President Trump declared it loudly during his State of the Union address: he wants the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act. “I’m asking you to approve the SAVE America Act,” he said, “to stop illegal aliens and others, who are unpermitted persons, from voting in our sacred American elections.” Yet the following day, speaking on Fox News, Senate Majority Leader John Thune inexplicably dismissed the effort as a “messaging” exercise, saying, “We’ll put the Democrats on the record” with nothing more than a vote on the bill.
To be clear: that’s not what America wants. America doesn’t want Senate Republicans to settle for a “messaging” bill. America already knows where Democrats are on illegal immigration, and – especially after President Trump’s bold challenge during his speech to stand up and be counted on the issue – so does the rest of the country.
America doesn’t need a “messaging” bill; it needs the SAVE America Act passed by the Senate. We’re counting on the Senate Majority Leader to use the rules of the Senate to accomplish that task.
Why am I so sure America wants this legislation? Because public polling makes it clear, including a poll conducted by McLaughlin & Associates for Tea Party Patriots Action last summer, which showed that 83 percent of likely voters agree that “proof of United States citizenship should be required to register to vote in American elections” and 79 percent agree that “voters should be required to provide identification when voting, including when casting absentee, mail-in, and overseas ballots, to ensure that the person is who they claim to be.”
The bill passed the House three weeks ago and now awaits action in the Senate. Despite the active and vehement opposition of Senate Democrats, Leader Thune nevertheless has an opportunity to guide this bill to passage by employing a strategy from days gone by, the so-called “talking” filibuster.
That’s because cloture – that is, ending debate – can be invoked by two methods, not one. The way we’ve become used to seeing cloture invoked is through the mechanical means, a vote to invoke cloture. The threshold for success on that vote is set by the Senate rules at 60 votes, and that’s why the false premise that it requires 60 votes to pass a bill exists.
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There’s a second way to invoke cloture – the natural method, which occurs when everyone who wants to speak on a bill exhausts his or her opportunities to do so. Under the rules of the Senate, as explained so well in my podcast interview with my colleague Rachel Bovard of the Conservative Partnership Institute, senators are allowed to speak for as long as they want, up to two times, on any given subject matter. After everyone who wishes to speak does so to the full extent allowed, debate ends, and the vote occurs naturally, without need of a cloture vote. Why have a vote to end debate, after all, when the debate has already ended?
This strategy does not require “nuking” the filibuster. This strategy does not require a change in the rules of the Senate, neither temporary nor permanent. This strategy, in fact, does exactly the opposite – it uses the rules of the Senate as they exist, and as they were regularly used for a century after the introduction of the cloture vote in 1917. Rather than destroy the filibuster, using the “talking” filibuster may well, in fact, save it.
All that is required is for Senate Republicans to show discipline in the effort. It will be a long process – it could take weeks, or even months, of Senate floor time to exhaust the speaking opportunities of the bill’s opponents, who will use the Senate’s unlimited debate rules to try to wear down the supporters of the bill to the point where they raise the white flag. It is, ultimately, a simple test of will – which side has the greater will to succeed in the effort?
Speaker Mike Johnson even greased the wheels for Leader Thune. When Johnson brought the bill to the floor of the House, he didn’t bring the House version of the bill to the floor; instead, he crafted a procedural maneuver to bring the bill to the floor as an amendment to a bill that had already passed the Senate. Consequently, when it passed the House, it did so as an amendment to a Senate bill that had already passed the Senate. That means it can be brought back to the floor of the Senate without need to end debate on a motion to proceed. Instead, all it needs is a simple majority vote on a motion to proceed. And then the debate will begin, and America will see if Democrats are more determined to prevent passage of a bill that’s supported by 83 percent of likely voters or if Republicans are more determined to enact that safeguard for election integrity?
Imagine if the Senate spent weeks, even months, on this filibuster, and every day journalists had to report a version of the following: “In their determined and continued effort to prevent the passage of legislation supported by four out of five voters to safeguard American elections from interference by illegal aliens, Senate Democrats yesterday continued their weeks-old filibuster, invoking not cloture but images and memories of Southern Democrats determined to block enactment of civil rights and voting rights laws …”
Leader Thune should bring the SAVE America Act to the floor as soon as possible, and he should let Democrats filibuster it for as long as they want. He should make clear to them that he will let them talk themselves hoarse, but he will not schedule a cloture vote. And then let the debate begin.
Jenny Beth Martin is Honorary Chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action.
Editor's Note: The Democrats are doing everything in their power to undermine the integrity of our elections.
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