The purpose of the reconciliation process is to enhance Congress's ability to bring existing spending, revenue, and debt-limit laws into compliance with current fiscal priorities established in the annual budget resolution. When Congress adopts a budget resolution, it is agreeing upon budgetary goals for the upcoming fiscal year. In some cases, for these goals to be achieved, Congress must pass legislation that alters current revenue, direct spending, or debt-limit laws. In this situation, Congress seeks to reconcile existing law with its current priorities. The reconciliation process is still a relatively new congressional process in that there have only been 23 reconciliation bills passed by Congress since the first use of reconciliation in 1980. Budget reconciliation is an optional, congressional process that consists of several different stages ( Figure 1 ). The first stage in the reconciliation process is the adoption of the budget resolution. If Congress intends to utilize the reconciliation process, reconciliation directives (also referred to as reconciliation instructions) must be included in the annual budget resolution. These directives trigger the second stage of the process by instructing individual committees to develop and report legislation that would change laws within their jurisdiction related to spending, revenue, or the debt-limit. These directives detail which committee(s) should report reconciliation legislation, the date by which the committee(s) should report, the dollar amount of budgetary change to be achieved in the reconciliation legislation, and the time period over which the impact of the budgetary change should be measured. If a single committee is directed in the budget resolution to develop reconciliation legislation, it will likely be instructed to report this language directly to its full chamber. If, however, several committees are directed to report reconciliation legislation, they typically will be directed to submit the language to their respective Budget Committee for packaging, without any substantive change, into an omnibus measure. During the second stage of the reconciliation process, the specified committee develops legislation in response to the reconciliation directive included in the budget resolution. The committee will then meet to vote whether to report that language. The committee may vote to report the language favorably or unfavorably, the latter meaning that although it satisfied its directive, the committee did not support the language. As stated above, if more than one committee has been directed to report reconciliation legislation, they are directed to submit such language to their respective Budget Committee. The Budget Committee then packages all committee responses into an omnibus budget reconciliation bill without making any substantive revisions and votes on whether to report the omnibus reconciliation bill to the full chamber. In this way, both the legislative committees and the Budget Committees in both chambers have important roles to play in the reconciliation process. During the final stages of the reconciliation process, the reported legislation is considered under expedited procedures in both the House and Senate. As with all legislation, any differences in the reconciliation legislation as passed by the two chambers must be resolved before the bill can be sent to the President for the final stage of the process, either approval or veto. Sometimes the reconciliation process triggered in the annual budget resolution of a specific year is not completed until the subsequent year. For instance, the FY2006 budget resolution , agreed to on April 28, 2005, included reconciliation directives that resulted in the enactment of two reconciliation bills, but these bills were not signed into law until February and May of 2006. As described above, Congress has the option of including reconciliation directives in its annual budget resolution. These directives trigger the reconciliation process, and without their inclusion in a budget resolution, no measure would be eligible to be considered under expedited reconciliation procedures. When reconciliation directives are included in an annual budget resolution, their purpose is to require committees to develop and report legislation that will allow Congress to achieve the budgetary goals set forth in the annual budget resolution. These directives detail which committee(s) should report reconciliation legislation, the date by which the committee(s) should report, the dollar amount of budgetary change that should exist within the reconciliation legislation, and the time period over which the impact of the budgetary change should be measured. They might also include language regarding the type of budgetary change that should be reported as well as other procedural provisions, contingencies, and programmatic direction. As described above, reconciliation directives in a budget resolution direct a specific committee or committees to develop legislation within its jurisdiction achieving a desired budgetary outcome. In both the House and Senate, reconciliation instructions in a budget resolution have directed either a single committee to report, or multiple committees to report. In cases when only one committee has been directed to report, the process directs the committee to report its reconciliation legislation directly to its full chamber. If the budget resolution instructs more than one committee to report reconciliation legislation, then those committees have been directed to submit their legislative recommendations to their respective Budget Committee. The Budget Committee then packages the committee responses into an omnibus budget reconciliation bill without making any substantive revisions, and votes on whether to report the omnibus reconciliation bill. Any legislative committee with jurisdiction over spending, revenues, or the debt limit may be directed to report reconciliation legislation, and many have been instructed to report reconciliation legislation at some point. Because the Senate Finance Committee and the House Committee on Ways and Means each have jurisdiction within their respective chamber over all revenue and debt-limit legislation, as well as some direct spending legislation, these committees are often directed to report some type of reconciliation legislation when reconciliation directives are included in a budget resolution. Since the 101 st Congress, 13 budget resolutions have included reconciliation directives to Senate committees. Twelve of those thirteen budget resolutions directed the Senate Finance Committee to report reconciliation legislation. Similarly, in that same period, 13 budget resolutions have included reconciliation directives to House committees. Twelve of those thirteen budget resolutions directed the House Ways and Means Committee to report reconciliation legislation. In current practice, reconciliation may include mandatory spending legislation, but does not include discretionary spending. Discretionary spending is subject to other enforcement mechanisms. The Appropriations Committees have only been directed to report reconciliation legislation on two occasions, the last of which was in 1981. Individual committees sometimes are given several separate reconciliation directives within a single budget resolution. In 2000, for instance, the budget resolution included four separate reconciliation instructions to the House Ways and Means Committee. There are several reasons why a budget resolution may include multiple directives to a single committee. First, a committee may be directed to report more than one kind of reconciliation legislation (revenue, spending, or debt-limit legislation) with a separate directive given for each type. The Budget Act also recognizes that committees may be directed to report a combination of spending and revenue legislation, including a directive to achieve deficit reduction. If a committee is given more than one directive, for instance to increase revenues and decrease spending, then the committee may respond with separate pieces of legislation. A committee may also be asked to report reconciliation legislation that achieves budgetary goals over different periods of time. Lastly, reconciliation directives may be separated to make clear that the directives are intended to achieve separate policy goals. Reconciliation directives set forth the dollar amount that reconciliation legislation should alter spending or revenue levels. Directives that would reduce spending or increase revenues are typically aimed at reducing or eliminating a deficit. These types of directives include a dollar amount that in practice is considered a minimum amount of deficit reduction, sometimes referred to as a floor, meaning a committee may report greater spending cuts or tax increases, but not less. Conversely, directives that would increase spending or reduce revenues are typically aimed at reducing or eliminating a surplus. These types of directives include a dollar amount that in practice is considered a maximum , sometimes referred to as a ceiling, meaning that the committee might report a lower level of spending increases or revenue reductions, but not greater. Further, the Budget Act provides that it is not in order in the Senate to consider reconciliation legislation that includes extraneous matter. One definition of extraneous is a provision that would increase the deficit beyond the period specified in the reconciliation directive. Compliance with the dollar amount set forth in a reconciliation directive is measured on a net basis. This means that legislation responding to a directive to reduce spending, for instance, might have a provision that would increase spending for a certain program. This would be considered in order as long as the legislation, taken as a whole, would satisfy the overall spending decreases set forth on the reconciliation directive. If a committee does not respond to its directive, each chamber has methods that it may employ that would allow it to include legislative language that falls within the non-reporting committee's jurisdiction to satisfy the committee's directive. For more information, see the section on "Enforcement of Reconciliation Directives," below. Section 310 of the Budget Act recognizes three types of reconciliation legislation that committees may be directed to report: spending, revenue, and debt limit. The Budget Act also recognizes that committees may be directed to report a combination of the three, including a direction to achieve deficit reductions, which may result from an unspecified combination of revenue increases and spending decreases. If a committee is given more than one directive, for instance to increase revenues and decrease spending, then the committee may respond with separate pieces of legislation. Under current Senate practice, however, this provision has been interpreted to mean that no more than one reconciliation measure of each type is permitted. Reconciliation instructions, therefore, may result in the creation of as many as three reconciliation bills that may be considered on the floor under expedited procedures, but no more than one each for spending, revenue, and the debt limit. In current practice, reconciliation directives pertain to direct spending which is in the jurisdiction of House and Senate legislative committees, rather than discretionary spending, which is in the jurisdiction of the Appropriations Committees. Such direct spending directives may instruct a committee to report legislation that would effect spending levels. A committee may respond to the directive by reporting changes to direct spending programs or by recommending changes in offsetting collections. Offsetting collections, such as user fees for water or mineral rights on federal land, are treated as negative spending rather than as revenues. Reconciliation directives pertaining to direct spending generally refer to changes in outlay levels. The outlay level is the projected level of dispersed federal funds.