House Speaker Mike Johnson has instructed Republican senators to remove the SAVE Act from the government funding bill once the House passes it, senior aides in Republican senate offices that support the SAVE Act being part of the government funding bill told Breitbart News on Thursday.
Johnson's office has denied the allegations.
The SAVE Act is a Republican-sponsored bill that would take drastic measures to prevent foreigners, especially illegal immigrants, from voting in the U.S. Johnson has said he wants to make this part of the fight over government funding. Conservatives have largely welcomed this position because they believe the threat of foreign voting is real and serious, and that Republicans should use all the influence they have in Congress to stop it.
But Johnson has little hope of getting his plan through the Democratic-controlled Senate or Democratic President Joe Biden. He faces a big challenge even getting his plan through the narrowly Republican House of Representatives. Even if he can rally House Republicans to pass the bill, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has vowed to block any effort to pass the SAVE Act in the Senate, and Biden has warned he will veto the bill. If an impasse develops between the House and Senate, or between Congress and the White House, and it remains unresolved, there are fears of a government shutdown. It's unclear whether Johnson is willing to fight to pass the SAVE Act.
That's why what Republican senators say Johnson told them is so interesting. One GOP senator told Breitbart News that Johnson literally told Republican senators that if the House could pass a government funding plan that included the SAVE Act, senators should strip out the SAVE Act, pass a clean funding bill, and send it back to the House and cave in. “This is all a bait-and-switch kabuki stunt to bolster Johnson's right wing,” one GOP senator told Breitbart News, adding that it wasn't a serious effort to stop illegal immigrants from voting.
A second aide to a Republican senator in a different office confirmed the first aide's account in a separate conversation with Breitbart News on Thursday.
Johnson's spokesman, Taylor Halsey, denied the allegations in a statement to Breitbart News.
“This accusation is, without question, 100% false,” Halsey said in an email. “In fact, quite the opposite. The Speaker is fighting tooth and nail to protect the integrity of America's elections and is actively calling on all Republicans to join him in this fight.”
Government funding expires at the end of September. Conservatives are enthusiastic about the fight over foreign voting, but there is also a general sense of fatigue among Republicans about the government shutdown policy, especially with the elections approaching. One of the reasons why Johnson is proposing what is called a Continuing Resolution (CR) that would fund the government at the current level from the end of the calendar year until March next year, and is trying to attach the SAVE Act to it, is because Republicans want to prepare for what they hope will be a Republican triumvirate to implement their policy priorities in early 2025. However, there is still a great deal of uncertainty about what exactly will happen in the November 5 elections and whether Republicans will maintain their House majority and retake the White House. Republicans seem poised to retake the U.S. Senate, given their highly favorable map and trends in key states such as Montana and Ohio.
Even if Republicans in the House and Senate are able to weather this difficult phase and retain the House and control the Senate and the White House, serious questions remain about Johnson's personal future. Johnson is currently Speaker of the House only because Democrats allowed him to hold the position. When Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) tried to force a motion to remove him from office earlier this year, she did not receive enough Republican support. Greene's effort was thwarted by a massive Democratic vote at the behest of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to keep Johnson in the Speaker position, but Johnson lost enough Republicans to remove him without Democratic support. After Greene's effort, things seem to have calmed down a bit as Republicans try to survive the election and then sort out Johnson's future and consider whether another Republican who doesn't need the Democrats' help would be more effective in the position.
Flashback: Republican Mike Johnson finally elected Speaker of the House
U.S. House of Representatives
