accounting of every addition or deletion made to the current text compared to the version the Committee released on October 28.

Providing a document showing line-by-line changes (known as a “redline”) to proposed legislation is a key step for the public and Congressional staffers to gain an understanding of what is actually in a bill. When bills number in the thousands of pages and are subject to significant changes behind closed doors, it’s an onerous process to identify what is actually in the final text before lawmakers must vote. Providing a redlining document should be standard for all spending bills and, in fact, could be done for all legislation.

On August 24, 2021, the House adopted the budget resolution (Sen. Con. Res. 14) that the Senate adopted on August 11, 2021. This included budget reconciliation instructions to various congressional committees to develop legislation that all told could cost $3.5 trillion.

In the intervening months, lawmakers have proposed numerous legislative packages to fulfill these reconciliation instructions.

Taxpayers for Common Sense is urging Congress to ensure any reconciliation package is fiscally responsible and serves the interests of all taxpayers. Follow along as Congress debates this issue.

TCS Resources on Reconciliation: