President Donald Trump’s patience is “running out” with the Senate and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) amid pushback regarding Trump’s top priority, the SAVE America Act.
“His patience is running out,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Thursday. “He wants to see as much of the SAVE America [Act] passed as possible by the August recess. He knows that’s what the American people want to see passed.”
Leavitt contended the SAVE America Act’s voter ID provisions are “common sense” and that there is public support for “proof of citizenship in our elections.”
“The American people elected overwhelmingly Republicans to lead not just this White House, but also the House and the Senate,” she said. “The House did its job. The Senate needs to do its job, too.”
When asked by reporters on Capitol Hill, Thune quipped that Leavitt “or somebody else ought to get on the phone and get the votes.”
During a campaign rally in Marietta, Georgia, in Atlanta’s suburbs, Trump implored the crowd to call Thune and put pressure on him and other senators to pass the SAVE America Act as House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) worked to pass provisions of it in his Republican-only $95 billion budget proposal. That measure cleared the House 216-214, with all Democrats against it.
Separately, Leavitt underscored Trump’s desire to keep the government open past Sept. 30, after the House passed a short-term patch to fund the government beyond the midterm elections. But the House’s funding patch will likely not be taken up in the Senate, as the upper chamber is working on its own bipartisan funding resolution that includes requests from the White House.
“The White House’s stance is that the government needs to be funded,” Leavitt said at the White House on Thursday. “The House and the Senate Republicans want to keep the government open. We want to work together to find ways to do that, and the White House will continue to have discussions with Senate leadership on the best path forward.”
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The press secretary used the opportunity to criticize “Democrats in this town, who have been acting as obstructionists.”
“We’ve seen time and time again,” she said. “They have chosen to block this administration, to block Republicans in Congress from keeping our government open, which does not help anyone, and it especially hurts the American people who depend on our government remaining open, so they can access the critical services that our government provides to so many Americans across the country. So these conversations are continuing, but I think I just made the president’s position quite clear.”