FY 2022 Budget Reconciliation Resource Page

Details on the history and status of the FY 2022 Budget Reconciliation

August 17, 2022

On Tuesday, August 16, President Joe Biden signed the fiscal year 2022 budget reconciliation bill (H.R. 5376, better known as the Inflation Reduction Act) into law.

The final package is much smaller than the initial $3.5 trillion envisioned Build Back Better, but still includes more than $450 billion in spending and nearly $800 billion in new revenue, for net deficit reduction exceeding $300 billion. This includes $369 billion of climate related provisions, $64 billion in an Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) three-year subsidy extension, and $90 billion in increased IRS funding (which is not included in the official “score” of the bill but results in $200 billion in revenue according to the Congressional Budget Office).

Final bill text and TCS analyses can be found below.

Inflation Reduction Act: Text and CBO Score

Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (as signed into law)
CBO Score (September 7, 2022)
This is the most recent CBO score.
CBO Score (August 12, 2022)
This score is based on the passed legislation. It does not include the budgetary effects of some provisions in titles I, V, and VI that would raise revenue.
CBO Score (August 5, 2022)
This score is based on the initial July 27th text of H.R. 5376. It does not include the budgetary impacts of several changes that were made to the bill prior to its passage.

Inflation Reduction Act: TCS Analyses

August 12, 2022

On the afternoon of Friday, August 12th, the House passed the fiscal year 2022 budget reconciliation bill 220-207 along strict party lines.

August 8, 2022

After an overnight 15-hour marathon of amendments and one-minute increments of debate, on the afternoon of Sunday, August 7th, the Senate passed the fiscal year 2022 budget reconciliation bill 51-50 with Vice President Harris casting the tie-breaking vote.

The bill’s passage came after the vote-a-rama and the parliamentarian ruling on what could be in the package. Vote-a-rama, a notable part of the reconciliation process, is a rapid fire (for the Senate) series of ten-minute votes on a wide variety of budgetary issues. Often the minority party is trying to force the majority into politically difficult votes and insert “poison pills” into the legislative package. Sunday was no different. The majority largely stuck together with only a few instances where amendments were successful.

Prior to consideration, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) was able to get some changes to the deal Senate Majority Leader Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Manchin (D-WV) struck. Most notably were the elimination of the provision tightening up the carried interest tax loophole (replaced by a one percent tax on stock buybacks) and $5 billion for drought relief measures for Western states.

The IRA heads to the House, which will briefly return from August recess to consider the package on Friday, August 12th. It is widely projected that the House will pass the measure in its current form, without changes. Before House consideration, the Congressional Budget Office is expected to release an updated estimate of the revenue and spending effects of the final bill the Senate agreed to on Sunday.

July 28, 2022

In the late evening of July 27, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced they reached agreement on text for a budget reconciliation deal. The 725 page bill, titled the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, includes a number of provisions related to climate change, healthcare spending including prescription drug pricing reform and an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies, and revenue increases from changes to tax law. Summary documents provided by Congress indicate the bill would raise $739 billion in revenue and direct $433 billion in spending to climate or healthcare investments. The remainder, more than $300 billion, would be used for deficit reduction.

Legislative summary documents provided by Senate Democrats can be found below.

Inflation Reduction Act: Summaries (as proposed)

July 14, 2022

In early July, citing high inflation, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) announced he would not support a broad reconciliation package that included climate spending and tax breaks or tax increases on the wealthy and corporations. He did leave open the possibility of supporting a package that includes various health care-related provisions including enabling Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices.

Even after this announcement, negotiations over a new bill to replace the Build Back Better Act, or several bills with individual components of the Build Back Better Act, are ongoing. The current opportunity for a reconciliation package expires at the end of the fiscal year of the budget reconciliation instructions, September 30, 2022. After September 30 a reconciliation package would require Congress to adopt another budget resolution containing reconciliation instructions.

December, 2021

In late December 2021, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) announced he would not support the current version of the Build Back Better reconciliation bill, halting the measure’s progress in the Senate.

December 17, 2021

The Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources chaired by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) released draft text for its section of the reconciliation bill. A TCS statement on the release can be found here, analysis of the oil and gas provisions of the draft section can be found here. Several other Senate committees also released drafts of their respective sections of the bill. The text and score of each draft Senate section is available here.

November 19, 2021

The House passed the reconciliation bill, H.R. 5376, the Build Back Better Act. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a full budget score of the bill on Nov. 18.

November 3, 2021

House lawmakers released an updated reconciliation package after additional negotiations. Along with this legislation (Rules Committee Print 117-118) the House Committee published a “comparative print” for the bill.

In this document, the Committee provides a line-by-line accounting of every addition or deletion made to the current text compared to the version the Committee released on October 28.

Providing a document showing line-by-line changes (known as a “redline”) to proposed legislation is a key step for the public and Congressional staffers to gain an understanding of what is actually in a bill. When bills number in the thousands of pages and are subject to significant changes behind closed doors, it’s an onerous process to identify what is actually in the final text before lawmakers must vote. Providing a redlining document should be standard for all spending bills and, in fact, could be done for all legislation.

On August 24, 2021, the House adopted the budget resolution (Sen. Con. Res. 14) that the Senate adopted on August 11, 2021. This included budget reconciliation instructions to various congressional committees to develop legislation that all told could cost $3.5 trillion.

In the intervening months, lawmakers have proposed numerous legislative packages to fulfill these reconciliation instructions.

Taxpayers for Common Sense is urging Congress to ensure any reconciliation package is fiscally responsible and serves the interests of all taxpayers. Follow along as Congress debates this issue.