— Rand Paul: Unelected Senate Parliamentarian Nixed Eliminating Welfare Benefits for Illegal Aliens in Big, Beautiful BillHannah Knudsen 25 Jun 2025
The Senate parliamentarian has further reduced the scope of the budget reconciliation bill — otherwise known as the Big, Beautiful Bill — by ruling out the elimination of benefits for illegal aliens, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said during an interview on Breitbart News Daily.
“The Senate parliamentarian, you know, ruled out any kind of elimination of benefits for illegal aliens. So we have basically an unelected, you know, person works in the Senate has now decided that she can decide for the country that we can’t eliminate welfare for illegal aliens, which is, to me, insane that we allow that to happen,” Paul began, referencing the decision to rule out eliminating Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for non-citizens.
“What did she say about health care for illegal aliens or welfare for illegal aliens?” host Mike Slater pressed.
Paul essentially explained that the effects of budget reconciliation must be more monetary than policy, but it is ultimately a judgment call on what goes under which category. But Paul contends that removing illegals from welfare benefits saves a lot of money.
“They say that when you do this budget reconciliation, the effect of the legislation has to be more monetary than policy, but it’s sort of a judgment call. So is it policy, that you don’t want illegal aliens to have welfare, or is that budgetary? Well, it saves a lot of money,” he explained. “They estimate, you know what, it’ll save hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe billions of dollars.”
“And that’s all the guesswork, you know, CBO and somebody else’s guesses what will happen if we do it. But then she has the unilateral, sole decision-making power to decide whether that’s policy or that’s budgetary,” he said of the Senate parliamentarian.
“We’re allowed to do budgetary things, but not policy things. So for example, one of the legislations that I’ve promoted for years is called the REINS Act, and it would say any regulation passed by bureaucrats, by the executive branch, if it’s a significant or major regulation — meaning that would impact the economy over $100 million — then what happens is it has to come back and be voted on by Congress,” he said.
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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/06/25/exclusive-rand-paul-unelected-senate-parliamentarian-nixed-eliminating-welfare-benefits-for-illegal-aliens-in-big-beautiful-bill/