The Anti-Democratic Role of the Senate Parliamentarian

Elizabeth MacDonough has held the office of Senate Parliamentarian for nearly 10 years, having been appointed by Harry Reid in 2012. She is only the 8th person to have held this office since it was created in 1935. Ostensibly, the role of the Parliamentarian is to resolve conflicts between prior established rules in the Senate and the incoming majority’s agenda. It is worth noting a few things about the office: It was not created by the constitution, the recommendations made by the office are in no way binding (and in fact have often been overridden in the past), and the occupant of the office is not accountable to the people through democratic mechanisms.

Setting aside for the moment whether the Parliamentarian is necessary for a properly functioning Senate, I find it prudent to ask why this unelected individual has been allowed first to derail the inclusion of a $15/hour minimum wage from the Biden Administration’s COVID-19 relief bill, the American Rescue Plan, and now to prevent the largest granting of amnesty to refugees in U.S. history from being part of the bipartisan infrastructure framework. Since Kamala Harris, the President (and tie-breaking vote) of the Senate, could easily overturn the decision of the Parliamentarian, I am left to conclude that the reason these rulings have been allowed to stand is that the Biden Administration wishes to appear supportive of a $15/hour minimum wage and a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants, when in fact they are more than happy not to have the Senate vote on them. I purport that the Senate Parliamentarian, in these cases, has been employed as a scapegoat, in order to maintain the status quo with regard to these issues without the political backlash reaching the White House or the Senate. This would be anti-democratic and morally depraved, if true. Yet if it were false, the rulings of the Parliamentarian in these cases would have been overridden.

Parliamentarian MacDonough blocked these proposals because she claimed that they would not affect the budget, and thus could not be included in any bill subject to reconciliation. This is patently false. The $15/hour minimum wage, as well as the pathway to citizenship, would absolutely have had budgetary implications in the form of increased federal Social Security taxes. MacDonough’s rulings have thus shown her to be either inept at her job, or malicious toward the proposed Democratic agenda. Either way, she should be removed from her post, and I would argue that we allow members of the Senate to settle such disputes as they did prior to 1935. If we the people dislike how they conduct themselves, as in any other matter, we can simply vote them out. This strategy would allow for democratic oversight of Senate procedures to include a wider swath of the process, and would remove the political cover from those who would seek to reap the benefits of paying lip service to a progressive agenda while safely clinging to the status quo.