George P. Shultz, Top Cabinet Official Under Nixon and Reagan, Dies at 100
He carried one of Washington’s weightiest résumés labor secretary, treasury secretary and budget director for Nixon and secretary of state under Reagan as the Cold War waned.
Secretary of State George Shultz, right, greeted Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze before a U. N. Security Council session in 1985,Credit.Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Published Feb. 7, 2021Updated Feb. 8, 2021
George P. Shultz, who presided with a steady hand over the beginning of the end of the Cold War as President Ronald Reagan’s often embattled secretary of state, died on Saturday at his home in Stanford, Calif. He was 100.
An abbreviated history of budget reconciliation James C. Capretta | Feb 1, 2021
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Budget reconciliation – the oft-used pathway for expediting tax and spending legislation through Congress – may be poised for another star turn on the national stage. Democratic leaders are signaling they might set it in motion to secure passage of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 response measure. Some background on the process, and its history, may be helpful to understanding the importance of this imminent decision.
Budget reconciliation has been central to federal policymaking for more than four decades. Created in the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act, the process allows the House and Senate to pass a budget, and then a bill implementing it, with majority votes, tight rules on allowable amendments, and limited time for debate. The process was first used in the last year of the Carter presidency to assemble unrelated budget cuts from several