James' World 2

Hmmmm … A billion Dollars could feed billions of starving children!

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A GOP bill seeking $1 billion for the Secret Service to help finance President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom is in jeopardy as it faces pushback from a top Senate official.

The Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, said Saturday that the budget bill, which aims to fund ICE and Border Patrol alongside $1 billion to help fund the ballroom, needs to be rewritten to account for jurisdictional issues.

“A project as complex and large in scale as Trump’s proposed ballroom necessarily involves the coordination of many government agencies which span the jurisdiction of many Senate committees,” MacDonough told Senate offices Saturday. “As drafted, the provision inappropriately funds activities outside the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee.”

The parliamentarian wrote that the bill would be subject to a 60-vote threshold to pass, meaning it can’t move forward with a simple majority, unlike similar bills advanced using budget reconciliation.

Budget reconciliation is a parliamentary tool used to get around the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold, but it comes with restrictions on what provisions can be included.

The development is a blow to the Republican bill, but it is not the end of efforts to include ballroom funding. Senate Republicans had already been redrafting the provision’s language before Saturday’s ruling based on feedback from Senate officials, a GOP leadership aide told NBC News.

A spokesperson for Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans also told NBC News that “conversations and revisions are continuing, as they have been for days.”

It’s not clear if Republicans can rewrite the provision in a way that would fully resolve the parliamentarian’s issues. The budget resolution detailing what can be included in the bill only allows language to originate from the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

If Senate officials again find the ballroom project falls under the jurisdiction of a committee other than those two, Republicans may be forced to leave that funding out of the bill, as they likley won’t find the 60 votes needed to overrule the parliamentarian.

Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., said in a statement Saturday that “the American people shouldn’t spend a single dime on Trump’s gold-plated ballroom boondoggle.”

“While we expect Republicans to change this bill to appease Trump, Democrats are prepared to challenge any change to this bill,” Merkley said. “We cannot let Republicans waste our national treasure on a mission of chaos and corruption while turning a blind eye to the needs of the American people.”

Ryan Wrasse, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader John Thune, downplayed the setback for the GOP bill Saturday.

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The parliamentarian wrote that the bill would be subject to a 60-vote threshold to pass, meaning it can’t move forward with a simple majority as similar bills advanced using budget reconciliation. Alex Brandon / AP

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