Trump urged Senate Republicans on Sunday to overrule the chamber’s parliamentarian in order to pass key parts of his sweeping domestic policy bill.
In a Sunday post on Truth Social, the president backed a call from Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) and other GOP hard-liners to ignore rulings from Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough.
The parliamentarian is the nonpartisan Senate official responsible for determining whether parts of laws meant to be passed through budget reconciliation comply with the rules for that process.
If the Senate can just "overrule" the parliamentarian whenever they want, what's the point of having one?
I mean in the end, it really doesn't matter. I don't know whether to call it a game of Calvinball or Who's Line is it Anyway, but the end result is about the same: They're just making up the rules as they go along, and ignoring their own rules once they become inconvenient, and not even trying to hide the fact that the actual rules (along with anyone who tries to enforce them) are going to be ignored.
Unfortunately positions like the parliamentarian are not part of the law of the land and are a procedure put into place by the Senate. That means the senate can remove them at any time.
It's a bad system and was built to work on "good faith".
But once they do, notions like the filibuster also fall apart. Republicans have been pretty in favor of using the filibuster whenever Democrats are in power. So they would be torching a really handy tool they like to keep around.
According to the article it says it requires only 51 votes to override. So "real" or not if the Republicans actually fall in line like always it once again doesn't matter what the Democrats in the Senate do. There are more than 51 (53) Republican senators, also Vance would vote for it. So they can have 3 people not vote for it and it would override it apparently. I thought the parliamentary would require 3/5 to override, but maybe that only pertained to some of the clauses they took out to ensure it did not require 60+ votes
Trump: "Haven't you idiots learned from my example by now!? We can do WHATEVER we want! Just do it. No one will stop us! A judge intervenes, we just get another to let us do it!"
The Senate has overruled the guidance of the parliamentarian, a nonpartisan staffer who interprets the Senate's rules, and voted 51 to 44 to overturn a waiver allowing California to set its own air pollution standards for cars that are stricter than national regulations. The Senate has only overruled its parliamentarian a handful of times in the 90-year history of the role.