Senate parliamentarian since 2012. MacDonough interprets the Senate's rules in a scrupulously non-partisan manner. She does not talk to reporters and does not talk back to senators. Her predecessor called the office a "silent killer".
Most bills need 60 votes to pass the Senate, the number required to end a filibuster. But a budget bill can proceed with only 51 votes through a process called "reconciliation". To prevent senators from sneaking non-fiscal policies into budget bills, the parliamentarian applies the Byrd rule, determining what counts as fiscal by weighing the nature of the policy against its budgetary effects—a process known as a "Byrd bath". Whatever she rejects becomes a "Byrd dropping". Her judgments are not formally enforceable but they almost always hold.
Senators comply with her rulings out of self-interest: they worry that ditching a constraint while in the majority will bite them when they are next in the minority. Adverse rulings also help avoid intraparty spats, allowing some members to promote controversial measures while permitting others to escape voting on them.
During the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, MacDonough vetoed elements including certain Medicaid cuts and a measure allowing the sale of federal land. Some provisions had to be excised completely and others rewritten before the Senate could pass its version on July 1st 2025. Republican senators accused her of being a woke, radical leftist who should be fired. Donald Trump told them to ignore her. Some wanted to limit her tenure.
Republicans refused to ask MacDonough about their plan to adopt a different baseline definition of spending to reduce the bill's notional cost.
In 2021 MacDonough ruled that Democrats could not give legal status to millions of unauthorised immigrants through reconciliation. That same year she rejected their bid to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. Democrats made a fuss but ultimately acquiesced.
The office has existed for nearly a century but has become much more influential and controversial owing to intensifying partisanship. Since mustering 60 votes is nearly impossible in today's Senate, more and more happens through reconciliation, including all the big laws of the past decade: Trump's 2017 tax cuts, the pandemic stimulus and Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act.
You can get *anywhere* in ten minutes if you drive fast enough.