Meet the U.S. official tying Republicans in knots over their tax bill
U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., centre left, speaks to reporters along with members of the Republican leadership, Tuesday, June 24, 2025, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
WASHINGTON — A few Republicans reacted with indignation Thursday after the U.S. Senate parliamentarian advised that some of the measures in their tax and immigration bill could not be included in the legislation.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., tweeted on X that Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough should be fired, 'ASAP.' Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., intimated that she was partisan, asking why an 'unelected swamp bureaucrat, who was appointed by Harry Reid over a decade ago' gets to decide what's in the bill?'
It's hardly the first time the parliamentarian's normally low-key and lawyerly role has drawn a blast of public criticism.
MacDonough also dashed Democratic plans over the years, advising in 2021 that they couldn't include a minimum wage increase in their COVID-19 relief bill. Later that same year, she advised that Democrats needed to drop an effort to let millions of immigrants remain temporarily in the U.S. as part of their big climate bill.
But the attention falling on MacDonough's rulings in recent years also reflects a broader change in Congress, with lawmakers increasingly trying to wedge their top policy priorities into bills that can't be filibustered in the Senate. The process comes with special rules designed to deter provisions unrelated to spending or taxes — and that's where the parliamentarian comes in, offering analysis of what does and doesn't qualify.
Elizabeth MacDonough
U.S. Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough is seen in the House chamber at the Capitol in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Her latest round of decisions Thursday was a blow to the GOP's efforts to wring hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid over the next decade. Senate Republicans could opt to try to override her recommendations, but they are unlikely to do so.
Here's a closer look at what the Senate parliamentarian does and why lawmakers are so focused on her recommendations right now.
The crucial role of the parliamentarian
Both the House and Senate have a parliamentarian to provide assistance on that chamber's rules and precedents. They are often seen advising whoever is presiding over the chamber on the proper procedures to be followed and the appropriate responses to a parliamentary inquiry.
They are also charged with providing information to lawmakers and their respective staff on a strictly nonpartisan and confidential basis.
The parliamentarians and their staff only offer advice. Their recommendations are not binding. In the case of the massive tax and spending bill now before both chambers, the parliamentarian plays a critical role in advising whether the reconciliation bill's provisions remain focused on fiscal issues.
How MacDonough became the first woman in the job
MacDonough, an English literature major, is the Senate's first woman to be parliamentarian and just the sixth person to hold the position since its creation in 1935.
She began her Senate career in its library before leaving to get a law degree at Vermont Law School. She worked briefly as a Justice Department trial attorney before returning to the Senate in 1999, this time as an assistant in the parliamentarian's office. She was initially appointed parliamentarian in 2012 by Democrat Harry Reid of Nevada, Senate majority leader at the time. She was retained by Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., when he became majority leader in 2015.
She helped Chief Justice John Roberts preside over Trump's 2020 Senate impeachment trial and was beside then-Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., for Trump's second trial the following year. Trump was acquitted both times.
When Trump supporters fought past police and into the Capitol in hopes of disrupting Congress' certification of Joe Biden's Electoral College victory, MacDonough and other staffers rescued those ballots and hustled mahogany boxes containing them to safety. MacDonough's office, on the Capitol's first floor, was ransacked and declared a crime scene.
Can the Senate ignore the parliamentarian's advice?
Yes. The parliamentarian makes the recommendation, but it's the presiding officer overseeing Senate proceedings who rules on provisions in the bill. If there is a dispute, it would be put to a vote.
Michael Thorning, director of structural democracy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank, said he doubts Republicans will want to go that route. And indeed, some Republican senators said as much Thursday.
'It's the institutional integrity, even if I'm convinced 100% she's wrong,' said Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D.
Thorning said lawmakers from both parties view MacDonough as 'very much an honest broker.'
'And the Senate relies on her,' Thorning said. 'Sometimes, those decisions cut your way, and sometimes, they don't. I also think members recognize that once you start treating the parliamentarian's advice as just something that could be easily dismissed, then the rules start to matter less.'
Have parliamentarians been fired?
Majority leaders from both parties have replaced the parliamentarian. For more than three decades, the position alternated between Robert Dove and Alan Frumin depending upon which party was in the majority.
Thorning said the two parliamentarians weren't far apart though, in how they interpreted the Senate's rules and precedents.
MacDonough succeeded Frumin as parliamentarian. He said the small number of calls Thursday for her dismissal 'tells you all people need to know about the current parliamentarian.'
'Senators know this isn't somebody playing politics,' Thorning said.
Kevin Freking, The Associated Press
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
National Post
39 minutes ago
- National Post
Conrad Black: The world is brighter thanks to Iran bombing
Some readers will recall that in this space last week I opposed those calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and de-escalation in the Iran-Israel war because that would only lead to renewed terrorist activity in Gaza against Israel and the deployment of nuclear weapons by Iran, whose government has pledged to destroy the Jewish people. To paraphrase Japanese Emperor Hirohito after the detonation of two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, in the light of this week's events, it is time for the 'unthinkable.' (The Japanese emperor acknowledged that the war had not gone 'entirely as we had hoped.') As predicted here and elsewhere, the United States Air Force and Navy successfully penetrated and destroyed the underground Iranian nuclear development sites. Those who immediately predicted a drastic escalation of hostilities and were soiling themselves in lamentations of imminent world war were placated, and in many cases doubtless disappointed, at the ceasefire that followed 24 hours later. Incorrigibly anti-American and particularly Trump-hating outlets such as the BBC, the CBC, the Guardian, Al-Jazeera, CNN and MSNBC attached themselves like limpets to the instant conjuration that the damage done by the American attacks had only been superficial and would easily be repaired. In the only known honest words that the criminally diseased regime in Tehran has uttered in its 47 years, the Iranian Islamic government acknowledged that official American reports of the success of the raids were accurate. U.S. President Donald Trump's opponents dismissed this as disinformation. The more vocal political suicide cases among the American congressional Democrats, who had been calling for Trump's impeachment for plunging the nation into war without authority, were struck mercifully dumb. Article content Article content Many will require tranquilization, therapy or even defibrillation in contemplation of this, but without incurring a single American casualty, President Trump has satisfactorily ended a potentially dangerous and enervating war; has dealt a shattering blow to the forces of terrorism in the world; has assisted Israel in honouring the pledge of the Jewish people after the Nazi Holocaust murdered approximately half the Jews in the world: 'Never again!'; and has helped the Jewish people to the highest level of unconditional security it has enjoyed in its tumultuous history of over 5,000 years. At the same time, as commander-in-chief, Trump has executed the most successful military operation of the U.S. armed forces since Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed nearly 50,000 men in less than an hour at Inchon and annihilated the North Korean army in four weeks in 1950. (MacArthur's subsequent insubordination was unacceptable, but if his strategic advice had been followed, Korea today would be united and a powerhouse, a second Japan, and the world would have been spared all the outrages of the Kimist regime in North Korea these 75 years.) Article content Article content Article content President Trump's very astute deployment of American military force and his agile diplomacy has been the greatest strategic tour de force of any world leader since U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1972-3 triangulated the great power relationship with China, negotiated the greatest arms control agreement in world history with the U.S.S.R. (which incidentally restored American nuclear military superiority), while extracting the United States from Vietnam and preserving a non-communist government in Saigon. The events of the last week have given the world a clear perspective on the dangerous vacuum of American enfeeblement that was created by the previous three U.S. presidents. George W. Bush's insane invasion of Iraq, which made most of that country a vassal state of Iran, and his insistence on elections that raised up Hamas and Hezbollah, and Barack Obama and Joe Biden's appeasement of Iran, including Obama's nuclear treaty with Iran, under which the Iranians would at this very time be joining the nuclear club with the blessing of its other members: all of this created an opportunistic appetite in some of the world's most irresponsible and dangerous governments. It is almost certainly true that if Trump were the president, it is unlikely that Russian President Vladimir Putin would have invaded Ukraine or that the Iranian leadership would have masterminded the Hamas invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. It is also worthwhile to go a little further back in unearthing western strategic blunders in the Mideast: as I remarked (to an indifferent response), in Their Lordships' House in London some years ago, the British government essentially precipitated the chief crisis of the Middle East by effectively promising the same territory to two different and contending parties: the Jews and the Arabs, in 1917 (unruffled by the fact that the territory was then being governed by Turkey, which ultimately did a better job of it than the British who followed them).
National Post
39 minutes ago
- National Post
Colby Cosh: How Donald Trump nationalized U.S. Steel
Last week, Nippon Steel Corp. of Japan formally completed a takeover of U.S. Steel (USS), the venerable but diminished American industrial giant created by J.P. Morgan in 1901. The Japanese company originally placed its bid for USS in late 2023, but it ran into immediate trouble with the Biden administration. U.S. Steel, once widely regarded as an overmighty pollution-spewing relic of Gilded Age cartelization, had magically evolved to become a vulnerable 'national champion' of morally superior things-making industries; and the company still has a powerful unionized workforce in U.S. rust-belt states that are electorally pivotal. Pennsylvania-born President Joe Biden wasn't going to let a corporate brand virtually synonymous with the city of Pittsburgh be raffled off without a tussle. Article content Article content Government foreign-investment approvals necessarily have this sort of personal-rule character wherever they happen, which is pretty much everywhere. If you want to sell a bundle of industrial assets in Country X to folks from Country Y, you had better have approval from the top political boss of X, whether that approval be tacit or explicit. Article content Article content Article content Still, Biden did go through the motions of being head of a government of laws rather than men. He had a U.S. Treasury Department panel, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), whack together an indecisive but fact-based report on the potential costs and benefits of the proposed takeover. Only at that point, with mere days remaining in his term of office, did Biden (or whoever was wielding his executive autopen) fully and officially block the Nippon Steel deal. Biden's successor had already been re-elected, and nobody could imagine that Donald Trump would be any less of an unruly economic nationalist — but the thing that is nearest and dearest to Trump's heart is deal-making, and Nippon Steel found a way to get the takeover done. The Japanese company had already promised to preserve U.S. Steel's Pittsburgh national head office and to honour existing collective-bargaining agreements with the unions. Trump extracted further concessions on investments and hiring, along with a means of enforcing them, namely a 'golden share' controlled by the U.S. government. Article content A 'golden share' is a special kind of equity that gives its holder veto power over specified corporate decisions. It is often used in privatizations to give governments some vestige of control over corporate entities originally created by the state (or, in Canada, the Crown) for public purposes. In this unusual case, the U.S. government is magically gaining a golden share in exchange for permitting the sale of one private company to another. The government will be given the right to choose some U.S. Steel board directors, to forbid any name change, and to veto factory closures, offshoring, acquisitions and other moves. Article content As the Cato Institute immediately pointed out, this is a de facto nationalization of U.S. Steel — the sort of thing that would have had Cold War conservatives climbing the walls and hooting about socialism. But at least socialism professes to be social! Yesterday a lefty energy reporter named Robinson Meyer was nosing around in the revised corporate charter for the newly-acquired U.S. Steel, and he discovered a remarkable detail that the Cato folks had missed: the decision powers of the golden share have been legally assigned to Donald Trump in person and by name for the duration of his presidency. Only after Trump has left the White House do those golden-share powers revert to actual U.S. government departments (Treasury and Commerce).
National Post
an hour ago
- National Post
Michael Taube: Mark Carney leans European, but needs to buy American again
Article content It will also 'promote multilateral dialogue and co-operation with like-minded countries in relevant areas of security and defence where considered mutually beneficial.' Some of the matters mentioned in the agreement include support to Ukraine, peacekeeping operations, military mobility, maritime security, sharing information on defence initiatives and cybersecurity. Article content And it doesn't stop there. Businesses will be encouraged to 'grow and diversify markets by fully and effectively implementing' the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement. The parties also agreed to work towards a 'digital trade agreement,' 'identify trends and risks of mutual concern that could affect our economic security,' 'reduce barriers and strengthen agriculture and agrifood trade' and focus on shared energy needs. Article content What about the future of Canada-U.S. relations? While there have been issues between our two countries due to U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs and leadership style, it's vitally important for Carney to rebuild ties with the U.S. There have been political, economic and military disagreements between Canada and the U.S. before. We fought one another during the War of 1812. Nevertheless, we always found ways to agree to disagree and move forward like good friends and allies do. Article content Article content Things looked promising at one point. Carney said earlier this month that his government was 'in intensive negotiations with the Americans' to end the tariffs on aluminum and steel that chilled relations between our two countries. Carney and Trump also agreed to work towards an economic and security pact within the next 30 days during last week's G7 summit in Kananaskis, Alta. Article content Alas, Carney's determined tone has noticeably shifted. He's now hemming and hawing about the path forward. 'We'll do what's right for Canada,' he told reporters in Brussels. 'We're working hard to get a deal, but we'll only accept the right deal with the United States. The right deal is possible, but nothing's assured.' Article content Trump then announced on Friday through his Truth Social account that he was 'terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately.' Why? This was due to Canada's decision to introduce a 'Digital Services Tax on our American Technology Companies.' Trump believed the Carney Liberal government was 'obviously copying the European Union' with this tax, and felt it was a 'direct and blatant attack' on the U.S. Article content Article content No one is suggesting that Carney is obligated to bend to Trump's every whim and desire during these crucial negotiations. At the same time, this is hardly the sort of descriptive language and rhetorical tone he should be using in public before the July 21 deadline. Article content If there have been issues between the two sides, fine. All Carney had to do was take a more neutral position for the bulk of the 30-day process and crescendo accordingly. This would have shown that he recognized the importance of preserving Canada-U.S. relations and was taking things seriously. It would have been hard to argue against such logic. Article content It appears that Carney's infatuation with the EU has further strained our friendship with the U.S. for the foreseeable future. While some will claim that Trump is the main reason, it's a false narrative. He'll be out of office in a number of years, as will Carney. The devastating political and economic effects of a fractured Canada-U.S. relationship will last long past then. Article content Article content Article content
