President Donald Trump's pressure campaign to force Senate Republicans back from August recess and push through the SAVE America Act is running into a wall of practical resistance — and so far, the threats aren't translating into results.
Trump wants Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) to either kill the filibuster or bring the House-passed budget resolution to the floor as a vehicle for the voter ID and citizenship-verification bill. But neither option is viable, reported Punchbowl News, because the math isn't there.
“It doesn’t have the votes,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who supports Trump's SAVE Act. “It is an exercise in futility if the votes aren’t there. Period, end of story. Do something productive with your life.”
A significant bloc of Senate Republicans still refuses to eliminate the 60-vote threshold, despite months of White House pressure, and Republicans don't even have the 50 votes required to begin debate on the budget resolution — let alone confidence that the SAVE Act's provisions would survive scrutiny from the Senate parliamentarian.
Rank-and-file Republicans are openly pushing back, while retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) has declared he won't back any package containing SAVE Act language at all. Defense hawks are demanding the Pentagon topline be roughly doubled before they'll engage — a gap Thune himself has acknowledged threatens the whole effort.
“I do think that’s an issue,” Thune said. “Frankly, if we’re going to do this — and what it’s going to take to get this done — you kind of want to make it worthwhile. I think the president asked for $350 billion… We’re at $67 [billion].”
Vulnerable Republicans, wary of a pre-midterm vote-a-rama that would force them into politically toxic votes on Democratic amendments – including on SNAP cuts – see little upside in scrapping their recess for a doomed effort.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) made clear that canceling recess wouldn't change the SAVE Act's fate regardless. Even Sen. Mike Lee's (R-UT) threat to force a recess vote — intended to shame colleagues into action — does nothing to move the actual vote count and only sharpens intra-party friction.