Federal Funding vs SAVE Act – Trump and the GOP Face a Choice

It’s Monday again. When discussing Congress of late, we might as well say it’s Groundhog Day again. Yet another legislative week begins, and lawmakers return to Capitol Hill to face the same stalled measures. The only real difference seems to be the time remaining on the clock. President Donald Trump and his closest allies in the legislature keep pushing for the SAVE America Act while the Democrats and at least a handful of Republicans in each chamber try to move past it. It’s time again for the annual funding fiasco, and this time the beleaguered lawmakers are skipping any attempt at full-year bills in favor of getting a continuing resolution knocked out before the buzzer sounds.

Federal Funding Fiasco – Same Bat-Channel, Same Bat-Time!

Federal funding expires on September 30, as it does every year, yet still Congress doesn’t seem ready to sort it out in any sort of bipartisan way. As Liberty Nation News reported earlier this month:

“November 3 is 120 days away – 17 weeks and a day – so why can’t Congress get it all done by then? Because of those 17 weeks, the House will only be in session for six and the Senate for seven – with only four of those weeks seeing both chambers in session at the same time.”

That was July 6; they now have 14 fewer days before the general election – and considerably less time until fiscal year 2026 comes to a close. And they aren’t much closer to clearing the legislative logjam than they were two weeks ago.

But now they’re at least working on extending the deadline.

On July 17, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK) introduced a continuing resolution – a “clean CR” with no policy riders – to keep the government funded at its current level through December 4. Still, there are those in the House – mostly among the Freedom Caucus – who want to try and attach the SAVE Act to the CR, dooming any chance it would actually have of passing both the House and the Senate.

Freedom Caucus Republicans are refusing to vote for bills, and President Trump is refusing to sign them, until the SAVE Act passes. But it isn’t going to – not by any conventional means, anyway. The votes just aren’t there in the Senate. Nuking the filibuster, if enough Republicans could be convinced to do it, would likely get the bill to Trump’s desk, but there doesn’t seem to be much upper chamber appetite for that these days.

But there are other ways to pull it off – maybe. And that’s what GOP lawmakers have been recently exploring. The bill won’t get 60 votes because every Senate Democrat is against it. Republicans won’t kill the filibuster for it. It won’t pass, as is, through reconciliation or as a rider on another bill. All of these avenues have been explored, and each one turned out to be a dead end.

But there’s a new plan, now – and there’s a chance it could work, but it certainly won’t get any Democrat support.

From Mandates to Incentives – The Path to Reconciliation

On July 16, House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX) advanced the FY 2027 Concurrent Budget Resolution, colloquially known as Reconciliation 3.0. Thus was revealed the pivot: Rather than passing a bill requiring nationwide photo ID to vote or showing proof of citizenship to register to vote, this budget allocates $10 billion in federal grant funding over ten years for any state that voluntarily adopts the requirements for itself.

Legally, it’s a tale as old as time – or, at least, as old as federal grants given to states. Back in 1987, the government bribed states to mandate seat belts by withholding a percentage of federal highway funding for any state that refused. The feds did the same – using the same funding, in fact – to coerce states to raise the drinking age to 21 in the ‘80s and to drop the speed limit to 55 MPH in the ‘70s. And those are just three examples of many.

Oh, there’s nothing subtle about it – this is bribery, plain and simple, a familiar old carrot-and-stick method that, as history has shown, all or almost all states will eventually comply with. A billion dollars a year for a decade is a lot of money, after all.

But will it pass muster in Congress? The House will almost certainly clear it, just as it has the SAVE Act itself and multiple further attempts to advance it that followed. In the Senate, the answer depends on the few holdouts in the GOP, like Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, who explicitly told The Wall Street Journal on July 18 that she would not support the SAVE Act at all.  As a reconciliation bill, it could pass without any Democrats behind it, so long as enough Senate Republicans get in line.

But before that, lawmakers have to clear the next CR to extend that funding deadline – and so far, even that isn’t happening. According to the congressional schedule, the Senate will focus today on confirmations and the digital asset CLARITY Act, while the House will be meeting in committee this afternoon to consider the Stop Insider Trading Act and Main Street Capital Access Act. The likelihood of the funding CR – or especially of the SAVE Act or any version of it – being addressed today is near zero. And all the while, the timer continues to count down.