The Republican Party is…

I’ve said this before and I’ll keep saying it until it stops being true. Republicans campaign like libertarians and govern like Democrats. And I want to explain exactly why using something most people don’t understand but absolutely should — budget reconciliation.
Most Senate legislation requires 60 votes because of the filibuster. That’s the excuse Republicans have used for decades: we’d love to cut spending but we just don’t have the votes. But reconciliation, created in 1974, bypasses the filibuster on three specific subjects — spending, taxes, and the federal debt limit. Under reconciliation, you only need 51 votes. Or 50 plus the Vice President. And Congress can pass up to three reconciliation bills per fiscal year, one for each subject. Three separate shots at fiscal reform every single year that require zero cooperation from the other party.
So why doesn’t more get done? There’s the Byrd Rule, which says reconciliation provisions must have a direct budgetary impact. If they don’t, they can be challenged and removed. It also says provisions can’t increase the deficit beyond a ten-year window and can’t touch Social Security. The rule exists to keep reconciliation focused on fiscal policy — spending and taxes. Clean legislation on the subjects that matter most.
But instead of writing clean bills that deal strictly with spending and revenue, they load them up with pork. Pet projects. Favors for special interests. The moment you stuff a reconciliation bill with non-budgetary items, you run into Byrd Rule challenges, and suddenly you need 60 votes to waive them. The excuse comes right back — we don’t have the votes. But you created that problem. If you wrote clean bills, you’d only need your majority. Clean bills mean no pork, and no pork means certain members of your own party won’t vote for it because the only reason they supported the package was the goodies attached.
We just watched this happen in real time. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed in July 2025 through reconciliation — 51 to 50 in the Senate with Vice President Vance casting the tiebreaker. They burned all three reconciliation subjects in one bill. The CBO estimates it adds 3.4 trillion dollars to the deficit over the next decade. With interest, it’s over 4 trillion. If the temporary provisions get made permanent, which they always do, it could exceed 5 trillion. We were told a second phase would address spending and the debt. That second phase isn’t coming because they already used their reconciliation opportunities for the fiscal year.
The mechanism to cut spending exists. The votes exist. The process that bypasses the filibuster on exactly these issues exists. They choose to bundle everything into one bloated package, stuff it with pork to buy votes from their own members, and tell you they did the best they could. They’re banking on the fact that you don’t understand any of this. Now you know better.