This piece originally appeared at Legislative Procedure.
Reports indicate that Senate Republicans plan to use a "current policy baseline" to determine the budget resolution's aggregate spending, revenue, and deficit/debt levels. A current policy baseline makes it easier for Republicans to use the reconciliation process to extend the expiring tax provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Democrats argue in response that Republicans are effectively eliminating the Senate filibuster by using a current policy baseline. As Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., stated unambiguously, "That would be going nuclear."
However, whatever the budgetary merits of using a current policy baseline, the Republican decision to do so is not the nuclear option as Democrats claim. This is because the nuclear option refers to when a majority of senators act in explicit violation of the Senate's rules. The Senate's rules are derived from five primary sources: The Constitution, the Standing Rules of the Senate, statutory rules passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, standing orders, and informal precedents. There is no prohibition on using a current policy baseline in five of those sources. And one - the statutory rules regulating the budget process created by the 1974 Budget Act - explicitly allow it.
The Scorekeeping Process
The scorekeeping process has two purposes: First, it helps lawmakers better understand the budgetary impact of legislative measures by evaluating them against the baseline. The baseline refers to the amount of federal spending, revenue, and deficit/debt that will occur in a fiscal year under current law or - in this instance - current policy that is scheduled to expire. Second, lawmakers use the scorekeeping process to enforce the budget resolution's top-line spending, revenue, and deficit/debt levels.
