House Speaker Mike Johnson has decided that if the Senate won't eat its vegetables voluntarily, he's going to hide them inside the mashed potatoes. As Conservative Brief reported, Johnson unveiled a plan this week to merge the SAVE America Act with the National Defense Authorization Act, essentially duct-taping an election integrity bill to one of the few pieces of legislation Congress actually bothers to pass every year.
The whole situation kicked off because a group of hard-line House Republicans decided to grind legislative business to a halt until the Senate does something about the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections and require voter identification at the polls. Johnson's solution involves a parliamentary maneuver called "MIRVing," which sounds like something you'd name an office robot but is actually a procedure to merge two bills together on a single rule vote.
"We're going to pass a MIRV, or what's better known as a merge onto the rule," Johnson told reporters Monday. "So what that means is, when Republicans vote for the rule, they'll be voting not just for the NDAA and everything else is there, but they'll be voting to merge onto that the SAVE America Act we passed back in February."
Johnson then added a little guilt trip for his own caucus, noting that any Republican who votes against the rule would be voting against the whole package. Nothing like a little peer pressure among colleagues.
The problem, as several of Johnson's own members quickly pointed out, is that the Senate could simply peel the SAVE America Act off the defense bill like a bumper sticker and pass the NDAA without it. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida wasted no time calling this out on X, arguing the only real solution is embedding the voter ID provisions directly into the NDAA bill text so the Senate can't perform surgery on it.
"I'm not trying to be difficult, but this is what 80% of Americans want and what we promised the American people, so I stand by my decision," Luna wrote, which is a very polite way of saying she thinks the plan has a gaping hole in it.
Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee took the classic "let me see the menu first" approach, saying lawmakers need to review the details before committing. "We might be able to get everything we want, but as Luna said, we'd need to see it on paper first," Burchett told reporters.
House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris of Maryland was more enthusiastic, telling The Hill he supports any strategy that advances the legislation. "Any way to include the SAVE or SAVE America Act on everything coming out of the House, I'm for," Harris said.
Democrats, meanwhile, have opposed the SAVE America Act, arguing it creates unnecessary barriers to voting. They are expected to vote against the NDAA if the election provisions stay attached, which means Johnson's strategy could also complicate passage of the defense bill itself. So the Speaker is essentially playing a game of legislative Jenga where pulling out the wrong piece topples the entire tower of military funding. No pressure.
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