Trump's ‘big, beautiful bill' heads for showdown with Senate parliamentarian

The Hill

5 days ago

House-passed legislation to enact President Trump's agenda is headed for a showdown with the Senate parliamentarian as Democrats plan to challenge key elements of it, including a proposal to make Trump's expiring 2017 tax cuts permanent.
Senate Democrats are warning ahead of the fight that if Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) makes an end run around the parliamentarian to make Trump's tax cuts permanent, it would seriously undermine the filibuster and open the door to Democrats rewriting Senate rules in the future.
Senate Republicans argue that it's up to Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to set the budgetary baseline for the bill. They say it's not up to the parliamentarian to determine whether extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts should be scored as adding to the deficit.
If Graham determines that extending Trump's tax cuts should be judged as an extension of current policy and therefore is budget neutral, it would allow Republicans to make the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent, which is a top priority of Thune and Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho).
Democrats expect Senate Republicans to do just that, most likely by putting the question to a vote in the Senate, which Republicans control with 53 seats.
That's what Thune did before the Memorial Day recess to set a new Senate precedent to allow Republicans to repeal California's electric vehicle (EV) mandate under the Congressional Review Act.
Democrats will attempt to force the parliamentarian to rule that making the Trump tax cuts permanent would add to federal deficits beyond 2034 — beyond the 10-year budget window — and therefore violate the Senate's Byrd Rule.
Such a ruling, if upheld on the Senate floor, would blow up Thune and Crapo's plan to make the 2017 tax cuts permanent. They would have to add language to sunset those tax cuts to allow the bill to pass the Senate with a simple-majority vote.
Democrats are warning that another effort to circumvent the parliamentarian would open the door to a rewriting of the filibuster rule when their party recaptures control of Washington.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee who will co-lead the effort to challenge provisions in the Republican bill, said that filibuster reform is needed to stop circumventions of the parliamentarian.
'Part of my argument was if we don't go to something like the talking filibuster where it's public and takes effort [to block legislation], then there are going to be end runs around the filibuster and this is exactly, exactly what happened,' Merkley said after Senate Republicans ignored the parliamentarian and established a new precedent with a partisan vote to allow California's EV mandate to be overturned under the Congressional Review Act.
Merkley has long advocated for requiring senators to actively hold the floor to block a bill.
Under current Senate rules, lawmakers typically filibuster a bill simply by raising an objection. They don't need to occupy the floor to stop legislation.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has called for eliminating the Senate filibuster for legislation, said Senate Republicans blew a hole in the filibuster rule when they circumvented the parliamentarian by voting to set a new precedent to expand the Congressional Review Act.
'It's clear that the Republicans can no longer say that they're opposed to getting rid of the filibuster because they just got rid of the filibuster when it suited them,' she said. 'We need a set of rules that apply across the board, and that's true whether you have Democrats in the majority or Republicans in the majority.
'Yes, it is time for filibuster reform,' she said.
Democratic aides say they suspect Thune's decision before the Memorial Day recess to put a major procedural question up for a Senate vote was a dress rehearsal for Trump's 'big, beautiful bill.'
Democrats say they plan to challenge the GOP plan to score the extension of Trump's expiring tax cuts as a matter of current policy during meetings with the Senate parliamentarian.
Any item that fails to pass muster under the so-called Byrd Bath would be subject to a point-of-order objection on the floor, which could hold up the whole bill.
A senior Senate Democratic aide said Merkley's staff argued to the parliamentarian in April that scoring the extension of Trump's tax cuts as a matter of current policy instead of current law would violate Senate precedent, as well as the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985.
The Democrats came away from those presentations hopeful that the parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, would rule in their favor that Republicans could not score the extension of the 2017 tax cuts as budget-neutral.
'They felt that they were well received and had strong arguments in particular because there's a section in Gramm-Rudman-Hollings that defines baseline, and there are reasons for consistency with the Byrd Rule,' the Democratic aide said.
Republicans were scheduled to argue their side of the case but then canceled the meeting, indefinitely postponing a ruling from the parliamentarian.
'The Republicans were scheduled to argue but then withdrew from that at the last minute, having convinced themselves that they had the authority' to set a current-policy baseline 'by empowering the chair of the Budget Committee,' the aide said.
Democrats say that decision to postpone a verdict from the parliamentarian in April sets up a procedural showdown this summer that could wipe out the Republican plan to make Trump's tax cuts permanent.
Under current law, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is due to expire at the end of 2025.
Therefore, using a current-law baseline would score an extension of those expiring tax cuts as adding significantly to federal deficits beyond 2035.
That would require Senate Republicans to come up with trillions of dollars in new spending cuts to offset the cost of making the tax cuts permanent.
Thune could opt to again circumvent the parliamentarian by having the Senate vote on whether the Republican Budget chair gets to set the baseline.
But Democrats warn that would strike another blow against the Senate filibuster and hasten its future abolition.
'We have to let the dust settle and see who still recognizes the importance of the filibuster. There are a bunch of Democrats who would probably vote to get rid of the filibuster,' said Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.).
Asked if Democrats would eliminate the filibuster once they regain power, the Colorado senator predicted: 'That temptation will be there.'