'Significant blow': Senate rules referee blows up key piece of Trump's immigration plan [View all]
Source: Raw Story
May 14, 2026 9:44PM ET
Republicans were dealt a severe setback as the top Senate rule keeper called foul on an immigration enforcement funding package.
Migrant Insider reported that Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough "delivered a significant blow" by stopping the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol reconciliation package, which Republican senators have been pushing as the second step to fully fund immigration enforcement after the months-long Department of Homeland Security shutdown ended.
"MacDonough advised Wednesday that multiple sections of the package are subject to a sixty-vote point of order under the Byrd Rule," according to Migrant Insider, adding that the move is "effectively killing them under a process designed to require only a simple majority."
The parliamentarian wrote that the money for Border Patrol proposed in the reconciliation package "inappropriately funds" non-Homeland Security activities. "Republicans tried to use the Homeland Security Committee's reconciliation lane to pay for programs that belong in other committees," Migrant Insider explained. "The parliamentarian called the bluff."
Read more: https://www.rawstory.com/senate-dhs-funding/
Link to REPORT - Senate Parliamentarian Kills Core of Republicans' ICE Funding Package
The OP is referring to the GOP trying to use the "reconciliation" legislative process that only needs a simple majority to pass, to do an end-run around the Senate 60-vote Rule (cloture), instead of going through the regular appropriations process like every other Department/Agency undergoes. The Barbaric Butcher Bill with the extension of the tax cuts for the billionaires, was done by reconciliation.
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During the first several years' experience with reconciliation, the legislation contained many provisions that were extraneous to the purpose of implementing budget resolution policies. The reconciliation submissions of committees included provisions that had no budgetary effect, that increased spending or reduced revenues when the reconciliation instructions called for reduced spending or increased revenues, or that violated another committee's jurisdiction.
In 1985 and 1986, the Senate adopted the Byrd rule (named after its principal sponsor, Senator Robert C. Byrd) on a temporary basis as a means of curbing these practices. The Byrd rule was extended and modified several times over the years. In 1990, the Byrd rule was incorporated into the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 as Section 313 and made permanent (2 U.S.C. 644).
A Senator opposed to the inclusion of extraneous matter in reconciliation legislation may offer an amendment (or a motion to recommit the measure with instructions) that strikes such provisions from the legislation, or, under the Byrd rule, a Senator may raise a point of order against such matter. In general, a point of order authorized under the Byrd rule may be raised in order to strike extraneous matter already in the bill as reported or discharged (or in the conference report), or to prevent the incorporation of extraneous matter through the adoption of amendments or motions. A motion to waive the Byrd rule, or to sustain an appeal of the ruling of the chair on a point of order raised under the Byrd rule, requires the affirmative vote of three-fifths of the membership (60 Senators if no seats are vacant).
The Byrd rule provides six definitions of what constitutes extraneous matter for purposes of the rule (and several exceptions thereto), but the term is generally described as covering provisions unrelated to achieving the goals of the reconciliation instructions.
The Byrd rule has been in effect during Senate consideration of 23 reconciliation measures from late 1985 through the present.
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