The SAVE America Act isn’t worth ending the Senate filibuster 

Republican President Calvin Cooledge (1923-29) once said, “It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.” That statement is as true today as it was then. Maybe even more so, because progressives in Congress can introduce some really bad bills. And if Senate Republicans were to end the Senate filibuster, the next time Democrats control the Senate (which could be as soon as January) the public will learn just how bad progressive legislation can be.

And yet President Trump and his MAGA camp are pushing to end the filibuster if that’s what it takes to pass the SAVE America Act. Regardless of how important you might think the act is, it’s not worth ending the filibuster.

First, a quick primer on the filibuster. Unlike the House of Representatives, senators historically had the right of unlimited debate. And in the 1800s, they occasionally exercised that right to postpone or quash a vote on a bill or nomination. By 1917, frustration over unlimited debate led President Woodrow Wilson (D) to propose changing Senate rules to allow a “cloture” vote — two-thirds of those present — to end debate, which became Senate Rule 22. In 1975 the Senate changed the number to three-fifths (60) of all senators.

Today there’s the “talking filibuster” and the “silent filibuster.” Senators can still talk for as long as they can hold up, and some have. But since the 1970s, they have typically used the silent filibuster to prevent ending debate, thereby killing a bill. There is some conjecture that implementing a talking filibuster might allow the Senate to vote on the bill without a cloture vote. But it’s a very complicated process and might fail, according to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.).

Because the Senate is so evenly divided along party lines, several members of the minority party have to agree to end debate. That’s an important check on the majority party’s ability to force a bill through.

The House of Representatives passed the SAVE (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility) Act last year. The SAVE America Act, which adds provisions to the SAVE Act, was passed by the House in February but hasn’t passed the Senate. Since President Trump thinks it’s the most important legislation facing Congress, he is encouraging Senate Republicans to end the filibuster if that’s what it takes to pass it.

The SAVE America Act has some important provisions — such as requiring a photo ID to vote, providing proof of citizenship when registering to vote, and requiring more frequent monitoring of the voter rolls — and many states already incorporate some of those elements.

Parts of the bill are very popular, such as requiring a photo ID to vote. However, some conflate the popularity of the photo ID requirement with support for all the bill’s provisions, which is not the case.

But without the filibuster, the next time Democrats control the White House and Congress, they could repeal the SAVE America Act and replace it with the radical John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which they would have done in 2021 but for the filibuster.

The reason passing the SAVE America Act is Trump’s top priority is for six years he has claimed the 2020 election was stolen — primarily by voting machines switching votes from Trump to Biden. Today, he says millions of llegal immigrants are voting for Democrats in federal elections.

If there were any truth to either of these claims, passing the SAVE America Act might warrant ending the filibuster. But no one, including Trump, has ever provided verifiable evidence of either claim.

In fact, all the available evidence refutes it. There are dozens of reputable polling companies and virtually all of them predicted a solid 2020 Biden victory. Even Trump’s communications director at the time, Alyssa Farah, told Politico the campaign’s internal polling mirrored the election results except for Georgia — they thought they would win Georgia. And Fox News paid Dominion Voting Systems $787 million to settle Dominion’s lawsuit against Fox’s false voter-fraud claims.

And while states have caught some illegal immigrants trying to register to vote, there are even fewer cases of them actually voting — just a handful out of millions of votes in any given state. Election fraud does exist, but it typically involves very few people and is usually aggressively prosecuted.

President Trump is guaranteeing that if Congress passes the SAVE America Act, Republicans will win in the November midterm election. But RealClearPolling’s congressional generic vote average — which isn’t affected by polling machines or illegal immigrants — continues to show a nearly 5-point Democratic advantage over Republicans. And that’s before the unpopularity of Trump’s Iran war is factored in.

The good news is there are at least five Senate Republicans who refuse to repeal the filibuster. And while Trump and MAGAs may excoriate them now, they will surely breathe a sigh of relief the next time Democrats control Washington.

Merrill Matthews is the Texas state chair of Our Republican Legacy.

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