Congress heads for spending fight with massive election implications

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are running out of time to court voters before Americans go to the polls on Nov. 5. But time is running out on another deadline before Election Day that has the potential to significantly affect the election and beyond.

On Sept. 30, the end of fiscal year 2024, the government could shut down if Congress fails to pass a short-term funding bill.

The chances of a government shutdown are incredibly unlikely, given that neither Republicans nor Democrats have the political incentive to risk getting blamed for a shutdown on the eve of an election. Nevertheless, how Congress ultimately decides to fund the government, and for how long, will be one of the last big fights of the raucous 118th Congress.

House Speaker Mike Johnson’s plan reportedly is to continue funding the federal government at levels previously agreed upon by congressional leaders of both parties, but with some key changes. Johnson, R-La., wants to throw out the sweetheart deals former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., struck with President Joe Biden in the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 that raised the government’s debt ceiling. That’s not unreasonable, given that those side deals were geared toward fiscal ’24 spending levels.

The speaker also wants to attach the SAVE Act to the continuing resolution. The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act would require individuals to provide proof of citizenship to register for and vote in federal elections.

As for this continuing resolution’s duration, Johnson and his fellow Republicans want to push off another spending fight until the next Congress, in hopes that Republicans will then control not only the White House, but also both chambers of the legislature. That way, a second Trump administration and a Republican Congress would not be hamstrung by spending levels agreed upon during the extended period of a Biden lame-duck presidency.

Democrats, meanwhile, are arguing that scrapping the Fiscal Responsibility Act’s side deals and adding the SAVE Act are nonstarters. Democrats in the House have already shown their opposition to the appropriations bill that has moved through the chamber.

House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., claimed that “just like last year, House Republicans have taken the process of funding the government down a partisan path—forcing us to consider extreme, harmful funding bills that have no chance of becoming law. And just like last year, House Republicans’ refusal to meet House Democrats at the table has left us without time to pass all 12 bills before the end of September.”

It’s worth noting that it was Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.—the most important Democrat in Congress for negotiating spending levels, given his party’s control of the Senate—and not House Republicans, who failed to move on any appropriations bills and refused to negotiate with GOP leaders for months leading up to the end of the last fiscal year.

Nevertheless, DeLauro persisted: “We need a continuing resolution because House Republicans let their most extreme members drive the ship. Let us hope they do not drive us straight to a Republican shutdown.”

The Democrats’ strategy in nearly every spending fight is to play up their structural advantage. Avoiding a government shutdown means spending money the federal government doesn’t have. Democrats seem to have no qualms about leveraging future generations’ wealth or financial security to keep the government open. Republicans, meanwhile, tend to correct in the other direction: The national debt is a killer lurking behind every corner. Democrats can brand any provision as a “poison pill,” and Republicans naturally end up on defense in spending fights, and often bear the blame when shutdowns do occur.

“As we have said each time we’ve had a [continuing resolution], the only way to get things done is in a bipartisan way, and that is what has happened every time,” Schumer claimed, according to Punchbowl News.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash., is a bit more explicit. “Demanding outrageous partisan ‘poison pills’ is a nonstarter. We’ve seen this movie before, and we know how it ends,” she claimed. “Senate Democrats will continue to work in 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.”

Yet, by adding the SAVE Act, Johnson has the opportunity to really strengthen Republicans’ hand in the upcoming spending battle. The House already passed the SAVE Act, first introduced by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, in July with Republican, and some Democratic, support.

Johnson spoke positively about the bill on the House floor when the lower chamber was considering the legislation this summer.

“This will be one of the most important votes that members of this chamber will ever take in their entire careers. And it’s an issue we never thought we would have to actually address, but that moment has come to us now,” the speaker said, adding:

Should Americans and Americans alone determine the outcome of American elections? Or should we allow foreigners and illegal aliens to decide who sits in the White House and in the people’s House and in the Senate?

The best hand Democrats have to play against the SAVE Act is that it is already against the law for illegal immigrants to vote in federal elections. They risk falling into the GOP’s trap. Not only are very liberal municipalities attempting to grant illegals suffrage, but one of the top issues in the upcoming election is the Biden administration’s immigration policies and its failure to enforce immigration laws already on the books. What guarantees do the American people have that this lawlessness does not extend to their elections?

Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, an expert on election laws, told The Daily Signal that Democrats’ retort doesn’t pass the smell test. “If things being against the law were effective, then obviously all our prisons must be empty across the country,” he said.

“There’s plenty of evidence—I’ve written a lot about it—that aliens, both legal or illegal, are registering and voting in many places across the country,” Von Spakovsky claimed, adding:

One of the only ways to prevent this from happening is to prevent it ahead of time, before it happens, because once an alien has registered and cast a ballot, there is nothing you can do to get that ballot out of the ballot box.

So, you want to make sure they don’t register in the first place. How do you do that? There’s only one way: Require proof of citizenship when people register to vote.

Noncitizens casting ballots in elections is not a problem isolated to border states, either. “The Biden administration has let in more aliens illegally than any other administration in our entire history, and they’ve been transporting them all over the country. All you have to do is search the news for the problems that city mayors are facing all over the country with a huge influx of aliens that they’re trying to find housing for, medical care, for overwhelming local schools,” Von Spakovsky told The Daily Signal. “This is a problem everywhere.”

Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., appears poised to undercut Johnson and the Republican-controlled House. McConnell’s operatives have reportedly been working behind the scenes to prevent Republicans from going forward with the SAVE Act as part of a short-term funding bill. It is the latest in a series of efforts to undermine conservative priorities on spending and immigration this Congress for McConnell, who took Democrats’ side in last year’s spending fight and supplemental spending and immigration negotiations.

Roy spoke about the SAVE Act in a recent appearance on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast: “Every state ought to be very clear that we’re going to force that only citizens are voting in our state, local, and federal elections. But the SAVE Act is meant to layer on top of that; to say that, no matter what you want to do at the state and local level, only citizens are going to vote for our Congress, Senate, and president.”

“Democrats say, ‘But, Chip, it’s not a problem. It’s already against the law for noncitizens to vote in federal elections.’ That is technically true, but what they don’t go on to tell you is that federal law has been interpreted by courts to restrict the ability of states to actually check the data and collect the information or to take the documentary proof of citizenship that has been eliminated by the courts.

“So, now the question is, will we attach [the SAVE Act] to a funding mechanism in September?” Roy asked. “I believe we should. President Trump believes we should. Mike Johnson appears ready and willing to do it, and that’s where we currently sit.”

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]

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