There's always a double standard at the heart of Washington, and Republicans never seem to benefit from it, just Democrats. I can’t seem to understand why.
DHS has now been shut down for over a month, and a deal is supposedly taking shape. Senate Democrats, after weeks of obstruction, reportedly appear willing to accept funding for most of the department, so long as ICE's migrant removal operations get carved out. Republicans are eyeing a two-step strategy: fund most of DHS through a bipartisan deal, then use a separate reconciliation bill to backfill ICE enforcement funding and advance key provisions of the SAVE America Act — voter ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements to register to vote.
That all sounds great. It’s something. But now we’re hearing that Republicans are tying themselves in knots over whether they can pass election integrity measures through budget reconciliation. Apparently, it’s not even clear if they can.
Really? Why not? I mean, this is the same procedural tool Democrats used without hesitation to reshape one-sixth of the American economy. Yeah, that’s right, that’s exactly how Democrats passed Obamacare. After they lost their 60-vote supermajority when Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts Senate seat, Democrats didn't fold. They improvised. Surely, if Democrats could revamp our healthcare system via reconciliation, then Republicans can secure our elections the same way.
That would make sense, wouldn’t it? But no, the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, would have to sign off on whether the voter ID and citizenship verification provisions survive the strict budget rule test that strips out provisions deemed insufficiently budgetary.
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Sen. Rick Scott is skeptical. "I think it's hard to do that. I just don't see how you get the SAVE America Act done with it," he said. Even Sen. Mike Lee, the bill's most vocal champion, sounded skeptical. "It's hard to imagine how the SAVE America Act could be passed through reconciliation. And by 'hard' I mean 'essentially impossible.'"
What crazy system of government lets one party — the Democrats — do whatever they want, however they want, yet Republicans always have things much harder?
On the plus side, Republicans do have options. Sen. John Hoeven argues there are legitimate budgetary paths forward: "We already provide funding for elections, right? 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." The reconciliation package would include financial incentives for states to implement voter ID — what one Republican lawmaker called a "down payment" on the SAVE America Act, using federal dollars as a carrot rather than a mandate. That's not nothing. I’ll take it.
Sen. John Kennedy isn't ready to give up either. "I would suggest to [Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham] that we consult the best legal minds that we can find … I think we have a reasonable shot." And Majority Leader John Thune left the door open: "If we find that that's a viable path, it makes sense to get some things done that we want to get done, we'll use it."
Find it.
