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Time for a little quiz: The "Byrd Rule" in the Senate states:

A. That no appropriations bill can pass without West Virginia receiving at least $10 million in projects.

B. That Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., is prohibited from giving any speech that does not make reference to something that happened in ancient Rome.

C. That any senator may raise a point of order against any part of a budget reconciliation bill that is extraneous (which is supposed to mean that it does not help achieve the goal of the bill -- i.e., have direct budgetary impact). If the chair rules that the provision is extraneous, it takes 60 votes to waive it.

If you answered all of the above, you may be right. If you answered "C," you know far too much about the budget and arguably need to get a life.

Seriously, the rule may sound like a lot of mumbo jumbo, but it's not. To understand why, it helps to know a bit more about the budget process.

If Congress comes to an agreement on a budget resolution, the House and Senate may send instructions to authorizing committees stating that they must find savings in entitlement programs under their jurisdiction. The allure of budget reconciliation legislation is that it cannot be filibustered in the Senate; it must be voted upon by the world's greatest deliberative body.

Of course, that makes it a magnet for all sorts of things that congressional leaders want to see enacted. In 1985, the Senate adopted the Byrd Rule on a temporary basis to keep such additions from getting out of hand. It was made permanent as part of the Budget Act of 1990.

But it's still just a bunch of budget jargon with little meaning, right? Not so fast -- consider what the Congressional Research Service reports:

• In the Budget Act of 1995, the Senate deleted a provision increasing the age of eligibility for Medicare as a result of the Byrd Rule.
• In that same bill, huge portions of a Republican welfare reform bill were cut for the same reason.
• In the 1996 reconciliation bill, the Senate struck additional welfare provisions, including a cap that would have limited assistance for families having additional children while receiving aid.

And those are just the highlights. From 1985 through 2002, 52 points of order were raised under the Byrd Rule, successfully striking or barring the consideration of 41 different provisions or amendments.

This year, if Congress considers a reconciliation bill, Senate budget-writers once again will scrub the House bill or conference report for possible Byrd Rule violations. That process is sometimes called giving the bill a "Byrd Bath." And to make matters even more corny, provisions that are deleted based on the rule are called "Byrd Droppings."

The rule drives the House crazy. It often foils plans by House leaders to tuck key agenda items into reconciliation bills. This year, the rule could be particularly important, since the Senate budget resolution included a provision authorizing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Opponents of drilling are likely to try to get the provision deleted based on a Byrd Rule violation.

In recent years, Byrd himself has been a sharp critic of how the rule is being applied, since Republicans have successfully allowed themselves to classify tax cut legislation in budget reconciliation. Because of a technicality, tax cuts could be included as long as they are sunsetted after 10 years.

Budget reconciliation has become a "process that has morphed into an annual exercise, where the majority party takes advantage of the limitations on amendment and debate allowed by the Budget Act to shield controversial legislation from public discussion," Byrd said in a March 2004 statement on the Senate floor. "I helped to craft the Budget Act in 1974 and I can tell senators that we never contemplated that reconciliation would be used to shield from debate legislation that spends the Social Security surplus and increases deficits."

Since this is the first year since 1997 that Congress has considered a reconciliation bill that calls for limits on entitlement programs, the Byrd Rule is certain to be an issue again. And once again, the Senate will attempt to exert its pre-eminence over the House of Representatives -- testing the already-tense relations between the two chambers.

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Story:	Byrd Brains
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