The fight over President Donald Trump’s SAVE America Act has moved from squabbles within the GOP to the top Senate Republican and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt publicly sniping at one another.
Leavitt suggested on Thursday that Trump’s patience was wearing thin with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., over his flagship election security legislation.
“His patience is running out. He wants to see as much of the Save America [Act] passed as possible by the August recess,” Leavitt said of the heavy-handed president. “He knows that’s what the American people want to see passed.”
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“And I would just add, you know, the American people … elected overwhelmingly Republicans to lead not just this White House, but also the House and the Senate,” she continued. “The House did its job. The Senate needs to do its job, too.”
But in the Senate, the political reality looks much different than Leavitt’s assertion that Republicans in the upper chamber weren’t doing enough. Still, Thune has become the dartboard for conservatives, online and at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., to throw their frustrations over the SAVE America Act at.
The SAVE America Act is universally despised by Senate Democrats, who argue that it would disenfranchise millions of Americans from voting. Thune would need Democrats to pass the bill, compared to the House, where Republicans can ram through legislation without Democratic help.
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Further compounding the issue is the fact that not every Republican is on board with the legislation.
And even though House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Trump are hoping that Thune and Republicans can pass a version of the SAVE America Act through the party-line budget reconciliation process, which requires 50 votes to work, there’s no guarantee that the support is there.
“Well, maybe she or somebody else ought to get on the phone and get the votes, right? It’s 50 around here,” Thune said. “So instead of, you know, pointing the finger at Republicans, they might think about going after the people who are stopping it on the floor, which is the Democrats. And if there are Republicans that they think are gettable, get on the phone. Let’s get them to yes.”
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And in the Senate, Republicans are growing increasingly frustrated with the expectations that are being made surrounding the bill that aren’t feasible given the math problem bogging the legislation down in the upper chamber.
Thune is considering using the reconciliation process to keep the government open, too, in the event that Democrats renege in ongoing negotiations to craft a short-term funding deal as the typical government funding process struggles to move forward.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., one of the most vocal opponents of the SAVE America Act, said that Republicans should turn to reconciliation to fund the government, and that some were “being dishonest to the American people to say that we need SAVE Act passed because there’s no way on God’s green Earth it can be implemented by the election.”
When asked about Leavitt’s comments against Thune, Tillis dug in.
“I have 1,000% confidence in Thune, and anybody in the White House who thinks he’s not a good leader isn’t qualified for their job,” he said.
