In a Washington awash with lawlessness and rule breaking in the second term of Donald Trump, thankfully there is one government official who is sticking with the long-established procedure: Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough.
MacDonough, who makes sure the Senate follows its own rules, has killed several parts of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill — effectively a MAGA wishlist of dismantling government and winding down resources for all manner of public functions except tax cuts for the wealthy and immigration enforcement, which gets showered in cash — now has some procedural ones.
MacDonough has decided that multiple marquee provisions of the bill violate the so-called Byrd Rule, which holds that a budget reconciliation bill, which only requires 51 votes to pass, cannot include items that are fundamentally non-budgetary.
Gone are measures to sell off huge swaths of public land, delegate authority for immigration enforcement to states, bar SNAP benefits for many immigrants, stopping federal courts from pursuing contempt against noncompliant federal officials and even things as petty as forcing the Postal Service to sell off electric vehicles. Those need to go through regular legislation, where 60 votes are needed to end debate
Some Republicans will crow that MacDonough is derailing all their signature and most nakedly ideological commitments as if that were evidence she’s acting in a partisan manner, but that’s precisely the point of this analysis. They’re attempting to skirt the possibility of a filibuster by pushing this all through reconciliation knowing that it’s an enormous patchwork of partisan goodies with some budgetary implications thrown in.
Certainly both parties have attempted similar maneuvers slotting in provisions that could not have otherwise passed in regular legislation, but this GOP effort is on another scale in terms of its sheer scope and intent to remake aspects of federalism, government power and American life.
The Supreme Court was very conclusive in rulings more than a century ago that the power to regulate immigration belonged to Congress and the federal government, and it’s rather legally dubious for it to try to delegate these powers to state officials.
That is precisely the sort of hugely controversial and transformative policy that should be the subject to full debate in what considers itself the world’s greatest deliberative body, not crammed into a gargantuan budget bill that no one except perhaps MacDonough and her staff has actually fully read.
Ditto the insane effort to further constrain the federal courts’ ability to intervene against administration policies they deem illegal, which so far has been one of the very few constraints on a presidency enjoying an extremely compliant and subservient Congress that seems happy to relinquish its own powers to the care of their leader.
MacDonough’s analysis has made these provisions no-gos for the bill, but rather than strip some out and try to push through a pared-down version, congressional Republicans should go back to the drawing board.
Have some backbone; when Trump says jump, it is the role of Congress not to say “how high” but to act as representatives for their constituents, who will be harmed by the many other provisions that would survive, including slashing food assistance and Medicare. Get rid of the big ugly bill.
