The BBB Isn’t Quite as Big or as Beautiful As it Was Last Week

Early Saturday, it looked as if the Senate’s reconciliation bill would not include the Stop Harassing Owners of Rifles Today Act (SHORT) and the Hearing Protection Act (HPA), due to the Senate’s language violating the Byrd Rule.

What’s the Byrd Rule? Named for the late Senator Robert Byrd, it restricts the inclusion of provisions not directly related to budgetary or revenue matters in reconciliation legislation. The goal is to ensure a smooth, expedited passage of bills with clear fiscal impact.

Why would someone want to slip policy items in a reconciliation bill? Because it only takes a simple majority to pass rather than 60 votes.

So, by adhering to the Byrd Rule, the Senate can get important legislation through without burdening it with add-on policy initiatives that wouldn’t pass the 60-vote threshold outside of the reconciliation process.

That’s why the Senate Parliamentarian ruled that Pro 2A-backed efforts to remove short-barrel rifles, short-barrel shotguns, and suppressors from regulation under the NFA wasn’t Byrd compliant—even though both measures included language that would eliminate the $200 tax stamp requirement for purchase.

This approach—bundling deregulation under the NFA with elimination of the transfer tax was known in the gun rights community as the “no compromise” approach. Unfortunately for the various pro–Second Amendment organizations that rallied behind and pushed the no compromise plan, the Senate Parliamentarian didn’t compromise.

That didn’t sit well with those groups, which signed a joint statement condemning the removal of the SHORT Act and HPA from the Big Beautiful Bill and called for the Republican-controlled Senate to overrule the decision—or for Majority Leader John Thune to outright remove the Parliamentarian.

Their statement framed both the SHORT Act and HPA as tax, not regulatory, issues. The Senate Parliamentarian differed. So SHORT and HPA were here one day and gone the next...until.

Until Senate supporters regrouped Saturday evening and repackaged both bills with new language that eliminates the $200 transfer tax but leaves in place NFA regulation of short-barrel rifles, short-barrel shotguns, and suppressors. For those keeping score, we’ve gone from no compromise to, well, a compromise. And one that benefits consumers and manufacturers.

The Senate is now debating its final version of the Big Beautiful Bill today with a final vote expected some time today. From The Hill . . .

The hours-long voting session was expected to start overnight, but GOP leaders opted to push it until 9 a.m. after a grueling weekend, which included Democrats forcing the Senate clerks to read all 940 pages of the bill. That process took nearly 16 hours to complete, and was followed by debate on the bill itself that lasted into Monday morning before the chamber finally recessed. 

“The debate and eventually voting on the ‘big, beautiful bill.’ has begun. Hallelujah. It’s taken a while for us to get there,” Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on the floor on Sunday afternoon. “I’ve worked a long time with my colleagues to get to where we are today.” 

Let’s assume this new language on SHORT and HPA remains intact and the Senate passes the bill. The next step is for the Senate and House versions—both of which include NFA tax elimination without changing NFA regulation—to go to a conference committee that will reconcile the differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill.

Once that’s complete, the final bill will be voted on by both houses again. It will then head to President Trump’s desk for signature.

That’s a roundabout way to get where many hoped we’d go and it’s less than we wanted—but it’s still a win. Sure, it’s not a blowout victory with deregulation and tax stamp elimination, but it’s a step forward.

It bears noting that this is essentially the path laid out by Joe Kurtenbach of Silencer Central in an interview Friday with Outdoor Life, after the Parliamentarian eliminated the HPA and SHORT Act.

Optimistic, Kurtenbach said . . .

There’s still a lot of game left to be played… What’s nice is the House language has already passed one body of the legislature, so [using the House version of the HPA in the Senate] might be the easiest substitution to make.

Dan Zimmerman made the same point here on Friday, emphasizing that the House version doesn’t deregulate suppressors, but does eliminate the tax burden on consumers—presumably making it a fiscal matter rather than a policy change in the eyes of the Parliamentarian, thereby satisfying the Byrd Rule.

So now we play the wait-and-see game. In the meantime, for those of you a little rusty on your Civics 101, here’s a refresher available in this short documentary and this short documentary on how the legislative process works.

UPDATE: The Senate Parliamentarian passed on the language eliminating the NFA’s of $200 transfer tax this morning, allowing it ti stay in the reconciliation bill.