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**SEPTEMBER 10, 2021**

Kuttner on TAP

Voting Rights and Labor Rights: The Two Sleepers in Budget
Reconciliation

****

The full Congress takes up the budget reconciliation process in late
September. In the meantime, committees are fashioning specific
provisions under the direction of the House and Senate leadership. What
makes reconciliation so important is that it's not subject to the
filibuster; so it's the one time a bill can pass the Senate with a
simple majority.

Two of the most crucial possible provisions have gotten very little
attention-labor rights and voting rights. Though the reconciliation
process is mainly about spending and taxes to pay for spending, it's
possible to add other substantive measures to reconciliation if they tax
or spend. Draft legislation artfully and it can use the reconciliation
umbrella.

In the case of labor rights, the PRO Act, which stands for Protecting
the Right to Organize, narrowly passed the House on a party-line vote,
but has no chance of gaining 60 votes in the Senate as freestanding
legislation. However, the rule that Congress passed on August 24,
authorizing Congress to proceed with a reconciliation measure that could
spend up to $3.5 trillion, also explicitly authorized several pro-union
provisions, using Congress's power to tax, spend, or levy fines.

On Wednesday, the House Education and Labor Committee duly approved a
far-reaching measure
adding
stiff fines for unfair labor practices as well as personal liability for
corporate directors and officers. The committee also created new rights.
It would be an unfair labor practice for employers to permanently
replace strikers, discriminate against a pro-union employee, or
misclassify a worker as an independent contractor. This does not go as
far as the PRO Act; but if accepted as part of reconciliation, it would
be a major breakthrough.

Doing voting rights via reconciliation would be a heavier lift. In
principle, the strategy would be similar-come up with fines or outlays
that make voting rights fit under reconciliation. Two law professors,
Jonathan Gould and Nicholas Stephanopoulos, recently provided a menu of
such strategies in a piece for

**The Atlantic** : Give
citizens a financial incentive to vote; provide funding to states that
enact pro-democracy reforms; provide federal money to counties and towns
for election administration; use public funding of campaigns to crowd
out PACs.

This makes sense. But since the House and Senate leaders, balancing
multiple political trade-offs, did not explicitly put voting rights into
the rule covering the specifics of reconciliation, it seems a political
long shot.

This train will soon leave the station. If Democrats want democracy to
survive and award them the majorities that they have earned on the basis
of popular support, nothing is more important than voting rights and
labor rights.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

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