US Senate parliamentarian nixes Trump's ballroom fund in budget bill

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, Report informs via NBC News.

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.