<![CDATA[Donald Trump]]><![CDATA[Elizabeth Warren]]><![CDATA[reconciliation]]><![CDATA[sanctuary cities]]><![CDATA[Senate]]>Featured

Senate Parliamentarian Going at Big, Beautiful Bill Like Lizzie Borden – HotAir

admin
June 23, 2025
0Points
0
0
Senate Parliamentarian Going at Big, Beautiful Bill Like Lizzie Borden – HotAir

It’s good to be the queen, and when you are one who’s been appointed by a different king, you see things (D)ifferently.

The Senate Parliamentarian is a lady and a lawyer named Elizabeth MacDonough. She’s been in the Parliamentarian’s office since 1999, so she has seen a lot of sturm und drang in her tenure. She took over and was officially appointed by Harry Reid as the Senate Parliamentarian in 2012. So she also has a lot of time in grade at the head of the office.





Some of the biggest fights the Senate has had were when they attempted a reconciliation package that qualified for not needing to meet the 60-vote threshold most budget bills do. The big test for any reconciliation effort is something called the Byrd Rule. That determines if what is contained in the Senate version of the bill (and this rule only applies to the Senate) meets the following parameters in order to allow it to proceed:

It is the Senate Parliamentarian’s job to ensure that all aspects of a reconciliation package do just that when objections or points of orders are raised against specific items within the proposed package.





  • Under the Byrd Rule, any Senator may raise a point of order against (and if sustained, strike) extraneous matter that is included in a reconciliation bill (as reported or in a conference report), or to prevent the incorporation of extraneous matter through adoption of amendments or motions.
  • Prior to consideration of a reconciliation bill or conference report, the Senate Budget Committee must provide a list of extraneous material to be printed in the Congressional Record. This list is advisory and does not bind the Presiding Officer in ruling on points of order.
  • A point of order may be raised against a single amendment or provision, or multiple amendments or provisions (as designated by title or section number or by page and line number). A point of order under the Byrd Rule must specify both the offending provision and the Byrd Rule test it violates.
  • The Senate Presiding Officer rules on points of order. The Presiding Officer receives advice from the Senate Parliamentarian. The Presiding Officer may sustain a point of order against all of the provisions (or amendments), or only some of them.
  • Any material stricken as extraneous may not be subsequently offered as a floor amendment. Determination of budgetary levels for purposes of enforcing the Byrd Rule are made by the Senate Budget Committee Chairman, and are assessed against the baseline for the budget window and the CBO baseline for the period outside the window.





As of this morning, Senator John Thune was still talking up being able to get Trump’s big, beautiful bill passed by July 4th.

But what was happening behind the scenes of the public show of optimism had people gnashing their teeth in frustration.

Parliamentarian MacDonough has gone crazy with the heat and flipping everyone The Byrd.

The woman has been going through the package with an axe and giving it forty whacks. She started with Tim Scott’s banking committee plans.

The U.S. Senate Parliamentarian ruled Thursday that several key provisions from Banking Committee Chairman Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., on the Trump budget bill violate reconciliation process rules.

…Among the pieces of the bill MacDonough disallowed were a $6.4 billion cut from Consumer Financial Protection Bureau budget that would zero-out all funding for that agency by reducing its maximum funding to 0% of the Federal Reserve’s operating expenses.

She also knocked out Scott’s provision of a $1.4 billion Federal Reserve staff pay cut.

…Scotts budget bill proposals included ending funding of the consumer bureau, as well as dissolving the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and cutting the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Research.

Scott said he was going to keep working with MacDonough to get the changes through. Elizabeth Warren did a feather-headed dance over that win on ‘ugly bill,’ as she called it.





On Saturday, following through on Democratic complaints, the Parliamentarian took her slash-and-burn approach to defunding sanctuary cities and ending intrusive federal court rulings.

The Senate Parliamentarian on Saturday ruled that the Big Beautiful Bill’s provisions limiting funding for sanctuary cities and restraining federal courts’ ability to issue preliminary injunctions cannot be included in Trump’s landmark legislation without a 60-vote majority.

Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled that there are many immigration-related policies that would require 60 votes to be included in the Big Beautiful Bill. This includes:

  • Limiting grant funding for “sanctuary cities”
  • Language granting state and local officials the authority to arrest non-citizens suspected of being in the United States unlawfully
  • Reducing the ability of federal courts to issue preliminary injunctions or restraining orders against the federal government by requiring litigants to post a potentially enormous bond

Key Biden climate cult outlays and rules were falling by the wayside, too, after being hacked from the package. Democrats are ecstatic.

Parliamentarian rulings would kill key climate provisions in GOP megabill

…Among measures found to be ineligible for inclusion in the bill by the Senate parliamentarian are provisions that would exempt certain infrastructure projects from judicial review if entities overseeing those projects pay a fee for accelerated permitting reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Republicans will also have to strip a measure that would repeal the Biden EPA’s tailpipe emissions rule for model years 2027 and later from their bill to stay in compliance with the parliamentarian’s ruling.

The Senate parliamentarian also found that Republicans cannot eliminate a variety of Inflation Reduction Act programs they had targeted for repeal, although they are still permitted to claw back unobligated funds from those initiatives created by the Democrats’ 2022 climate law.





Oh – and the plans to push illegal aliens off of SNAP benefits?

FUGGEDABOUDIT

…Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled late Friday that a measure pushing some of the cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program onto the states should be struck from the bill, along with a provision barring undocumented immigrants from receiving SNAP benefits.

MacDonough has been analyzing the legislation to ensure its provisions comply with the Byrd Rule. The rule requires that measures included in reconciliation bills, which can be passed with a simple majority rather than a 60-vote threshold, are directly related to budget matters.

Republicans have pushed the SNAP provision to partially cover the cost of extending massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans.

I think out of the list below, she did allow the AI item to fly – the only item out of all of them..

And so it goes. The Republicans can appeal or rejigger their proposals, but every delay means less chance of seeing this completed by the 4th, and more Democratic victory hoots and hollers.

AT this rate, the package is going to be unrecognizable.





According to Congressman Chip Roy, the Senate Finance Committee argues their portion of the bill today in front of MacDonough. and he’s not particularly optimistic, as they’ve lost so much of their cost savings with her rulings already.

Naturally, there are now howls for MacDonough’s head. This has also happened before, even from the Democratic side, when they’ve been unhappy with her rulings (as in 2021). It remains to be seen if it will come to that pass, but what is going to emerge from this bloodletting is going to be unrecognizable to anyone as the Big, Beautiful Bill it was going in with whole swaths of the legislation chopped out.

How much of this is poor battlefield preparation on Thune and company’s part, and how much of this can be blamed on partisan overreach on MacDonough’s part is hard to say. Of course, one expects the Dems to object at every turn, even if an item was rational and inoffensive. 

Dems are in a war for survival.

We’ll have to see if anything the Finance Committee put forward survives the afternoon whack attack.

.







Source link

admin

Related Posts

1 of 94
Copyright © 2025 integrityright - .
Copyright © 2025 integrityright - .