(Picture credit The Vince Show)
Vice President JD Vance spoke on the Vince Coglianese show Tuesday and said he and President Trump have been wargaming how to get the SAVE America Act passed.
“Could I assume the chair of the Senate and fire the parliamentarian? Yes, I could,” Vance said. “You have to ask the question — ‘What does that get you?’ So, let’s just play this out, and trust me, we’ve played it out internally with a lot of great people, including the president of the United States.”
“So I take over the chair, I fire the parliamentarian, and what happens? Four or five Republicans, at least, and maybe ten Republicans — they join the Democrats to then overrule the new chair, which is the vice president of the United States. The point is there is no shortcut.”
The vice president’s comments come as the party’s conservative base has expressed frustration over the Senate’s inability to pass the SAVE Act. Earlier this summer, Trump called on Senate Majority Leader John Thune to fire the parliamentarian to get the bill passed.
The Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, has ruled that the SAVE Act does not fit the requirements to be in a budget reconciliation package, which only needs a simple majority to pass. Instead, the bill would need 60 votes to break the Senate’s filibuster — Republicans only have 53 Senate seats.
The SAVE Act, which stands for Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, contains provisions to move voter registration standards nationwide, including requiring Americans to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections. The bill would also limit mail-in voting in future elections.
Vance singled out four Republican senators he said were standing in the way of the bill’s passage.
“Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, Thom Tillis, Lisa Murkowski,” he said. “There’s your four. They overrule the vice president. You have a fun little ceremonial battle that you lose. We are actually interested in winning the battle, which means replacing mediocre Republicans senators with good Republican senators.
— John Gage is the executive editor of The Plains Sentinel.