Reconciliation 2.0: Time to Get Ready
Our wannabe king is now demanding a massive 42% increase in Pentagon spending 'paid for' by a huge cut in domestic health, housing, childcare, and education funds, big tariff increases that are stealth sales taxes on consumers, and increased deficits, which will raise interest rates on home loans. In his own words: "We can't take care of daycare. We're a big country. We're fighting wars. It's not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare."
He publicly acknowledges that he cannot get his demand through Congress using the normal democratic process. So he has instructed his MAGA sycophants in the House and Senate to ram it through using the undemocratic Reconciliation maneuver that circumvents a Democratic filibuster.
And while they're at it, they may include SAVE Act voter suppression provisions and more money for ICE/CBP raids, sweeps, mass detention, and deportations.
Last year, the MAGA regime was riding high. Their base was solid, and they were boasting of a "permanent" GOP ruling majority. Against feeble Democratic opposition, they were able to ram through their political agenda at will. Reconciliation was the scheme they used to jam through their “BBB” bill that granted huge tax -cuts -for -billionaires while slashing Medicaid and nutrition for low-income children. Now they want to do it again – they're calling it "Reconciliation 2.0."
But 2026 is not 2025.
Due in large part to massive and growing popular resistance from people like us:
MAGA's demand for additional funding to expand their militarized ethnic-cleansing campaigns against nonwhite immigrants is still being blocked by a Democratic filibuster in the Senate.
The SAVE ACT, their highly-partisan voter-suppression bill, is also stalled in Congress.
Make no mistake, Recon2 is, first of all, an acknowledgment of our growing power to block the MAGA agenda; and second, it is a naked power-grab aimed at establishing authoritarian one-party rule.
A Reconciliation bill has to pass by majority-vote in both House and Senate. Last year, despite MAGA's political strength, the “BBB” barely squeaked to victory. If just one more Republican senator had voted "nay," or two House members had done so, the “BBB” would have died a well-deserved death.
Today, MAGA and Trump are lower in the polls. There are cracks and disaffection in their base over Epstein and the Iran War. Seven Republican senators and 16 House members are retiring from politics and not running for re-election. By many counts, the number of Republican incumbents at risk of losing in November is significantly higher than the number of Democrats. If one Republican in the Senate or two in the House switch from how they voted on “BBB” last year, we can block their Recon2 assault.
Some MAGA leaders are calling for a Recon2 vote in May with a goal of enacting it by early June. But many at-risk Republican incumbents don't want to vote for what will be a deeply unpopular bill before the November election. Yet if MAGA wants Recon2 to limit who can vote in November, they must enact it quickly enough so that they have time to accelerate the inevitable constitutional challenges onto the Supreme Court's so-called "Rocket Docket." So we don't know when the MAGA regime will bring Reconciliation to the floor.
Nor do we know exactly what they are going to include in their Recon2 bill, but we do know it will be undemocratic, cruel, selfish, greedy, and altogether vile.
This time, we know it's coming. This time, we can plan and prepare in advance. This time, there will certainly be a massive national campaign to defeat a one-party reconciliation bill. This time we have a chance of winning a major legislative victory over MAGA.
So we need to be ready for "if" and "when." We of Indivisible SF need to start thinking and planning to do our part. If you are interested in working on this issue, please join the #Federal_Action channel on the ISF Slack.
As Curtis Mayfield once sang, "People get ready..."
