Senate Republicans Face Uphill Climb to Enact Trump’s Voting Bill

Senate Republicans are facing major roadblocks to their nascent plan to codify parts of a contentious voting bill using reconciliation. Conservatives are questioning the practicality of passing core provisions of the measure, and President Donald Trump remains noncommittal on a deal to end the Department of Homeland Security shutdown.

Lawmakers have made headway toward figuring out the DHS puzzle that has vexed them for more than a month, with Republicans proposing a deal that would fund more than 90% of the department. They would then seek funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a separate reconciliation bill that would likely be passed with only Republican votes.

More importantly, the reconciliation package would also include provisions from the SAVE America Act, which the White House and conservatives have deemed their top legislative priority. However, some of the bill’s most ardent supporters see no path for key portions of the act to pass muster under the chamber’s rules.

“I think it’s hard to do that,” Republican Sen. Rick Scott said of a second reconciliation bill more broadly. “I just don’t see how you get the SAVE America Act done with it.”

The bill would codify voter ID and proof of citizenship requirements and curtail mail-in voting, among other measures.

Budget reconciliation is a process that allows the majority party to green-light scores of priorities with only majority support. However, they can only be included if they comply with the chamber’s strict budget rules.

The primary components of the SAVE America Act are unlikely to do so, leaving conservatives to throw up their hands.

“It’s hard to imagine how the SAVE America Act could be passed through reconciliation. And by ‘hard’ I mean ‘essentially impossible,” Sen. Mike Lee, the leading proponent of the blueprint, wrote on X about the idea.

During a meeting on Monday evening, a handful of Senate Republicans convinced Trump to back their strategy to separate DHS funding and the SAVE America Act in order to end the DHS shutdown, with the voting bill portion the major lever to convince him.

A day later though, the president did not seem overly enthusiastic about the emerging deal, saying that he is unlikely to be “happy” with any agreement.

“Well, I’m going to look at it, and we’re gonna take a good hard look at it. I want to support Republicans,” the president told reporters. “They are getting fairly close. But I think any deal they make, I’m pretty much not happy with it.”

As part of the Senate Republican plan, the reconciliation bill would include financial portions of the SAVE America Act to incentivize states to codify voter ID requirements. One Republican lawmaker described it as a “down payment” on the SAVE America measure, with the money in an eventual reconciliation bill serving as a carrot for state lawmakers to chase.

“We already provide funding for elections, right?” said Sen. John Hoeven, a Republican appropriator. “There’s plenty of ways that we can go to work and include SAVE America provisions through the budgetary process … and providing funding to states. I think there are ways that we can do it.”

As leaders sort out the details of what can be included in a reconciliation package, the chamber will continue to debate the voting bill for the foreseeable future, including when the Senate returns to work after the upcoming two-week recess around Easter and Passover. Senators admit they don’t have the 60 votes needed to pass the bill, but the exercise is a demonstration of the party’s commitment to fight for a top Trump priority.

Lawmakers are currently attempting to hammer out the DHS deal by the end of the week with the hopes of keeping the spring recess intact.

It’s not only top conservatives who are pessimistic that key pillars of the voter integrity bill will ultimately be nixed. Republican leadership indicated on Tuesday that it remains an open question what the Senate parliamentarian would allow in a potential package down the road.

“We’ll look at all the options on SAVE America and we’ve contemplated reconciliation for other things,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune. “If we find that that’s a viable path [and] it makes sense to get some things done that we want to get done, we’ll use it.”

A second reconciliation bill has been discussed for months, but until recently, leadership had yet to figure out a path for members to pursue it. Some rank-and-file members have called for it to be used as a measure to address affordability issues, including health care and housing, ahead of November.

More recently, a reconciliation bill has been kicked around as a way to approve funding for the ongoing Iran war.

“It’s been my experience with reconciliation that it’s very, very hard to predict. I have seen provisions that I thought were a slam dunk as to surviving a ‘Byrd bath’ that got rejected and vice versa,” Sen. John Kennedy said, referring to the parliamentarian’s process of determining what proposals violate the Byrd Rule.

“I would suggest to [Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham] that we consult the best legal minds that we can find … that have mastered the Budget Control Act, and I think we’ve — I can’t predict the future, I have to wait for it like everybody else. But I think we have a reasonable shot,” Kennedy said.