How Senate Parliamentarian Tripped Up Trump Tax Bill

Tobin Marcus, Head: US Public Policy at Wolfe Research, breaks down the latest concerns around the fate of President Trump's tax bill in the Senate.

Senate Republicans’ effort to use President Donald Trump’s massive tax bill to eliminate regulations on short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns and silencers has hit a roadblock with the chamber’s rules-keeper.

The Senate parliamentarian decided the policy provisions violate the fast-track budget rules Republicans are using to avoid a filibuster and pass Trump’s legislative agenda with only GOP support.

The regulations, first enacted in 1934 during the Great Depression to counter organized crime and gang violence, have long been a target of gun rights’ groups like the Gun Owners of America and the National Rifle Association.

Under the GOP plan, only machine guns and certain destructive devices would still have remained subject to that law, and states would have been forbidden from imposing registration or licensing requirements of their own for the newly deregulated guns and silencers.

The state preemption language was effectively blocked by the parliamentarian.

The parliamentarian is still reviewing a provision that would also eliminate a $200 tax — unchanged since 1934 — on the transfer and manufacture of the weapons subject to it.

Gun safety groups had derided the Senate proposal, warning it would make it easier for assassins and harder for police.

It’s the latest setback for Republicans as they race to enact a massive tax and spending package by a July 4 goal. The parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, has already ruled many other provisions violate the rule, blocking policy items that aren’t primarily budget-related from the special bills that are exempt from the chamber’s 60-vote rule.

While MacDonough’s advice is technically nonbinding and can be ignored by the Senate president pro tem or the vice president sitting as president of the Senate, both parties have followed the parliamentarian’s advice rather than erode the filibuster rule. Senate Republicans have said they will abide by her decisions.

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