LISA MASCARO
Sat, June 21, 2025
Activists with the Poor People's Campaign protest against spending reductions across Medicaid, food stamps and federal aid in President Donald Trump's spending and tax bill being worked on by Senate Republicans this week, outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)More
WASHINGTON (AP) — In another blow to the Republicans’ tax and spending cut bill, the Senate parliamentarian has advised that a proposal to shift some food stamps costs from the federal government to states — a centerpiece of GOP savings efforts — would violate the chamber’s rules.
While the parliamentarian's rulings are advisory, they are rarely, if ever, ignored. The Republican leadership was scrambling on Saturday, days before voting is expected to begin on President Donald Trump's package that he wants to be passed into law by the Fourth of July.
The loss is expected to be costly to Republicans. They have been counting on some tens of billions of potential savings from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, to help offset the costs of the $4.5 trillion tax breaks plan. The parliamentarian let stand for now a provision that would impose new work requirements for older Americans, up to age 65, to receive food stamp aid.
“We will keep fighting to protect families in need,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, which handles the SNAP program.
“The Parliamentarian has made clear that Senate Republicans cannot use their partisan budget to shift major nutrition assistance costs to the states that would have inevitably led to major cuts,” she said.
The committee chairman, Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., said in a statement that his team is examining options that would comply with Senate rules to achieve savings and "to ensure SNAP serves those who truly need it while being responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars.”
What's at stake in the big bill
The parliamentarian's ruling is the latest in a series of setbacks as staff works through the weekend, often toward midnight, to assess the 1,000-page proposal. It all points to serious trouble ahead for the bill, which was approved by the House on a party-line vote last month over unified opposition from Democrats and is now undergoing revisions in the Senate.
At its core, the goal of the multitrillion-dollar package is to extend tax cuts from Trump's first term that would otherwise expire if Congress fails to act. It also adds new ones, including no taxes on tips or overtime pay. To help offset the costs of lost tax revenue, the Republicans are proposing cutbacks to federal Medicaid, health care and food programs — some $1 trillion. Additionally, the package boosts national security spending by about $350 billion, including to pay for Trump's mass deportations, which are running into protests nationwide.
Trump has implored Republicans, who have the majority in Congress, to deliver on his top domestic priority, but the details of the package, with its hodgepodge of priorities, is drawing deeper scrutiny.
All told, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the package, as approved by the House, would add at least $2.4 trillion to the nation's red ink over the decade and leave 10.9 million more people without health care coverage. Additionally, it would reduce or eliminate food stamps for more than 3 million people.
The parliamentarian's office is tasked with scrutinizing the bill to ensure it complies with the so-called Byrd Rule, which is named after the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., and bars many policy matters in the budget reconciliation process now being used.
Late Friday, the parliamentarian issued its latest findings. It determined that Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee’s proposal to have the states pick up more of the tab for covering food stamps — what Republicans call a new cost-sharing arrangement — would be in violation of the Byrd Rule.
Many lawmakers said the states would not be able to absorb the new requirement on food aid, which has long been provided by the federal government. They warned many would lose access to SNAP benefits used by more than 40 million people.
Initially, the CBO had estimated about $128 billion in savings under the House’s proposal to shift SNAP food aid costs to the states. Cost estimates for the Senate’s version, which made changes to the House approach, have not yet been made publicly available.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer called the latest development a “small but important win,” but warned the overall package with other SNAP changes “still includes the most brutal assault to food assistance in American history.”
Schumer held a private conference call with Democratic senators Saturday and said they will continue lobbing objections to the package. “Senate Republicans are hell bent on paying for tax cuts for billionaires by ripping food out of the mouths of kids, seniors, veterans and families,” the New York senator said.
More questions and decisions ahead
The parliamentarian's office rulings leave GOP leaders with several options. They can revise the proposals to try to comply with Senate rules or strip them from the package altogether. They can also risk a challenge during floor voting, which would require the 60-vote threshold to overcome. That would be unlikely in the split chamber with Democrats opposing the overall package.
The latest findings from the parliamentarian also said the committee's provision to make certain immigrants ineligible for food stamps would violate the rule. It found several provisions from the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, which is led by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to be in violation. They include one to provide $250 million to Coast Guard stations damaged by fire in 2025, namely one on South Padre Island in Texas.
Still to come are some of the most important rulings from the parliamentarian. One will assess the GOP's approach that relies on “current policy” rather than “current law” as the baseline for determining whether the bill will add to the nation's deficits.
Already, the parliamentarian delivered a serious setback Thursday, finding that the GOP plan to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was a core proposal coming from the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, would be in violation of the Byrd Rule.
The parliamentarian has also advised of violations over provisions from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that would rollback Environmental Protection Agency emissions standards on certain vehicles and from the Senate Armed Services Committee to require the defense secretary to provide a plan on how the Pentagon intends to spend the tens of billions of new funds.
The new work requirements in the package would require many of those receiving SNAP or Medicaid benefits to work 80 hours a month or engage in other community or educational services.
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Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.
Senate parliamentarian strikes key SNAP spending cuts from GOP megabill
Alexander Bolton
Sat, June 21, 2025
Senate parliamentarian strikes key SNAP spending cuts from GOP megabill
The Senate parliamentarian on Friday ruled against several more Republican provisions in President Trump’s megabill, including language to bar immigrants who are not citizens or lawful permanent residents from receiving food assistance under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
The parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, also ruled against a key Republican pay-for in the bill, a proposal requiring states to pay for a certain percentage of food assistance under SNAP depending on those states’ error rates in delivering aid.
The proposal to shift SNAP costs onto the states was a sticking point with Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine).
The parliamentarian’s ruling could make it easier for Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) to pick up Murkowski’s and Collins’s support as the SNAP-related pay-for will now need to be stripped from the legislation.
The Senate bill as drafted would have required states to pay between 5 and 15 percent of food benefits in 2028 on their rate of error in paying out food benefits.
Almost every state in the country has had error rates of 6 percent or higher, which would have shifted a significant percentage of the cost for delivering food assistance onto the states.
The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimated that the Senate language would have cost North Carolina, for example, to pay up to $438 million for food aid in 2028.
MacDonough struck another blow against the GOP leadership’s agenda by ruling against a section to extend the suspension of permanent price support authority, something that traditionally has been part of the farm bill.
Congress passed a one-year extension of the farm bill in December after Democrats and Republicans failed to reach a deal on a multi-year extension of the law due to disagreements over SNAP funding.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, applauded the parliamentarian’s decision on Friday.
“The Senate parliamentarian has begun providing guidance that certain provisions in the Republicans’ One Big, Beautiful Betrayal will be subject to the Byrd Rule — ultimately meaning they will need to be stripped from the bill or altered to comply with the rules of reconciliation,” Merkley said in a statement.
“As much as Senate Republicans would prefer to throw out the rule book at advance their conservative families lose and billionaires win agenda, this process has rules and Democrats are making sure those rules are enforced,” he added. “We will be fighting this bill every single day until Republicans bring it to the floor.”
Provisions of the reconciliation package that the parliamentarian decides violate the Senate’s Byrd Rule are not eligible to pass with a simple-majority vote.
If Thune and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) don’t remove provisions found to be in violation of the Byrd Rule, the Republican package would need to muster 60 votes to advance.
The parliamentarian ruled against several provisions of the bill under the Commerce Committee’s jurisdiction, including a section that appropriated $250 million to Coast Guard stations on South Padre Island, Texas, damaged by fire in 2025.
She also ruled that language allocating $85 million to transfer the space shuttle on display at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum to a non-profit group in Texas would not be eligible for the budget reconciliation fast track.
Provisions found not to comply with the Byrd Rule would need at least 60 votes to overcome a point-of-order objection.
Senate GOP’s plan to push food aid costs onto states axed from megabill
Grace Yarrow
Sat, June 21, 2025
Sat, June 21, 2025
Senate Republicans' plan to force states to share the cost of the country’s largest nutrition program to pay for their policy megabill has been halted by the chamber’s rules.
The Senate parliamentarian determined that the cost-sharing plan would violate the so-called Byrd Rule, which limits what can be included in the reconciliation process, and would be subject to a 60-vote filibuster threshold, according to an advisory sent out Friday night by Senate Budget Committee Democrats.
That means Republicans will need to head back to the drawing board after months of heated debate about how to slash spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
The advisory comes after Senate Agriculture Committee staff met with Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough on Thursday to discuss their piece of the reconciliation bill text.
The cost-sharing plan, which was first put forward by House Republicans, sparked backlash from state officials and concerns within the caucus. The bill would make states pay for SNAP benefits for the first time using a sliding scale based on their payment error rates.
The Senate Agriculture Committee introduced a scaled-back version of the House GOP’s cost-sharing plan earlier this month. Without it, Senate Republicans will struggle to find enough cuts to pay for their policy priorities and the $67 billion farm bill package they included — all with an ambitious timeline of delivering the megabill to President Donald Trump’s desk by July 4.
Although the committee’s bill hadn’t received a final cost saving estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, committee staff predicted it would save around $211 billion in agriculture spending, with the cost-share plan making up a large portion of those trims.
MacDonough also struck measures that would remove SNAP eligibility for immigrants who are not lawful permanent residents and extend a farm bill provision that allows federal officials to update farm payment programs.
Jennifer Bendery
Sun, June 22, 2025
WASHINGTON ― A provision in the GOP’s tax-and-spending bill that would make it nearly impossible for anyone to sue the Trump administration for breaking laws is on track to be stripped from the bill after the Senate parliamentarian said it violates the chamber’s rules.
This provision, which is in Senate Republicans’ version of the One Big Beautiful Act, would require anyone seeking an emergency court order ― that is, a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction ― against the federal government to first post a bond that covers all the costs and damages that would be sustained to the federal government.
Judges grant emergency orders to temporarily halt actions like deportations, bans or drilling, while a case is being decided. They typically waive bonds in public interest cases, but under the Senate GOP’s bill, public interest groups, or even individual plaintiffs, would have to cough up millions if not billions of dollars in order to seek an emergency court order against the Trump administration ― money they definitely don’t have.
In short, this provision would allow Trump to serve as a king, free to ignore the courts amid his lawlessness.
The Senate parliamentarian, the chamber’s nonpartisan adviser on Senate rules, determined Saturday that this provision is not related to budget matters. Republicans are using a process called budget reconciliation to expedite passage of their tax bill, which allows them to advance it with 51 votes instead of 60. But this process is only for budget-related bills, so any language in the bill that the parliamentarian flags as unrelated to budgets is subject to 60 votes.
With Democrats united against this provision and Republicans only holding 53 votes, it’s almost certainly coming out of the bill. Democrats are already signaling their plans to invoke the so-called Byrd Rule to strip this and other language out when the Senate begins debate on this bill in the coming days.
“We continue to see Republicans’ blatant disregard for the rules of reconciliation when drafting this bill,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said in a Saturday statement. “Today, we were advised by the Senate Parliamentarian that several more provisions in this Big Beautiful Betrayal of a bill will be subject to the Byrd Rule – and Democrats plan to challenge every part of this bill that hurts working families and violates this process.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and other Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee put language into the GOP's tax-and-spending bill to make it too expensive for public interest groups to sue the Trump administration. Kevin Dietsch via Getty ImagesLess
On Tuesday, HuffPost asked Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) why he and other Republicans on the panel put this provision into the bill at all.
“Yeah, it’s pretty simple,” Grassley said. “There’s no constitutional authority. There’s no statutory authority for national [injunctions].”
HuffPost reiterated that the effect of this language is that it prices out public interest groups from being able to sue the Trump administration, something they’ve been very, very successfully doing for months. Grassley, visibly irritated, offered a confusing defense of this provision. He insisted judges don’t have the authority to issue injunctions, which they do.
“You’re talking about the authority of judges to put national emergency,” he said, his voice rising. “Forget about who can enter the courtroom for anything, because judges can only see cases and controversy. They don’t have any authority to issue a national injunction, but if you do do an injunction, you’re supposed to put a bond up, and they haven’t put bonds up.”
Asked again about this provision making it too expensive for public interest groups to be able to sue the Trump administration at all, Grassley said, “Well, it seems to me, if you don’t even have authority in the Constitution or in the laws, to have national injunctions, you shouldn’t even be asking that question!”
He walked off in a huff.
Senate parliamentarian deals blow to GOP plan to gut consumer bureau in tax bill
LISA MASCARO
Fri, June 20, 2025
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is joined by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., left, ranking member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, as he talks to reporters about Senate Republicans' efforts to pass President Donald Trump's tax cut and spending agenda with deeper Medicaid cuts, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, June 18, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans suffered a sizable setback Friday on one key aspect of President Donald Trump's big bill after their plans to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other provisions from the Senate Banking Committee ran into procedural violations with the Senate parliamentarian.
Republicans in the Senate proposed zeroing-out funding for the CFPB, the landmark agency set up in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, to save $6.4 billion. The bureau had been designed as a way to better protect Americans from financial fraud, but has been opposed by many GOP lawmakers since its inception. The Trump administration has targeted the CFPB as an example of government over-regulation and overreach.
The findings by the Senate parliamentarian’s office, which is working overtime scrubbing Trump’s overall bill to ensure it aligns with the chamber’s strict “Byrd Rule” processes, signal a tough road ahead. The most daunting questions are still to come, as GOP leadership rushes to muscle Trump's signature package to floor for votes by his Fourth of July deadline.
Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., the chairman of the Banking Committee that drafted the provisions in question, said in a statement, “My colleagues and I remain committed to cutting wasteful spending at the CFPB and will continue working with the Senate parliamentarian on the Committee’s provisions.”
For Democrats, who have been fighting Trump's 1,000-page package at every step, the parliamentarian's advisory amounted to a significant win.
“Democrats fought back, and we will keep fighting back against this ugly bill,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Banking Committee, who engineered the creation of the CFPB before she was elected to Congress.
Warren said that GOP proposals “are a reckless, dangerous attack on consumers and would lead to more Americans being tricked and trapped by giant financial institutions and put the stability of our entire financial system at risk–all to hand out tax breaks to billionaires.”
The parliamentarian’s rulings, while advisory, are rarely, if ever ignored.
With the majority in Congress, Republicans have been drafting a sweeping package that extends some $4.5 trillion tax cuts Trump approved during his first term, in 2017, that otherwise expire at the end of the year. It adds $350 billion to national security, including billions for Trump's mass deportation agenda. And it slashes some $1 trillion from Medicaid, food stamps and other government programs.
All told, the package is estimated to add at least $2.4 trillion to the nation's deficits over the decade, and leave 10.9 million more people without health care coverage, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office's review of the House-passed package, which is now undergoing revisions in the Senate.
The parliamentarian's office is responsible for determining if the package adheres to the Byrd Rule, named after the late Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who was considered one of the masters of Senate procedure. The rule essentially bars policy matters from being addressed in the budget reconciliation process.
Senate GOP leaders are using the budget reconciliation process, which is increasingly how big bills move through the Congress, because it allows passage on a simple majority vote, rather than face a filibuster with the higher 60-vote threshold.
But if any of the bill's provisions violate the Byrd Rule, that means they can be challenged at the tougher 60-vote threshold, which is a tall order in the 53-47 Senate. Leaders are often forced to strip those proposals from the package, even though doing so risks losing support from lawmakers who championed those provisions.
One of the biggest questions ahead for the parliamentarian will be over the Senate GOP’s proposal to use “current policy” as opposed to “current law” to determine the baseline budget and whether the overall package adds significantly to deficits.
Already the Senate parliamentarian’s office has waded through several proposals in Trump’s big bill, including those from the Senate Armed Services Committee and Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
The Banking panel offered a modest bill, just eight pages, and much of it was deemed out of compliance.
The parliamentarian found that in addition to gutting the CFPB, other provisions aimed at rolling back entities put in place after the 2008 financial crisis would violate the Byrd Rule. Those include a GOP provision to limit the Financial Research Fund, which was set up to conduct analysis, saving nearly $300 million; and another to shift the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which conducts oversight of accounting firms, to the Securities and Exchange Commission and terminate positions, saving $773 million.
The GOP plan to change the pay schedule for employees at the Federal Reserve, saving $1.4 billion, was also determined to be in violation of the Byrd Rule.
The parliamentarian’s office also raised Byrd Rule violations over GOP proposals to repeal certain aspects of the Inflation Reduction Act, and one from the Environment and Public Works Committee to repeal emission standards for some model year 2027 light-duty and medium-duty vehicles.
A provision from the Senate Armed Services Committee that would have required the Defense Secretary to provide a plan detailing how the boost of new funds in the bill would be spent, with quarterly updates, or risk reductions of $100,000 a day, was also deemed by the parliamentarian to be in violation of the rule.
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Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.
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