STEVE MILLOY: John Thune Needs To Do Something About Obama-Era Parliamentarian Kneecapping Trump’s Megabill

MAGA supporters are outraged that the Senate parliamentarian is dictating what the Republican-controlled Senate may include in the Big Beautiful Bill (BBB). They’re correct and Majority Leader John Thune needs to somehow reconcile the problem.

Established by rules approved by two-thirds of the Senate, the parliamentarian is majority leader-appointed and is not filled by a sitting senator. The job description is to enforce Senate rules on Senate procedures in a non-partisan manner.

The current parliamentarian,Elizabeth Macdonough, was appointed in 2012 by then-Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat. She is not term limited and will serve until she steps down or is replaced by the majority leader. Her Democrat provenance is all well and good as long as she enforces Senate rules in a non-partisan way. But that is not what she is doing.

The parliamentarian has determined, for example, that the rollback of Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provisions is not possible through the special Senate process known as reconciliation, even though reconciliation was how the Senate was able to vote on the IRA in the first place.

This means that the IRA rollbacks, including hundreds of billions in climate spending cuts already approved by the House, will require 60 Senate votes versus only a bare majority under the reconciliation procedure.

The parliamentarian’s decision clearly lies somewhere in the abyss between arbitrariness and hypocrisy. The decision is her call and is not practically appealable. This decision is a bitter pill to swallow given that voters elected President Donald Trump and a Republican-led Senate to pass the BBB.