To avoid the challenge of overcoming a Senate filibuster, Congress sometimes uses the process of “reconciliation.” That bit of arcane procedure allows Congress to approve budget-related legislation by simple majority votes.
Earlier this week, Senate Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act using the reconciliation process, and the House followed suit on Friday, overcoming the deep partisan divide that prevents most legislation from becoming law.
In an increasingly polarized Congress, reconciliation has gained attention with both sides of the political spectrum criticizing the process as a way to “cheat” the legislative system – and also utilizing it for their own benefit (much like the filibuster).
So we asked our readers: Is reconciliation a legitimate way of passing major legislation? Did you feel differently when Republicans used it to pass the Republicans’ tax cuts in 2017? Was the Inflation Reduction Act a good use of the tool?
Following is a selection of reader responses, edited for length and clarity.
It’s a very difficult call. I think we should need a two-thirds vote to pass anything to get bipartisanship into our legislative process. The challenge with this – in our polarized government – is we may never get any legislation passed. -Al Smith
I think using the reconciliation process is the reality of a hopelessly divided and cynical Congress. As much as I don't like it being used to pass legislation I oppose, I understand that reconciliation is all a majority party is left with if too few legislators are willing to set aside the partisan hackery to work together. It reminds me of the fact that, now more than ever, we need to invest in ways to approach one another across our differences, collaborate on shared goals, and learn how to better define the boundaries of our disagreements. This is not something we will learn from Congress, but it could be something Congress learns from us. -Damien Lally
Reconciliation allows even an extremely polarized Congress to pass legislation. In that this is one of the functions of Congress, reconciliation is a good thing. In passing legislation, a Congress ideally reflects the values and priorities of the majority of the electorate. Given the Electoral College system, and the fact that a majority of Congress can represent a minority of the people, the passing of legislation can at least make clear to that part of the public that is paying attention the values and priorities of the party in the majority, and thus aim to clarify the whole electoral process. -John Mathews
In my opinion, it reflects the slowly emerging end of the Senate rules requiring 60 votes to pass legislation and the use of the filibuster. Or to put it another way, a simple majority is all it will take now to pass most legislation, for whichever party is in control of Congress. -Pat Partridge
As long as the filibuster remains in its broken state, legislators require a way around it. Depriving the American people of legislation that is broadly popular among voters but that "only" 59 percent of senators support is nearly always wrong. -Riley Hart
Reconciliation, which can be characterized as power politics, may be beneficial for "small" legislation since it is almost impossible to get complete agreement on everything. Reconciliation on "large" complex and controversial topics can be perceived as "might makes right" power politics. Thus it can create more not less polarization among competing sides because of the broad ramifications of large, complex and multi-topic legislation. Creating more polarization is the opposite of the term “reconciliation.” mIf you want to polarize the country more, then do more reconciliation on large complex legislation. -Kenneth Rebar
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.