GOP Blasts Schumer’s CR Threat: ‘Citizens Voting in U.S. Elections? Why Is That Even Controversial?’

Summer may be over, but the theatrics over the federal budget certainly aren’t. Congress flew back into D.C. this week for another hamster wheel of government spending fights — only this time, the drama is getting a shot of election politics. That should at least make this spat — which has seen more reruns than “M*A*S*H” — more interesting. Either way, most Americans probably wish there was a way to govern more efficiently. As Tom Temin joked on The Federal Drive, “I can see the next bumper sticker in Washington: ‘Pass Bills, Not Gas.’”

With just three weeks to wrap up the huge pile of unpassed appropriations proposals, the squeeze is on House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who last week announced his intent to add a popular election integrity bill to whatever funding package the chamber considered. Most people assume that will be a continuing resolution (CR) that would keep the government funded at the same levels (and under the same policy riders) through March of next year. Anyone who’s tuned into this spectacle over the last two years knows that the idea may not fly with a few hard-line conservatives, who committed to debating, working, and passing 12 slimmer budgets in regular order.

By Monday, five House Republicans had panned the push for a new CR — painting Johnson into a very familiar corner. Thanks to the wafer-thin majority in the House, the GOP can only stand to lose four members on any legislation before leadership would have to cross the aisle for support. But, as Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) pointed out to guest host and former Congressman Jody Hice on “Washington Watch,” there aren’t a whole lot of appealing options. “We’re going to run out of funding,” he warned, “and we don’t have a partner in the Senate with [Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). They have passed zero appropriations bills.”

In fact, he shook his head, “They haven’t even agreed on a budget [or even] what we call a ‘top line number,’ [which is] how much we’re going to spend for a year. They can’t even agree on that. … So we’re going to be left with a couple options — a continuing resolution, which keeps spending the same amount of money until the deal is worked out — or an omnibus, which would be terrible. [It would be] written in Chuck Schumer’s office by his staff [and propose] wildly terrible policy.”

Does Perry relish the idea of another six-month funding bridge? No, “but that gets us into the Trump administration, God willing, if he were to prevail.” To sweeten the deal for reluctant Republicans, Johnson has decided to tack the SAVE Act on the CR and pull some conservatives back to his side. “The SAVE Act,” Perry explained, “requires states to verify [the] citizenship of every one of their voters. And that’s something that is sorely needed. Of course, it’s already illegal for people [who] are here illegally to vote, but … no one is enforcing it. Think about speed limit laws in your state with no police there to ever enforce them. And so this would require states to actually enforce the law. We see it as a potential game-changer.”

The legislation, which has the public backing of Donald Trump, has (unsurprisingly) raised the hackles of Democrats, who seem appalled that anyone would want to make our elections fair and constitutional. “If Speaker Johnson drives House Republicans down this highly partisan path,” Schumer said, “the odds of a shutdown go way up, and Americans will know that the responsibility of a shutdown will be on the House Republicans’ hands.”

It’s amazing, Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Saturday’s “This Week on the Hill” that even safeguarding our vote is somehow partisan now. All this legislation states, he explains, is that “if you’re going to register for a federal election, you must show your proof of citizenship. I don’t even understand why it is an issue,” he exclaimed. “Citizens voting in U.S. elections? Why is that even controversial? Why is that even an issue? I think most common-sense people would say, ‘Yes, we ought to decide our own elections.’”

But then, he acknowledged, this goes to the heart of the Democrats’ open-borders scheme. “It’s very clear now: … They are importing voters.” Kamala Harris’s party used to try to hide it, the Texan explained, but now, they openly say, “We’re registering illegal immigrants to vote.” “We know it’s happening,” Self warned, so it’s time to put Democrats on the record about whether they believe in election integrity or not.

As Johnson said when he posted the text of the CR, “House Republicans are taking a critically important step to keep the federal government funded and to secure our federal election process. Congress has a responsibility to do both, and we must ensure that only American citizens can decide American elections.”

To Schumer’s dead-on-arrival threat, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) cautioned that he’s way out of step with the rest of the country. “I’ve been to a lot of congressional districts,” he told Perkins on Monday’s “Washington Watch.” “Last week, I did a big West Coast swing. Even in California, there are so many people fed up with the open borders. … I mean, over 80% of Americans think it’s crazy that illegals can vote. How is Chuck Schumer [defending this]? Chuck Schumer is in New York. He can get away with it. But I’ll tell you this — Chuck Schumer has a number of vulnerable Democrats that are on the ballot this election. How are they going to go back home and explain a ‘no’ vote on that bill?”

In many conservatives’ minds, Johnson’s push to exact some sort of price from Democrats is a solid one. From across the Capitol, Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) urged Republicans to stick together, pointing to a Hill op-ed that suggested the wisest course of action for the GOP is to back Johnson. “The House has passed all 12 appropriations bills out of committee and passed five through the full chamber,” The Heritage Foundation’s Kevin Roberts writes. “The Senate has not cleared a single bill. Now we’re left staring down another continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown — something Democrats and their allies in the media would no doubt blame on Republicans.”

But, he continued, “if conservatives in Congress can stay united, they can flip the script — and secure major victories before the election.” It would “save taxpayers money, avoid another outrageous Christmas omnibus and present an opportunity to protect our ballot boxes from the over 10 million illegal aliens that the Biden/Harris administration let into the country.”

“Absolutely right,” Lee insisted. “Democrats want a CR that expires right before Christmas so they can: 1) push through a bloated, irresponsible spending bill nobody reads using the holiday as leverage, per usual 2) tie President Trump’s hands even after the American people show them the door in November. … We are going to protect American voters,” he vowed. “We are going to pass the SAVE Act.”

Quena Gonzalez, senior director of Government Affairs at FRC, understands people’s frustration with this constant haggling and Congress’s seeming inability to ever get the job done. “In one sense, this feels like more of the same old, same old: government spending out of control, deficits as far as the eye can see, and a national debt that defies comprehension ($35 trillion, over $100,000 per citizen, and climbing), with Democrats and Republicans unable to agree on national spending levels,” he told The Washington Stand. “So of course they’ll kick the can down the road a little while, using a continuing resolution to fund the government for another several months, unable to agree on anything and ignoring the soaring debt.”

But in another sense, he underscored, “this misses the picture. Republicans in the House are using this CR as an opportunity to reset. Last year, Speaker Johnson tried a number of tactics to regain fiscal discipline, including promising to bring all 12 appropriations bills forward separately for the first time in decades, then pushing the deadline back with a short-term CR to put more pressure on members to come to agreements in funding levels, then structuring a ‘laddered CR’ to pass the funding bills they could agree on while creating pressure to pass the ones they couldn’t. These haven’t been universally popular among Republicans, but it may’ve been the best that leadership could’ve done.”

Gonzalez likes the current proposal for a short-term CR for several reasons. “One, it extends into next year, so that if Republicans gain a greater majority in the House, win back the majority in the Senate, and/or take the White House, they’ll be in a much greater position to negotiate more responsible spending levels next year.” Secondly, he pointed out, Johnson is attaching a major conservative priority — the SAVE Act — to the funding bridge.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, “Speaker Johnson is implicitly bypassing the many ‘poison pill’ spending provisions that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats are seeking to inject into the federal appropriations process, including millions of taxpayer dollars for organizations that focus on indoctrinating youth with false sexual identities, promote and fund abortion and abortion providers, and accelerated the leftward cultural slide.” With a historically slim majority, he urged, “this is a proposal that House conservatives should strongly consider, even those who usually vote against a CR on principle.”