Reconciliation (United States Congress) Reconciliation is a legislative process of the United States Congress that expedites the passage of certain budgetary legislation in the United States Senate. The Senate filibuster effectively requires a 60-vote super-majority for the passage of most legislation in the Senate, but reconciliation provides a process to prevent the use of the filibuster and thereby allow the passage of a bill with simple majority support in the Senate. The reconciliation procedure also exists in the United States House of Representatives, but reconciliation has had a less significant impact on that body. Reconciliation bills can be passed on spending, revenue, and the federal debt limit, and the Senate can pass one bill per year affecting each subject. Congress can thus pass a maximum of three reconciliation bills per year, though in practice it has often passed a single reconciliation bill affecting both spending and revenue. Policy changes that are extraneous to the budget are limited by the "Byrd Rule", which also prohibits reconciliation bills from increasing the federal deficit after a ten-year period or making changes to Social Security. The reconciliation process was created by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 and was first used in 1980. Bills passed using the reconciliation process include the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Process Reconciliation process Reconciliation is an optional part of the annual congressional budgetary process. Typically, the reconciliation process begins when the president submits a budget to Congress early in the calendar year. In response, each chamber of Congress begins a parallel budget process, starting in the Senate Budget Committee and the House Budget Committee. Each budget committee proposes a budget resolution setting spending targets for the upcoming fiscal year; in order to begin the reconciliation process, each house of Congress must pass identical budget resolutions that contain reconciliation instructions. Other committees then approve bills that meet the spending targets proposed by their respective budget committees, and these individuals bills are consolidated into a single omnibus bill. Each house of Congress then begins consideration of their respective omnibus bills under their respective rules of debate. The reconciliation process has a relatively minor impact in the House of Representatives, but it has important implications in the Senate. In contrast to most other legislation, senators cannot use the filibuster to indefinitely prevent consideration of a reconciliation bill, because Senate debate over reconciliation bills is limited to twenty hours. Thus, reconciliation bills only require the support of a simple majority of the Senate for passage, rather than the 60-vote super-majority required to invoke cloture and defeat a filibuster. Senators could theoretically prevent passage of a reconciliation bill by offering an unending series of amendments in a process known as a "Vote-a-Rama," but, unlike the modern filibuster, senators introducing these amendments must stand up and verbally offer the amendments. Though the reconciliation process allows a bill to bypass the filibuster in the Senate, it does not affect other basic requirements for the passage of a bill, which are laid out in the Constitution's Presentment Clause. The House and Senate still must pass an identical bill and present that bill to the president. The president can sign the bill into law or veto it, and Congress can override the president's veto with a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress. Byrd Rule The Byrd Rule, named for Senator Robert Byrd, was adopted in 1985