During President Trump’s push for his “big, beautiful” budget bill, either a betrayal or a political blunder occurred as an unelected bureaucrat became the most powerful person in the U.S. Congress. Before we go any further with a new budget — a process that is already underway — that needs to change.
Trump campaigned with the message that federal engagement on the abortion issue should be cut back. Although I disagree given the life-and-death stakes, I admire his commitment to tackle hard issues. And few things are harder than cutting federal funding to Planned Parenthood.
In the U.S. House budget, pro-life leaders fought for abortion vendors to be cut from the nation’s health care for a period of 10 years — a historic legacy for Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson and the GOP. But the U.S. Senate dropped that ball by choosing to play by rules that others haven’t always followed, allowing an umpire into the political game who seems to be playing for the other team. As a consequence, the funding cutoff now lasts just one year.
When key Republican-backed provisions of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” were gutted in the Senate, the executioner was not one of the elected leaders charged with representing taxpayers. The person wielding the blade, rather, was an unelected, deep-state bureaucrat: U.S. Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough.
The parliamentarian position was created in the 1930s as an advisory role to weigh in on the statutes and procedures guiding the legislative process. It was not created by the Founding Fathers to ensure a check on congressional decision-making, and it does not appear in the U.S. Constitution. In 2012, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a notoriously shrewd political operator from Nevada, appointed MacDonough to what has too often been a nearly lifetime role.
- Read More: lifenews.com