Ramming a $15 Minimum Wage Bill Through the Senate Using Reconciliation Would Be a Norm-Busting Mistake

Fittingly for someone who spent more than three decades as a member of the U.S. Senate, President Joe Biden holds the so-called world's greatest deliberative body in high regard.

Biden calls the Senate his "second home" in his 2007 memoir and, as that metaphor suggests, it is often obvious that the relationship is about more than just a physical place. Biden sees the Senate—with its arcane rules and combative but dignified atmosphere—as the embodiment of what government should aspire to be. When Biden stresses that Americans must learn to disagree without disrespecting one another, as he did in his inaugural address, he's drawing on the ethos of the Senate. "Unity requires you to eliminate the vitriol, make anything you disagree with about the other person's personality. We have to get rid of that," Biden said last month.