Plan B: GOP May Get Creative to Pass SAVE Act

With time quickly running out to pass the SAVE America Act before the midterm elections, President Trump and his allies are ramping up the sense of urgency. The president has made the bill his number one legislative priority, refusing to sign other legislation until it passes both the House and Senate. Some House Republicans are also playing hardball, refusing to approve any legislation until the Senate passes the SAVE America Act.

That urgency has spawned some new ideas to get the bill over the finish line. Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall wants to break up the SAVE America Act and pass it piece by piece. He told Newsmax it may be easier to pass the individual parts of the bill in separate votes, while also putting Democrats on the spot. "Let's just vote on voter ID...ninety percent of Americans support that," said Marshall. "Then next, let's vote on some type of proof of citizenship and get that passed. Then let's go to what type of guardrails do we want on mail-in ballots as well."

Don Palmer, senior legal fellow on election integrity at the Heritage Foundation, believes Marshall's idea could work. And at the very least it would force Democrats to squirm. "Democrats don't want to vote on particular parts of (the SAVE Act), so it is possible you could break it up," says Palmer. "That is one way of getting senators on the record...and maybe then you can get to 60 votes on particular pieces of the legislation if there's some compromise language."

If that doesn't work, the House has a plan of its own. They call it Reconciliation 3.0. "This third reconciliation bill, I think it's about 95-billion dollars," says Palmer. "Most of it is defense spending, but about 10-billion dollars of that may go to election grants to the states, as a way to use federal grants to implement pieces of the SAVE Act."

Of course, the wild card is President Trump, and whether he would support any of these alternative plans. "I think he would support it in the end...if you could move the needle on election integrity, I think he would sign off on that," says Palmer. "Because he does want there to be increased integrity for this year's elections."