Rachel Bovard, the vice president for programs at the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), said on Breitbart News Saturday that Senate Republicans are waiting to be led into a “broadly politically popular fight” to pass the SAVE America Act.
Bovard spoke to Breitbart News Saturday guest host Bradley Jaye as the Senate Republican majority has remained unable to pass the SAVE America Act, a bill that would require proof of citizenship to vote and require voter ID to vote, among other reforms.
The bill has passed through the House; however, the Senate’s 60-vote threshold has made it difficult for it to pass through the chamber. This is why Bovard and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), among other conservatives, have advocated for using the talking filibuster to break through the 60-vote filibuster threshold and pass the legislation with only 51 votes through the Senate.
President Donald Trump has called for eliminating the 60-vote threshold entirely.
Bovard explained that, even if that were the case, it remains unclear if the SAVE America Act has enough votes to pass through the Senate.
She said, as the Senate voted on amendments to pass the budget resolution this week, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) offered an amendment to the budget resolution that would establish many parts of the SAVE America Act.
The Senate voted it down 48-50, with four Senate Republicans — Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) — voting against the amendment.
Bovard explained that McConnell led Senate Republicans for roughly 17 years, meaning that GOP lawmakers in Congress’s upper chamber have not become accustomed to being led through contentious fights. She added that the Senate “hates working” and that many senators are too used to the Senate’s two-and-a-half-day workweek.
Jaye said that being the Senate Majority Leader means being a “thermostat, not a thermometer,” and that a Republican leader should apply pressure to enact the president’s agenda.
Bovard said that many Senate Republicans are “waiting to be led.”
She said, “This bill did receive a majority of the conference cosponsoring it; they are just waiting to be led. This is a conference again, the bulk of which has never seen a leader that’s willing to listen to them and to lead into a broadly politically popular fight. Mitch McConnell didn’t do these things, and so now I think they’re waiting for John Thune to tell us what to do and not take the heckler’s veto.”
She said that the “Senate is where you deliberate” and “pass a negotiated product.”
Bovard added, “That is all we have been asking for the SAVE America Act, just try.”
Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M. Eastern.
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