If Donald Trump is elected president and Republicans hold onto Congress, House Speaker Paul Ryan is bluntly promising to ram a partisan agenda through Capitol Hill next year, with Obamacare repeal and trillion-dollar tax cuts likely at the top of the list. And Democrats would be utterly defenseless to stop them.

Typically, party leaders offer at least the pretense of seeking bipartisanship when discussing their policy plans. But Ryan is saying frankly that Republicans would use budget reconciliation — a powerful procedural tool — to bypass Democrats entirely. It’s the same tool Republicans slammed Democrats for using to pass the 2010 health care law over their objections.


While GOP leaders have made empty threats to use reconciliation to repeal Obamacare in the past, Ryan is making it clear that this time he plans to use it when it counts. And he would likely have support from a Trump White House. Larry Kudlow, an economic adviser to the GOP presidential nominee, said he is also strongly urging Trump to embrace reconciliation in order to pass sweeping tax cuts.

Ryan peeled back the curtain on his strategy at a news conference last week after a reporter suggested he would struggle to implement his ambitious agenda next year. After all, it was noted, Republicans are certain to lack the 60 votes needed in the Senate to break Democratic filibusters on legislation. So Ryan gave a minitutorial on congressional rules and the bazooka in his pocket for the assembled reporters.

“This is our plan for 2017,” Ryan said, waving a copy of his “Better Way” policy agenda. “Much of this you can do through budget reconciliation.” He explained that key pieces are “fiscal in nature,” meaning they can be moved quickly through a budget maneuver that requires a simple majority in the Senate and House. “This is our game plan for 2017,” Ryan said again to the seemingly unconvinced press.

Democrats and progressive advocates are not so skeptical. Terrified might be a better word.

“I’m extremely concerned,” said Harry Stein, director of fiscal policy at the liberal Center for American Progress. “There’s this flawed assumption in the coverage of how this election will matter that either way, we’re just going to have more gridlock. … We just assume that that’s the state of nature. But it’s not.”

Here’s how the process works: If the House and Senate pass identical budgets, they can include broad instructions for Congress to pass reconciliation legislation that has privileged status and cannot be filibustered in the Senate. The bill is intended to change current law to comply with the budget’s directives and must abide by certain parliamentary rules, such as having some effect on spending or tax levels. But ultimately a broad swath of policy changes can be made. “There’s an enormous amount you can do under reconciliation,” Stein said.

Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist agreed. “I think you can do everything that’s in the Paul Ryan budget plan in reconciliation,” he said. “That’s the model. It’s not some secret, it’s the obvious thing to do.”

Both parties have used budget reconciliation in the past. George W. Bush’s trillion-dollar tax cuts were passed under the procedure in 2001 and 2003; Democrats used it in 2010 to finish passing Obamacare, with Republicans rebuking Democrats for running roughshod over the GOP.

A senior Senate Democratic aide said it was “the height of hypocrisy” for Republicans to plan to use reconciliation after their previous complaints. “Winning back the Senate is critical for Democrats to stop Republicans from ramming through deep cuts to earned benefits programs,” the aide said.

An aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell didn’t weigh in on the matter, noting only that no announcements have been made about next year’s budget process.

But Republicans have already done a dry run on targeting Obamacare.

The GOP-controlled Congress passed a reconciliation bill last year that would repeal key parts of the health law, including effectively eliminating the individual and employer mandates and scrapping the Medicaid expansion, insurance subsidies for consumers and the medical device and Cadillac taxes. The bill was promptly vetoed by President Barack Obama, but it would serve as a road map to Republicans in 2017. The reconciliation process relies heavily on precedent, so now opponents of Obamacare already know what can pass muster with the Senate parliamentarian. Notably, the bill also defunded Planned Parenthood for one year, in a sign of how expansive a reconciliation bill can be.

Other pieces of Ryan’s “Better Way” policy agenda that could find their way into a reconciliation measure are controversial proposals to bring down the costs of Medicare and Medicaid or overhaul the food stamp program and housing assistance for low-income renters. Every line of the bill would face scrutiny from Democrats, but a skilled procedural tactician could overcome most parliamentary challenges.

Republicans would also set about rewriting the tax code through budget reconciliation. Asked if the procedure would be a good way to implement GOP tax plans, Kudlow responded, “Not good, fabulous.” Speaking for himself and not the campaign, Kudlow said reconciliation was “the fastest way in our judgment to get necessary pro-growth tax reform.” He said he has been encouraging that path to Trump and his staff all year, and that they were considering it.

Trump and House Republicans have proposed different tax plans, but they are largely in sync on major principles. Both would cut the top tax rate for individuals to 33 percent from the current 39.6 percent. The corporate rate would drop to 15 percent under Trump’s plan and 20 percent under the House GOP plan, from 35 percent today. Both plans also would drain federal coffers of several trillion dollars and give the biggest boost to the wealthy. By the end of the decade, the richest 1 percent would have accumulated 99.6 percent of the benefits of the House GOP plan, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

One drawback to using budget reconciliation as a vehicle for tax cuts is that if the bill increases the deficit after 10 years, the provisions then sunset. That was the case with the Bush tax cuts — though the vast majority were ultimately extended permanently under the Obama administration.

“A 10-year tax cut is not a bad deal,” Norquist said. “Very few things in life are forever.”

The other obvious issue is that pursuing reconciliation is a fundamentally partisan exercise. The bill becomes a “political piñata,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office.

But for some, that’s a feature, not a bug. Ryan’s office didn’t respond to a further request for comment, but he has been vocal about the need to get Trump in the White House to enact his agenda.

“I’m tired of divided government. It doesn’t work very well,” Ryan said last week. “We’ve gotten some good things done. But the big things — poverty, the debt crisis, the economy, health care — these things are stuck in divided government, and that’s why we think a unified Republican government’s the way to go.”