The Republican-controlled Senate passed a resolution on Feb. 12 so that Sen. Thom Tillis could have a dog parade but cannot find time to pass critical voting legislation.
Tillis’ resolution, which he submitted to the Senate earlier this month, allowed the “use of the atrium in the Philip A. Hart Senate office building for a Bipawtisan Doggi Gras Pawrade” on Wednesday, Feb. 25. The resolution passed by unanimous consent.
As The Federalist’s CEO and co-founder Sean Davis said in a post on X: “Truly incredible what the Senate will find time to do when it’s motivated.”
Senate Republicans are seemingly unmotivated to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act.
The SAVE America Act would require both documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote and voter ID to cast a ballot in federal elections. The legislation passed the House, but is stalling in the Senate, despite 50 Republican senators who co-sponsor or support the SAVE America Act. Approximately “80 percent of Americans (including a significant number of Democrats) … support citizenship and ID requirements,” as pointed out by The Federalist’s Matt Kittle.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s latest excuse is that he lacks a consensus in the Senate Republican conference to use a talking filibuster to get the legislation passed. As Texas Rep. Chip Roy explained in a letter exclusively obtained by The Federalist, in a talking filibuster, as long as all Senate Republicans who have either co-sponsored or publicly supported the legislation show up and present a live quorum, Democrats would have to talk nonstop in order to delay a vote at just 51 votes, rather than the typical 60-threshold filibuster vote. “If no one is speaking and a quorum is present, the vote on the pending business happens automatically,” Roy said.
But Thune claims a talking filibuster is a nonstarter for now.
“If we were to go down that path, it’s very hard to pivot and get back to open up the government,” Thune said, according to The Hill. “That’s harder to do once you’re in the throes of a talking filibuster.”
“The talking filibuster issue is on which there is not certainly a unified Republican Conference and there would have to be. If you go down that path, you’re talking about the need to table what are going to be numerous amendments and an ability to keep 50 Republicans unified pretty much on every single vote,” he continued. “There just isn’t the support for doing that at this point.”
While Thune says the SAVE America Act will still come up for a vote, Democrats will vote it down with ease by voting against a cloture motion to advance the measure. As Roy explained in his letter, “Under current practice, [Thune] would call it up, debate it for a while, and proceed to a 60-vote cloture vote to ‘shut off debate.’ It would fail, Republicans would shrug and say ‘we tried, we need to elect more Republicans.’”
As Roy said, “If Republicans stick together, and the minority exhaust their opportunities to speak in opposition or give up, a final vote on passage of the bill occurs automatically at a majority threshold.”
If Republicans can’t “stick together” to pass the single most important piece of election legislation in decades, at least their voters can sleep easy at night knowing their senators were able to “stick together” to approve a dog parade.
