Learn all about the legislative shortcut that could make Trump's life easier in Congress

Donald Trump hopes to advance his packed legislative agenda through Congress. Among other things, this includes beefing up border security, stripping regulations from the energy sector, more funding for the military, and extending or making permanent the tax cuts he implemented in 2017. However, like most presidents, the GOP does not have the ability to pass legislation on its own.

Congress is composed of the House of Representatives and the Senate. In the former, of 435 members,  legislation is passed by a simple majority. This is the same as saying half plus one of the members. In this case, with 218 representatives.

In the Senate, the situation is a little different. As the founding fathers intended it to be a more deliberative body where more consensual laws move forward, they added one more obstacle. Once a law arrives and goes to a longer or shorter debate depending on the subject to be dealt with, 60 senators out of 100 are needed to end the debate and move on to the final vote. This final vote does govern by simple majority rules: 51 senators or 50 plus the vice-presidential runoff. In other words, since Trump has 53 Republicans in the Senate, he is forced to negotiate with Democrats to reach a majority of 60.

This rule, known as filibuster, gives the majority party more of a headache, but is usually celebrated by the minority.

However, there is a shortcut through which presidents can advance part of their legislative agenda without the need to have all 60 votes in the Senate. This mechanism is known as budget reconciliation.

What is budget reconciliation?

This process was created from the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 and since then it was used 27 times, of which 23 ended successfully for the president in office with the legislation in question enacted.

Broadly speaking, it allows bills to move forward by circumventing the Senate's filibuster rule.

Under the Byrd Rule, named for Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, it can only be used on legislation that directly affects the budget on these issues:

- Increases or decreases spending by the Federal Government.

- Increases or decreases federal government revenue.

- Changes the public debt limit

Issues outside this framework cannot be included in the budget reconciliation.

In terms of how it works, the House and Senate committees responsible for the affected areas (e.g., Finance or Commerce) draft the necessary changes as directed. They then send their proposals to the Budget Committee of each chamber, which combines them into a single reconciliation bill for debate sooner rather than later.

In turn, its content is dealt with in stages. In a process known as "Vote-a-rama," senators can propose amendments and vote on them without limit before the final vote on the entire bill.

Some practical examples

Here are three recent successful cases of budget reconciliation:

The former was used by the Democratic president to pass a companion bill to his famous Affordable Care Act. Although Obama initially had a majority of 60 senators, Republican Scott Brown surprised everyone after winning the election to fill the seat vacated by the death of Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts.

Trump also used the recourse in 2017, when he passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The only Republican senator to oppose this legislation was Bob Corker of Tennessee.

As for Biden, he initially pushed legislation dubbed Build Back Better, dubbed by Republicans as 'Build Back Broke.' Because there was no agreement among Democrats on the provisions of this bill, it ultimately moved forward with the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

With no Republicans voting for it, Vice President Kamala Harris had to break a 50-50 tie in the Senate.

One huge bill or two separate bills: the House-Senate debate

What Trump lacks to definitively move forward with his legislative agenda is to define the strategy to be used.

On this point, lawmakers are divided into two groups: those who prefer to put all the president's priorities together in one big bill and those who are betting on two separate pieces of legislation. The second group believes that issues on which there is general consensus in the GOP, such as the southern border, energy and funding for the Army, should be lumped together first, thus leaving the tax issue for a second bill to be introduced in August or September.

Led by Mike Johnson, House Republicans favor the big bill, while Senate Republicans look favorably on splitting that text in two.

"How should we proceed the House of Representatives and the Senate are having a big argument right now and the House and Senate are on different places. What the house has argued for is that we should do one gigantic reconciliation Bill. The problem is it is is a path that I think is almost certain to fail. (...) Doing a massive bill complicates things, makes it harder to accomplish," Senator Ted Cruz noted in a recent episode of his podcast, "Verdict."

In addition, he remarked on the need to split Trump's priorities into two separate pieces of legislation to have a better chance of ending up passing.

What they both agree on is moving forward before March, given that, should they take longer, Democrats will be able to use the southern border funding as a bargaining chip for the government shutdown.