NATIONAL NEWS

Senate parliamentarian deals blow to GOP plan to gut consumer bureau in tax bill

Jun 20, 2025, 11:40 AM

File - The Capitol is seen in Washington, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)Credi...

File - The Capitol is seen in Washington, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans have suffered a sizable setback on one key aspect of President Donald Trump’s big bill after their plans to gut the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and other provisions from the Senate Banking Committee ran into procedural violations with the Senate parliamentarian.

Republicans in the Senate proposed zeroing-out funding for the CFPB, the landmark agency set up in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, to save $6.4 billion. The bureau had been designed as a way to better protect Americans from financial fraud, but has been opposed by many GOP lawmakers since its inception. The Trump administration has targeted the CFPB as an example of government over-regulation and overreach.

The findings by the Senate parliamentarian’s office, which is working overtime scrubbing Trump’s overall bill to ensure it aligns with the chamber’s strict “Byrd Rule” processes, signal a tough road ahead. The most daunting questions are still to come, as GOP leadership rushes to muscle Trump’s signature package to floor for votes by his Fourth of July deadline.

Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., the chairman of the Banking Committee that drafted the provisions in question, said in a statement, “My colleagues and I remain committed to cutting wasteful spending at the CFPB and will continue working with the Senate parliamentarian on the Committee’s provisions.”

For Democrats, who have been fighting Trump’s 1,000-page package at every step, the parliamentarian’s advisory amounted to a significant win.

“Democrats fought back, and we will keep fighting back against this ugly bill,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Banking Committee, who engineered the creation of the CFPB before she was elected to Congress.

Warren said that GOP proposals “are a reckless, dangerous attack on consumers and would lead to more Americans being tricked and trapped by giant financial institutions and put the stability of our entire financial system at risk–all to hand out tax breaks to billionaires.”

The parliamentarian’s rulings, while advisory, are rarely, if ever ignored.

With the majority in Congress, Republicans have been drafting a sweeping package that extends some $4.5 trillion tax cuts Trump approved during his first term, in 2017, that otherwise expire at the end of the year. It adds $350 billion to national security, including billions for Trump’s mass deportation agenda. And it slashes some $1 trillion from Medicaid, food stamps and other government programs.

All told, the package is estimated to add at least $2.4 trillion to the nation’s deficits over the decade, and leave 10.9 million more people without health care coverage, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s review of the House-passed package, which is now undergoing revisions in the Senate.

The parliamentarian’s office is responsible for determining if the package adheres to the Byrd Rule, named after the late Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who was considered one of the masters of Senate procedure. The rule essentially bars policy matters from being addressed in the budget reconciliation process.

Senate GOP leaders are using the budget reconciliation process, which is increasingly how big bills move through the Congress, because it allows passage on a simple majority vote, rather than face a filibuster with the higher 60-vote threshold.

But if any of the bill’s provisions violate the Byrd Rule, that means they can be challenged at the tougher 60-vote threshold, which is a tall order in the 53-47 Senate. Leaders are often forced to strip those proposals from the package, even though doing so risks losing support from lawmakers who championed those provisions.

One of the biggest questions ahead for the parliamentarian will be over the Senate GOP’s proposal to use “current policy” as opposed to “current law” to determine the baseline budget and whether the overall package adds significantly to deficits.

Already the Senate parliamentarian’s office has waded through several titles of Trump’s big bill, including those from the Senate Armed Services Committee and Senate Energy & Public Works Committee.

The Banking panel offered a modest bill, just , and much of it was deemed out of compliance.

The parliamentarian found that in addition to gutting the CFPB, aimed at rolling back entities put in place after the 2008 financial crisis would violate the Byrd Rule. Those include a GOP provision to limit the Financial Research Fund, which was set up to conduct analysis, saving nearly $300 million; and another to shift the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which conducts oversight of accounting firms, to the Securities and Exchange Commission and terminate positions, saving $773 million.

The GOP plan to change the pay schedule for employees at the Federal Reserve, saving $1.4 billion, was also determined to be in violation of the Byrd Rule.

The parliamentarian’s office also raised Byrd Rule violations over GOP proposals to repeal certain aspects of the Inflation Reduction Act, including on emission standards for some model year 2027 light-duty and medium-duty vehicles.

__

Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

National News

Associated Press

Trump says Gabbard was ‘wrong’ about Iran and Israeli strikes could be ‘very hard to stop’

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday that his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was “wrong” when she previously said that the U.S. believed Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon, and he suggested that it would be “very hard to stop” Israel’s strikes on Iran in order to negotiate a possible ceasefire. Trump […]

20 minutes ago

Associated Press

Guest lineups for the Sunday news shows

WASHINGTON (AP) — ABC’s “This Week” — Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. ___ NBC’s “Meet the Press” — Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Mark Kelly, D-Ariz. ___ CNN’s “State of the Union” — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem; Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.; Israeli President Isaac Herzog; former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton; Michigan […]

45 minutes ago

Associated Press

Air traffic controllers in Florida briefly lost radar after fiber optic line was cut

Air traffic controllers in Florida briefly lost their radar Friday after a fiber optic line was cut, but the outage didn’t appear to lead to significant disruptions like what happened after similar outages around the Newark, New Jersey, airport this spring. Controllers were able to continue directing planes across five states in the Southeast because […]

59 minutes ago

FILE - This undated photo provided by the Hartford, Conn., Police Department, shows Officer Robert ...

Associated Press

Man gets 16 years in prison for crash that killed a Connecticut officer

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A 20-year-old Connecticut man was sentenced to 16 years in prison Friday for causing a car crash that killed a Hartford police officer and seriously wounded the officer’s partner after fleeing a traffic stop. Richard Barrington, who was an 18-year-old high school junior at the time of the 2023 crash, apologized […]

1 hour ago

Bishop Micheal Pham, center, leads an inter-faith group as they enter a federal building to be pres...

Associated Press

San Diego clergy visit federal immigration court to bear witness during crackdown on migrants

SAN DIEGO (AP) — About a dozen religious leaders from the San Diego area visited federal immigration court Friday to serve as witnesses to “what goes down” as some cases arising from the Trump administration’s migration crackdown are heard, an organizer said. Some migrants have been arrested at the court by federal immigration officers. The […]

1 hour ago

FILE - An advertisement for the cryptocurrency Bitcoin is displayed on a building in Hong Kong on N...

Associated Press

Man whose parents were kidnapped after $245M Bitcoin theft has pleaded guilty to federal charges

A Connecticut man whose parents were kidnapped after he took part in a $245 million Bitcoin theft has pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering conspiracy charges and has agreed to testify against his co-defendants, according to court documents that were unsealed this week. Veer Chetal, 19, from Danbury, Connecticut, was one of three men […]

2 hours ago

Senate parliamentarian deals blow to GOP plan to gut consumer bureau in tax bill