Senate Republicans are exposing efforts by House Republicans to stoke a partisan battle over the federal budget, fearing it could lead to an embarrassing government shutdown just weeks before Election Day.
With Republicans on the brink of taking control of the Senate in 2025, GOP senators do not want a funding deal at the end of the month to be derailed by a proposal backed by former President Trump to require proof of citizenship for voter registration.
Republican senators have acknowledged that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) would not accept any short-term funding bill that would impose new restrictions on voter registration, and have warned that Republicans would be blamed if the fight over the bill led to a government shutdown.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) is considering whether to introduce a government funding measure combined with the SAVE Act, which would set new rules for voter registration, to the House next week. The speaker suffered a setback on Wednesday when he was forced to halt a vote on the bill due to a split within his House faction over the six-month deadline for a continuing resolution (CR).
But Republican senators are quietly rooting for House Republicans to drop the fight over voter registration and instead support a clean continuing resolution with no policy attachments, so Congress can get its work done in two weeks and leave without any drama.
“Now we can run the government effectively, [a shutdown] “It happens right before an election,” said Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Mass.
Romney suggested the SAVE Act's goal of making sure only Americans are registered to vote is worth pursuing, but would be better pushed forward next year.
He said the bill, taking effect next year or early 2026, would “allow election officials time to go through the process of actually verifying people's documents.”
“With the time frame we're working with, it's just not realistic before the November election,” Romney said.
The Utah senator warned that Republicans will “always” be held responsible for the government shutdown.
A Senate Republican aide said GOP senators have no appetite for confrontation with Democrats over voter registration reform just before the government's budget expires on Sept. 30.
“No one wants to be forced into a corner having to choose between the SAVE Act or a government shutdown. We're 50 days away from the election. We're not stupid,” the aide said.
But President Trump has ignited the controversy by demanding that Republican lawmakers enact a citizenship requirement for voter registration or face a shutdown of Washington.
“If Republicans in the House and Senate cannot get absolute assurances about the security of our elections, they should not move forward with a continuing budget resolution of any kind,” Trump blasted in a Truth Social post on Tuesday.
President Trump has far more influence over House Republicans than he does over Senate Republicans, and his decision to intervene in the debate himself put the Speaker in a difficult position.
Johnson wants to win another term as Speaker of the House and cannot afford to anger President Trump and his MAGA allies on Capitol Hill by giving in easily on the SAVE Act, but he also wants to avoid being seen as trying to risk his slim House majority to shut down the government.
“Mike Johnson now has to fight for reelection as speaker,” a Senate Republican aide said.
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-Ill.), who threatened to shut down the government on Sept. 28 or 29 if Democrats don't agree to tougher voter registration requirements, said GOP senators do not want to be backed into a corner.
“I'm not going to shut down the government,” he said, adding that Republicans have a lot of issues to tackle on the campaign trail in the coming weeks, including the economy, inflation, immigration and border security.
He suggested some House conservatives might be hoping to energize their party's right-wing base with a losing battle over voter registration reform, rather than sticking to substantive policy issues.
“Some people would rather suffer a glorious defeat than a humble victory,” he said.
While the fight over voter registration rules has captured the attention of President Trump, conservative commentators and activists, some Republicans see a larger fight in Congress over whether to postpone spending decisions until next year.
Republican senators are also increasingly questioning Johnson's plan to pass a stopgap measure that would essentially freeze federal programs and funding levels until late March 2025.
Senate Republicans have warned that if former President Trump wins, the bill would hit the Defense Department and create a legislative backlog in his first months in office.
“It would be a mistake to continue the CR beyond December because we should offer them a clean slate regardless of who wins the presidential election and not put the burden on them to deal with issues in a fiscal year that began in October,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Collins said the SAVE Act is not controversial because foreign nationals are already legally barred from voting, but she acknowledged that Democrats strongly oppose it.
A growing number of Republican senators believe Johnson will be forced to remove the SAVE Act from the government's budget bill, and senators are focusing on whether the SAVE Act will be extended through December or January — an issue that has also become a key point of contention among House Republicans.
“I'm very focused on the length of the CR and am very concerned about it not going beyond December,” Collins said.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) also said he would like to reconsider the spending bill during the lame-duck session in December, rather than delaying it until March.
“I'm hoping it will last until December. Let's see how the Nov. 5 election goes,” he said. “What I really don't want to do is let Trump be president and then he [spend] “The first three months will be spent dealing with the chaos of the Biden administration. I want to start from a clean slate.”
Mullin also pointed to the reality that only a stopgap bill for clean government funding is likely to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate.
“The House obviously can't send us anything they want in the SAVE Act,” he said. “If the House tries to do anything without a clear CR, it's going to be hard to pass.”
