Jack Lew's statement that 60 votes are needed to pass budget in Senate is incorrect

The statement

"You can't pass a budget in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes."

Jack Lew, White House chief of staff, in an interview on CNN

The ruling

The annual congressional budget resolution plays a very specific role in the process of spending the federal government's money. It's not a piece of legislation that actually spends money — in fact, as a resolution, it doesn't even have the force of law and does not go to the president to be signed — but rather helps provide a spending blueprint and helps define benchmarks in the budget process.

The process of writing a budget resolution begins after the submission of the president's budget.

When the budget resolution is ready to hit the floor in the Senate, its consideration is governed by section 305(b)(1) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, the law that enshrined the current federal budget process.

Most business in the Senate is subject to filibustering — that is, actions, or even just threats, to talk a bill to death. Filibusters can be overcome by what's known as a "cloture" vote that shuts off debate and moves a measure toward final consideration. For the Senate to agree to cloture requires 60 votes — a high threshold that many Senate majorities are unable to muster on controversial votes.

However, a filibuster cannot be used to block a budget resolution. That's because the Budget Act sets out a specific amount of time for debate in the Senate — 50 hours. If a specific amount of debate time is enshrined in the controlling statute, the filibuster is moot. So a simple majority — not 60 votes — is all that's required to pass a budget resolution.

Indeed, passing a budget resolution by at least 60 votes has become increasingly rare in recent years, according to Congressional Research Service data. Since 1994, the Senate vote has exceeded that threshold just three times. More common in recent years are votes in which 51 was enough to prevail. In 2009, the Senate even passed the final budget resolution by a 48-45 margin.

So Lew is wrong to say, "You can't pass a budget in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes." As a longtime senior official at the Office of Management and Budget and other federal agencies, he should have known better.

We rate this claim False.

This ruling has been edited for print. Read the full version at PolitiFact.com.