Very few people are aware of the job of the US Senate Parliamentarian, or the holder of that position, Elizabeth MacDonough.
She has held that job since 2012, appointed by then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
The first woman to hold that position, she is the sixth person to be in that job, since it was created in 1935.
She is designed to be a nonpartisan official who determines what and what cannot be done under the “reconciliation” process in the Senate, which can allow certain budgetary situations to move forward without meeting the filibuster requirement of sixty senators.
Without that, very little could be done in a Senate which for only the fourth time in history has seen an evenly divided Senate.
The 47th Congress (1881-1883); 83rd Congress (1953-1955); and the 107th Congress (2002-2003) are the only times before the 117th Congress, where we have seen such a situation.
So this woman, Elizabeth MacDonough, highly respected, has tremendous power over the Joe Biden agenda, and now has made clear that immigration reform cannot be utilized under “reconciliation”, a blow to action on that issue, which seems unlikely to be able to be overcome!