Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., in his patented off-the-cuff, southern style, urged the “smart lawyers” in Congress and beyond to rework the SAVE America Act to pass Senate parliamentarian “muster,” so it can move to law with a simple budget reconciliation majority.
“You don’t know till you try, and we haven’t tried,” Kennedy said Wednesday night during the brief Senate debate window on the federal election integrity bill seeking voter I.D., proof of citizenship, vetted voter rolls and mail-in ballot reforms.
“And if this bill is as important as everybody says it is — and I think it is because we’re not just talking about voting; we’re talking about the confidence, the trust of the American people in our elections if — this bill is as important as we say it is, we should try it through reconciliation.”
Kennedy admitted he is “in the minority on this,” but joked that “sometimes the majority just means all the fools are on the same side.”
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“Sometimes someone in the minority can be right,” he said, noting Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., needs even more convincing on budget reconciliation than he needed to bring this week’s limited debate to the Senate floor on what could be President Donald Trump’s signature election integrity law.
There are enough “smart lawyers” in the U.S. to find a budget reconciliation form of the bill, according to Kennedy.
“I haven’t convinced Sen. Thune to that,” he said. “I haven’t convinced all my colleagues on either side of the aisle. But, I plan on continuing to chase them like they stole Thanksgiving and Christmas put together.”
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The bill might have to overcome Democrat filibuster in the next week before the Senate’s Easter recess, particularly amid the new urgency on other Senate priorities, including Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., moving to a full Senate vote to confirm him as the next Department of Homeland Security secretary.
The Senate can debate Mullin’s nomination as the SAVE America Act debate remains open, but it will be more complex than the normal confirmation process and take a few extra procedural votes, senior GOP sources told Fox News on Thursday.
The Senate procedure tends to be complex, but nothing a few “smart lawyers” cannot navigate, according to Kennedy.
“Anything you pass through reconciliation has to conform with the contours of the Budget Control Act: We call that giving a provision a ‘Byrd bath,'” Kennedy said. “And our parliamentarian decides what passes muster under the Budget Control Act.”
Kennedy dropped an “Oliver Wendell Scalia” challenge on the professed “smart lawyers” around Washington, referencing two of the most influential (and stylistically similar) Supreme Court justices in American history: Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Antonin Scalia.
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“We’ve got a lot of smart lawyers in the United States Senate: Every single one of them thinks they’re Oliver Wendell Scalia,” Kennedy said. “But we’ve got a lot of other smart lawyers in America.
“Here’s what I’m getting at: We have yet to try going to these smart lawyers, some in the Senate — and some, believe it or not, not in the Senate — and saying, ‘craft us a SAVE act that will pass muster under the Budget Control Act and can be blessed by the parliamentarian.”
The bill being most actively pushed by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, faces the tall 60-vote hurdle in the Senate, with Republicans holding just a 53-47 majority. The 45 Democrats and the two independents that caucus with them almost always obstruct any Trump agenda item.
But why fight the obstruction, Kennedy urged, just do an end run around it.
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“Some of my colleagues, those Oliver Wendell Scalia types, they say, ‘Kennedy, you know that you’ll never be able to do that’: They don’t know!” Kennedy said. “I’ve been here 10 years: I’ve seen things pass muster, survive a bird bath that I didn’t think had a hope in hell.
“And I’ve seen provisions pass the parliamentarians’ judgment under a Byrd bath,” he continued, also admitting, “I’ve seen them not pass that I thought were slam dunks.”
Lee hosted an X Spaces briefing late Wednesday night, dispelling the “lies” put forth by filibustering Democrats.
“I’ve listened carefully to hours upon hours of the Democrats’ arguments against it I have yet to hear a single argument that I cannot refute — and in fact have not refuted on the Senate floor in the last 24 hours,” Lee wrote on X. “Even worse, most of their arguments are based on a profoundly indefensible mischaracterization of my bill.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Lee’s office for comment on Kennedy’s budget reconciliation recommendation.
