House Republican leaders sent lawmakers home for a nearly two-week holiday recess Tuesday after several hardline conservative members rebelled on the floor to demand stronger action on President Donald Trump’s much-desired voter identification bill.
It’s the second straight week that House floor activity has been brought to a standstill over the SAVE America Act, a Republican-written measure that the President has pressured Congress to pass. The legislative impasse before the Fourth of July weekend dealt another blow to Speaker Mike Johnson, who has struggled to rein in an increasingly fractious and razor-thin majority in the chamber.
The continuing blockade from GOP hardliners came despite Trump’s plea to stop their “grandstanding” in the chamber, after lawmakers said they would block other legislation from advancing until the Senate passes the SAVE America Act. That also canceled last Friday’s votes.
“It makes no sense for us to stop our very important progress forward from House Republicans, because some Senate Democrats are refusing to do their job,” Johnson said after the vote. “That’s where we are. That’s the reality of it.”
Railroading Trump’s election law
The Tuesday impasse was partly over a rule with language that would have merged the SAVE America Act with the National Defense Authorization Act, a defense budget bill, once it passed the House. Johnson had said he would use “MIRVing,” a process in which a procedural rule packages together separately passed legislation before being sent to the Senate.
But Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R, Fla.), who had lobbied to attach the SAVE America Act to the NDAA via an amendment, argued on social media that Johnson’s approach is a “procedural head fake,” since the Senate can easily remove the voter ID bill provision.
Luna has insisted on more radical means of railroading Trump’s election law overhaul. But Senate GOP leadership has repeatedly said that Republicans do not have enough votes needed to overcome Democrats’ filibuster against the SAVE Act, nor enough support to change the chamber’s rules.
On Tuesday, Luna, along with 13 other House Republicans, including Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R, La.), voted with Democrats, 224-198, to reject the procedural rule. Scalise voted “no” as a procedural move so Republican leaders can call up the vote at a later date.
The other members were Reps. Lauren Boebert (Colo.), Tim Burchett (Tenn.), Eric Burlison (Mo.), Elijah Crane (Ariz.), Randy Fine (Fla.), Andy Harris (Md.), Thomas Massie (Ky.), Max Miller (Ohio), Chip Roy (Texas), Keith Self (Texas), Victoria Spartz (Ind.), and Michael Turner (Ohio).
But other Republicans cited broken promises by House GOP leadership as the reason for voting against the rule.
Rep. Harris, who chairs the House Freedom Caucus, told the New York Times that Johnson failed to deliver on what he called a “central” vote on a border security bill before July 4. Conservative legislators demanded the vote as a condition for supporting the $70 billion immigration enforcement bill the GOP passed earlier this month.
Stalled legislative agenda
Because of the deadlock over the SAVE America Act, other important policy bills stalled as well. The NDAA would provide funding for Pentagon programs and a pay raise for U.S. troops—at a time when the U.S. is facing multiple military conflicts. Also stalled are appropriations for the State Department, a resolution commemorating the anniversary of the enactment of the Working Families Tax Cuts Act, among other measures.
The intraparty impasse elicited criticism from Democrats.
Rep. Jim McGovern (D, Mass.), the ranking member in the House Rules Committee, called the “chaos and dysfunction” on the House floor “unhinged.”
“What on earth are we doing here?” McGovern said. “Even your own members are fed up, Mr. Speaker. Every week, wondering if someone’s going to throw a fit, if Donald Trump is going to post something crazy and blow everything up, if Mike Johnson is going to bring something to the floor when he doesn’t have the votes.”
“House Republicans are the gang that cannot legislate straight,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D, N.Y.) told the Times. “They are a complete and total mess. And this has been the case from Day 1 of the new Congress.”
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