Overview: President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are attempting to advance the Save America Bill, a major voting restriction proposal, via the budget reconciliation process. After failing to overcome the possibility of a Senate filibuster earlier, proponents aim to bypass traditional hurdles by framing the legislation as a fiscal measure. If successful, these provisions could significantly alter voter registration requirements and purge voter rolls across the United States.
S.E. Williams
As President Donald Trump continues to distract the nation with one trumpish act of deadly folly, indiscriminate cruelty or outright, laughable antics of stupidity, there is one obsession he continues to harp on that just won’t go away–his draconian voting restriction proposals.
In recent months, a sum of the most destructive voting proposals were packaged together as part of the largest, most restrictive voter suppression bill in recent history. ‘The legislation is deceptively named the Save America Bill (SAB).
The SAB was promoted by Trump and his enablers under the guise of “election integrity.” Had the Tump administration successfully moved the bill through Congress, millions upon millions of voters would be disqualified, discouraged, and/or disenfranchised from voting in future elections.
The good news is that some Republicans in both the House and Senate sided with Democrats and against the president as he put pressure on elected officials to pass the bill as soon as possible. He even pushed on the Senate to end the filibuster so he could move the legislation through the Senate with a simple majority of 51 votes since he could not muster the 60 votes needed to supercede a near certain filibuster. Trump however, could not secure the required Republican support needed to do so.
Faced with such failure and lackluster support for his voter suppression legislation, Trump and his team changed the game. Trump is nearly apoplectic about gaining control of the voting process and suppressing votes.
Trump hopes to impede and/or restrict voting to such an extent that no matter what happens over time demographically and/or politically, Republicans will remain in electoral control—maybe even to the extent that they manipulate a way for Trump to run for a third term.
Always conniving, Trump is now plotting to sneak through parts of his voting rights restrictions/limitations strategies and tactics by attaching them to a budget reconciliation package according to talkingpointsmemo.com and other news outlets.
“Those who rage against and work against expanding the electorate know what’s at stake. The goal is to block access to the ballot and to policy making because letting the agitators inside might yield new laws to remedy inequality or injustice. The fear of these elected officials is a loss of power, grounded in an assortment of causes like racism, sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance, or an inchoate desire to keep the world as it was when they sat at the peak of influence. They forget that the bygone days of political tranquility never truly existed—the agitators simply hadn’t amassed sufficient power to be heard. But they are getting closer to it every day.”
Stacey Abrams
Although the budget reconciliation process is supposed to be restricted to fiscal related issues, Trump and his team found ways to push through two bills already this term that are not budget centered but are very damaging to a large number of Americans. These include the life-altering so-called “big, beautiful tax” bill, and the life shattering “three-year ICE funding” bill.
I refer to the “big beautiful tax” bill as life altering because of the many people in need being impacted by cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and other social programs. I identify the “three-year” ICE funding bill as life shattering because of the individuals who continue to be shot dead by ICE officers without justice and the pain and suffering it continues to inflict on the lives of those they left behind as well as families who are being torn apart regardless of their immigration status.
Now, the president has set his sights on using this same budget reconciliation process to suppress the vote, even though voting has nothing to do with the budget process.
Republicans are now tying themselves into double-speech knots as they once again try to make Trump’s dreams come true through budget reconciliation. They seek to not only satisfy the whims of their “dear leader” but also to protect their own jobs because when American voters eventually throw out the “big baby” President Donald J. Trump, they are certain to want to throw the “bathwater” aka Republicans in the House and Senate out as well.
So, House Republicans are now saying Trump’s legislative proposals for voting will cost the nation about $10 billion…By quantifying it fiscally, they in essence are claiming it now meets the requirements for budget reconciliation because they want to allocate a certain amount…say a payment of $10 million to each state for implementing Trump’s voting initiatives. But, does it? Others claim reconciliation rules do not allow distributing lump sums of money with conditions like let’s say “must meet the Save Act requirements” to qualify for funding.
In the past, the Senate has been adamantly opposed to attaching controversial issues to reconciliation legislation, including things like minimum wage increases, etc. But, in the age of Trump, Congress has changed. According to the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, in order to add something to the reconciliation bill the issue should have what’s considered, “primary, direct, and substantial fiscal impact.”
The House is expected to consider the budget resolution this week and the Senate in August. This, however, is only the first step in the process. The next step is where we should focus—a reconciliation bill. This is where Republicans hope to work their magic and somehow morph the Save America Bill into a budget reconciliation bill and in the process, further weaken America’s current tenuous hold on democracy.
Democrats in Congress could not stop passage of the “big beautiful tax” bill nor were they able to prevent passage of the “three-year ice funding” bill. Both moved successfully through the reconciliation process and both measures are tearing at the social fabric of this nation’s democracy.
The Save America Bill seeks to change the law so that voter rolls can be purged of inactive voters without notifying them; require proof of citizenship in order to register to vote; require one’s birth certificate must match his/her current legal name. These are just a few examples of Trump’s proposed changes to voting rights in America.
The number of individuals who may be impacted by these changes alone is staggering. By some estimates there are nearly 21 million voting-aged citizens without the documents that would be required to register under the Save America Bill and nearly 60 million women in this country use their married names not their maiden names on official identification and thus would not meet the requirement for having a valid identification with the name that matches the name on their birth certificates.
If Republicans successfully navigate these voting suppression initiatives through the budget reconciliation process, American democracy will hang by a thinner thread.
We must raise our voices on this issue in whatever way we are called to do so.
Of course, this is just my opinion. I’m keeping it real.