Latest news with #SenateParliamentarian
Forbes
6 hours ago
- Politics
- Forbes
This Woman Could Block Some Controversial Parts Of Trump's Big Bill
UNITED STATES - AUGUST 4: A sign marks the entrance to the Senate Parliamentarians office in the U.S. Capitol. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images) The biggest obstacle in the Senate standing in the way of the House-passed 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act' (OBBBA) may not be Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) or stalwart deficit hawk Rand Paul (R-Ky.), but rather Elizabeth MacDonough. The name may not ring a bell, but MacDonough has been a fixture in the Senate for over a decade, serving as the Senate Parliamentarian. The D.C.-born lawyer is the first woman to be named Parliamentarian—the official interpreter of Senate chamber rules—a role she's held since February 2, 2012. The job of the Parliamentarian is a big one. In addition to interpreting Senate rules, the Parliamentarian advises on procedural matters and guides precedent. That includes sorting out what's allowed during the debate, amendment, and voting processes. While the moniker may sound hundreds of years old, the role itself is not—the Senate has only had an official Parliamentarian since 1935 (before 1935, the role was unofficial). The job, which is deliberately nonpartisan, was created to navigate the complex rules and procedures of the Senate, especially as they apply to the budget reconciliation process. Since agreeing on a final budget can be slow, to speed things up, the Senate often jumps straight to a process called reconciliation. Reconciliation is especially beneficial when one party has the majority (more than 50 votes) but not a filibuster-proof majority (60 votes). The process can be complicated, but generally, under reconciliation, the goal is to combine spending and revenue provisions into a single bill. Reconciliation bills are subject to special rules in the Senate. First, debate is limited to 20 hours, which can help a reconciliation bill get to a vote quickly. More importantly, the bill cannot be filibustered—the 60 votes necessary to stop a filibuster are not required. Republicans currently hold the majority in the Senate, with 53 seats, compared to the Democrats' 47 seats, including two independents (Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine) who caucus with the Democrats. Thanks to the Byrd Rule, named for the late Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.V.), there are some limits to reconciliation. For example, under the Byrd Rule, you can't tack on policy changes that are unrelated to the budget, including tampering with Social Security. (Congress often tacks on extras to push potentially unpopular measures through on the coattails of government funding, but that's not allowed with reconciliation.) Also notable, any bill under reconciliation cannot increase the deficit beyond the fiscal years covered—that's usually limited to 10 years (and why tax cuts rarely last forever). To avoid violating the Byrd rule, key provisions of reconciliation bills—typically tax cuts—are written to expire. That's why certain provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA)—like those lower income tax rates or the $10,000 limit on the deduction for state and local taxes (SALT)—will, unless they are renewed, 'sunset" at the end of 2025. They were passed originally with an expiration date—you can thank reconciliation and the Byrd Rule for that. (If you're scratching your head wondering why the corporate tax cuts under the TCJA were allowed to be made permanent, it's because Congress can often find some wiggle room. In this case, the reconciliation rules under the budget resolution allowed for $1.5 trillion in revenue costs within the 10-year budget window.) The Byrd rule would also apply if a reconciliation bill recommended a change in Social Security. Since the reconciliation rules can be tricky, the Parliamentarian is often called upon to determine what is—and isn't—allowed, especially when it comes to interpreting the Byrd Rule. If the Parliamentarian determines a provision in a bill violates the Byrd Rule, the provision must be removed from the bill unless the Senators vote to waive the rule—that requires 60 votes. The presiding officer of the Senate (currently J.D. Vance, since the Vice President serves as the presiding Officer of the Senate) can overrule the Parliamentarian, though this is extremely rare. And simply ignoring the Parliamentarian has the potential to become a political landmine. How does that play out in practice? It means that MacDonough isn't always popular. In 2021, during the debate over the American Rescue Plan (ARP), MacDonough ruled that a provision to raise the federal minimum wage (which has been stuck at $7.25 since 2009) did not comply with the Byrd Rule and had to be removed under the reconciliation rules. Some Democrats in the Senate suggested that the presiding officer—then Vice President Kamala Harris—should overrule MacDonough. She did not, and the provision was taken out of the bill. There are several provisions in OBBBA that the Parliamentarian could flag as violating the Byrd Rule. These include a proposal to limit judicial contempt powers. The controversial language, which Rep. Mike Flood (R-Neb.) famously acknowledged he didn't know was in the bill when he voted for it, limits the ability of federal judges to hold government officials in contempt for flouting court rulings. Typically, if federal officials defy a court order, judges may hold them in contempt (that can look like fines, jail time, or other penalties to induce compliance), but under OBBBA, federal courts may not issue those contempt penalties against anyone who disobeys preliminary injunctions or temporary restraining orders if the party seeking the order did not post a monetary bond, or financial guarantee that would cover damages if a party is found to have been wrongfully enjoined. Since the federal government has far more resources than average citizens, this creates a potential hardship for those bringing actions, leaving judges with few options to demand compliance—and creating an imbalance of power. Despite tossing in some tenuous language in an effort to tie the provision to federal spending, it's widely considered a violation of the Byrd Rule. Also largely unrelated to the budget? A proposed 10-year ban on state-level artificial intelligence (AI) regulations. Under the rule, states that establish their own AI regulations would risk losing access to federal broadband funds—a step intended to pull the provision into compliance with the Byrd Rule, though it may not be enough. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who voted for the bill, later said she never would have voted for the provision, posting on X (formerly Twitter), 'Full transparency, I did not know about this section on pages 278-279 of the OBBB that strips states of the right to make laws or regulate AI for 10 years. I am adamantly OPPOSED to this and it is a violation of state rights and I would have voted NO if I had known this was in there.' (Sensing a theme? It's almost as though pushing a 1,000-page bill through without reading it first might not be a great idea.) Other potential violations of the Byrd Rule could include the elimination of Medicaid funding for transgender care and a proposal to raise immigration fees. The goal was to move OBBBA over the finish line in time for President Trump to sign it on July 4. That's looking increasingly unlikely, a fact that even the President has acknowledged. For the bill to become law, identical versions have to pass in the House and Senate. Just one example of policy differences: the Senate passed a standalone 'no tax on tips' law that differs from the version in the House bill. Additionally, the more fiscally conservative Senate is increasingly unhappy with the cost of the bill, which is estimated to add $3.1 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. There's not a lot of room for wiggle. The Senate holds a slim majority, and at least four Senators, including Paul, have publicly expressed concerns over parts of the bill (the others are Ron Johnson, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski). Any changes could tip the balance of votes in the House—the original OBBBA passed with a squeaky close 215-214 vote. That makes MacDonough's role—and how willing Republicans might be to overrule nearly 100 years of precedent—a crucial part of the reconciliation process.
Daily Mail
7 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
The senate referee who could decide the fate of Trump's mega-bill
A rarely-talked-about, unelected bureaucrat within the Senate may have the power to tank President Donald Trump 's big beautiful bill. The Senate Parliamentarian, a position held by Elizabeth MacDonough since 2012, is about to weigh in on whether the House-passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act runs afoul of the upper chamber's rules. The parliamentarian is more often than not an afterthought, typically because their role is to be the Senate's hall monitor, essentially making sure mundane processes on the floor are adhered to. However, the parliamentarian is thrust into the spotlight every time senators try to pass a bill through budget reconciliation, a process that allows the Senate to pass items with a simple majority instead of the usual 60 votes needed to overcome the filibuster. Since Trump's big beautiful bill is going through reconciliation, MacDonough has the power to veto certain provisions that she feels aren't related to the budget or are solely policy objectives. The appeal of the reconciliation process is obvious. Since Republicans control 53 seats in the Senate, a united GOP can essentially pass the bill without input from a single Democratic senator. The catch is, MacDonough can pick and choose which line items in the bill need to be slashed with red ink. She will be responsible for interpreting whether the Big Beautiful Bill complies with something called the Byrd Rule, which has been around since 1985. The Byrd Rule is named after the late Sen. Robert Byrd, who was a key figure in instituting the guardrails around reconciliation packages like the one Trump is trying to ram through. The most important facet of the Byrd Rule states that reconciliation bills cannot have provisions in them that don't have an effect on the budget. Put simply, if a provision doesn't meaningfully increase or decrease federal spending, it can be considered extraneous and be tossed out of the bill. The Byrd Rule also prohibits reconciliation bills from overhauling Social Security or increasing the deficit for a fiscal year not included in the bill's purview. The test to see whether a bill complies with the rule has been referred to as the 'Byrd Bath.' MacDonough last used the 'Byrd Bath' to water down President Joe Biden's Build Back Better package in 2022. Specifically, she struck down three separate attempts by the Democrats to provide a pathway to citizenship for eight million immigrants living in the United States illegally. Now, she's in the position to take a major bite out of Trump's agenda, though its not entirely clear what she might take aim at. Many have speculated MacDonough will rule against a provision buried deep within the bill that will upend the US judicial system. Section 70302 of the bill would severely limit the power of federal courts to enforce injunctions or hold government officials in contempt. This comes as federal judges have slapped the second Trump administration with an unprecedented 25 nationwide injunctions in its first 100 days , most of which curtailed the government's ability to deport illegal migrants. During a townhall on Friday, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, told a constituent that she believed this provision has no chance of getting through the Senate. 'I don't see any argument that could ever be made that this affects mandatory spending or revenues, so I just don't see that I don't see that getting into the Senate bills,' Ernst said. The big beautiful bill also contains a section that prohibits Medicaid funds from going to any clinic that provides abortions. Back in 2017, the parliamentarian found that a similar provision in a reconciliation bill violated the Byrd Rule, which could mean she'll strike it down again this time. The current bill's regulations on AI could also be cast aside in the impending Byrd Bath. There is precedent for the Senate simply ignoring the parliamentarian. The declarations of MacDonough and all the other parliamentarians before her have been non-binding and lacking in actual enforcement power. Just two weeks ago, the Senate voted 51-44 to repeal a federal waiver that allowed California to institute an electric vehicle mandate, completely disregarding the parliamentarian's guidance on the issue. Democrats condemned the move by Republicans, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer saying, 'Republicans, I believe, I am certain, will come to regret the ill-considered step they take tonight.' Going back a bit further, there is also precedent of Senate leaders getting rid of the parliamentarian over disagreements on the Byrd Rule. On May 7, 2001, then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., fired the parliamentarian at the time, Robert Dove, because he was getting in the way of President George W. Bush's budget bill. Exactly one month later, with a new parliamentarian in place, Bush was able to sign his first landmark tax cut into law. This scenario appears unlikely to repeat, since Senate Majority Leader John Thune has indicated that he isn't even willing to overrule the parliamentarian, let alone fire her. 'We're not going there,' Thune told reporters on Monday.
Daily Mail
7 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
The powerful politician no one's heard of who can torpedo Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill'
A rarely-talked-about, unelected bureaucrat within the Senate may have the power to tank President Donald Trump 's big beautiful bill. The Senate Parliamentarian, a position held by Elizabeth MacDonough since 2012, is about to weigh in on whether the House-passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act runs afoul of the upper chamber's rules. The parliamentarian is more often than not an afterthought, typically because their role is to be the Senate's hall monitor, essentially making sure mundane processes on the floor are adhered to. However, the parliamentarian is thrust into the spotlight every time senators try to pass a bill through budget reconciliation, a process that allows the Senate to pass items with a simple majority instead of the usual 60 votes needed to overcome the filibuster. Since Trump's big beautiful bill is going through reconciliation, MacDonough has the power to veto certain provisions that she feels aren't related to the budget or are solely policy objectives. The appeal of the reconciliation process is obvious. Since Republicans control 53 seats in the Senate, a united GOP can essentially pass the bill without input from a single Democratic senator. The catch is, MacDonough can pick and choose which line items in the bill need to be slashed with red ink. She will be responsible for interpreting whether the Big Beautiful Bill complies with something called the Byrd Rule, which has been around since 1985. If MacDonough decides to exercise her veto power, key provisions of President Donald Trump's Big Beautiful Bill could be deleted The Byrd Rule is named after the late Sen. Robert Byrd, who was a key figure in instituting the guardrails around reconciliation packages like the one Trump is trying to ram through. The most important facet of the Byrd Rule states that reconciliation bills cannot have provisions in them that don't have an effect on the budget. Put simply, if a provision doesn't meaningfully increase or decrease federal spending, it can be considered extraneous and be tossed out of the bill. The Byrd Rule also prohibits reconciliation bills from overhauling Social Security or increasing the deficit for a fiscal year not included in the bill's purview. The test to see whether a bill complies with the rule has been referred to as the 'Byrd Bath.' MacDonough last used the 'Byrd Bath' to water down President Joe Biden's Build Back Better package in 2022. Specifically, she struck down three separate attempts by the Democrats to provide a pathway to citizenship for eight million immigrants living in the United States illegally. Now, she's in the position to take a major bite out of Trump's agenda, though its not entirely clear what she might take aim at. Many have speculated MacDonough will rule against a provision buried deep within the bill that will upend the US judicial system. Section 70302 of the bill would severely limit the power of federal courts to enforce injunctions or hold government officials in contempt. This comes as federal judges have slapped the second Trump administration with an unprecedented 25 nationwide injunctions in its first 100 days, most of which curtailed the government's ability to deport illegal migrants. During a townhall on Friday, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, told a constituent that she believed this provision has no chance of getting through the Senate. 'I don't see any argument that could ever be made that this affects mandatory spending or revenues, so I just don't see that I don't see that getting into the Senate bills,' Ernst said. The big beautiful bill also contains a section that prohibits Medicaid funds from going to any clinic that provides abortions. Back in 2017, the parliamentarian found that a similar provision in a reconciliation bill violated the Byrd Rule, which could mean she'll strike it down again this time. The current bill's regulations on AI could also be cast aside in the impending Byrd Bath. There is precedent for firing the parliamentarian. In May 2001, then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss. (left), fired the parliamentarian at the time, Robert Dove (right), because he was getting in the way of President George W. Bush's budget bill There is precedent for the Senate simply ignoring the parliamentarian. The declarations of MacDonough and all the other parliamentarians before her have been non-binding and lacking in actual enforcement power. Just two weeks ago, the Senate voted 51-44 to repeal a federal waiver that allowed California to institute an electric vehicle mandate, completely disregarding the parliamentarian's guidance on the issue. Democrats condemned the move by Republicans, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer saying, 'Republicans, I believe, I am certain, will come to regret the ill-considered step they take tonight.' Going back a bit further, there is also precedent of Senate leaders getting rid of the parliamentarian over disagreements on the Byrd Rule. On May 7, 2001, then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., fired the parliamentarian at the time, Robert Dove, because he was getting in the way of President George W. Bush's budget bill. Exactly one month later, with a new parliamentarian in place, Bush was able to sign his first landmark tax cut into law. This scenario appears unlikely to repeat, since Senate Majority Leader John Thune has indicated that he isn't even willing to overrule the parliamentarian, let alone fire her. 'We're not going there,' Thune told reporters on Monday.
Fox News
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Senate parliamentarian: Who is the unelected official getting say on Trump's 'big, beautiful bill?'
House and Senate Republicans have been working for months on a sweeping piece of legislation addressing a litany of President Donald Trump's agenda items. Such a bill is possible via the budget reconciliation process, which allows the party controlling Congress and the White House to pass broad policy overhauls while totally sidelining the minority. It lowers the Senate's threshold for passage from 60 votes to 51, lining it up with the House's simple majority rules. However, one of the caveats is that the measures tucked into the bill must deal with taxes, spending or the national debt. One key person gets the final say over what is relevant to that sphere – the Senate parliamentarian. The parliamentarian, who heads the Senate's parliamentarian office, is a nonpartisan, unelected role appointed by the Senate majority leader. It does not have a fixed term. The person's role is to advise the Senate and its staff on the chamber's rules and precedent. The normally low-profile role has been thrust into the spotlight several times in congressional history, however, particularly surrounding reconciliation. "At the end of the day, it really is a judgment call. And sometimes you're making a judgment call where you're relying on similar situations or maybe analogous situations where we dealt with reconciliation in the past, maybe other times you're dealing with a completely novel issue, and you're having to figure it out," one former senior Senate aide described to Fox News Digital. "Or maybe, and this happens a lot, people are trying get things through, debating or citing past provisions of previous reconciliation bills…saying 'Hey, this provision is very similar, and this got through.'" The Senate parliamentarian leads the "Byrd bath," a key part of the reconciliation process where the legislation is carefully examined, and any measures found not relevant to the contours of reconciliation are stripped out. Notably, progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., called for the firing of the Senate parliamentarian in 2021 when she forced Senate Democrats to scuttle their $15 per hour minimum wage effort from their reconciliation bill at the time. That same parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, who was appointed by the late former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is still serving today and has largely garnered bipartisan respect for her handling of the role. MacDonough, appointed in 2012, is the first woman in the job. She was a part of the parliamentarian's office before that and briefly served as an attorney in the Department of Justice, according to NPR. "I would say that this particular parliamentarian sees herself more as, almost an administrative law judge, and I think that she has generally viewed some of the things that the Senate has been allowed to get away with in reconciliation as a departure from precedent," said Paul Winfree, president of the Economic Policy Innovation Center and a former Senate Budget Committee staffer himself, told Fox News Digital. "I think that she has more of a 'small-c' conservative approach to what is allowable. At the same time, a lot of what is considered to be allowable under reconciliation is dependent on estimates that are produced by the Congressional Budget Office or the joint tax committee." When asked if any of the current public reconciliation plans could face issues with the parliamentarian, both people who spoke with Fox News Digital floated an accounting maneuver that would largely obscure the cost of permanently extending Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. That scoring method, known as current policy baseline, would zero out the cost of extending the 2017 tax cuts by measuring it as an extension of the current economic conditions, rather than factoring in how much less the government is taking in via tax revenues with the cuts in effect. Senate Republicans have signaled they believe they have the legal basis for moving forward with that calculation, however, without the parliamentarian's say. "We think the law is very clear, and ultimately the budget committee chairman makes that determination," Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters last month. The Senate GOP aide who spoke with Fox News Digital said, "If that were to have fallen out or just, you didn't know what was going to happen, that would just affect so many provisions in the bill." "Because all of a sudden, you know, all these things start scoring [as an increase to the deficit]…and things become more problematic with your instructions," the former aide said. Winfree, however, said Republicans have appeared to be mindful overall with how they have written the text so far. "They've actually been pretty conservative in how they've approached the language," he said. He said it was "possible some of the immigration provisions could get a second look," but that even then, he believed it would "ultimately be okay." Republican leaders have said they hope to have a bill on Trump's desk by Fourth of July. Fox News Digital reached out to the current Senate Majority Leader's office for comment.
