Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told Newsmax on Tuesday that the reconciliation budget package being considered in the upper chamber “is getting worse at this point” after the Senate parliamentarian tossed out several provisions because they violated Senate rules.
Elizabeth MacDonough has been the Senate parliamentarian since 2012. MacDonough, an unelected official who advises senators on following the chamber’s rules, earlier this week determined that many provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act did not qualify for budget reconciliation.
“The Senate parliamentarian has this decision-making process they call the Byrd Rule, where a lot of things get excluded from the bill,” Paul told “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” referring to the rule established in the mid-1980s and named after its chief sponsor, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., in which provisions considered extraneous to fiscal matters require 60 votes to pass the Senate.
The reconciliation package must undergo a “Byrd bath” to eliminate all provisions that the parliamentarian believes are more about making policy changes than adjusting the federal budget. Such eliminated provisions would need 60 votes to pass a filibuster, a tough task for the Republican majority given how divided the Senate is.
“The last two days has been a bloodbath in the sense that they’ve excluded a lot of different things that we had intended to be in the bill to cut spending,” Paul said.
“So, my guess is that the score has gotten a lot worse, that this actually is even less good now that most of those things have been removed. And my worry still is about the [national] debt, that the debt’s going to go up after this.”
Paul said he is among many who are worried that MacDonough’s actions might be political. He said she gave Democrats wider latitude on reconciliation when they controlled the House, Senate, and presidency.
“Now that we want to actually restrain or cut spending, many of the things have been eliminated and said that there are policy, for example, different benefits, Medicaid benefits to illegal aliens, things like that have been ruled as policy, not as actual savings, even though they would have significant savings,” Paul said. “So, unfortunately, I think the bill is getting worse at this point.”
Paul, who said he thinks the legislation will pass the Senate this week, asked why someone like MacDonough wields so much power.
Reconciliation is “supposed to be about the budget and the umpire ends up being this person who is nonpartisan,” Paul said. “I don’t know that she’s necessarily partisan, but it does seem weird that in a country of 330 some-odd million people, we elect representatives and that we’re all beholden to someone who’s not elected.
“It’s just a bizarre situation. And she ultimately is ruling out 10, 20% of the bill as not being consistent with the rules. And in no other parliament or congress I’ve ever heard of anything where an unelected person is able to have so much power.”
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