Lee, for his part, has vowed to return with a diluted version of the proposal, writing on X, “Yes, the Byrd Rule limits what can go in the reconciliation bill, but I’m doing everything I can to support President Trump and move this forward. Stay tuned. We’re just getting started.”
The fight isn’t over though. It was just deemed to be too far outside of strictly budget related proposals. Another version of this will be added eventually. If not in this same bill, the next one.
The next bill can be filibustered and won’t have the same incentives to accept things because we need to pass a budget. Everything that can be blocked from this is a big deal.
When Republicans get sick of being filibustered they will just get rid of the filibuster. It only needs a majority vote to go away.
Ok, that’s still a big fight and a dedicated news cycle on the issue rather than being blended into a bloated spending bill with a laundry list of issues. They’re getting a bunch of stuff like this ejected by the parliamentarian. If they wanted to go full ‘fuck the system’, they could just reject these rulings right now.
In the end, the Senate Republicans love having reasons that they can’t do unpopular things their base wants. And they love how powerless the filibuster makes the Democrats. They can get most of what they want via the budget, an unchecked executive, and the Supreme Court.
