Republican Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville became the first GOP senator to advocate for Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough’s ouster on Thursday morning, just hours after she struck initial Medicaid reforms from Senate Republicans’ budget bill.
Tuberville, who is running for the Alabama governorship, called on Senate Majority Leader John Thune to fire MacDonough for nixing provisions from the Senate’s version of President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” bill that would have prohibited Medicaid funding for child sex-change procedures and banned the use of federal Medicaid dollars to cover noncitizens. MacDonough, an unelected official who helps lawmakers interpret Senate procedure, has struck 47 provisions from the president’s sweeping tax and immigration bill thus far.
Tuberville highlighted MacDonough’s appointment to the Senate Parliamentarian role in 2012 by the late former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and accused MacDonough of undermining the president’s “mandate” to implement his domestic policy agenda.
“The WOKE Senate Parliamentarian, who was appointed by Harry Reid and advised Al Gore, just STRUCK DOWN a provision BANNING illegals from stealing Medicaid from American citizens,” Tuberville wrote on X Thursday morning. “This is a perfect example of why Americans hate THE SWAMP.”
“Unelected bureaucrats think they know better than U.S. Congressmen who are elected BY THE PEOPLE,” Tuberville continued. “Her job is not to push a woke agenda. THE SENATE PARLIAMENTARIAN SHOULD BE FIRED ASAP.”
Though MacDonough is an unelected official, she exercises massive influence over the so-called budget reconciliation process that congressional Republicans are using to pass the president’s budget bill by a simple majority vote in the Senate. The upper chamber’s Democrats are seeking to challenge as many provisions within the Senate plan as possible and have celebrated MacDonough’s rulings thus far striking key provisions from the bill.
Several GOP senators previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation that MacDonough has ruled in favor of more GOP provisions within their budget bill than she has struck out.
Tuberville’s calls for MacDonough’s firing is a notable shift from the Alabama Republican’s previous deference to the parliamentarian in a brief interview with the DCNF on Tuesday.
“Most of them went through that we’re excited about,” Tuberville said. “We’ll argue with some of them, some of them we won’t.”
Republican Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall is also calling on Thune to oust MacDonough, Fox News Digital first reported. Marshall also said he would introduce a resolution that would restrict the parliamentarian to serving a single six-year term.
Though MacDonough serves at the pleasure of the majority leader, Thune has shown no indication that he will seek her removal thus far. The only parliamentarian to be fired in U.S. history occurred in 2001 when then Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott ousted Robert Dove from the upper chamber’s scorekeeper role.
Calls for MacDonough’s firing threatens to divide Republican senators and could create additional hurdles for Senate GOP leadership as they race to hold a vote on their version of the president’s budget bill as early as Friday.
“We all have respect for the parliamentarian,” Republican Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy told reporters Thursday. “I think she’s very fair, and I don’t think she should be fired, nor do I think she will be fired.”
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