President Donald Trump and his closest allies on Capitol Hill said they\u2019re willing to do whatever it takes to pass the so-called SAVE America Act before the midterms \u2014 except follow through on threats to cancel August recess.<\/p>\n
A group of ultraconservative House Republicans and even a few GOP senators lobbied for the chamber to forgo its summer break<\/a> until it passed the voter ID bill. But last week the MAGA wing yet again had a hard pill to swallow: They simply don\u2019t have the votes.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to have to keep fighting on that one. We\u2019re not done, we\u2019re just getting started,\u201d Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who had promised to try to keep the Senate in session, said<\/a> in a video after the chamber adjourned without passing the bill. \u201cWe did our best, left no stone unturned. I wish the outcome had been different.\u201d<\/p>\n Lee and others had threatened to force a roll call vote<\/a> on the motion to adjourn \u2014 something that\u2019s become a rarity in modern Congress \u2014 but when push came to shove in the early hours on Saturday morning, the Senate adjourned by voice vote.\u00a0<\/p>\n Any recognized senator can ask for the yeas and nays, triggering a formal roll call vote. Nobody did so Saturday, allowing the chamber to leave without forcing senators to go on the record.\u00a0<\/p>\n Instead, Lee and 10 of his Republican colleagues submitted statements to the Congressional Record<\/a> noting that \u201chad there been a roll call vote on the motion to adjourn, I would have voted nay.\u201d He defended<\/a> his reasoning in a social media post, saying \u201cthe recess was set up as part of the same unanimous consent agreement that allowed us to vote on\u201d other priorities on the way out of town, like confirming<\/a> Attorney General Todd Blanche and passing a stopgap funding<\/a> measure.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think the Senate should have stayed in. I think they should keep fighting to show the American people they\u2019re fighting for them. The Senate didn\u2019t do that,\u201d said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, Monday on Fox Business<\/a>. \u201cSo I think we need to focus in September, the House and the Senate, on finishing the job and delivering for the people.\u201d<\/p>\n The SAVE America Act saga has been plaguing Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., for months<\/a>. Although the House has passed various<\/a> versions<\/a> of the measure, which requires proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo ID at the polls, Thune hasn\u2019t been able to muster the votes from Democrats and Republicans alike.\u00a0<\/p>\n Still, Trump and House Freedom Caucus members have pushed Thune to take extreme measures, like abolishing the filibuster, to jam it through the chamber. That, too, does not have the votes amongst Senate Republicans<\/a>.<\/p>\n Thune quipped to reporters last week: \u201cIt seems to me sometimes I\u2019m the only one who can count to 50 in this town.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have the votes to get rid of the filibuster, and we aren\u2019t flipping\u201d enough Democrats to vote in favor of SAVE, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThose two realities are there,\u201d he added. \u201cIs there somewhere in here for budget reconciliation that we can do pieces of the SAVE America Act, or at least in a fiscal way deal with funding for some of those things? Maybe. We\u2019ll see what the traffic will bear on that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n They immediately ran into several red lights.<\/p>\n Senate Republicans were working through the night Friday to try and find a path forward on a budget resolution for a third reconciliation package that would pump up defense spending and impose elements of the voter ID bill, but the decision to scrap a planned procedural vote<\/a> came after a late-night call with the president about the lack of votes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Budget Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said Trump agreed to give the reconciliation effort more time to shore up support.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a concern whether or not we could actually pass the budget resolution tonight,\u201d Johnson told reporters after the meeting. \u201cThen we had a discussion with the president. He agrees. Don\u2019t take the vote tonight, and just work diligently through August and September to do an actually \u2026 better reconciliation bill.\u201d<\/p>\n Though the weeks do give Senate Republicans time to explore more viable paths to try to move SAVE or some of its provisions, they face the same inevitable truth: math.<\/p>\n Before they jetted away for recess, Senate Republicans tried to push a standalone photo-ID requirement bill<\/a> introduced by Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, but it met with defeat on a procedural vote along party lines, 52-46<\/a>.<\/p>\n