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Sen. Tommy Tuberville called for the firing of the Senate parliamentarian Thursday over her ruling against a provision in the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act to prevent illegal aliens from accessing Medicaid.
“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,” wrote Tuberville, R-Ala., on the social media platform X.
The “big, beautiful bill,” as President Donald Trump calls it, would fulfill a number of campaign promises, such as extending his 2017 first-term tax cuts and funding border security.
Tuberville thinks the parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough—essentially the Senate’s rules arbiter—is taking a hatchet to the 10-year fiscal package.
“Unelected bureaucrats think they know better than U.S. congressmen who are elected BY THE PEOPLE. Her job is not to push a woke agenda. THE SENATE PARLIAMENTARIAN SHOULD BE FIRED ASAP.”
MacDonough has the authority to decide whether or not provisions in the budget reconciliation process follow Senate rules.
In such cases, she is invoking the “Byrd Rule,” which is generally intended to restrict the process to budgetary policy only. The rule is named for then-Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., who was the rule’s main sponsor when it was adopted in 1985.
Firing MacDonough would not be unprecedented.
Then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., did so with then-parliamentarian Robert Dove in 2001 over his frequent overruling of Senate budgetary proposals.
Nor is Tuberville the first to recommend defying the parliamentarian, who technically serves at the pleasure of the Senate majority leader.
In 2021, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., urged then-Vice President Kamala Harris to overrule MacDonough striking a $15 minimum wage provision from the American Rescue Act, a reconciliation package during the Biden administration.
“I’m sorry—an unelected parliamentarian does not get to deprive 32 million Americans the raise they deserve,” Khanna said at the time. “This is an advisory, not a ruling. VP Harris needs to disregard and rule a $15 minimum wage in order.” Harris ultimately did not do so.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., also called for MacDonough’s firing at the time.
“Abolish the filibuster. Replace the parliamentarian,” she said on social media. “What’s a Democratic majority if we can’t pass our priority bills? This is unacceptable.”
Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., was quick to join in on Tuberville’s criticism Thursday.
“It is time for our elected leaders to take back control. @JDVance should overrule the Parliamentarian and let the will of the people, not some staffer hiding behind Senate procedure, determine the future of this country,” he wrote.
Vice President JD Vance (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)As presiding officer of the Senate, Vance does hold that power, although using it would break with precedent.
Another way to address the issue is to amend a provision and resubmit it in the hope that the parliamentarian will let it stand.
Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., told The Daily Signal on Wednesday, “I’ve heard from people that are former Senate staffers that it all has to do with what the leader wants to accomplish.”
He continued, “That if the leader wants something dead, they will write it in such a way that they know that it will die. But yet if they want something to pass, they’ll figure out a way to write it to get it though Byrd.”
Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, expressed a similar skepticism Wednesday over the power of the parliamentarian to derail the Republican agenda.
“When we look back two, three generations from now and our kids wonder why [we failed] at doing the fiscal reforms and transformative reforms that need to happen, and the excuse was the Senate parliamentarian, I don’t think that’s a good excuse that would be good enough for our kids. So we’ve got to figure out what it’s going to take to get the reforms that need to happen, the things that we all campaigned on.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., viewed the parliamentarian’s new ruling against Medicaid for non-citizens as a dire threat.
“The UN-ELECTED Deep State bureaucrats, radical far left activist judges, and America LAST Democrats are doing everything they can to destroy President Trump and THE PEOPLE’S agenda!!!” she wrote on X.
The post Senator Demands Parliamentarian’s Firing Over Ruling on Medicaid for Illegals appeared first on The Daily Signal.
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