Key senator presses to term limit parliamentarian, clear possible path for election law

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., is reviving an idea to end the current Senate parliamentarian’s blockade on the Save America Act election integrity law: enact a term limit for the position.

Blackburn told Just the News on Tuesday her legislation from a year ago to set term limits for the parliamentarian was gaining renewed steam as the GOP voter base stews over the chamber’s inability to pass President Donald Trump’s signature election law, imposing voter ID in citizenship checks.

“Now, when it comes to the parliamentarian, last year you had Senators Tuberville, Marshall, and I who filed a bill that called for term limits on the parliamentarian. And this is a discussion that has popped back up because of some of the decisions of the parliamentarian,” Blackburn told the Just the News, No Noise television show.

“I think it's appropriate to term limit the parliamentarian,” she added. “You know, you have different positions, different assigned, and different offices that are term limited, whether it's serving as on the Fed, or whether it's serving on certain commissions, or in certain appointments, and we think it's appropriate that the parliamentarian be someone that is term limited also.”

As Trump has pressed Senate Majority Leader John Thune to fire Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, Blackburn said more senators have rallied around the idea of her legislation.

“I can assure you in the last few days this is something that we have heard a lot about,” she said. “People are beginning to say, you know, that idea that you had about term limiting the parliamentarian, that is a pretty good idea. So, we'll see what happens.”

MacDonough has been in Trump’s crosshairs since she ruled that the Save America Act was not covered by the Byrd Rule, which allows legislation to be included in a budget reconciliation package that can pass with a simple-majority vote and avoid the 60-vote filibuster threshold.

Trump on Monday called on Thune to fire MacDonough.

“Senate Majority Leader John Thune should immediately fire the parliamentarian, who treats Republicans and everything they stand for horribly!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

MacDonough is no stranger to political controversy, since becoming the parliamentarian in 2012, against both Republican and Democrat efforts to avoid the filibuster rule. She fell out of favor, for instance, with President Joe Biden by refusing to allow the Byrd Rule when Democrats tried to provide mass amnesty to illegal aliens.