Date: 2026-08-03. Parliamentarian-precedent seed; CRS deep-dive pending.
Byrd-rule precedents directly on point
- The $15 minimum wage was struck from the American Rescue Plan (2021) — the parliamentarian found a wage mandate's budgetary effects "merely incidental" to a private-sector transfer (Manhattan Institute review, EPIC). This is the controlling analogy for any childcare wage floor or compensation mandate in a reconciliation bill. A compensation requirement is Byrd-dead; compensation funding (grants that pay for wages, DC-PEF-style) is budgetary and survivable. The distinction between mandating wages and financing them is the drafting fulcrum for H11.1.
- BBB immigration provisions struck as non-budgetary (AILA) — the same logic reaches PRWORA eligibility fixes (§11.6): noncitizen-eligibility changes through reconciliation face the identical exposure.
H11.1 refined, not just supported: the reconciliation-feasible set isn't "money-only vs. standards-bearing" — it's "anything that moves money survives; anything that mandates behavior dies." Quality standards attached as grant conditions on new money sit in the contested middle; ratio/credential mandates on the existing market are near-certain strikes. The §14 architectures should be re-read through this lens: the Head Start model and public option (architectures 3, 8) put standards inside federal spending programs — the most Byrd-defensible home for quality provisions that exists.
Confirmed elsewhere this session
- BBB was written time-limited to fit the budget window (H11.2's mechanism, confirmed by the CBO structure); the ARPA cliff (ws09) is the measured preview of what a reconciliation sunset does at scale.
Pending: CRS Byrd compilations; committee-jurisdiction map; state supermajority/TABOR verification (anchors 6–7); the 2024 CCDF rule's CRA/litigation status.