Requiring voter ID to vote and proof of citizenship to register to vote has broad support across party lines. The Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act would implement those requirements in federal elections by amending the 1993 National Voter Registration Act.
But the challenge in getting it passed is not public support — it’s the Republican controlled Senate. Some Republicans have suggested the SAVE America Act could be passed through budget reconciliation, but such an option is “essentially impossible.”
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said he “would include the SAVE Act as part of that reconciliation bill, as well. We wouldn’t need 60 votes. We wouldn’t need 55 votes. We’d only need 51 votes … I would go get a really smart lawyer and ask them to help us craft a SAVE Act that can survive a Byrd bath. I would do those two things in reconciliation or at least open up ICE through reconciliation.”
Kennedy also pushed passing the bill via reconciliation while on Fox News, saying we “ought to be [passing the SAVE America Act] through reconciliation, which only requires 50 votes plus the vice president.”
Republicans are considering a reconciliation bill that would include parts of the SAVE America Act, according to Politico.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he is working “expeditiously” to write a “reconciliation” bill that could “implement elements” of the SAVE America Act along with funding ICE and the Iran war, as the Hill reported. NBC News only furthered his framing by claiming reconciliation “allows the Republican-led Senate to bypass the 60-vote filibuster rule and cut Democrats out of the action.”
But as Sen. Mike Lee posted, “It’s hard to imagine how the SAVE America Act could be passed through reconciliation[.] And by ‘hard’ I mean ‘essentially impossible.’”
Lee explained the legislation is “non-budgetary. It can’t pass with budget reconciliation.”
Reconciliation allows Congress to pass certain bills that pertain to the federal budget with a simple majority vote. But any provision in the reconciliation must directly relate to spending or be related to a budgetary change. The SAVE America Act does not include any explicit budgetary or spending provisions.
And as the House Freedom Caucus explained in a post on X, “Senate Republicans refused to force a talking filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act because it would have allowed Democrats to offer unlimited amendments. Now, Senate R’s claim they will pass SAVE America Act via reconciliation (which may not even be possible under the Senate’s arcane rules), which would … allow Democrats to offer unlimited amendments.”
If a provision is determined to be policy-related rather than budget-related, a senator can object and once again, the legislation would be back to the 60-vote threshold. The parliamentarian, currently Elizabeth MacDonough, gets to decide if the provision is budgetary or policy-related. The Senate could overrule MacDonough — with 60 votes.
Meanwhile, Senate leadership has not indicated it would pursue a talking filibuster. The talking filibuster would allow Republicans to pass the legislation by a simple majority vote without having to change any Senate rules. Such a method would require opposing senators to talk on the floor continuously in order to delay a vote. Once the opposing senators run out of their two-speech limit and exhaust themselves, the SAVE America Act would go to a simple majority vote.
Instead, it appears the Senate would use cloture to end the filibuster if reconciliation fails, which means the Senate would need 60 votes to end the filibuster and pass the legislation.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
