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Senate Republicans may have left Washington on a high note early Saturday morning, but they left one major item on the table: passing the SAVE America Act.
It’s the bill that has dominated President Donald Trump’s attention span and garnered heavy criticism against Republicans in the upper chamber for not being able to pass it.
And despite guarantees from some in the party that they would object to leaving until Sept. in order to pass the voter integrity bill, lawmakers’ suitcases were packed and ready for the airport. It’s one of several agenda items that didn’t get finished prior to the lawmakers’ vacation, and one that will have to wait until next month. But its biggest proponents appear okay with that outcome.
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“We’re not dropping SAVE,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said. “It’s a matter of time.”
Time between now and the end of this session of Congress will be an increasingly short commodity to come by.
The Senate returns the third week of September and will be tasked with moving two massive bills dealing with cryptocurrency regulations and money in college sports, both of which didn’t make the cut during the upper chamber’s last week in town.
Then they’ll leave once again for nearly the entire month of October in preparation for midterm elections in early November.
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Another priority heavily pushed by Trump and the administration, taking another crack at the party line budget reconciliation process, was detoured, too.
That process is how Republicans hope to pass the SAVE America Act without Democrats getting the chance to block it with the filibuster. Republicans were ready to vote on the $150 billion budget blueprint drafted by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., until Trump intervened over concerns that it would fail.
The push was paused after Johnson, who just took over the Senate Budget Committee, Lee and Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., huddled in the office of Senate Majority Leader John Thune after speaking with Trump.
Johnson said Trump agreed that the best path forward was to “just work diligently through August into September to do an actually better budget reconciliation bill.”
Republicans want to crank up the defense spending in their budget framework — Johnson said that War Secretary Pete Hegseth made a “very convincing case” to beef up the funding by $350 billion as the war in Iran continues and munitions dwindle.
Still, whether the gamble to incentivize states to take up portions of the SAVE America Act will work remains unknown, given that the Senate’s rules chief will ultimately decide if the provisions pass muster with reconciliation’s guardrails.
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Taking another shot at reconciliation that doesn’t include cost-of-living elements or affordability-minded provisions hasn’t been a popular subject among Senate Republicans, especially heading into midterms.
Thune acknowledged that there was an appetite among Republicans to use the legislative tool to muscle through defense funding and try to include elements of the SAVE America Act.
The top Senate Republican, unlike others in his conference, hasn’t been gung-ho about turning to reconciliation for a third time. That appeared to subtly change early Saturday morning.
“I think at some point, we’re going to need to do another reconciliation bill,” Thune said.
Meanwhile, Republicans were able to accomplish several items on their to-do list Saturday morning.
They passed a short-term funding extension until early December to take away Democrats’ ability to politicize another government shutdown, advanced a bone-crushing Russia sanctions package and confirmed acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to lead the Department of Justice with the command of a Senate-confirmed cabinet member.
But Democrats blocked a voter ID bill from Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, and hurdles remained for the massive, cryptocurrency bill known as the Clarity Act, and Sen. Ted Cruz’s, R-Texas, legislation going after Name Image and Likeness (NIL) funding in college sports.
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Perhaps the most glaring omission, however, was a vote on whether to cancel the August recess.
Lee had pushed for a full vote on the Senate floor as part of the Senate’s push to reach a broader agreement on several legislative items. Instead, he accepted a voice vote, uttering a quiet “no,” on the floor against the forthcoming recess.
“Would it have been better if we had passed SAVE America already? Absolutely,” Lee said. “Would it be better if we had the votes right now? Yes. We, for a variety of reasons, don’t have the wherewithal to pass it right now.”
“No, no, no, [its] Democrats,” Johnson interjected. “The reason is Democrats. Democrats refuse to vote for any kind of voter integrity measure, that’s just the reality of the situation.”
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