Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled on Sunday that it is "not appropriate" for Democrats to include an immigration reform effort in their budget bill.
Democrats had been wanting to include a pathway to citizenship for 8 million people in a reconciliation bill, which only needs a simple majority to pass the Senate; they argued that making millions of people citizens would have a major, positive impact on the economy. The Senate parliamentarian is nonpartisan and rules on technical issues, and MacDonough wrote that she found such a "tremendous and enduring policy change ... dwarfs its budgetary impact."
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