Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) denied promising that Senate Republicans would weaken the filibuster to pass the SAVE Act, telling the Washington Examiner on Tuesday that he only agreed to speak with the rest of his conference about it.
“We haven’t made any commitments,” Thune said, rebuffing suggestions from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) that he was prepared to embrace the “talking filibuster,” which allows a simple majority vote after a marathon of floor speeches.
“I made a commitment to have a conversation about it with our members and try and find out where the consensus of the Republican conference is,” Thune added.
When he became majority leader last year, Thune vowed to protect the filibuster, which currently requires at least 60 senators to support bringing legislation to the Senate floor, and a wide cross-section of his conference still supports it.
For that reason, any meeting to discuss changes is unlikely to clear the way for passage of the SAVE Act, which requires proof of citizenship for voting. But a growing number of Republicans have expressed openness to workarounds such as the talking filibuster, owing to President Donald Trump’s long-standing crusade against it, and the concession helped clear the way for Luna to drop her opposition to a government funding bill now being considered in the House.
As for the SAVE Act, it has 49 Senate co-sponsors and the support of Thune, meaning it could theoretically pass with a bare majority vote. But Democrats have promised to block it so long as the filibuster remains in place, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Monday calling it “dead on arrival” in the Senate.
“Every single Senate Democrat would vote against any bill, any bill, that contains it,” Schumer said.
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Thune told reporters on Tuesday that he still plans to schedule a vote on the SAVE Act, which has already passed the House, but has not yet settled on a date.
“Whenever we can work it in,” he said. “I mean, any legislative vehicle that crosses the floor could be a candidate for an amendment vote. But, yeah, we will have that vote. And exactly when, I can’t give you a hard answer on that yet.”