Major fights await Senate after break
By: Zachary Schermele
USA Today
WASHINGTON - The Senate just went out with a bang - passing a government funding bill to try to avert another shutdown, confirming Todd Blanche's attorney general and bucking a voter ID measure.
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Overnight, a quick flurry of legislative activity doubled as an escape plan to push senators into their annual month-long break and onto the Campaign trail.
..... But after days of Republican infighting, lawmakers left a lot on the cutting room floor.
..... A plan to advance an influx of Pentagon cash amid the Iran war was stalled, as was bipartisan legislation to overhaul college athletics. Hopes of getting around to years-in-the-making legislation to regular cryptocurrency were dashed. A circuitous effort to implement pieces of President Donald Trump's biggest legislative priority -a voting restriction bill called the SAVE America Act - didn't get closer to the finish line, either.
..... Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, recently acknowledged the challenges when was having getting everyone on the same page.
..... "It's shut a series of thongs that are sort of piled up," he said. "Train wreck's probably a little extreme of an analogy."
..... The result: congress will be using what little time it has left before the November [2026] midterms fighting some of this most politically fraught battles. With teeth all election potentially expected to end the current era of full GOP control on Capitol Hill, Senate Republicans are still struggling to reconcile their aim to stay in power with their need to get things done.
..... The last few months in the Senate have been dominated by a conservative furor to pass some version of the SAVE America Act. The bill - which would significantly curb mail-in voting while requiring photo ID and documentary proof of citizenship to cast a ballot - is at the top of the White House's legislative wish list.
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Although the full bill has virtually no chance of passing, Republican leaders in Congress are working in tandem on a cerate end-run around the Senate filibuster to approve it anyway: incentively states, through grants, to turn parts of it into law. That gambit is in the form of a budget bill, which can pass along party lines without Democrats.
..... While the blueprint is focused on defense spending to beef up the Pentagon, it would also set aside billions of dollars for election-related purposes.
..... The House already green-lit the effort weeks ago, the first step in a long process. Senate Republicans had hoped to do the same before leaving town, but 11th hour disagreements and other priories got in the way. Instead, hoping to quell frustration among the biggest SAVE proponents, Senator Jon Husted, R-Ohio, offered a measure to require photo Id in elections. The bill failed.
..... "Not a single Democrat joined us," Santor Mike Lee, R-Utah said.
..... Lee is arguably the SAVE Act's biggest champion in the Senate. Before legislators left Washington, he repeatedly threatened to obstruct the schedule and keep his colleagues in session if they didn't mover it forward. Lee, or any other Republican senator, could've objected to the chamber adjourning just before 5 AM. None of them did.