By David Morgan
WASHINGTON, June 24 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump will go to the U.S. Senate on Wednesday to pressure his fellow Republicans to pass a long-stalled package of voting restrictions that has aggravated party fissures and shown the limits of his power.
At a closed-door lunch in the Capitol, Trump has said he will lobby Senate Republicans to pass the voting measure called the SAVE America Act, his top legislative priority.
The bill would require a photo ID to vote in federal elections and proof of U.S. citizenship to register, while requiring states to turn over their voter registration rolls to the federal government.
“We have to pass it, so we’re going to have a talk about that, and many other things,” Trump told reporters during a Tuesday visit to Pennsylvania.
But that may not change the math. Although Republicans control the Senate, they have already tried and failed five times to pass the legislation. They repeatedly fell short of the chamber’s 60‑vote threshold, while procedural workarounds failed to muster majority support.
At this point, they say, they simply do not have the votes for it.
“Those are just hard realities. And I think people at some point have to come to grips with that,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters in what may be a preview of his conference’s message to Trump.
Presidential visits to Congress are rare, and Wednesday’s meeting comes at a time when relations between Trump and his party in the Senate are at a low ebb.
With less than five months until a November midterm election that threatens to end their majority, Senate Republicans have begun to resist Trump on several fronts: They forced him to abandon a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, expressed outrage over his pick of an ally with no intelligence background as the top U.S. intelligence official, and supported legislation to halt military action against Iran.
Senate Republicans have also rejected Trump’s demand that they adopt hardball tactics to pass the SAVE America Act, such as attaching it to must-pass legislation or firing a Senate official who blocked it from a recent spending package. Trump has unsuccessfully pressured Republicans to jettison longstanding rules that require 60 votes in the 100-seat chamber to advance most legislation.
Backers of the bill say they should not abandon efforts to pass a top Trump priority.
“For every bill up here, when it starts, there’s not enough votes,” said Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida, a supporter of the legislation who invited Trump to Wednesday’s meeting. “We’re going to have a nice conversation to see if we can figure out how to get this across the finish line.”
Critics of the legislation, including Senate Democrats, say the bill targets a nearly non-existent problem of non-citizen voting, but would disenfranchise American citizens who do not have ready access to a passport or birth certificate.
Some Republicans say their efforts could be better spent on other issues.
“Every minute we spend on it, we’re not spending on something that can get my colleagues reelected,” Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, told reporters.
(Reporting by David Morgan; additional reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Andy Sullivan and Edmund Klamann)
Comments