X is aflutter with panic over the Senate parliamentarian’s latest decisions on what can and cannot be included in the reconciliation package. “Fire her!” “Ignore her!” “The bill is dead on arrival!” If every element she struck — most recently key Medicaid reforms — were truly dead, critics might have a case. But nothing is final. Not yet.
Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian, doesn’t hold constitutional office. She’s an appointed adviser. The Senate respects her rulings, in part because both parties depend on her to uphold rules like the filibuster when they land in the minority.
The process can be frustrating and time-consuming, particularly with the White House’s July 4 deadline, but it’s doable.
That respect isn’t absolute. Both Republican and Democrat leaders have overruled her before. Senate rules belong to the Senate. While MacDonough can make poor decisions, her role has long been understood as a knife that cuts both ways.
She cut President Joe Biden’s $15 federal minimum wage from the American Rescue Plan Act, for example, deciding that the impact it would have on the 10-year federal budget was “merely incidental” to the policy side of things.
That’s the basic rule of it: Senators and their committees must show that the budgetary impact is not “merely incidental” (and also won’t touch Social Security) to pass with just 51 votes instead of the normal 60 required.
Her latest rulings — excluding items like increasing pension contributions from new federal employees, authorizing states to enforce immigration laws, and capping funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from the reconciliation package — aren’t final judgments. They function more as warnings: Go back, rewrite, and try again if it matters. Think of them as strikes, not outs.
Take MacDonough’s objection to language barring illegal immigrants from receiving Medicaid funds. Democrats claim this isn’t happening, then insist it can’t be banned. Either way, staffers just need to revise the language and sharpen their case.
The process can be frustrating and time-consuming, particularly with the White House’s July 4 deadline, but it’s doable. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) plans to keep the chamber in session until the job is done. Senate veterans believe he could file for cloture Friday night and still land a vote before the weekend ends.
Without a doubt, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will be less pretty than she was when she reached the parliamentarian’s desk. But this is a ball game, and enough Republicans are eager to put points on the board. Once it’s out of the Senate, however, it gets to go back to the House for approval, negotiations, or a formal conference hammering out details between the two chambers. No Republican wants to go to a formal conference negotiation, where Democrats would have a larger say. They know this is the fight, with the resources and people Republicans need to fight it.
So save the panic. There will be plenty of time for that next week.
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