The Senate parliamentarian has rejected the last item in Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill, cutting a $1 billion White House and Secret Service security funding provision tied in part to President Donald Trump’s planned ballroom. The ruling lands as Republicans try to push a roughly $72 billion package focused largely on immigration enforcement through the Senate with a simple majority.
Elizabeth MacDonough, who has served as Senate parliamentarian since 2012, said the security money falls under chamber rules that require 60 votes to pass most legislation. That means the provision cannot ride along in the reconciliation process unless it is rewritten to satisfy the rules that govern the chamber’s most tightly contested bills. The request had already drawn skepticism from some Senate Republicans before MacDonough acted, including Sen. John Curtis, who said he had “some really hard questions” about the ask and bluntly added, “You made that number up.”
Ryan Wrasse said Republicans would keep trying to revise the legislation until it won approval, and he posted on X, “Redraft. Refine. Resubmit,” adding that “None of this is abnormal during a Byrd process.” The reference was to the Senate’s effort to strip provisions that do not fit reconciliation rules, a process that often turns on the parliamentarian’s interpretation of what belongs in a bill. MacDonough’s role is not to decide policy, but to decide whether the language can survive the chamber’s rulebook.
The fight matters because the money was folded into a larger effort to use reconciliation to move spending items without needing bipartisan support, and because the White House-linked funding was tied in part to a ballroom Trump has said would be privately financed. That tension is now central to the bill’s path forward: Republicans want to keep the package moving, while Democrats are ready to fight any rewrite that preserves the political goal behind it. Sen. Jeff Merkley said, “While we expect Republicans to change this bill to appease Trump, Democrats are prepared to challenge any change to this bill.”
MacDonough’s ruling is the latest reminder that the parliamentarian can still stop even a majority party when the numbers do not fit the rules. Republicans can try again, and Wrasse says they will. The question now is not whether the bill will be rewritten, but whether there is any version of this $1 billion request that can survive 60-vote scrutiny while still delivering what Trump’s allies want.
MacDonough’s authority has shaped high-stakes Senate fights before. She became parliamentarian in 2012, and in 2000 she served as former Vice President Al Gore’s advisor in the Bush v. Gore election challenge. Her latest ruling leaves Republicans back at the drafting table and Democrats preparing to challenge the next version the moment it appears.
Related coverage on how the White House State Ballroom funding was already stripped from a Senate spending package underscores how sensitive the request has become. For Republicans, the immediate task is to find language that can pass muster. For everyone else, the answer is already clear: the original $1 billion plan is out, and the Senate rules said so.
