Well to be fair,the Dems must have been brain dead dip shits for letting them do it,after all they had all three branches for awhile,and still have 2 doesn't say much for their abilities.
Republicans now blaming Democrats for Bush tax cuts
To understand what's going on here, you need to go back 10 years to the passage of the Bush tax cuts. In order to maximize the size of the cuts, Republicans had to minimize the influence of minority Democrats on the package. So they chose to run the bill through the reconciliation process.
But that posed some challenges. Budget reconciliation had never been used to increase the deficit. In fact, it specifically existed to decrease the deficit. That's why one of its rules was that you couldn't use it to increase the deficit outside the budget window. Republicans realized they could take that very literally: The budget window was 10 years. So if the tax cuts expired after 10 years, they wouldn't increase the deficit outside the budget window. They'd also have the added benefit of appearing less costly in the Congressional Budget Office's estimates, as the CBO duly scored them as expiring after 10 years, which kept the long-range budget picture from exploding.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reconciliation -- The Federal Budget Reconciliation Process Defined
Definition: The federal budget reconciliation process is a legislative device employed by the U.S. Senate to end a filibuster, close debate and pass controversial budget bills, thereby circumventing the three-fifths rule. Because reconciliation only requires a simple majority, it is a tool primarily used by the majority party. Although the House has a similar procedure, its is rarely used since rules are regularly introduced to prevent protracted debate.
The federal budget reconciliation process arose from language inserted in the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which, in part, allows Senators to pass concurrent budget bills without debate or a presidential signature.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The process had never been used before in this way. It's like "voter suppression" or any number of Republican "schemes". They do one thing to accomplish something else. This was to move the wealth of the nation to the top 1% and Democrats were powerless to stop it. The "Definition of Reconciliation" explains why.
Another example is what they did to the post office during their lame duck session. Many in blue states depend on the post office to vote. That's the real reason Republicans are trying to get rid of it.
