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John:
The House and Senate were both back in session this week.
At the very end of last week, the Senate passed legislation to provide new funding for military and defense spending, financial services, and foreign operations, including the Departments of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, State, and Transportation and passed flat funding, or a Continuing Resolution (CR), for the Department of Homeland Security. This was in large part due to liberal objections over the funding for ICE and CBP which are carrying out the President’s mandate to pursue mass deportations. Despite the rush, the Senate wasn’t able to pass the bills quickly enough to avoid a “temporary lapse in appropriations” also known as a government shutdown (Here is a brief explainer from the Economic Policy Innovation Center on the mechanics of Government Shutdowns).
After the bills were sent over to the House, due to the slim margins, the House decided that they needed to consider the bills under a procedural move that would allow them to pass with a simple majority. The new package passed 217-214. Both the House and the Senate now have two weeks to debate and decide what to do. Liberals in the House and the Senate took the opportunity to share a list of 10 demands in exchange for their votes to support funding for DHS.
Anna Paulina Luna, a conservative Representative from the state of Florida, has been very vocal about her desire to attach the SAVE America Act, which is legislation that would require proof of citizenship in order to vote in federal elections with a voter ID requirement, to any funding bill. As a result of this effort, along with other members of the House Freedom Caucus, there were promises made to consider this bill in the near future.
This has been coupled with an effort to force the Senate to consider the SAVE America Act by engaging in a “talking filibuster.” CPI’s Vice President of Programs, Rachel Bovard, lays out the case for how this can be accomplished in a new article in The Federalist titled, “Senate GOP Can Fix Elections, Boost Trump, and Wreck Dems with the SAVE Act.”
Here is the main excerpt:
“Here’s how it would work. Leader Thune would call up the House-passed voter ID bill. At this point, the Senate would be “on” the SAVE Act. Senate rules would dictate that a vote on the bill — at a 51-vote simple majority threshold — must be the next thing the Senate does. The only way to delay that vote is for a senator to stand up and speak — indefinitely. It’s harder to sustain than it sounds. To give an hours-long speech, a senator may not leave the floor, not even to use the restroom. He may not sit. He may not eat. If he so much as leans on his desk, he loses the floor, which either triggers the vote or requires another senator to begin speaking.”
Should this be able to pass out of the House, the Senate could soon be on the hot seat to push this through to the President’s desk.
ICYMI…
Sincerely,
Hugh Fike
Senior Director, CP Academy
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