GOP Push to Sideline Senate Parliamentarian Signals Path for Trump’s Big Budget Bill
By defying the parliamentarian on California’s emissions standards, Senate Republicans are rehearsing for a bigger fight: pushing Trump’s mega-bill past the Byrd Rule’s constraints.
WASHINGTON — In a maneuver as audacious as it is ominous, Senate Republicans are testing the tensile strength of Senate norms, poised to steamroll the chamber’s parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, in a bid to dismantle California’s auto emissions standards.
This calculated gambit is more than a policy skirmish—it’s a dress rehearsal for how the GOP intends to handle President Donald Trump’s sprawling legislative vision, the so-called “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” when it faces the Senate’s procedural crucible known as the Byrd Bath.
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The current clash centers on a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to overturn a Clean Air Act waiver, granted by the Biden administration in late 2024, that allows California to set its own stringent vehicle emissions rules—rules that effectively ban new gas-powered cars by 2035.
Thirteen other states follow California’s lead, making this waiver a linchpin of the nation’s climate policy. The House, with a 246-164 vote, including 35 Democrats, passed the resolution, but in the Senate, the path is thornier.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) and MacDonough have said that the waiver isn’t a “rule” subject to CRA repeal, a stance that Senate Republicans, led by figures like John Barrasso of Wyoming and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, are itching to defy.
This isn’t just about tailpipes and smog in California. It’s about power—raw, unapologetic, and impatient at the Capitol. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakotan with a reputation for cautious pragmatism, finds himself caught between the Senate’s traditions and the relentless pressure of Trump’s agenda.
Barrasso, the Senate GOP Whip, has been blunt, urging colleagues to ignore the GAO and MacDonough, dismissing the former as mere bureaucrats who “can’t dictate the actions of the U.S. Senate.”
Capito, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, frames it as a technicality, insisting she’s not “overturning the parliamentarian” but merely disputing the GAO’s opinion. Yet the subtext is clear: Republicans are warming up to bending the Senate’s guardrails.
Ignoring MacDonough on the California waiver could set a precedent for sidelining her when Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act —packed with mass deportation funding, tax cuts, and who-knows-what-else—hits her desk for the Byrd Rule review.
The Byrd Bath, an arcane Senate ritual, strips reconciliation bills of provisions that don’t directly affect the budget. Trump’s allies want to ram the bill through with minimal pruning, and disregarding MacDonough now could embolden them to do so later.
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Democrats, smelling blood, are sounding alarms. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, alongside California’s Alex Padilla and Environment Committee Ranking Member Sheldon Whitehouse, penned a letter calling the GOP’s move a “procedural nuclear option” that could “weaponize” the CRA to undo decades of agency actions.
Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware decried it as “a terrible break with the traditions and rules of the Senate,” while Hawaii’s Brian Schatz, ever skeptical, doubts Republicans have the votes, pointing to GOP Senators like Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, and Lisa Murkowski.
The biggest story here is the slow erosion of the Senate’s soul. MacDonough, a nonpartisan referee in a polarized age, is the last line of defense against legislative chaos. Ignore her here, and the floodgates open. Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” looms like a storm cloud, promising to bundle his every whim into a single reconciliation package. Thune, once a defender of Senate norms, warned in January that ignoring MacDonough would be “akin to killing the filibuster.” Now, under pressure from Trump and House Republicans, he may be wavering — or at least, testing the waters for the bigger bill and the Senate will have to decide whether it’s a deliberative body or a rubber stamp.