Obamacare’s little secret
Meet the most important person you don’t know.
The parliamentarian is typically a little-known person — at most, MacDonough can sometimes be spotted on C-SPAN quietly advising the Senate’s presiding officer. But when the post has become controversial in the past, it’s often been over the thorny decisions around reconciliation.
.. In 2001, Republicans fired Robert Dove as parliamentarian after he ruled against them on how many reconciliation bills could be used. That was actually his second stint in the job: Democrats had fired Dove when they took the majority in 1987.
.. Her tenure has been so free of controversy that many lawmakers interviewed said they didn’t know much about her, or even her name.
.. “I would hope and trust that her reputation is a straight shooter, because she is,” Frumin said of MacDonough. “She’s a nonpartisan professional. She listens. She’s a very good listener. And she’s very smart. And she will have possibly some difficult decisions to make, but she’s absolutely the right person to do that.”
.. “Every generation or so this comes along,” he said. “But this is what the parliamentarian does.”