WASHINGTON — The hard-right Freedom Caucus is pushing House Republican leaders to condition government funding on passage of new proof-of-citizenship requirements to vote and create a new deadline that faces broad Senate opposition.
The tactic would risk a government shutdown just one month before the 2024 elections, a scenario that some GOP leaders prefer to avoid as it could play into the hands of Democrats politically.
The deadline to avert a government shutdown is Oct 1. Election Day is Nov. 5, although early voting begins before then.
With Congress on recess until Sept. 9 and little progress made so far on appropriations, it’s all but certain that lawmakers will need a short-term funding bill — also known as continuing resolution, or CR — to prevent a shutdown.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has not made any decisions on what a CR might look like or when he would set the deadline for its expiration.
The Freedom Caucus said Monday in a statement that the group has taken the official position that a CR “should include the SAVE Act — as called for by President Trump — to prevent non-citizens from voting to preserve free and fair elections,” accusing the Biden-Harris administration of having “imported” people to the U.S. illegally.
Trump and other top Republicans have repeated that claim, pushing for nationwide proof of citizenship in voting by falsely alleging a plot to use undocumented people to benefit Democrats in elections. Noncitizen voting is already illegal and very rare. Critics of the bill say the new requirements could disenfranchise American citizens.
The SAVE Act recently passed the Republican-led House but is dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate. If GOP leaders attached it to government funding, it would spark a standoff with Democrats and President Joe Biden that risks a government shutdown.
The Freedom Caucus added that in the event of a stopgap bill, “government funding should be extended into early 2025 to avoid a lame duck omnibus that preserves Democrat spending and policies well into the next administration.”
That, too, would spark a fight as many lawmakers prefer to deal with funding the government through fall 2025 in the lame-duck session. House and Senate Democrats favor a late 2024 deadline. And Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, recently told NBC News it would be a “mistake” to push the deadline into the new year, calling it wiser to finish the process in 2024 and give the new president a “clean slate” next January.
Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray, D-Wash., said the Freedom Caucus demands amount to “outrageous partisan pills” that are a “nonstarter,” calling for a bipartisan approach.
“The SAVE Act is nothing more than a partisan scare tactic meant to erode confidence in our elections. It is already illegal for noncitizens to register and vote in federal elections — our elections are free and fair, despite the dangerous, often incoherent, ramblings of Donald Trump,” Murray told NBC News in a statement.
She said the Senate will pursue a “bipartisan way to ensure we can keep the government funded and deliver responsible, bipartisan spending bills that can actually be signed into law before the end of the year.”
The Freedom Caucus is in a period of upheaval as its chairman, Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., lost a hotly contested primary by a wafer-thin margin. But the group of roughly 40 members has punched above its weight in a narrow House GOP majority.
Asked to respond, Johnson spokesperson Athina Lawson didn’t address the new conservative demands and said only that the House has “made significant progress” on full-year funding bills through September of next year.
“The House Appropriations Committee has diligently moved all 12 bills out of committee and the House has passed 75 percent of government funding for the upcoming fiscal year while the Senate has yet to even consider a single appropriations bill,” she said. “The House will continue its successful effort to responsibly fund the government for FY25 when it returns from its district work period.”
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