The Senate was forced to use an amendment to get around the Democrat-appointed parliamentarian in order to get illegals off of Medicaid, but they couldn’t do it.

The amendment summary states “To reduce Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) for the Medicaid expansion to 80 percent in expansion States that provide State-funded coverage to aliens who are not qualified aliens and who are have been charged with or convicted of certain acts.”

In other words, if states insist on giving illegals Medicaid, the federal government would reduce their funding level to 80 percent.

The vote failed 56-44, with 4 Democrats voting for it and one Republican voting against it. That one Republican was Susan Collins, but it wouldn’t have made a difference if she’d voted for it. The needed to get 60 votes because of the parliamentarian, and clearly they weren’t close enough.

I get that Thune doesn’t want to get rid of the parliamentarian during this process because of the way it would look, but he really should have appointed a new parliamentarian back in January. This is absolutely a knock against his leadership.