45 Groups: Senate Majority Must Abide by Reconciliation Rules
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20515
June 17, 2025
Dear Majority Leader Thune,
cc: All United States Senators
We, the undersigned 45 organizations, on behalf of our millions of members and supporters from across the country, write to express our grave concern with respect to the present Senate majority’s intent to observe the strictures of the budget reconciliation process. We are particularly troubled when it comes to the majority’s plans to administer section 313 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 (which codifies the Senate’s “Byrd rule”),(1) given: (i) the House’s recent passage of a bill(2) purporting to provide for reconciliation pursuant to the pending concurrent resolution on the budget(3) that is rife with material violative of Byrd; (ii) reports that planning is underway to upend decades of precedent with respect to the calculation of the bill’s budgetary baseline;(4) and (iii) the majority’s recent actions contorting the Congressional Review Act (“CRA”)(5) to evade the Senate’s cloture requirement (the operation of which is known, colloquially, as the “filibuster”).(6)
While the signatories to this letter have a range of views on the ongoing utility of the Senate filibuster, there is a unifying principle upon which we all can agree: the law as it stands must be followed. Indeed, you acknowledged as much earlier this Congress, when asked whether you would advise against moving to override the Senate Parliamentarian’s determinations under Byrd, stating, “[T]hat’s totally akin to killing the filibuster. We can’t go there. People need to understand that.”(7) This public stance would be heartening, had you not made similar assurances on maintaining the integrity of CRA process(8) and followed them up by improperly extending that Act’s expedited procedures to the disapproval of any executive branch action,(9) forging a primrose path around the filibuster in the process.(10) Such depredations on law, precedent, and the institution of the Senate must end.
Whatever one’s stance on the Senate filibuster, it must at some point be acknowledged that rules are rules—and, moreover, section 313 of the Budget Act(11) is the law of the land. Any effort to selectively enforce the requirements of the Budget Act to suit the majority’s whims will be met with forceful rejection by both the undersigned and the American public and may well be countered legislatively when the makeup of the Senate shifts.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
20/20 Vision
All* Above All
Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments
American Economic Liberties Project
Americans for Financial Reform
Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF)
Autistic Self Advocacy Network
Center for Digital Democracy
Center for Progressive Reform
Clean Water Action
Climate Hawks Vote
Coalition on Human Needs
Consumer Action
Consumer Federation of America
Endangered Species Coalition
Food & Water Watch
Friends of the Earth
Japanese American Citizens League
Immigration Equality Action Fund
Indivisible
League of Conservation Voters
League of Women Voters of the United States
MassCOSH
Medical Students for a Sustainable Future (MS4SF)
MoveOn
National Employment Law Project
National Health Care for the Homeless Council
National Health Law Program
National Immigrant Justice Center
Natural Resources Defense Council
NENYCOSH
Oceana
P Street
Pacifica Social Justice
People Power United
Physicians for Social Responsibility
Public Citizen
Reproductive Freedom For All
Service Employees International Union
Sierra Club
The AIDS Institute
The Center for Science in the Public Interest
UFCW Western States Council
United Steelworkers (USW)
Voices for Progress
WisCOSH, Inc.
Footnotes:
1: 2 U.S.C. § 644 (2018). The Congressional Budget Act of 1974 is referred to hereinafter simply as “the Budget Act.”
2: H.R. 1, 119th Cong. (2025) (as passed by House, May 22, 2025).
3: H. Con. Res. 14, 119th Cong. (2025) (enacted).
4: See, e.g., Alexander Bolton, Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Heads for Showdown with Senate Parliamentarian, The Hill (June 2, 2025, 6:00 AM ET), https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5326610-democrats-challenge-trump-tax-cuts/. Of course, such a move would impact a multitude of Byrd rule determinations. See 2 U.S.C. § 644(b)(2)(B) (barring from reconciliation bills language that would “result in a substantial reduction in outlays or a substantial increase in revenues during fiscal years after the fiscal years covered by the reconciliation bill . . . [when] such increases or decreases are greater than outlay reductions or revenue increases resulting from other provisions . . . .”).
5: 5 U.S.C. §§ 801–08 (2018).
6: See S. Rule XXII.2 (enabling the closing of debate in the Senate by a vote “in the affirmative by three fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn”).
7: Thune to Senate GOP: Don’t Overrule Parliamentarian on Reconciliation, Punchbowl News (Jan. 6, 2025), https://punchbowl.news/article/senate/thune-tells-gop-not-to-overrule-parliamentarian/.
8: 171 Cong. Rec. S2984 (daily ed. May 20, 2025) (statement of Sen. Thune) (promising, when discussing the proposed consideration of three CRA joint resolutions of disapproval that did not qualify for expedited consideration under that Act, “[w]e are not talking about doing anything to erode the institutional character of the Senate”).
9: From floor debate on the proceedings:
Mr. SCHUMER. Yes. I just want to—I hope our leader will listen because it is exactly clear, and I want to repeat what we had said yesterday. Is it true what you said yesterday: that the Parliamentarian advised leadership offices that [the CRA measures] at issue do not qualify—do not qualify—for expedited consideration under the Congressional Review Act?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Parliamentarian has advised me that such advice was given.
Mr. SCHUMER. Thank you. It shows we are going nuclear, no matter what the leader says.
171 Cong. Rec. S3048 (daily ed. May 21, 2025).
10: The method ultimately used to improperly extend the CRA’s filibuster-evading expedited procedures was a stark point of order presenting the conclusory question of whether facially deficient joint resolutions of disapproval met “all the requirements of section 802 of the [CRA],” which the presiding officer then put to the body. See id. at S3051. This enabled the Parliamentarian’s precedent-based determination as to the CRA’s inapplicability to those measures to be overturned via a simple majority vote. See id. It does not take a procedural expert to see that this blunt-force approach to expanding the CRA’s reach could easily be used to bypass the filibuster and overturn any executive branch action ever taken.
11: Supra note 1.