By Maria Ortiz
07 Sep 2024, 00:25 AM EDT
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, is deploying the Republican Party’s strategy for a high-stakes fight for the government budgetsetting up a showdown with Senate Democrats as the deadline approaches government shutdownOctober 1st.
On Friday, House Republican leaders unveiled a stopgap federal budget bill, also known as a continuing resolution, that will largely fund the government at current levels. until March 28, 2025.
The funding measure includes a GOP proposal to require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections, a measure that former President Donald Trump insisted on but that Senate Democrats do not want to accept.
The Protecting American Voter Eligibility Act (HR 8281), or SAVE Act, to prevent undocumented immigrants from votingproposes “To amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to Require proof of U.S. citizenship to register a person to vote in elections for federal office and for other purposes.”
“Today, House Republicans are taking a critically important step to maintain federal government funding and secure our federal election process,” said House Speaker John F. Kennedy, Mike Johnson (Republican of Louisiana), after the bill was introduced.
“Congress has a responsibility to do both, and we must ensure that only American citizens can decide American elections,” Johnson said.
Rejection in the Senate
Senate Democratic leaders immediately rejected the proposal.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and the chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said in a joint statement that “avoiding a government shutdown requires bipartisanship, not a party-crafted bill.”
“Speaker Johnson is making the same mistake former Speaker McCarthy made a year ago, wasting precious time pandering to the MAGA radical right. This tactic didn’t work last September, and it won’t work this year. The House Republican funding proposal is an ominous case of déjà vu.” Schumer and Murray said.
“If President Johnson leads House Republicans down this highly partisan path, the odds of a shutdown will greatly increase, and Americans will know that the responsibility for a shutdown will fall in the hands of House Republicans.”
Democrats have fiercely opposed the SAVE Act, and The Biden administration has promised to veto it when the House considered it earlier this year, noting that It is now a crime for non-citizens to vote in federal elections.
The White House also argued that The bill would make it harder for eligible voters to register and would increase “the risk that eligible voters will be removed from the voter rolls.”
Conservative lawmakers have also been pushing for postpone the current deadline of September 30 for lawmakers to resolve the federal budget for fiscal year 2025 through next year, with the hope that former President Trump will regain the White House in November.
Continue reading:
• Republicans push bill that would prevent voting without proof of citizenship
• Republicans advance legislation against voting by undocumented immigrants, but Latino congressmen accuse it of a “big lie”
• What does the new law on undocumented immigrants approved in the House consist of?