She has been on the job for over 30 years, she held her current position since 2012, she worked for both the Republicans and the Democrats leaderships. But now she has ruled against the Republican pet bill and the Republicans are ready to can her.
Kansas senator cites 2001 precedent when Trent Lott fired parliamentarian during reconciliation process
Fox News
By Alex Miller
June 26, 2025
A Senate Republican wants to see the Senate parliamentarian fired and plans to introduce a resolution that would require the position to be term-limited.
Fury erupted among conservatives Thursday morning following the news that Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled several key reforms and tweaks to Medicaid in the Senate GOP’s version of President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" did not pass muster with Senate rules.
Bear with me for a minute, this gets a little bit technical. You see when one chamber passes a bill and the other chamber amends the bill, they can only amend what in the bill and not add other things. For example if the bill is on the budget the other chamber can only add financial amendments... they add an amendment to strip us from healthcare. That would not be allowed.
Yahoo News put it this way...
Over the course of the past week, the parliamentarian has decided that a long list of key provisions that have been part of the "big, beautiful bill" cannot be included in their current forms.
Danger Will Roberson, Danger! You are going against the Lord Master!
Here’s a list of just some of the items that have been vetoed:
- A plan to sell off millions of acres of public lands.
- Defunding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
- Blocking federal grants for “sanctuary cities.”
- Cuts to federal food assistance.
- Barring undocumented immigrants from receiving Medicaid.
- Rollbacks of green energy funding and emissions standards.
- New Medicaid tax rules that would have brought in hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue.
Republicans will now have to either rewrite each of these sections of the bill in a way that satisfies the parliamentarian or be forced to abandon them completely so they don’t prevent the entire package from becoming law.
You are going against the Master's plan! So heads will roll!
Fox News goes to report,
However, Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., wants immediate action taken against the parliamentarian.
Off with her head!
He argued that, based upon early reports, the parliamentarian's rulings against myriad provisions in the bill may erase up to $500 billion in spending cuts, which could hamper the bill's survival among fiscal hawks and miss the goal of hitting up to $2 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade.
Marshall, like other congressional Republicans, was particularly incensed over the parliamentarian’s rulings that gutted numerous changes Senate Republicans made to the widely-used Medicaid program that triggered conservatives.
Among the axed provisions was the Senate GOP’s harsher crackdown on the Medicaid provider rate, or the amount that state Medicaid programs pay to providers on behalf of Medicaid beneficiaries, which proved a divisive policy among some in the conference.
Yahoo New writes this about the parliamentarian...
The current parliamentarian is named Elizabeth MacDonough. She’s a 59-year-old Washington, D.C., native who has worked for the federal government in some capacity for most of the past 35 years. She was appointed as parliamentarian in 2012, becoming the first woman — and just the sixth person in history — to hold the position. At the time, she was described as “down-to-earth,” “diligent” and “a pistol” by figures in Congress who knew her well.
Since assuming the role, she has largely stayed out of the public eye. She purportedly only makes one public speech a year and does not speak directly to the media. During her tenure, control of the Senate has flipped three separate times — first to Republicans in 2015, then to Democrats in 2021 and back to the GOP this year. In addition to advising leaders from both parties through several reconciliation bills over the years, she also guided the Senate through two separate impeachment trials and was responsible for protecting Electoral College certificates from the mob attacking the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack.
Now now she is a piranha, she had the audacity to go against the king's wishes... so it is "Off with her head the traitor!"
She has found that the changes proposed to Medicaid are not budgetary but rather regulatory. The Hill writes,
Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has rejected key Medicaid provisions in the Senate GOP megabill, a ruling that appears to strike a major blow to Republicans’ strategy for cutting federal spending.
The Senate’s referee rejected a plan to cap states’ use of health care provider taxes to collect more federal Medicaid funding, a proposal that would have generated hundreds of billions of dollars in savings to offset the cost of making President Trump’s corporate tax cuts permanent, according to a Democratic summary of the parliamentarian’s ruling.
I am just an interested bystander, but even I can tell that they way the Republicans want to cuts is by changing the rules... it is right in there in black and white. What they want is to change the rules for the state portion of Medicaid funding... That is a regulatory change.
So it all boils down to will they fire her and appoint a crony to the position who will always answer kneeling "Yes Master, as you wish!"
