Danny Pellegrino (10:34)
All right, first up, let's start with what the right is saying. The right is dismayed by the rulings, and some call on Senate Republicans to circumvent the parliamentarian. Many say the removals undermine the bill's budget savings. Others endorse a cautious approach to selling federal land. The Washington Times editorial board said GOP leaders must not Let Senate Parliamentarian McDonough derail their agenda. An unelected functionary wields enormous influence over the fate of major legislation. Elizabeth McDonough the Senate parliamentarian is using her clout to veto key elements of the House passed one big beautiful bill act that needs to stop, the board wrote. Although she holds a nonpartisan position, it's hard not to play favorites when implementing a legal standard that's as vague and convoluted as the Byrd rule. Under the Byrd rule, any senator can object to an extraneous provision that doesn't meet the criteria laid out by Senator Robert C. Byrd, the late Democratic leader. Ms. McDonough's decisions regarding President Trump's top priorities have raised concerns about her objectivity. She rejected a section that would make it more difficult for federal judges to impose nationwide injunctions. It does so by forcing anyone suing the administration to post a bond covering the full cost to the public of carrying out the judicial decree, the board said. When Senator Trent Lott was in charge, the Mississippi Republican canned an unhelpful parliamentarian who interfered with the Republican agenda. That's the precedent Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican, ought to apply now. In National Review, John R. Perry explored the dozens of provisions stripped from the bill. Given the obvious politics of the Republicans bill, winning bipartisan support to meet that threshold is not an option. Therefore, the reconciliation package must undergo a birdbath to eliminate all provisions that the parliamentarian thinks are more about making policy changes than adjusting the federal budget, puri wrote. Unfortunately, the removal of such policies will make the big, beautiful bill worse. The bill was already a mixed bag for fiscal conservatives. Now, over $250 billion worth of savings will have to go, as well as some immigration enforcement tools and limits on regulatory overreach. One silver lining is this birdbath is a provision on artificial intelligence that the parliamentarians surprisingly allowed to stay. This would predicate federal funding to states on the condition they not regulate AI for 10 years. Beyond that, there is not much to cheer for other than upholding the rules that sustain the Senate filibuster. Republicans will especially have a hard time filling the holes in their planned budget savings that the Byrd rule has carved out, the Deseret News editorial board wrote. Sell some public lands, but do it carefully, lee says changes to his bill are coming. That's good. We hope they include clear and unmistakable language that protects important public lands, which Lee has said all along is the intent of this bill, the board said. Lee has said the revised bill would restrict the Bureau of Land Management to selling land within five miles of a population center. He has said the land should be connected to existing subdivisions. Forest Service land would not be for sale. Freedom zones would be established to protect farmers, ranchers and those who use public lands for recreation. Those solutions are worth considering. Lee's original proposal would require 11 states to sell between 0.5 and 0.75% of all Bureau of Land Management and U.S. forest Service lands, or with a combined maximum 1.5% in some cases. The plan was to use the proceeds to help pay for some of the proposed tax cuts. In the One Big Beautiful Bill act, the board wrote, we're encouraged by any plausible measure that would reduce the relentless and ultimately disastrous accumulation of debt. However, the sale of land would provide a one time reduction of the annual deficit. What the nation needs is more permanent fiscal integrity, most likely through reforms to entitlement programs and a combination of spending cuts and revenue increases. Alright, that is it for what the right is saying. Which brings us to what the left is saying. The left welcomes the parliamentarians rulings, suggesting they uphold the intent of the Byrd rule. Some worry that Republicans could move to circumvent the parliamentarian. Others say the land sale measure would primarily benefit corporations and the wealthy. In the American Prospect, David Dayan wrote, the parliamentarian comes for the Big Beautiful bill. The parliamentarian has reshaped the bill in important ways. She threw out most of the Senate Banking Committee title, including measures that would have defunded or dismantled the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Office of Financial Research and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, Dain said. She stopped the repeal of emission standards for passenger vehicles and a pay to play measure whereby developers of infrastructure projects could avoid judicial review if they paid a fee. She stopped two bizarre home state gifts snuck in by Senator Ted Cruz, one of which would have robbed a space shuttle from the Smithsonian and ferreted it to Houston on the taxpayer's dime. The biggest move by the parliamentarian in budgetary terms thus far was her jettisoning of a provision that would have forced states to add matching funds to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program or SNAP on a sliding scale based on program error rates. Because states don't have reserves lying around to backfill the loss, it would have meant severe cutbacks to nutritional assistance eligibility, dayen wrote. It should be said, of course, that Senate Republicans could simply ignore the parliamentarian. But Senate Majority Leader John Thune, the Republican from South Dakota, has vowed to heed the parliamentarian's rulings, and so far everyone is proceeding as if they will be adhered to. Blowing up the current policy baseline would be the real test here in Common Dreams, Stephen Harper called McDonough an unsung hero. Republicans in the Senate made the bill worse over the weekend, an unlikely hero blocked this assault on the Constitution, the Senate parliamentarian. Will her ruling stick, or will Senate Republicans detonate the nuclear option to save the provision? Harper asked. Buried in the House bill's 1,000 plus pages was section 70302, which allowed Trump to disregard all existing injunctions and continue his unconstitutional policies with impunity. It provided retroactively that unless a court required a bond, it could not enforce a contempt charge for violating an injunction or temporary restraining order. The Senate proposed a different way to protect Trump's unconstitutional actions from judicial scrutiny, an enormous bond that would close the courts to the vast majority of potential litigants. The current attempt to limit federal court injunctions is among many provisions that McDonough struck from the Senate version of the One big beautiful bill, harper said. Unfortunately, Trump, who has urged elimination of the filibuster, doesn't care about preserving the institutional value of anything. If he can neuter the courts in the process of bending the Senate to his will, so much the better. Senator John Thune is about to get the test of his political career, loyalty to Trump or the Constitution? In msnbc, Hays Brown argued the land sale provision is designed to benefit the wealthy. The fire sale of public lands is something of a pet project from the committee's chair, Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee. Lee and other supporters argue that the provision would help alleviate the nation's housing crisis. But in practice, the sale of these lands would more likely be yet another boon to the wealthy. And in a bill already designed to facilitate a massive upward transfer of wealth, Brown wrote, he believes the West's vast federal estate is reserved for the enjoyment of very few an elite who want to transform the American west into picturesque tourist villages and uninhabited but nonetheless beautiful vistas. The Senate's version of the provision goes further than the one the House rejected, offering up almost four times as much land for sale. Crucially, the Senate bill would exempt one western state, Montana, and one of the state's congressmen, Representative Ryan Zinke, led the opposition to the House version. But leaving out the state still might not be enough to sway the Montana delegation to support Lee's provision, Brown said. As the Wilderness Society warned, letting this provision pass sets up a precedent to quickly liquidate huge chunks of America's treasured lands in the future, whenever politicians have a pet project to pay for. In this case, it would entail disposing of untouched nature in favor of newly built McMansions and second homes. All right, let's head over to Isaac for his take.