Who Is Elizabeth MacDonough?

     The Senate Parliamentarian isn't a flashy position on Capitol Hill. It's not the kind of office that puts people behind podiums and microphones so they can deliver fiery partisan invective and polemics. It's not a platform for political kabuki. In fact, it's safe to say that the majority of Americans don't even know who the Senate parliamentarian is or even what her job is. In fact, in the 17 year history of this blog, I've only mentioned the Senate Parliamentarian's office once or twice and I'll get back to that later.

     If you're wondering why Trump's "big beautiful bill" has been proceeding in the Senate at a glacial pace, she's largely the reason why. It's not because Senate Republicans are just finding their inner human and excising some of the worst parts like the metastatic cancer it is. Don't believe the mainstream media when they seem to give credit that the GOP doesn't deserve. Republicans are soulless husks who don't give a flying fuck about their constituents or the American people in general. They only occasionally find themselves on the right side of history or humanity only when it's politically expedient.

     The "big beautiful bill", that greasy ball of tax and spending cuts passing as Trump's signature domestic agenda, just had a major blow dealt to it. You have Elizabeth MacDonough to thank for that. The sticking point, or one of them, in her office were the cruel and sadistic Medicare cuts that Republicans wanted so they could justify the tax cuts for the ones holding their balls hostage in jars beside their beds.

     The Senate Parliamentarian's job is, in part, to make sure things are on the up and up in the upper chamber. It's not her job to decide what’s morally right or wrong but what's legally right or wrong. As in the House, Senate Republicans are trying to ram this bill through a process called reconciliation, which is essentially the fast tracking of a piece of legislation. Elizabeth MacDonough's office decided the bill, as it had originally stood in the Senate, was a violation of the Byrd Rule, named after the late West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd. 

     The Byrd Rule is comprised of six tests and these tests are (emphasis not mine):

1) Does not produce a change in outlays or revenues or a change in the terms and conditions under which outlays are made or revenues are collected;

2)  Produces an outlay increase or revenue decrease when the instructed committee is not in compliance with its instructions;

3)  Is outside the jurisdiction of the committee that submitted the title or provision for inclusion in the reconciliation measure;

4)  Produces a change in outlays or revenues that is “merely incidental” to the non- budgetary components of the provision;

5)  Would increase the deficit for a fiscal year beyond the budget window covered by the reconciliation measure; or

6) Recommends changes to Social Security.

     What this means is the Byrd Rule essentially forbids non-budgetary issues and to focus on fiscal ones, and any such non-budgetary issues would be subject to a point of order, which could derail such legislation's privileged status. 

     In short, the Byrd Rule strips out riders or amendments that are not applicable as budgetary issues. This bloated monstrosity at over 1100 pages is essentially an epic love letter to evil and moral depravity. It includes selling off millions of acres of federal public land to states and private developers (Thank you, Mike Lee), to gutting Medicaid for low-income families, immigrants, and trans people, to defunding Planned Parenthood and taking a machete to environmental protections like they were nude teenagers in an 80s slasher film. It was rushed, which is why House Republicans opted for reconciliation. And it entirely depended on sleazing past Senate rules without a fight.

     MacDonough was that fight. The land sell-off? Out. The Medicaid provider tax cap? Out. The bans on gender-affirming care, immigrant coverage, and ACA subsidies? Out. By the time MacDonough put down her red pen, the Republicans in the Senate were left holding a mostly empty bag to which they originally wished to fill with dog shit so they could set it on fire and leave on the doorstep of America.

     Elizabeth MacDonough's been the Senate Parliamentarian since 2012 when she was appointed on a bipartisan basis. For a non-elected official who doesn't vote or write laws, she wields an enormous amount of power. So, before the MSM try to give credit to the Senate GOP for some sanity and decency, remember: They have none. You have Elizabeth MacDonough to thank for that decency and sanity. And she did it not with partisan polemics but simply standing up for the rule of law in the Senate.

     I wrote earlier that I'd mentioned the Senate Parliamentarian's office just once or twice in the long history of this blog. That was nearly four and a half years ago, right after January 6th, 2021. Because, you see, part of the Senate Parliamentarian's responsibility to safely get the state electors' votes in every presidential election to the United States Senate.

     MacDonough's office was the one that was ransacked the hardest during the riot on January 6th. The people who'd done it obviously had guidance and they had a purpose: Grab the votes that made Joe Biden the president and dump the ballots in the Potomac in a reprise of old Tammany Hall.

     A quick-thinking aide to MacDonough, knowing what was going on outside and realizing the madness would soon be inside, grabbed the wooden boxes containing the state electors' ballots and moved them to a secret location.

     Yes, MacDonough's office saved the 2020 election. Say thank you, Elizabeth.