Save the SAVE Act?
So today it’s been announced that the SAVE Act will be brought up for a Senate vote, and it will almost certainly go down:
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., plans to bring the bill to the floor next week, but Republicans won’t take the route of launching into a talking filibuster despite pressure from President Donald Trump and the GOP base to do so.
“We don’t have the votes either to proceed, get on a talking filibuster, nor to sustain one if we got on it,” Thune said. “But that is just a function of math, and there isn’t anything I can do about that. I mean, I understand the president’s got a passion to see this issue addressed, as we all do.” …
While the end result after an exhaustive marathon of debate would allow Republicans to pass the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act at a simple-majority threshold, Thune has time and again warned that the votes aren’t there among Republicans to block Democratic amendments that could completely reshape the bill.
Still, Trump and a sphere of online conservative voices are demanding that the bill pass at any cost. Trump warned that if it does not, Republicans will fall flat in the upcoming midterm election cycle.
The online chatter is that the GOP doesn’t want to pass it. I think it’s much more accurate to say that a certain minority of them don’t, but they hold a lot of power because of the tiny margin the GOP has in terms of numbers.
But I am convinced that – although I strongly support the bill – people are exaggerating what it would accomplish in this election cycle, if passed. There would be immediate court challenges that would probably tie it up so that it couldn’t be implemented prior to the 2026 election.
If the Democrats win the House in 2026, they will impeach Trump again. But I have to say, who cares at this point? It’s meaningless unless they could convict and remove him, which they couldn’t because they would not have those kinds of numbers in the Senate, even with the Murkowskis of the world. Plus, removing Trump would give them Vance. Not really what they want, either.
And what if they do gain the Senate, too? They would definitely nuke the filibuster. But they wouldn’t get past Trump’s veto.
I think the whole thing hinges on 2028, not now. And yet everyone is so fired up about this that a failure to pass it could have the result of many voters on the right punishing the GOP in the midterms. That would be a real self-own, IMHO.
I agree that even if passed it would be tied up in court cases through the 2026 midterms. Getting Democrats on record opposing voter ID, which a large majority of voters support, might be the best use of this issue at this point.
Even though I agree with all the line items I wish the sports-related things weren’t part of this — voting security is paramount.
many voters on the right punishing the GOP in the midterms. That would be a real self-own, IMHO.
Ideally they would be punished in the primaries. Failing to hold the GOP accountable for not using the power it has is the biggest self-own of all. It puts us on a “plantation” like Dem interest groups are on–but with the difference that the Dems occasionally give their base what they want.
The RINOs have no principles and want to keep their seats. If they are in danger of losing their seats for not advancing our goals, they will start to advance our goals. If they are not, they won’t. We don’t need a bloodbath, just a few pour encourger les autres.
Niketas:
You write:
Depends on the RINO. For example, if Murkowski were defeated in a primary, her replacement would probably win the seat, because Alaska is still pretty much a red state. If Collins is primaried and a more conservative Republican replaces her as the candidate, that person would almost certainly lose, and that person would help the Democrats get majority control. One has to be very careful who is primaried.
I think we, and accordingly the people who represent us in the House and Senate, would be wise to quit pushing the citizenship identification part of all this quite so hard and insist, both uncompromisingly harder and from the outset, to remove all attempts and policies allowing anyone to vote by mail or online under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. We would also improve the whole thing by requiring all voters to come LIVE AND IN PERSON to their designated polling places on voting day, and under no circumstances to vote after that day. There should be exceptions for, say, military service members–but even those should be allowed under few and carefully and tightly controlled times within a week prior to Election Day.
I’m all for the SAVE act, of course, and I have a dream that someday a bill like it will pass.
But this bill is a big epochal change — at the level of the Civil Rights Act. Such things usually take more than the first try to push it over the top.
Keep on pushin’!
What good does it do if non-citizens can continue to vote?
That is an important qualifier, more important than the method used to cast the vote.
Sheesh.
I don’t buy Thune’s weak sauce argument. He can negotiate future legislation, give something the Democrats want and need, in order to get enough votes to pass the SAVE ACT.
I also don’t care if it will be challenged in court, everything is.
The point is to show Republican voters that you will fight, fight, fight on the 80/20 issues.
I am so tired of weak Republicans. I’m not super enthusiastic about voting for these types, but obviously they represent the lesser evil. When Democrats have the majority, they use it without remorse or hesitation.
James Sisco:
There is noting Democrats want that he could give them that would be worth their caving on the SAVE Act. They consider keeping voting rules looser rather than tighter to be absolutely central to everything they want to do.
He doesn’t have the votes to pass it. There are too many RINOS.
Democrats had the majority and tried to pass a national voting act that would loosen the rules, HR1. Sinema and Manchin wouldn’t vote for the nuclear option in order to pass it. So no, they were unable to use their majority to do what they wanted to do. The Democrats also wanted desperately to make DC a state and to pack the Court. They couldn’t do those things for the same reason.
They will try again, of course.
Neo -“They will try again, of course.”
Agreed.
Will they go the nuclear option? 100%. Without remorse or a second thought.
They fight. Hard. Harder. Whatever it takes. Republicans are still in college debate mode.
Thune has already surrendered. “I’ll try” he says. Weak. Oh well I guess we’ll just hope Democrats don’t cheat enough to steal the Senate too.
Regardless of the merits of the SAVE Act, abolishing the filibuster to pass it now would be stupidity on stilts.
I could potentially be sympathetic to abolishing the filibuster, but only if the payoff is high. Now, if the SAVE Act were actually going to go into effect and stay in effect, that is a payoff that might be worth it. But that payoff is simply not available. Full stop. As neo points out, the SAVE Act will not be in effect for the 2026 election. There’s no chance. I think there’s reason to doubt that it would go into effect before 2028 too. There’s also reason to believe that the GOP might be in for an honest thumping in 2028 even if the SAVE Act is in effect. Then in 2029, we are almost certainly going to see Democrats in full control of the federal government, at which point the SAVE Act will be “repealed and replaced” with Democrats’ HR1.
So nuking the filibuster to pass the SAVE Act now gets the GOP precisely nothing. The GOP would take the hit with the public of being the party that abolished the filibuster. Democrats would get to run in 2026 and 2028 against “radical” Republicans who upended 250 years of American tradition to pass their “radical” agenda. And, in the unlikely event that the Democrats 2029 Senate caucus happens to include enough Kirsten Sinema or Joe Manchin-type institutionalists who would be inclined to keep the filibuster to prevent new states, HR1, Supreme Court packing and the like? It wouldn’t matter at all. And what the GOP would get for this? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Trading something for nothing is a bad deal. It doesn’t really take a political genius to figure that out, which is why I suspect Thune and some of the other holdouts know it.
What I do see is MAGA building a new “stab-in-the-back” narrative to avoid responsibility for the electoral backlash that it is bringing about. When the GOP gets its rear end handed to it in 2026 and 2028, MAGA is going to whine that it was all because the SAVE Act wasn’t passed. It couldn’t be that Trump has an approval rate in the 30’s and has spent the last 14 months earning it. It couldn’t be his illegal growth-choking tariffs, it couldn’t be that he unilaterally launched an unpopular war. MAGA will argue that it was all because the SAVE Act wasn’t passed. It will be like 2022, when MAGA blamed the GOPs performance on pro-lifers instead of admitting that Trump was unpopular and also backed a bunch of stinker candidates like Mehmet Oz and Hershel Walker.
@Bauxite
You are really, really not beating the allegations. If you looked in the mirror, you might see how your way of “thinking” is part of what got the “GOPe” a bad name.
Ok. Why? And how would it be more stupid than not trying to push the issue?
I would be more sympathetic to this line of thought if we had reason to believe the Dems would not abolish it anyway to get what they want if they can muster the votes. If it really was more of an ironclad tradition of Congress that was rarely touched. But we do not live in that reality, and have not for a long time. The Dems have been explicit about being willing to abolish the filibuster to get what they want, with the main focus being on if they can get the votes. Ergo I do not see the reason there.
It definitely won’t be available if it is never passed. Likewise if nothing else of its kind is.
Which is all well and good, but if we’re focused only on the next election cycle then we lose this republic bit by bit. Something like the SAVE Act is crucial to restoring faith in American elections and their legitimacy, and cracking down on fraud and other sussy bullshit like that we saw from Fulton County. It also will force the issue further onto the agenda in a way that will make the Dems have to vote to repeal or replace it, which is worth itself.
As we’ve established, the quality of your “thoughts” are greatly lacking in general. Especially when President Cheeto, the Orange Whale, is on the subject.
As we’ve also established, you miss 100% of the shots you do not take. And I fail to see how breaking faith with the base and something that is generally popular among the public will make a thumping LESS likely in those elections. So there’s a risk the Dems beat us on those elections and rescind SAVE or some equivalent? Ok, fine. That’s the risk we have for basically every piece of legislation. But better to have them forced to tally the votes and do so than to never have them suffer the effort and time.
In which case they will also nuke the filibuster, rendering saving it moot.
Oh Bauxite Bauxite Bauxite, you can be painfully fucking stupid when you want to preach defeatism, lethargy, and so on.
Firstly: even if I bought this theory and accepted it in entirety unmodified, it establishes a couple important things.
A: It makes the Dems take the time, effort, and votes to get on the record and repeal it. That would be a blow but it will also force them to take the focus to do so as opposed to using it for whatever else they’ll want to do.
B: It will make the Dems have to answer to the public why they chose to repeal it.
C: It will move the Overton window. That they can no longer say that it is unprecedented for something like the SAVE act to be passed, and we can say that if not the SAVE act, then something to address the issues.
Make them fight for it.
I quite literally LOl’d upon seeing this. Do you truly think the filibuster is viewed as some kind of sacred totem greatly loved by the public and never violated? The filibuster has been nuked before, and not infrequently. It will be nuked again. The issue is how often and for what. Moreover, the party doing so usually gets backlash if it does so if it backfires on them (as happened most famously with the Dems during High Tide Biden/Obama) or if it is seen as being done for petty or extremely partisan reasons. But the SAVE Act and Voter Integrity are reasonably popular throughout the public. So even if the GOP does “take the hit with the public”, that hit will be mitigated greatly by the reason why it is being done.
So like they’ve been doing for years now and will do no matter what, as well as having to square the circle of them being prolific abolishers of the filibuster themselves.
Yeah, this is not the strong argument you seem to think it is. But then there’s so much in this that does not pass the smell test.
Ok, so either the Dems have enough “institutionalists” to “keep” the filibuster (after it was abolished? You were acting like it was such a big huge terrible thing that would likely be decisive in these elections) or they don’t. In either case it doesn’t matter. As you yourself tried to say.
In spite of the fact that “it wouldn’t matter at all” essentially means you wasted the time of myself and anybody else unfortunate enough to read through the paragraph of drek you spat out above. Because it’s chaff thrown out to try and deflect and distract attention for what you are actually trying to peddle.
In any case, glad we understand that whether or not the filibuster survives a Dem dominance has little to do with whether or not the SAVE Act passes. Meaning we can safely move on, and act as if this entire paragraph can be ignored.
Besides the promise of voter integrity down the line, drawn battle lines that are popular with the base and the general public, and the Overton Window shifted in favor. And that’s the minimal. It is progress that the Dems will have to burn time, political capital, and effort overturning, and force them to get on the record doing so, explaining why, and proactively overturning passed legislation.
So how is this trading “something for nothing”?
I imagine we’ll be waiting a long time before we get a coherent answer to that.
The astute reader might notice a few things, certain gaps in this.
When we cut through the cruft, the excess words, and the superfluous posturing, Bauxite’s position is essentially this:
“We should not pass the SAVE Act regardless of its merits, indeed we should not try that hard to do so.”
“The reason is because doing so now will involve nuking the filibuster, and the SAVE Act will not take force before the 2026 elections, and possibly not before the 2028 ones. And since I, Bauxite, believe it is possible and even likely the GOP is beaten down in those elections to come, and if the Republican Party nukes the filibuster to pass it, the Democrats will use this as a campaigning point and the public will punish the Republicans for it, and we can only hope it does not really matter because the Dems may have enough Manchin/Sinema types. In any case, it would be trading something – the filibuster – for nothing, a SAVE Act that will not be put in place but repealed.”
Again: You might notice a few holes or things Bauxite does not deign to explain to we mere mortals.
Firstly: Why he is oh so confident the Dems will not do what they have promised anyway and nuke the filibuster to push their own agenda.
Secondly: Why we should believe someone with a proven history of failing to accurately predict elections for this.
Thirdly: Why the damage from not being seen to push this would be greater than the damage of being seen not to for an issue that is broadly popular among the base and public.
Fourthly: What purpose the GOP Congressional Representation has if they will not work to safeguard the integrity of the process that elected them.
I’m guessing Bauxite cannot and will not answer these things honestly. They’ve had several paragraphs to do it and have failed. Because frankly this is not at all a coherent, logical, or rational explanation. What it is is a RationalIZING explanation much like the prior posts Bauxite has made on this issue such as pointing out how leftist Judges would interfere with it being carried out.
…. and there it is. The real reason Bauxite wrote all this. The tell. The projection. I’d wax poetic about a dog returning to its vomit, but that would be a disservice to dogs because at least a good number of those can be trained not to.
You see, this is Chapter HoweverMany in the Neverending Chronicle of Bauxite crafting the GOPe Stab in the Back Myth against “MAGA”, the Great Orange Whale, and others here. A chronicle that was at best momentarily halted for a couple days after the clear verdict of 2024 and which is not at all inconvenienced by the recent midterm results, because it fundamentally has Absolutely Fuck All to do with evidence, truth, or logic.
It has everything to do with the red hot, angry, irrational rage of people who have been shown up time and again, and whose addiction to the grievances and vindictiveness is exceeded only by addiction to Not Being Held Accountable.
Bauxite, we’ve seen you peddle this stuff for Years by this point. I have no reason to be impressed, and I am sure I am not the only person.
If.
You mean IF the GOP gets its rear end handed to it in 2026 and 2028 Bauxite.
Because let us remind ourselves how just a few paragraphs above, even you could at best muster:
Observe the sleight of hand. How “Reason to Doubt” or “Might be” transforms into “When”, as supposition rooted in little more than Bauxite’s particular reading of the tea leaves transforms into the assertion that something will happen. Coming from the same person who asserted that Trump running was the only chance the Dems had to win before Trump handed the GOP the most convincing victory it had in a quarter century (and after a very narrow and “suspect” defeat in 2020).
The problem is not merely that Bauxite is substituting their own flawed intuition in for what is actually going to happen, anybody trying to predict the future does so. The problem is not merely that Bauxite has… shall we say had a poor track record predicting things regarding modern politics. We’ve all erred.
But this gives off “Author’s Poorly Disguised Fetish” vibes. If the GOP is not soundly defeated in 2026 or 2028, or indeed wins resoundingly, Bauxite will do absolutely fuck all to give credit to MAGA, contemplate where they went wrong, or even finish eating the ration of crow they still have from 2024. And claiming “OH BUT SOME MAGATARDS DON’T EITHER” does nothing to create exoneration, any more than it would for members of “MAGA” that also lack that kind of reflective capacity.
It’s not just stupid, it’s honestly rather gross.
Which would be just as foolish as asserting that such a defeat had nothing to do with the divisions over the SAVE Act, and particularly how disillusioning the failure to make a united front to push it would be.
In the face of headwinds that are truly deranged, from an MSM bent on lying about everything up to and including the White House renovations that were bipartisan just a year ago to trying to blame DHS over Daesh loyalists.
The fact that Trump’s approval rating not only holds strong there but has in fact BEEN GROWING RECENTLY BY MOST INDICATORS is something. And of course something you will not address because it points to another factor: backbiting and actual backstabbing.
Translation: Bauxite cannot exactly deny Trump’s approval rating has been on the climb in the face of truly insane headwinds and bias, but wants to spin it in the least damning for their agenda way possible. And then wonders why many of us no longer take them seriously.
Which have seen modest at least financial benefits and are decently popular.
This is your mind on TDS MSM Mindworms. It makes you stupid and prone to repeating stuff without confirming it.
“Unilaterally” – Untrue, as both Trump and Hesgeth pointed out, Iranian reprisal doctrine has been well established, as was Trump’s threat about the Mullahs needing to behave more, so when it became clear they weren’t and the Israelis would need to act further the US opted to operate in concert with them.
And if we’re talking about unilaterally as in the perspective of US law, this is still not true. Trump and Hesgeth briefed the Gang of Eight, and congressional opposition has gone absolutely nowhere.
“Unpopular.” Yeah going to need some citations for that Bauxite.
And that argument would make a hell of a lot more sense than what you are shotgunning out, hoping nobody will scrutinize enough to check.
Let’s ignore the fact that in this case you are the one advocating for the stinker candidates like Thune, and also ignore the downstream effects of things like 2020 and allowing scum like Fulton County to get their way.
If only Bauxite would spend a fraction of their effort actually demanding voter accountability that they spent trying to craft their own stab in the back mythos, and then blaming “MAGA” over it.
@Turtler, Bauxite:Do you truly think the filibuster is viewed as some kind of sacred totem greatly loved by the public and never violated? The filibuster has been nuked before, and not infrequently.
At least three times last year, the most notable being to roll back California’s EV mandate. They could find 51 votes (including Collins and Murkowski) to set aside Sacred Senate Tradition for that, but not for the SAVE Act.
Few of us here ever notice when the filibuster is nuked, it has to be dramatized in that way by the legacy media before the Salem Media bloggers pick it up and tell us what to think about it. When it’s described as procedural maneuvering nobody catches it unless they are familiar with all the ways the filibuster is set aside.
The question is, and I think, sadly, the answer is negative: Are there enough GOP votes to end the filibuster in order to pass the SAVE Act? Thom Tillis is unfortunately still in the Senate.
@Kate:The question is, and I think, sadly, the answer is negative: Are there enough GOP votes to end the filibuster in order to pass the SAVE Act?
They could pass it with 51, if 51 of them wanted to, and 51 of them don’t. Since 51 of them need to pretend to want to, they pretend the filibuster is stopping them. But 51 Senators can vote to set aside the filibuster at any time, in several different ways. They did it a bunch last year, the same people claiming they can’t do it now. It’s the same people in the Senate. The filibuster is a device for the majority to evade accountability by pretending their majority isn’t big enough to do what their constituents want. The only majority ever needed to do anything is 51.
Yes. Do they have 50 on this issue? (Vance would be the tie-breaker.)
@Kate:Thom Tillis is unfortunately still in the Senate.
Thom Tillis specifically is one of the 51 who set aside the filibuster last year on California’s EV mandate. All the “mavericks” voted yes on that: Collins, Tillis, Murkowski.
@Kate:Yes. Do they have 50 on this issue?
If they did, it would pass with Vance’s vote. If one of those 50 was the Senate Majority leader it would happen. Consequently there must be less than 50 votes, despite what they say, or there is only 50 but the Majority Leader does not support it, despite what he says.
And that’s all there is to say really, except all that all their talk about the filibuster is deliberately deceptive. Collins for example says she would vote for the SAVE Act but not to “do away with the filibuster”, but she had no trouble setting aside the filibuster last year. She knows how it works. She’s deceiving us deliberately, and so is any one of her colleagues who says anything like it. They all participated last year when we weren’t noticing.
It’s not so much the opposition to things we want that disgusts me as the gaslighting does.
I think the problem is that the “mavericks” who voted, properly, against the EV mandate, are not inclined to vote for the SAVE Act. Tillis, I believe, says he is a “no.”
@Kate:I think the problem is that the “mavericks” who voted, properly, against the EV mandate, are not inclined to vote for the SAVE Act.
Well that must be true, but some of them at least are lying about supporting it, because they won’t provide the relevant vote that would actually make the SAVE Act law, they will only provide a meaningless show vote.
I think it is one thing for RINOs to not want to do something, but very different and more serious when they say want to do it and they lie. If they have the power to do it and refuse to do it, it just doesn’t matter what they say about what they want to do.
Niketas:
That’s what Sinema said – that there were bills (and one of them was the Democrats’ bill to relax voting rules nationwide) that she favored, but wouldn’t vote to have a majority vote to pass it. That stance ended her political career. She saved the country from a terrible bill. Do you have the same criticism of her?
I wrote this post on it and quoted her speech on the subject. Please read it. Is she a hypocrite? I don’t think so.
The problem is that I don’t think any Democrats today agree with her. Maybe Fetterman, although I haven’t checked that out so perhaps not. That’s why the GOP must contemplate majority rule for this bill and others – because the Democrats WILL do it, now that people who think like Sinema are gone from the party. But her stance was not hypocritical.
Perhaps Thune’s stubbornness on the SAVE Act should be used to argue for repeal of the 17th Amendment, and return selection of senators to their legislatures. His home state is all for it, but he’s obviously not representing his state’s interests. Then, if a senator starts displaying some “independence,” his governor can call him up and ask WTF.
This would return the Senate to the Founders’ original vision, in which the senate represents the States. Right now, senators are more beholden to Beltway interests, and that’s the problem.
@neo:here were bills (and one of them was the Democrats’ bill to relax voting rules nationwide) that she favored, but wouldn’t vote to have a majority vote to pass it. That stance ended her political career. She saved the country from a terrible bill.
That’s the “maverick” narrative. The problem is that Sinema voted to set aside the filibuster just the previous month, in order to raise the debt ceiling.
Do you have the same criticism of her?
Yes. She and her party lied to their base and she agreed to be the mechanism by which they deceived them. Both parties do this and have done so for a long time.
quoted her speech on the subject. Please read it
Words. Her actions in setting aside other filibusters say otherwise.
Is she a hypocrite? I don’t think so.
I do.
But her stance was not hypocritical.
You have no way to know this. Neither do I, but the fact is she violated her principle in supporting the filibuster a little over a month before her speech on how seriously she supports the filibuster.
Maybe she had a sincere change of heart in that five weeks, and was inwardly remorseful for her previous vote to set aside a filibuster. Only God knows that.
The fact is that just like Collins and the GOP mavericks, she supported the filibuster with words on some occasions and set it aside with her actions on other occasions.
Tillis and Murkowski are opposed.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-backed-voter-id-bill-faces-gop-resistance-tillis-vows-stop
Niketas:
The links you gave are to what appears to be a bill on health care for health care professionals, not the debt ceiling. And it’s not clear to me from those links that it was a vote to set aside the filibuster. If you could link to something about the filibuster for the debt ceiling, it would be more clear what you’re talking about.
However, it is well established that budget bills are immune to the filibuster in the sense that they can be passed by reconciliation. Also federal judgships are presently passed by simple majority.
This is what I found about Sinema and the debt ceiling (Google AI gave the summary):
@neo:The links you gave are to what appears to be a bill on health care for health care professionals, not the debt ceiling.
That’s simply the title it had at one time. The House gutted the Senate bill, and retitled it on December 7. You have to click through and follow along what happened, and that’s how they get away with this stuff. I don’t think you could expect an LLM to figure it out. It’s S.610. I provided a link to the text for S. 610:
It was a one-time exception to set aside the filibuster.
In the “actions” tab you can see when the various votes were. The vote to adopt the amendment on December 9 was 59 in favor, not 60. Sinema and Manchin both voted to adopt a House amendment that would remove the filibuster one time only using a simple majority. This was December 9, 2021, just over a month before her impassioned stand on the defense of the filibuster: the one time filibuster exception she had voted for on a different issue for was not set to expire for another three days (I think they raised the ceiling before then).
Consequently I strongly doubt the sincerity of her attachment to the principle, and this is based on the contrast between her words and her actions.
@neo:it is well established that budget bills are immune to the filibuster in the sense that they can be passed by reconciliation. Also federal judgships are presently passed by simple majority.
This is a separate issue, which I’m tackling separately. Who decides what Senate bills count as “budget bills” or “judgeship bills”? Fundamentally the Senate does. Any ruling by the chair as to what kind of bill it is and if it requires 60 votes for cloture can be, and is, overruled by simple majority.
They have lots of ways to set aside the filibuster. They can attach whatever it is to a bill that has already passed and is in reconciliation. They can overrule the chair after a cloture vote fails. They can change what kind of bill they consider it to be, or attach it to a budget bill or other bill of the right type to not need 60 votes for cloture. And all of these things are done by simple majority vote.
And as for “well-established”, what that means in terms of the practice of the Senate is, “this is the way the Parliamentarian would advise the chair to rule”. And the chair is not only free to ignore the Parliamentarian, but can always be overruled by simple majority.