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House Republicans will bring forward this week a surprising and dangerous form of the voting restriction proposals that President Trump has been relentlessly pressuring Congress to pass for months. That act may well discourage or exclude millions of voters via draconian requirements for presenting proof-of-citizenship when registering, showing rigorous voter ID at the polls, or even purging voter rolls. Previously, Trump has pushed these notorious proposals under the guise of “election integrity,” termed the “SAVE America Act,” repeatedly and loudly, and they have even passed the House. But the proposals have failed in the Senate, for lack of the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster, thanks to unyielding Democratic resistance and an assist  from some Senate Republicans. Trump has asked  Senate Republican leadership to abolish the filibuster in order to get the legislation through, and even to fire the universally-respected Senate Parliamentarian, and has been repeatedly refused. It seemed dead. His threat is back, disguised in a new form.

Now, House Republicans have deceptively rebranded the voting initiative, seeking to get elements of it passed as part of a “reconciliation” bill. Such bills need only 51 Senate votes, but they are restricted to fiscal measures. Trump has pushed through two of these already, the “big, beautiful” tax cut bill of a year ago, and the three-year ICE funding bill this past June. So, the alarming issue discussed here is whether House Republicans have found a backdoor path to pass something so damaging to democracy, which was dead and buried under the filibuster.

The SAVE Act policies are blatantly anti-democratic. To begin with, the bill would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. Over 21 million voting-age U.S. citizens lack easy access to the requisite documents. Over 60 million American women have changed their name after marriage and do not have a birth certificate with the required match to their current legal name. It is Trump’s way, by invoking the myth of election fraud, to disenfranchise millions of voters. So, what makes passage suddenly a dangerous prospect?  

The SAVE Act has nothing to do with budget procedure. But now, House Republicans have said, in general terms, they would be spending $10 billion on these legislative proposals. It is the $10 billion which grounds the claim to fit within the requirements for reconciliation treatment.  But reconciliation rules would not just allow giving out the lump sum of money with a condition that states must obey the SAVE Act. That kind of condition would be “incidental” to the spending, not part of the spending. In the past, the Senate has rejected tacking on things like minimum wage increases or immigration reform to reconciliation bills. So, in the past, it was not feared that an attempt to move the SAVE Act using reconciliation could happen.

Hence, House Republicans must be contemplating ways they could pass much of the measure by dint of valid budget reconciliation language, namely, passing the test that it should have a “primary, direct, and substantial fiscal impact.”  

Here is a quick overview of the entire process. First, the bare-bones budget resolution, which the House Budget Committee reported on July 16, has to pass the House, and will in August be expected by its supporters to be put before the Senate, needing only 51 votes.  Passage of the budget resolution is only the first of two stages. In the second stage, a reconciliation bill, implementing the budget resolution in legislative language, would pass (its proponents........

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