As last week got underway, the Senate Republican majority had a lengthy list of things to do before the chamber broke for its lengthy summer recess. By and large, GOP senators got through some of their to-do list, including passing a stopgap spending bill to prevent a government shutdown during an election season and confirming Todd Blanche as attorney general.
But Donald Trump had far more in mind. In fact, the president wanted to see senators act ahead of their lengthy summer break on a variety of other proposals, including bills related to cryptocurrency regulation and college athletics.
And then, of course, there the White House’s voter suppression package that Republicans have labeled the SAVE America Act.
Two weeks ago, in an item published to his social media platform, Trump wrote that Senate Majority Leader John Thune “should not allow the United States Senate to ‘leave town’ until it passes The Save America Act or, far better still, TERMINATES THE FILIBUSTER, where Republicans can then quickly pass everything they ever dreamed of, including a full and deep throated SAVE AMERICA ACT, the Budget, and the ever looming Debt Ceiling disaster, 1929!”
How’d that work out? With predictable failure. The New York Times reported:
The Senate bowed to political reality at 4:36 a.m. on Saturday, adjourning and allowing bleary-eyed senators to leave Washington without any concrete steps toward passing the voting restriction bill that President Trump has demanded for months.
Republican lawmakers had insisted they would work tirelessly to enact election changes that Mr. Trump has suggested the party needs in place to win the midterm elections. Instead, they departed with little to show for their efforts, other than a performative pre-dawn procedural vote on a watered-down version of the bill that they knew they could not pass.
It’s worth emphasizing that Trump wasn’t the only one whose demands went ignored by GOP leaders. A variety of Senate Republicans, led in part by Utah’s Mike Lee, vowed to derail the chamber’s August recess unless and until members passed the voter suppression bill Trump is desperate to sign.
But when push came to shove, senators were offered a stark choice: Spend the rest of their summer trying in vain to pass an unnecessary proposal that faces bipartisan opposition, or go home.
Despite weeks of posturing, they chose the latter.
When the Senate returns to work in September, Republicans plan to work on a budget resolution for a third reconciliation package (a maneuver that would allow the party to circumvent the 60-vote threshold and pass a spending bill by majority rule), which GOP members want to use to advance at least parts of Trump’s anti-voting initiative. Watch this space.
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