It takes 60/100 votes to pass the budget bills in the Senate, instead of 51, because the Senate still has a filibuster. The minority Democrats have the power to stop the vote from coming up by simply talking on the floor forever until the Republicans give up and go home.

The 53-47 vote was for a cloture motion, which is to put time limits on debate on a particular budget bill. The rules don't let Dems filibuster the cloture motion for obvious reasons, so that vote happened. But it takes 60 votes to pass cloture, so it went down.

Now, there are some resolutions that don't involve coming to a compromise:

the Democrats could choose not to do the filibuster. Then the bill would come up, and they could all vote against it, but it could pass on 53 votes.
the Senate could change the rules to get rid of filibuster. This is usually called the "nuclear option" because it removes the 60 vote barrier using a rules vote that only needs 51 to pass. The procedure is to make someone actually start a filibuster, then raise a point of order that filibustering member is taking too long. The Parliamentarian will deny the point of order based on the current rules, but that can be appealed to the whole Senate on a majority vote. And the point of order is not debatable.

[–] Clathrate_Gun@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Correction: it is no longer necessary for a Senator to keep talking on the floor to create a filibuster. Any Senator can now simply indicate a filibuster and require an immediate cloture to bypass it. This is sometimes called a “silent filibuster” but mostly it just kept the same name which prevents the public from being aware of the difference.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This is only true because the Senate's floor time is valuable enough that leadership would rather move on to consider other bills than waste time on a real filibuster. The "silent filibuster" is not an official part of Senate rules.

People have been saying that Congress is gridlocked and ineffective, and that is true, by several subjective and objective measures. But even in the gridlocked state there are still a bunch of bills that are debated and passed. And it takes floor time to work on those.

[–] Clathrate_Gun@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago

The "silent filibuster" is not an official part of Senate rules.

The silent filibuster results from a change to Senate rule #12, aka “Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of The Senate” that was made in 1970. It allowed the Senate, for the first time, to move on to the next bill in the event of a filibuster. So in effect there’s no longer a “talk it to death” requirement to prevent a bill from reaching a vote.

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

The budget can bypass the filibuster (for the most part). They would have to let the Democrats bs for 20 hrs and then it would only take 51 votes to pass the budget. (Or at least the majority of it that I know of). This is intentional, but if they are putting extraneous bologna in the bill, that would cause it to need 60 for those parts. But all of the budgetary needs should be 51

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 28 points 3 days ago (1 children)

There is a rule that the reconciliation bill can pass on 51. But there are two main limits on reconciliation:

Reconciliation has to be at least nominally about the budget, as you said, and
Only one reconciliation bill per fiscal year.

The Republicans already shot their reconciliation shot with the BBB. They can't do it again until the next fiscal year (which arrives tomorrow, so they can get started).

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

2 isn't correct though, there is no limitations on the number of reconciliations that can be filed.

You can file one for every budget resolution made. Which being that this is a different resolution than the BBB which already passed, it has no ties or limitations to it

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 15 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

From The Wiki:

Congress can pass up to three reconciliation bills per year, with each bill addressing the major topics of reconciliation: revenue, spending, and the federal debt limit. However, if Congress passes a reconciliation bill affecting more than one of those topics, it cannot pass another reconciliation bill later in the year affecting one of the topics addressed by the previous reconciliation bill.[3] In practice, reconciliation bills have usually been passed once per year at most.[16]

Edit: Are you saying the Senate and House made two identical budget resolutions in this year? Or is it just that Senate Republicans don't want to blow reconciliation for the next year on what is probably mostly continuing resolution?

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 days ago

That information doesn't line up with History. When a second budget is drawn up in the same year, you can reconcile it.

Say 2021, budget passed in February, then the "Build Back Better Act" went to reconciliation in 2021 and failed.

But it didn't fail do to reconciliation limits, but rather votes

[–] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 10 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Is it 51 or 50 plus the vice president?

[–] teft@piefed.social 14 points 3 days ago

It’s majority of the senate present with quorum. The vp only votes in ties.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

Everything that says 51 can be read as 50 plus VP,.