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- Senator Bernie Sanders said on Sunday Democrats were eager to pass a relief package for COVID-19.
- On CNN, Sanders said Democrats would use reconciliation “as soon as possible” to bring relief.
- Reconciliation would prohibit the use of systematic obstruction, which to override requires a vote of 60.
- Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.
Senator Bernie Sanders said on Sunday Democrats must act quickly by adopting a COVID-19 relief plan now that President Joe Biden has taken office and Democrats have tight control over the House and Senate.
“Well, I don’t know what the word compromise means,” Sanders, a Vermont independent, told CNN’s Dana Bash during an appearance on “State of the Union” when asked about finding common ground with Republicans on relief. “I know working families today are living in greater economic despair since the Great Depression. If Republicans are willing to work with us to resolve this crisis: Welcome – let’s do it.”
But Sanders said Democrats shouldn’t wait for Republican support for relief, telling Bash Democrats should use a process called reconciliation to get relief into American hands more quickly. As Bash and Sanders have pointed out, the process only requires a simple majority vote to pass a law, as it does not allow for the use of filibuster which requires 60 votes to overturn. Reconciliation was first used in 1980 and is generally reserved for budget and expenditure legislation, as Politico noted.
Read more: More than 200 coronavirus vaccines are still in development as the initial vaccine rollout accelerates. Here’s how experts predict 2021 will unfold.
Without reconciliation, Republicans could use filibuster to prevent Democrats from legislating despite their majority in the House, Senate, and occupation of the White House. Democrats and Republicans have an equal division in the Senate, but Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, serves as Senate Speaker and will vote in the event of a tie, giving Democrats tight control of the chamber.
: State of the Union (@CNNSotu) January 24, 2021
“But what we can’t do is wait weeks and weeks and months and months to move forward,” Sanders said Sunday. “We must act now. This is what the Americans want.”
The tactic was used by Republicans under the Trump administration when the GOP unsuccessfully attempted to overturn parts of the Affordable Care Act. It has also been used by the GOP to pass tax bills, as Sanders noted. While Bash noted that Sanders had criticized his fellow Republicans for their use of the tactic, he defended his earlier criticisms in Sunday’s interview, saying “the devil is in the details.”
“We will use reconciliation … to pass legislation that working families in this country desperately need now,” he said.
Sanders added that he is proposing two reconciliation bills, the first of which would prioritize direct aid to Americans and efforts to end the COVID-19 pandemic. The second, he said, would contain efforts to rebuild a struggling economy.
Sanders told Bash on Sunday that Senate Democrats could simultaneously focus on the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump and fight the pandemic.
“We have to do everything,” he said. “You don’t have time to sit for weeks on the arraignment and not get vaccines in people’s arms. You don’t have time to worry about vaccines and not that people children in America are hungry.
“We have to break this old approach that the Senate takes years and years to do anything,” he added. “We have a seizure right now. We can chew gum and walk at the same time.”
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