President Biden’s signature COVID relief bill is now law. Read on to learn what’s in it, what got left out, and how your MoCs voted on this critical legislation.
M.I.R.V is an acronym for “Multiple-Impact Reentry Vehicles” used to describe the House special rule, which allows two or more individually passed bills to be combined into one legislative vehicle.
Normally, the Senate requires a 60-vote majority to pass any legislation—a high bar that makes it hard for the Senate to quickly pass major pieces of legislation. Budget Reconciliation, often referred to as just reconciliation, is a legislative maneuver that allows the majority to get around this 60-vote threshold.
The trick with must-pass bills is members of Congress (MoCs) can use them as an opportunity to attach policy changes, even if those policies would be difficult to pass on their own. The thinking is, if members can manage to get their policy priority into the must-pass bill, other MoCs will have to support it because they want to avoid a shutdown.
The Byrd rule has been law since 1990, and has been used successfully dozens of times to block so-called “extraneous” (unrelated) provisions that shouldn’t get passed through reconciliation.
February recess is coming up, which means it’s time to get loud. From February 13-February 21, members of Congress get a break from their work in Washington D.C. to spend time in their districts talking to constituents (that’s why it’s technically called a “district work period”).
