The House of Representatives will make a final push to pass the SAVE America Act by embedding it into a budget reconciliation bill, a procedural move designed to bypass the Senate’s usual 60-vote requirement, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced Sunday.
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act would require individuals to present physical proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, alongside a photo ID to cast a ballot.
“The president has that as a top priority, and so do I,” Johnson said during an interview with Fox News’s Shannon Bream. “We passed it three times in the House. We’re going to try one more time on a budget reconciliation bill, and I think that will be the way to get it through the Senate, and finally, to the president’s desk.”
Johnson described the House version of the bill as the “backbone” of the administration’s goals, asserting that its focus on citizenship verification and voter ID “eliminates the problem, all the fraud and everything that everybody’s concerned about in our elections.”
This reconciliation strategy is the latest attempt to advance the legislation, which has continually stalled in the Senate. The House previously passed versions of the bill in February and March 2026 along narrow party lines. However, Senate Republicans have pushed back against attaching the measure to must-pass legislation, pointing to procedural hurdles and logistical constraints.
Three days prior to Johnson’s announcement, North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis declared the bill “dead” on Capitol Hill, arguing that there is not enough time to implement new voter ID rules before the upcoming midterm elections.
“Unless they do the work to get to the 60 votes, they know it’s dead, and so all this is theater,” Tillis told The News & Observer.
Even with a 53-seat Republican majority in the Senate, passing the bill would normally require Democratic crossover votes or a successful procedural workaround—both of which face steep odds given unified Democratic resistance.
The issue has also caused internal friction among House Republicans. Representative Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican, publicly vowed to block standard House business unless the SAVE Act is tied to a larger legislative package, such as the National Defense Authorization Act or a party-line budget reconciliation bill.
Johnson downplayed the internal conflict during his interview. “Nobody’s mad at Anna; we all want the same thing,” Johnson said. “She’s a team player; she’s a good friend of mine. We’re going to get this done.”
Democrats remain firmly opposed to the legislation, with many opponents labeling it a return to Jim Crow-era voter suppression. Critics of the bill argue that the strict documentation requirements would disproportionately disenfranchise eligible voters, specifically targeting women, Black voters, and college students who are less likely to possess the exact paperwork mandated by the proposed law.
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