WASHINGTON, D.C. - While most Americans think of Congress as just the House and Senate, an unelected official known as the Senate Parliamentarian holds significant power in deciding what provisions make it into the final version of a bill, according to reports.
Elizabeth MacDonough serves as the Senate Parliamentarian. She has the power to strike down key portions of what President Trump has called his “One Big Beautiful Bill” that will fund the federal government.
Some of those key provisions include limiting federal court powers and restricting Medicaid funds for abortion clinics, The National Pulse reports.
The proposed budget reconciliation bill, making its way through the Senate, would implement key portions of Trump’s America First agenda. Part of MacDonough’s charge will be to evaluate various points of order raised by Senate Democrats in an attempt to roadblock Trump’s agenda.
One Republican, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has also objected to provisions of the bill.
If MacDonough were to uphold those objections, it could disqualify their inclusion in the reconciliation package. Those objections include whether the bill reduces non-discretionary (mandatory) spending, increases the deficit after the 10-year budget window, or if a policy provision is irrelevant to the budget change.
While the use of budget reconciliation allows the Senate majority to circumvent the filibuster, it also grants one person — the Senate parliamentarian — tremendous power, despite being unelected. There is some protection if the parliamentarian rules that provisions of the reconciliation package do not comply with Senate rules. The President of the Senate–in this case, Vice President JD Vance–can override any ruling made by the parliamentarian. However, such instances are, according to The National Pulse, extremely rare.
In 1975, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller tried to overrule the Senate Parliamentarian over Senate procedural rules. This prompted a bipartisan group of Republican and Democratic Senate leaders to convene an emergency meeting to create a compromise ruling, thereby circumventing Rockefeller and ensuring that no precedent would be set whereby the presiding officer (the vice president) overrules the Senate Parliamentarian.
Typically, Senate Parliamentarians are selected from the Office of the Parliamentarian to ensure continuity. The office has only been in place since 1935. MacDonough has served since 2012 when she was appointed to the role by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).
Despite being appointed by Reid, MacDonough was a vocal critic of his 2013 decision to alter Senate rules and use the so-called “nuclear option” to abolish the filibuster for lower-level federal court nominations. Despite MacDonough and Senate Republicans warning him that setting the precedent could have the adverse effect of ending the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations, Reid followed through.
Those warnings came to pass in 2017 when Republicans used the maneuver to advance President Trump’s nomination of conservative Neil Gorsuch to the high court.
While MacDonough has received bipartisan praise from Senators, she has also drawn the wrath of far-left progressive Democrats by ruling against some of their radical proposals, including parts of the “American Rescue Plan.” That caused some radical progressives, including Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), to demand she be fired. Of note, she ruled against the inclusion of a $15 federal minimum wage.
She ruled that including a “pathway to citizenship” for illegal aliens in the legislation violated the Byrd Rule, stating, “changing the law to clear the way to (Legal Permanent Resident) status is tremendous and enduring policy change that dwarfs its budgetary impact.”
While Senate Republicans have promised not to resort to “extreme” measures should MacDonough rule against provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill, last month, they overturned California’s electric vehicle mandates using several procedural votes. They conducted an expedited vote under the Congressional Review Act.
By doing so, they ended the debate and held a final vote before the Senate Parliamentarian could rule on the matter. Using such a tactic would not likely work with a complicated measure, as opposed to a one-issue measure.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune flatly rejected the chance of overruling determinations of the Senate Parliamentarian. “We’re not going there,” Thune said.
Thune may be taking that position, but it may not be his decision to make. Since Vice President Vance is technically the president of the Senate, he, not Thune, may decide to invoke his authority and override a theoretically unfavorable MacDonough decision, much as Rockefeller did in 1975.
