MacDonough has played important roles in previous budget debates.
In 2017, she decided key provisions of Republicans’ efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, concluding they were more about policy-setting than budgeting. But she later blessed a Republican move to set the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate tax penalty to zero, which freed up hundreds of billions for additional tax cuts in the GOP tax overhaul.
Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz argued in 2017 that MacDonough’s rulings could be ignored by then-Vice President Mike Pence, saying that under the law he could rule repealing the Affordable Care Act including its regulations complied with the rules. Other Republicans, however, declined to go down that road, viewing it as tantamount to eliminating the filibuster entirely.
Likewise last year some advocates on the left talked of either firing MacDonough or ignoring her, but that doesn’t have support among senators, including Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who has repeatedly pledged to uphold the Byrd Rule and the filibuster rule.
MacDonough, the first woman to hold the top position, was a trial attorney at the Department of Justice before joining the parliamentarian’s office.
--With assistance from Erik Wasson.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.