Sharing his thoughts Thursday on the "Washington Watch" program, Rep. Greg Steube said the filibuster must be tossed aside for the bill to pass. He also said Senate Majority Leader John Thune is not being honest to suggest otherwise.
The Senate, in the early hours of Friday morning, passed a standalone funding measure to reopen most of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) remains a contentious issue, but the vote was meant mainly to restore pay for Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) employees to ease the chaos at airports.
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Coast Guard have also gone without pay, but the focus has been on historic lines of people waiting to clear security and board flights.
The important vote did nothing for the SAVE America Act, however, which is designed to ensure that only American citizens vote in federal elections.
President Donald Trump has pressured Congress to tie the SAVE America Act to any bill that would reopen DHS.
The spending measure now returns to the House where it’s getting a cool reception.
“In the dead of night, with only five senators present on the floor and no one there to object, the Senate rushed through a DHS funding bill that deliberately left ICE and CBP unfunded. Now, they are leaving town. No SAVE America Act. ICE and CBP unfunded. Senate Republicans just gave the Democrats everything they wanted and more,” Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) wrote on X Friday.
Filed originally by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) as the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, the bill passed the House but stalled in the Senate in 2025.
Revived, tweaked and renamed, it is sitting in the Senate again.
The bill requires individuals to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship—such as a passport or birth certificate—when registering to vote in federal elections.
It also imposes strict photo ID requirements for voting, excludes student IDs, and mandates that mail-in voters submit photocopies of their ID with both their ballot application and ballot.
Alleged disenfranchisement
Democrats say the increased scrutiny would disenfranchise millions of eligible voters.
A Pew Research poll last summer showed American support for photo ID at the ballot box at 83%.
As the filibuster remains, Republicans, the majority party with 53 seats, need 60 votes to pass the SAVE America Act.
Not only do Republicans lack the votes to pass the bill, according to Thune, they lack the votes to get rid of the filibuster. Many GOP lawmakers, Thune has said, are citing future concerns when Republicans find themselves as the minority party and Democrats are the majority again - with no filibuster to stop them.
“The only way that it passes is if John Thune, the leader of the Senate, nukes the filibuster and passes it with a majority vote. You will never get 60 senators to vote to only allow citizens to vote in our elections because Democrats aren't going to allow that to happen, Rep. Steube told show host Jody Hice.
Thune has said the measure could be passed through the budget reconciliation process that allows certain fiscal bills to pass the Senate with a simple majority.
However, reconciliation requires tying the SAVE America Act to the budget in some manner. Steube is skeptical.
Anything through reconciliation has to be budgetary in nature and has to pass what we call the birdbath over on the Senate side, which is a rules-based approach that the parliamentarian takes that looks at the bill to ensure that there's no policy provisions in it. It's only budgetary in nature,” he said.
It’s a Democrat parliamentarian
The parliamentarian serves as the chief advisor on Senate rules.
The current parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, was appointed by then-Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in 2012. She was previously an advisor to Vice President Al Gore.
“There is no way that a Harry Reid parliamentarian is going to agree for a voting rights bill to be on a budgetary reconciliation bill in the Senate. It's not going to pass the birdbath test over there,” Steube said.
“So, for Thune to even give this kind of inclination … He knows darn well the parliamentarian is not going to allow that to be attached to any type of reconciliation bill. The only way that these types of provisions become law is if he nukes the filibuster and passes all these great conservative reforms,” he added.
