House Republicans relaunch SAVE America Act push in new reconciliation package

House Republicans are once again attempting to enact a version of President Donald Trump's long-sought SAVE America Act, a sweeping voter suppression measure that the Senate has repeatedly refused to pass.

This time, the GOP leadership is trying to get the anti-voting provisions through the Senate via the budget reconciliation process, which allows the chamber to bypass the filibuster's 60-vote threshold and pass legislation with a simple majority.

Republicans included $10 billion worth of election-related grants over a 10-year period in the $95 billion legislative framework for funding the Iran war and bailing out farmers hit by Trump's tariffs. Those grants would be used to coax states into adopting anti-voting measures like those in the SAVE America Act.

The House Budget Committee voted 20-14 Thursday to adopt the reconciliation resolution. Ahead of the vote, some Republicans threatened to vote against the plan, and its passage on the House floor is far from guaranteed.

It's unclear what elements of the SAVE America Act the House will ultimately try to pass. The procedural outline merely authorizes the House Administration Committee to draft legislation with a $10 billion budget.

The version Trump has pushed most forcefully for would require voters to show documentary proof of citizenship (DPOC) when registering and ID when casting their ballots. It would also ban no-excuse mail voting, gender affirming care for minors, and transgender athletes in women's sports.

The House passed a narrower version of the SAVE America Act in February that only included the DPOC and voter ID requirements, but it floundered in the Senate after a protracted floor debate.

The bill's backers have already tried to attach the measure to earlier reconciliation bills, but those attempts fell short of a majority, with some Republicans joining Democrats in opposition.

One of those opponents, retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), took to the Senate floor Thursday promising he would block any new efforts to pass the bill. "If I see a reconciliation bill come from the House with another failed attempt to confuse this election, I will use every device I have available to slow down the wheels of government until people cop a clue and do the math," Tillis said.

Still, Trump has refused to let the proposal die.

Legislation passed through reconciliation must be budgetary in nature. The Senate Parliamentarian, the chamber's procedural umpire, ruled last month that the SAVE American provisions did not fit the bill, leading Trump to call for her ouster.

By turning the SAVE America Act's dictates into conditions on federal grants, supporters hope it will survive a Senate "Byrd bath," the procedure — named after former West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd — for stripping non-budgetary measures out of reconciliation bills. But budget experts have said that's unlikely to work.

"Finding a workaround to tie it to budgetary-related matters would be unlikely to pass muster," Matt Glassman, a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Government Affairs Institute, told Democracy Docket in March.

And even if the Senate did pass a $10 billion grant program conditioned on states implementing their own versions of the SAVE America Act, there would be no impact on the upcoming midterm elections.

With or without the voting restrictions, Republicans' third reconciliation package this Congress might fail. The House budgetary plan did not include spending offsets to cover its costs, something the incoming Senate Budget chairman, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), says he will insist on adding.