The Honeymoon’s Over: Trump and GOP Senators Butt Heads

Donald Trump seems to have had an epiphany: “It’s like the Senate is a place you send things when you want them to die,” he said at a rally in Marietta, GA, on Wednesday. The US House of Representatives didn’t pass the SAVE Act once, nor even twice, but thrice. Yet still it flounders in the Senate – and it isn’t the only bill suffering such a fate. But as correct as the president may be on that, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) wasn’t happy to hear it. Could this mean the end of the camaraderie between the White House and the congressional GOP?

Trump vs Thune – Tensions Rise

“We’re having a hard time in the Senate,” President Trump said in Georgia this week. “It’s like the Senate is a place you send things when you want them to die.” Of course, he was speaking specifically about the SAVE America Act, the legislation he’s championing that would establish a national standard requiring people to show proof of citizenship whenever registering to vote, then showing photo ID before actually casting a ballot. That said, the statement could just as easily apply to any number of other measures that seemed to clear the House easily enough.

A day later, on Thursday, July 23, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the president’s patience was “running out,” specifically calling out Sen. Thune as the leader of the Senate GOP majority. “The Senate needs to do its job,” she admonished.

Thune wasn’t impressed. When asked by a reporter about the comments, the gentleman from South Dakota fired back: “Maybe she or somebody else ought to get on the phone and get the votes. Right? It’s 50 around here.”

“Instead of pointing the finger at Republicans, they might think about going after the people who are stopping it on the floor, which is the Democrats,” Thune continued. “And if there are Republicans they think are gettable, get on the phone.”

The majority leader’s allies quickly jumped in to defend him as well. “I have 1000 percent confidence in Thune, and anybody in the White House who thinks he’s not a good leader isn’t qualified for their job,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) declared.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who serves as Senate Appropriations Committee chair, said she thinks Thune “enjoys well-deserved support from the caucus.”

But there’s something Collins and Tillis have in common, aside from their apparently newfound solidarity with Thune. They’ve both opposed the SAVE America Act in general. Tillis, who has supported voter ID laws in his home state and who actually initially co-sponsored the original SAVE Act, considers its present iteration a “show vote,” something designed more for messaging than passing an actual law. He abstained from the first procedural floor vote in March of this year, then voted against it – along with Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – when Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) tried to attach it to the most recent reconciliation bill in April. All three of them plus Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) did so again in June when the late Lindsey Graham tried to attach it to an immigration and budget package.

SAVE in the Senate

You may have noticed that the number of GOP senators who oppose SAVE by reconciliation is four. That’s precisely one too many. Any bill or resolution only requires a simple majority to pass – which, of course, means a minimum of 51 votes or a 50-50 split with the vice president breaking the tie. But thanks to the filibuster rule, it takes a 60-vote minimum to force an end to debate and invoke cloture, setting up that final vote. The reconciliation process, of course, is a workaround that doesn’t require the supermajority to implement, but it has its limitations.

Sens. Collins, Tillis, Murkowski, and McConnell have all routinely opposed pushing this policy change as a budgetary agenda, despite the House GOP’s willingness. And with a majority of just 53, losing four means no chance of success without support from at least some Democrats.

On June 22, the House passed a $95 billion budget reconciliation framework 216-214, almost exactly along party lines, that includes $10 billion in grant money for states that implement their own versions of the SAVE America Act. As Liberty Nation News previously reported, that’s a clever workaround that Congress has long used to coerce states into passing laws they simply could not – whether that’s due to an insufficient majority, like this, or a constitutional block at the federal level, like with seatbelts, drinking age, and speed limits.

But to actually make it to President Trump’s desk, it must first clear the Senate. “As I’ve said before, you got to get to 50, and I can’t count to 50 right now on a budget resolution,” Thune told the press. “We’ll see. We’ll have those conversations with the conference. The priority is funding the government. To me, that’s the thing we got to keep our eyes on.”

Presidential Protest and Senate Strife

But President Trump wants results, and he’s tired of waiting. He has refused to sign any legislation until he gets the SAVE America Act on his desk – and he has stuck with it. Though he didn’t veto the recently passed 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, he did refuse to sign it, allowing it to become law by default without his name attached to it.