Trump wants the SAVE Act in a third megabill, but even supporters aren’t convinced
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President Donald Trump wants Republicans to include his long-sought ID and citizenship law in the party’s pocket, but even the bill’s strongest supporters don’t think it’s possible.
Trump last week demanded that Republicans work on a third budget reconciliation package, including $350 billion in defense spending and the Protecting American Voting Eligibility (SAVE) Act in one bill.
Republicans, who recently passed their second reconciliation package to fund immigration legislation for the rest of Trump’s term, have been slow to implement the plan again, especially with so little time left before the fast-approaching midterm elections.
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Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., argued that a third budget reconciliation package is unlikely to happen this year. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
But others see reconciliation, which would completely remove Democrats from the system, as the only way to pass the SAVE America Act.
“It’s our only gun. It’s the only gun,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La.,. “I don’t think we have enough time. We burned a lot of time, and I’m not sure we can agree on everything to include. Not everyone is as easy to get along with as I am.”
The problems facing the law are twofold. Senate Democrats have vowed to block it on the floor, meaning any hope of hitting the 60-vote threshold is unlikely — and not all Republicans are on board with the bill.
“I support voter ID and I support only American citizens voting, but the Democrats are very much against it, and we don’t have enough Republicans to fill the gap,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. “So we should continue to focus on winning the midterms instead of fighting each other.
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Republicans have tried and failed several times now to pass the bill, even taking a floor seat earlier this year to force a debate on the issue.
Still, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, RS.D., admitted that “we don’t have the vote.”
“Even if you could put it down to just two issues of photo ID, and you know, citizenship, to register to vote on those two issues, you take 60 votes in the Senate,” Thune said. “The only way to get there is to delay or filibuster legislation, and there aren’t even close votes here in the United States Senate to accomplish that.”
Trying to fit a bill into a reconciliation package, which can pass with a majority vote, has its problems beyond vote count.
The process is governed by the Byrd Law, which broadly states that any item in the reconciliation must have a direct impact on the budget and cannot be pure policy. If the provision is regulated as a policy, it triggers a 60-vote limit.
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Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, has been leading the effort to get the Senate to take up the SAVE America Act, which would federally require voter ID nationwide. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Republicans, including Kennedy, tried three separate times to include the SAVE America Act — or versions of it — in the latest reconciliation package. All three scored 60 votes, and all failed to score 50 votes.
Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, is one of the top supporters of the SAVE America Act in the upper chamber and said he was “looking for every possible way to pass the SAVE America Act.”
“And at the moment we are still working on other methods that can reach the level of being part of reconciliation,” said Husted. “But I’m not sure we do, but we have to try.”
Those measures could be very different than what appears in the current bill, which Trump has already asked Republicans to revise to include non-election-related policy, such as banning gay men from participating in women’s sports.
President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on June 10, 2026. (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP)
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, the main driver of the SAVE America Act in the Senate, agreed that the bill “was a policy, not a budget. Therefore, SAVE America itself is not worthy of consideration in the third reconciliation.”
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But he said a plausible way to get at least part of the bill through the Byrd Act would be to provide funding for states to issue an “Enhanced Real ID,” which shows proof of citizenship.
Then, lawmakers could pass a separate bill without reconciliation that would require proof of identity to register to vote in state elections. But Lee, like many in the Senate GOP, was skeptical that a third reconciliation bill would be an option.
“The second reason is just, as a practical matter, I don’t see evidence that there is a viable third-party reconciliation bill,” Lee said. “I hope there is. I’d like to be wrong about that. I want us to do that. I think we should do that. But the plan we have, to my great dismay, doesn’t – it doesn’t include any of it.”
