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Earlier this week, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) said he and other GOP lawmakers in Congress would attempt to pass an election reform bill touted by President Donald Trump through budget reconciliation.
The reconciliation process allows a bill to be passed without a Senate filibuster being able to block it. Reconciliation can only be used sparingly, and is subject to certain rules limiting what can be included in the bill.
The proposed bill Johnson is hoping to include in a larger reconciliation package is the SAVE AMERICA Act, a measure that would require states to implement stricter proof of citizenship rules for U.S. residents to register to vote, which voting rights experts fear has the potential to disenfranchise tens of millions of otherwise eligible voters. Trump has prioritized the bill, claiming it is “desperately needed,” despite the measure containing virtually no provision that would make elections more secure than they already are.
The bill has passed multiple times in the House, but has stalled within the Senate. Speaking to Fox News on Sunday, Johnson said there is a “big urgency” among Republican lawmakers to pass the SAVE AMERICA Act.
“The president has that as a top priority, and so do I,” Johnson said, adding:
We’re going to try one more time on a budget reconciliation bill, and I think that will be the way to get it through the Senate, and finally to the president’s desk.
Johnson’s comments come after MAGA-aligned lawmakers in the House blocked a procedural vote last week to advance multiple other bills unless the SAVE AMERICA Act was advanced, too. The action by those legislators is similar in spirit to one Trump took last month, when he announced he wouldn’t sign a bipartisan housing bill into law until Congress also passed the SAVE AMERICA Act.
The plan to use reconciliation to pass the bill faces a major hurdle: Under Senate rules, a reconciliation package cannot contain non-economic policies. The SAVE AMERICA Act is not structured as a budget-type bill, which means the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, would likely block it from being included.
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MacDonough, who has served as parliamentarian since 2012, has blocked reconciliation proposals from both Republicans and Democrats during her tenure. Earlier this year, Trump derided her for blocking a provision in a separate reconciliation package, and demanded she be fired, falsely claiming she only targeted Republicans.
“Over the years, she has been brutal to Republicans, but not so to the Dumocrats,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post at the time.
Critics of the SAVE AMERICA Act have opined that the bill as currently written cannot be passed through reconciliation.
“Despite the speaker’s confidence, the reconciliation push would almost certainly fail in the Senate because the chamber has strict rules,” Democracy Docket reporter Jacob Knutson wrote this week.
“The meat of the Save Act cannot be done in reconciliation unless you’re willing to break the rules of reconciliation,” said Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, speaking to Talking Points Memo about the idea when it was first considered by Republicans this past spring.
Even Republicans in the Senate say the measure is dead on arrival.
“It can’t” pass through reconciliation, North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis recently said. “If it could, we’d already be talking about it. Let’s just stop playing games. Let’s stop being dishonest.”
Asked if the House could force the Senate to change course, potentially through blocking other legislation, Tillis responded sarcastically, stating, “That’s super cute.”
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