Key Portions Of ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Being Stripped By ‘Unelected Official’
Key parts of the Senate budget proposal carrying major parts of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda are now at risk, with more provisions possibly on the chopping block.
But the threat is not coming from a lack of GOP votes or Democrat obstruction. The obstacle is that Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, an unelected official appointed by the late Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in 2012, is now issuing rulings on what can, and cannot, be included in Trump’s “one big, beautiful” budget package, The Daily Caller reported.
On Thursday, MacDonough advised that Senate Republicans must strike a slate of banking and environmental provisions from their proposal, including key planks of Trump’s agenda. She blocked GOP efforts to roll back a Biden-era electric vehicle mandate and to strip funding from a federal agency created by Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to regulate the financial services industry.
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MacDonough serves as a de facto referee on Senate rules, including which provisions meet the requirements of the budget reconciliation process. Senate Republicans are using reconciliation to pass Trump’s budget with a simple majority, bypassing the 60-vote filibuster threshold and stopping Democrats from blocking the bill.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota is racing to move Trump’s tax and spending package through as early as Wednesday, but MacDonough is expected to have enormous influence on the final version. Anything ruled ineligible for reconciliation would need 60 votes to pass, handing Democrats the power to block those provisions.
Senate Democrats are already challenging key parts of the Republican plan, claiming some provisions violate reconciliation rules, which require each section to directly impact spending or revenue. Democrats are doing everything possible to knock Trump’s priorities out of the final package, and MacDonough is already siding with them on several points.
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Her rulings have frustrated Republicans trying to keep their priorities in, while giving hope to Democrats trying to gut Trump’s bill.
“As much as Senate Republicans would prefer to throw out the rule book and advance their families lose and billionaires win agenda, there are rules that must be followed and Democrats are making sure those rules are enforced,” Democrat Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the top Democrat on the budget panel, claimed in a statement Thursday.
Among the items struck this week, MacDonough ruled that the Senate Banking Committee cannot eliminate funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and cannot cut pay for certain Federal Reserve employees. This comes even as Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency has already moved to dismantle the CFPB during the first 100 days of the administration.
The banking panel’s provisions would have saved taxpayers nearly $9 billion over ten years. The committee is still required to find at least $1 billion in cuts and is now expected to rewrite its section of the bill to meet the spending reduction target.
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“I remain committed to advancing legislation that cuts waste and duplication in our federal government and saves taxpayer dollars,” Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott said in a statement. “My colleagues and I remain committed to cutting wasteful spending at the CFPB and will continue working with the Senate parliamentarian on the Committee’s provisions.”
MacDonough also ruled that a proposal repealing Biden’s EPA regulation mandating that about 67 percent of new cars sold after model year 2032 be electric or hybrid cannot be included in reconciliation.
She also ruled that a provision eliminating funding from Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act violates reconciliation rules. Billions of those IRA funds have gone to radical left-wing groups that promote open borders, call for defunding the U.S. military, and even glorify Hamas’ October 7th attacks on Israel.
MacDonough has not yet ruled on some of the biggest parts of the bill, including a permanent extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and a moratorium on states regulating artificial intelligence.
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Trump has urged Congress to pass the bill quickly, so he can sign it into law by July 4.
