In the high-stakes game of American politics, few non-elected lawmakers hold as much sway over legislative giants as Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate Parliamentarian who has become the make-or-break vote on whether or not President Trump’s sweeping legislative package will ever pass into law. With Republicans working to beat Trump’s Fourth of July deadline to advance the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” Elizabeth MacDonough’s latest decisions have handed crushing rounds of punishment to the GOP agenda, wiping out billions in projected savings and requiring complete overhauls of the bills.
Who is Elizabeth MacDonough?
Elisabeth MacDonough is a career government worker who made history in 2012 as the first woman to ever serve in the office of Senate Parliamentarian, an office created in 1935. Born on February 16, 1966, MacDonough grew up in the Washington, D.C., area and traced her career path to this influential role from the Senate’s very own halls.
Following her graduation from Greens Farms Academy in 1984, MacDonough received a bachelor of arts degree in English literature from George Washington University in 1988. She joined the Senate in 1990 as a legislative reference assistant in the Senate library and also worked as an assistant morning business editor in the Congressional Record. Her desire for public service was so high that she went on to pursue a law degree at Vermont Law School, which she graduated from in 1998.
After she graduated, MacDonough was a trial lawyer with the Department of Justice for a short period of time, representing immigrants in New Jersey. The Senate called her back again, though, in 1999, when she was an assistant parliamentarian with the Senate Parliamentarian’s office. She was named senior assistant parliamentarian in 2002, and a decade later, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid named her the head.
The Senate Parliamentarian’s role and responsibilities
The Senate Parliamentarian is the chamber’s chief procedural and rules advisor, really the “Senate referee”. On the U.S. Senate website, they write that the parliamentarian’s primary responsibility is to “provide expert advice and assistance on questions relating to the meaning and application of the Senate’s legislative rules, precedents, and practices.
Although the parliamentarian does not make binding rulings, his advice holds significant value due to the fact that senators have ever extended their nonpartisan advice much appreciation. Its regular role is to advise the presiding officer on the management of Senate affairs, respond to senators’ intricate queries on reconciling technical points of order and legislative realities, and send bills to the concerned committees.
The parliamentarian’s power has expanded in recent years as the Senate more and more has looked to precedent in the operation of its debates. This development has led both Democrats and Republicans to fall back on the parliamentarian’s opinion, even where there were no precedents to follow in comparable circumstances.
MacDonough’s influence on the “One Big Beautiful Bill”
Trump’s legislative child himself, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025,” rounds up more than 20 significant provisions from tax reduction to immigration enforcement. The expansive bill proposes extending Trump’s 2017 tax reductions, eliminating tip and overtime taxes, paying for mass deportations, and implementing revolutionary Medicaid and other social program changes.
But MacDonough’s recent decisions have posed significant barriers to Republican leadership. On Thursday, June 26, 2025, she issued a series of rulings that Republicans described as disastrous to their legislative bill. Perhaps most significantly, MacDonough ruled that a provision limiting states’ power to use healthcare provider taxes to secure additional Medicaid funding was a violation of budget reconciliation rules.
The next day, MacDonough went ahead and reviewed in detail the legislation, reserving a series of other provisions including increased penalties on disclosure of taxpayer information and deregulating silencers for guns. These actions directly put over $500 billion of projected savings under the bill at risk, with the provider tax provision alone accounting for around $250 billion of the savings that Republicans were banking on to offset the tax cuts in the legislation.
The budget reconciliation procedure and the Byrd Rule
MacDonough’s decisions are based on budget reconciliation rules, a special process that enables legislation to clear the Senate with a simple majority instead of the usual 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. The Republicans are trying to push Trump’s bill through the expedited process in order to circumvent Democratic paralysis.
However, reconciliation bills must comply with the Byrd Rule, named after former West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd and adopted in 1985. The rule defines provisions as “extraneous” and therefore ineligible for reconciliation in six specific cases, including if they don’t produce changes in outlays or revenues, if their budgetary impact is merely incidental to non-budgetary components, or if they would increase the deficit beyond the bill’s fiscal window.
The Byrd Rule requires the parliamentarian to interpret what constitutes an “incidental” budgetary effect, giving MacDonough significant discretion in determining which provisions can remain in the legislation. As one expert noted, “It will strip provisions renaming buildings or policies, changes to regulations with little or no budgetary effect, and other portions of the House-passed bill that fail to change spending or tax policy”.
Political reactions and challenges to MacDonough’s authority
MacDonough’s rulings have triggered intense criticism from conservative Republicans, who view her decisions as obstructionist to Trump’s agenda. Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama wrote on social media, “Unelected bureaucrats think they know better than U.S. Congressmen who are elected BY THE PEOPLE,” demanding that MacDonough be fired immediately. Representative Greg Steube of Florida echoed this sentiment, questioning why a “swamp bureaucrat” appointed over a decade ago should determine national policy.
However, Senate Majority Leader John Thune has indicated that Republicans will not attempt to overturn MacDonough’s decisions, stating it “would not be a good approach for getting the bill done”. This deference to the parliamentarian follows longstanding Senate tradition, though it has frustrated conservative members who are calling for more aggressive action.
Interestingly, some moderate Republicans have quietly welcomed MacDonough’s rulings, particularly regarding the provider tax provisions, which they feared would harm rural hospitals in their states. As one moderate House Republican told The Hill, “This moves the bill in a more reasonable direction and gives us the ability to focus on areas of the bill we would like to fix”.
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