House Speaker Mike Johnson told Senate Republicans to strip the SAVE Act from the government funding legislation once the House passes the bill, senior aides from two different GOP U.S. Senate offices who support the SAVE Act being part of government funding efforts told Breitbart News on Thursday.
Johnson’s office is denying these allegations.
The SAVE Act is a Republican-led piece of legislation that would take drastic steps to prevent noncitizens—particularly illegal aliens—from voting in America. Johnson has publicly taken the posture of saying that he wants this to be part of the government funding fight. Conservatives have generally celebrated this position, as they deem the threat of noncitizen voting to be real and serious and think Republicans should use all the leverage they have on Capitol Hill to prevent it from happening.
But Johnson faces steep odds of getting such a plan through not just the Democrat-controlled Senate or Democrat President Joe Biden—he’s even having serious trouble in getting the plan through the narrowly GOP-controlled House of Representatives. Even if he is able to rally House Republicans to get it done, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has vowed to block any efforts in that chamber to pass the SAVE Act, and Biden has threatened to veto it. If an impasse between the House and Senate, or Congress and the White House, were to emerge and remain unsettled, it could threaten a government shutdown possibility. It remains unclear if Johnson is willing to go that far to fight to get the SAVE Act through.
That is what makes what these Senate GOP aides are saying Johnson told Republican senators so very interesting. One Senate GOP aide told Breitbart News that Johnson literally told Republican senators that if he is able to get his government funding plan with the SAVE Act in it passed out of the House, then senators should strip the SAVE Act out of it and pass a clean funding bill to send back to the House, thereby capitulating. “It’s a bait-and-switch kabuki theater designed to shore up his right flank,” the Senate Republican aide told Breitbart News, adding that it is not a genuine effort to stop illegal aliens from voting.
A second Senate GOP aide from a different office confirmed the first aide’s account in a separate conversation with Breitbart News on Thursday.
A spokesman for Johnson, Taylor Haulsee, denied this in a statement to Breitbart News.
“This accusation is unequivocally, 100% false,” Haulsee said in an email. “In fact, it is entirely the opposite. The Speaker is fighting tooth and nail to preserve the integrity of American elections, and he is actively urging all Republicans to join him in this fight.”
Government funding expires at the end of September, and while conservatives are itching for a fight on noncitizen voting, there is also a general fatigue among Republicans regarding government shutdown politics—especially this close to the election. Part of why Johnson is offering up what is called a Continuing Resolution (CR) that would fund the government at current levels through the end of the calendar year and into next March—he’s aiming to attach the SAVE Act to that—is that Republicans are hoping to tee up an opportunity for what they hope and expect will be a GOP trifecta to enact their policy priorities in early 2025. There is still great uncertainty about exactly what will happen in the November 5 election, though, and if Republicans will hold their House majority and retake the White House. Republicans do seem poised to retake the U.S. Senate given a very favorable map and swings their way in key states such as Montana and Ohio.
Even if Capitol Hill Republicans on both sides—the House and Senate—are able to navigate this tricky landscape and if they’re able to hold the House and take the Senate and White House, there also remains serious questions about Johnson’s personal future. Johnson is only Speaker of the House today because Democrats allow him to be there in the position, as he did not produce enough GOP support when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) forced a vote on a motion to vacate him earlier this year. While Greene’s effort was sunk by Democrats who voted en masse on the orders of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to save Johnson’s Speakership, Johnson lost enough Republicans to have removed him without Democrat support. After Greene’s effort, things seem to have cooled down a bit as Republicans aim to get through the election before sorting out Johnson’s future and whether or not a different Republican who did not need Democrats to save his job would be more effective in the position.
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