Johnson says the House will try to pass the SAVE Act through budget reconciliation after the recess

House Speaker Mike Johnson said the House will try to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act by attaching it to a budget reconciliation bill, a route that would let the measure clear the Senate with 51 votes rather than the 60 it has not been able to reach.

Johnson announced the plan on "Fox News Sunday" on July 5, days after a bloc of House Republicans blocked his previous attempt to move the bill. "We passed it three times in the House," he said. "We're going to try one more time on a budget reconciliation bill, and I think that will be the way to get it through the Senate and finally to the president's desk." He said the goal was to write a package that "will be irresistible for any Republican."

What the bill would do

The SAVE America Act would require documentary proof of United States citizenship to register to vote in federal elections and photo identification to cast a ballot. Johnson said the House has passed it three times. It has stalled in the Senate, where Republicans hold 53 seats and the bill needs 60 votes to break a filibuster. Democrats have opposed it as a bloc.

Why reconciliation changes the math

Budget reconciliation lets qualifying tax and spending bills pass the Senate by simple majority, skipping the 60-vote threshold. It carries a limit known as the Byrd Rule, which bars provisions that are not primarily budgetary. The Senate parliamentarian ruled earlier this year that the SAVE Act's requirements do not qualify.

To work around that ruling, House Republicans have floated a roughly $4 billion federal grant program that would pay states to adopt proof-of-citizenship and voter ID requirements, according to Punchbowl News. Recasting the mandate as a spending incentive is meant to satisfy the budgetary test. Whether the parliamentarian would accept it is unresolved.

How the last attempt failed

Before the July Fourth recess, Johnson tried to attach the SAVE Act to the annual defense authorization bill through a procedural maneuver House members called a "MIRV," which would have packaged the two measures together for the Senate. On June 30, 14 Republicans joined Democrats to defeat the procedural rule needed to bring it to the floor, 198 to 224. House leaders canceled the rest of the week's votes and sent members home early.

Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, one of the holdouts, called the maneuver a "procedural head fake" and said she wanted the citizenship and identification language written directly into the defense bill. "I will vote for the rule if you allow my amendment for voter ID plus proof of citizenship to be placed into the text of the NDAA," she said. "They're saying they won't, so you saw what happened on the floor."

The Senate problem remains

Reconciliation would still have to move through a Senate where Majority Leader John Thune has said a third reconciliation package this year would be difficult. Republican leaders have said for weeks that they do not have the votes to pass the elections bill on its own.

The approach also carries a cost inside the House Republican conference. Conservative holdouts are expected to seek deep cuts to social programs in exchange for their votes, which moderate Republicans have resisted heading into the November midterm elections, according to Punchbowl News.

President Donald Trump has pushed for a provision banning most mail-in voting. Johnson's version does not include a full ban. Johnson said Trump "understands that one is a bigger reach" and would accept a bill built around proof of citizenship and photo identification.

What each side says

Republicans backing the bill say requiring proof of citizenship and identification prevents noncitizens from voting and strengthens confidence in federal elections. Democrats say the requirements would keep eligible citizens from voting, citing people who do not hold a passport or whose birth certificate does not match their current legal name. Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina has compared the measure to Jim Crow era voting laws. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Republicans had made the defense bill "highly partisan in ways that are irresponsible when it comes to providing for the national security of the American people." Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, the senior Democrat on the Rules Committee, said there was a "zero percent chance the SAVE Act ends up in the NDAA" and called the effort a "shell game."

What happens next

Johnson has not set a date for bringing a reconciliation bill to the floor. Any package would need to pass the House, survive the parliamentarian's review in the Senate, and hold together through a party-line vote in both chambers. Even if it becomes law, states would need time to change their registration and voting procedures before it takes effect.