Conservatives shoot down Senate off-ramp on SAVE America Act

Conservatives in both chambers are sharply shooting down the idea of trying to advance key provisions of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act through the budget reconciliation process, arguing the strategy has little chance of succeeding.

Senate Republicans have been searching for an off-ramp to end the intense pressure campaign from President Trump and his allies to pass the GOP voting requirements bill, which they’ve been debating on the floor for two weeks even as unified Democratic opposition leaves it short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster in the upper chamber. 

But a proposal to pass pieces of the bill, which mandates voter IDs and proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, via the same partisan process they used for Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” last year was met with swift and angry pushback.

“The Senate parliamentarian picked out a bunch of what they call policy items out of (the) One Big Beautiful Bill (Act). So how are they going to move SAVE America through reconciliation? They have a new parliamentarian over there that I don’t know about? See, that’s the mess. That’s the mess the Senate tries to pull, and they can see that they’re doing something and they’re not. That’s unfortunate,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) said.

Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) echoed similar sentiments, noting that the parliamentarian will “kill” any provision of the SAVE America Act “in two seconds.”

“They’re not gonna let that through reconciliation. It’s policy. It’s not budget. It won’t work,” he said.

Reconciliation would allow Republicans to circumvent a Democratic filibuster in the Senate. But it also has strict rules about what can be included and the bill would have to go through a so-called “Byrd Bath,”........

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