BREAKING NEWS: Thanks to House Republicans, the SAVE Act Lives to Fight Another Day

By Kristine Christlieb, MFEI News & Commentary Editor

July 23, 2026

House Republicans, pulling out all the stops before a summer recess, successfully pushed through two legislative vehicles on July 22, keeping open as many passage options as possible for the SAVE America Act.

The first option carries the SAVE Act's original text, attached to a must-pass defense bill, banking on the Senate not stripping it back out.

The second option does not specifically include the provisions of the SAVE Act. Instead, it opens a budget process that includes the opportunity, through the reconciliation process, for funds to be allocated to states that comply with the provisions of the SAVE Act. This is the option U. S. House Speaker Mike Johnson thinks has the best chance.

While Speaker Johnson has managed to float two options for passage of the Save Act provisions, they are tenuous and traps await at every turn.

Speaker Johnson’s Two-Track Strategy in Detail

The first vehicle is the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the annual defense policy bill. The House passed it by a vote of 216-212 and attached the SAVE Act's already-passed text. So the legislation's original language, not a rewrite, is now riding along on defense legislation Congress considers must-pass.

The second vehicle is House Concurrent Resolution (H.Con.Res.) 113, which passed 216-214. It doesn't contain SAVE Act language directly. Instead, it opens the door to a budget reconciliation process and specifies various budget parameters. It instructs the House Administration Committee to draft a budget bill by September 11. Among its provisions, it can include incentive-based legislation offering states up to $10 billion in grants for adopting voter ID and citizenship-verification measures similar to those in the SAVE Act. Speaker Johnson is calling this future bill the “SAVE and Protect America Act.”

In an official statement following the passage of H.Con.Res 113, Johnson said:

Today, House Republicans passed the Budget Resolution for Reconciliation 3.0  [H.Con.Res. 113] — the SAVE and Protect America Act — which puts Congressional Republicans on a path to enacting two fundamentally simple and crucial goals: securing American elections and strengthening our homeland by providing supplemental funding requested by the Administration to support our national defense and protect our nation’s food supply. After the Senate passes this Budget Resolution, our House Committees will begin the process of drafting and passing the SAVE and Protect America Act. This Budget Resolution is our best shot at enacting as much of the SAVE America Act into law as possible. This is a bill that every Republican in Congress can and should get behind.

Pitfalls for NDAA Option

The problem with the NDAA manuever is the SAVE Act language can be stripped out by the Senate. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) has said the tactic "won't work” for that very reason. Senate Republicans Thom Tillis, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and Mitch McConnell have all previously voted against SAVE Act provisions, and Tillis has said he'll use "every device" available to slow the chamber down if the language reappears in a Senate-bound bill.

The Senate will now take up its own version of the NDAA. It's in this step of the process the SAVE Act language can be removed by ordinary floor action or stripped in conference.

Given the stand-alone SAVE Act was stalled in the Senate for months, it seems unlikely to survive . . . which is why Speaker Johnson believes the budget reconciliation route is the best bet. But even it is full of landmines.

Pitfalls for Budget Reconciliation

H.Con.Res. 113 contains no SAVE Act text. It does not mention voter ID or citizenship-verification requirements. What it does is direct four House committees — Agriculture, Armed Services, Intelligence, and House Administration — to submit budget recommendations within a specified deficit ceiling.

The SAVE Act will be shepherded through the process by the Committee on House Administration where a budget ceiling of $10 billion can be used for state grants that incentivize states to adopt SAVE Act-style measures voluntarily.

The strategy has its skeptics. Axios quotes Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) "That's just free money for Florida." He went on to predict, Blue states "will never take the grant money. I'm not a big fan of carrots. I like sticks."

The House Committee on Administration is chaired by Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), who has been vocal about his commitment to election integrity. But the committee's ranking Democrat, Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY), has been an outspoken critic of the broader Republican push on voting law.

The Senate must pass its own budget resolution that matches the House version before the process is fully underway — though House Administration Committee could begin drafting informally even before that happens. Once the Senate resolution is adopted, the committee has until September 11 to submit its legislative text. That text gets folded into one big reconciliation bill. The Senate parliamentarian reviews it. If it survives that review, the Senate passes it with a simple majority. Then the House and Senate reconcile any differences between their versions. Both chambers vote again on the final text. Only then does it go to the President.

Nothing in this process will be final before autumn at the earliest.

The throughline

Both options require multiple steps before a piece of legislation actually lands on President Trump's desk. One carries the original language but faces a Senate stripping risk with no real procedural defense. The other carries a much weaker grant incentive and still faces Senate scrutiny.