The more President Trump and Republicans pursue the America First agenda, the more new levels of the Deep State reveal themselves. They are legion, and they need continual culling if America is to be run by representatives of the people and not the endless parade of permanent government subversives.

The full US Senate is set to take up the Big Beautiful Bill this week, and there will be all of the expected hair-on-fire hyperbole from Democrats and their media—frankly, so commonplace it has become little more than cultural background noise for most people.

But a very real part of establishment Washington has reared its head to leg sweep several planned cuts in the Senate’s Big Beautiful Bill—the parliamentarian.

This person, Elizabeth MacDonough right now, has, all by her lonesome, determined that the Senate cannot cut funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, cannot cut some Fed employees’ salaries, cannot cut the Treasury’s Office of Financial Research, cannot cut some Inflation Reduction Act programs and cannot dissolve the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. And, get this, the parliamentarian has decided that the Senate cannot even repeal Biden’s EPA’s tailpipe emissions rule. Rule! 

It is to the point already that Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., head of the Senate Banking Committee, now has to go back and find some way to reach just $1 billion in cuts, the functional equivalent of D.C. pocket change. And more “rulings” by the parliamentarian are expected this week.

So add the Senate parliamentarian to the list of District Judges, intelligence community operatives, and mid-level managers in every department of the federal government who are actively working to sabotage every action President Trump and Congress take to follow through on the promises the American people elected them to keep.

So, who is the unelected apparatchik now gumming up the works?

The Office of the Senate Parliamentarian is not a Constitutional position. It was created in 1935 to provide supposedly non-partisan advice on Senate rules and procedures. Its official authority is only to advise, but note that the media frequently uses the term “ruled” for the parliamentarian’s advice, misleading the American public out of ignorance or malice — equally believable. Current Parliamentarian MacDonough was appointed in 2012 by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid during Barack Obama’s presidency—a pretty significant red flag.

In truth, the Senate almost always follows the advice, as rolling over seems to be in many Senators’ DNA. It has overruled the parliamentarian only a few times. Encouragingly, the last time was just in May when Senate Republicans voted to overturn her decision regarding the use of the Congressional Review Act. The vote allowed them to overturn a waiver granted to California by the federal Environmental Protection Agency for vehicle emissions, which was deleterious to the entire nation. 

But consider that was again a waiver by unelected bureaucrats (the EPA is riddled with Deep Staters) that the elected representatives of the Senate wanted to undo. The elected representatives wanted to undo what a bureaucrat had not, but parliamentarian MacDonough advised that it could not be done on Senate procedures.

If the Senate wants to act in its role as the elected representatives of the American people and not subservient to an appointed functionary; if Senators want to do what they were elected to do and dramatically change the direction of the nation; if Senators want to be reelected for keeping promises, then they have two options. 

One, they can vote to overturn each ruling of a parliamentarian who does not seem on board with Americans’ vision for America and go through all of the drama and political warfare of each vote, or Senators can remove MacDonough and replace her with someone not friendly to Harry Reid, one of the nastiest partisan liars in modern history. There are precedents for doing this, most recently in 2001.

Senators must decide whether their procedures are more important than the will of American voters.

President Trump has demonstrated that this is the time for big, bold moves, for shoving aside the old ways that have not worked for Americans. Is the Senate, perhaps the most ossified of institutions, up to the task?

Rod Thomson is a former daily newspaper reporter and columnist, Salem radio host and ABC TV commentator, and current Founder of The Thomson Group, a Florida-based political consulting firm. He has eight children and seven grandchildren and a rapacious hunger to fight for America for them. Follow him on Twitter at @Rod_Thomson. Email him at [email protected].