Tea at Trianon: Can the Senate Be Saved from Its Democrat Parliamentarian?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, June 27, 2025

Can the Senate Be Saved from Its Democrat Parliamentarian?

From Amuse on X:

Let us begin with a matter of fact, not speculation. The Parliamentarian's rulings are advisory. They are not law. The idea that she is the final arbiter of what may or may not appear in a reconciliation bill is a legal fiction, propped up by political timidity and institutional inertia. There is precedent, and not ancient, musty precedent, but recent, muscular precedent, for the Vice President to exercise the authority that the Constitution vests in him. In 1975, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller overruled the Parliamentarian in a matter involving the filibuster. In 1969, Hubert Humphrey attempted the same. The office of the Vice President, when acting as President of the Senate, is not a rubber stamp.
Consider the bill in question. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed by the House in May by the narrowest of margins, is not merely another legislative vehicle for routine policy tinkering. It is the centerpiece of Trump’s second-term agenda, and its key provisions are deeply rooted in the fiscal and moral expectations of the American electorate. The bill eliminates funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a bureaucratic stronghold created by Dodd-Frank, long insulated from congressional accountability. It restricts Medicaid and CHIP funds from being used for what is euphemistically called "gender-affirming care" for minors, and it bars the disbursement of public health funds to those unlawfully present in the country. Each of these provisions carries both moral clarity and budgetary consequence. Yet MacDonough has ruled them impermissible under the Byrd Rule.
Here we must pause and ask, what precisely is the Byrd Rule? Enacted in 1985 and named after Senator Robert Byrd, the rule prohibits the inclusion of "extraneous" material in reconciliation bills. What counts as extraneous? Anything that does not primarily affect federal revenues or outlays. The Parliamentarian’s job is to interpret this language. But interpreting is not the same as ruling. And even if it were, the text of the rule allows far more discretion than MacDonough appears willing to concede. (Read more.)