REPORT: Senate GOP to make ‘down payment’ on SAVE America Act with party-line bill

March 24, 2026

From the Washington Examiner: Senate Republicans are moving “full steam ahead” on budget reconciliation, a major shift in strategy that opens the door for an election overhaul and other GOP priorities demanded by President Donald Trump.

Republican members of the Senate Budget Committee left a Tuesday evening meeting announcing that they would use the party-line budget process for the second time since Trump returned to the White House.

The meeting was preliminary and left open-ended exactly what will make it into the bill, but the decision breathes new life into passing a version of the SAVE America Act alongside funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Republicans have also discussed using reconciliation to fund the war in Iran.

“We’re going to move,” Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said on Tuesday, telling reporters that Senate Republicans would make a “down payment” on Trump’s election bill, which requires voter ID at the polls and proof of citizenship when registering to vote.

As chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Sen. Graham is responsible for drafting a blueprint of the legislation, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune said it would include a “lot of input from members of the conference.”

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) are also members of the Budget Committee and appear to be involved in the process.

“There are certain voter integrity things we can do that would be budget-related, things like grants conditioned on actually doing things to clean up your voter rolls, to provide IDs,” Johnson explained.