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 House Administration Committee chair, Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wisc.) also has introduced his own voter suppression bills this year that overlap considerably with the SAVE America Act.

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. Trump used his Independence Day speech to advocate for the SAVE America Act and, after Sen. Lindsey Graham died unexpectedly, the president repeatedly urged the Senate to pass it in his honor. And in his speech Thursday night, Trump is expected to repeat false allegations about the 2020 election in an attempt to rally support for the bill.

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. 

Such a scheme would take effect in Fiscal Year 2027, which begins October 1, 2026, but it would take the federal government some time to stand up a new funding program, begin accepting and assessing applications, and then award grants. And besides the 14 states that already have SAVE America Act-like laws on their books, other state legislatures would need to first enact new laws to qualify. 

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. 

And time to pass the spending measure ahead of the midterms is rapidly running out. Between the August recess and October campaign season, Congress will only be in session for a few more weeks before November. 

In his push for the legislation, Trump and his allies have repeatedly promoted lies about alleged widespread illegal voting, despite multiple studies and voter registration roll audits showing that exceedingly few noncitizens even attempt to register, let alone actually vote. It is illegal for noncitizens to cast ballots, and those who do face prison time and deportation. As such, DPOC and voter ID rules would burden nearly every voter in a bid to prevent the miniscule amount — 0.000007% by some estimates — of votes cast by noncitizens.

The House also attached the narrow version of the SAVE America Act to the national security funding bill that passed Wednesday. But the Senate is expected to strip the electoral aspects out of the appropriations measure.