Mike Lee: Senate GOP must do ‘hard work’ to pass SAVE America Act

Senate Mike Lee: Senate GOP must do ‘hard work’ to pass SAVE America Act Comments: by Ryan Mancini - 06/21/26 2:57 PM ET Comments: Link copied by Ryan Mancini - 06/21/26 2:57 PM ET Comments: Link copied

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Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) on Sunday said Senate Republicans must do the “hard work” to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, a voter ID bill touted by President Trump as his legislative priority.

Lee told “Fox News Sunday” host Shannon Bream that the SAVE America Act makes “it easy to vote, hard to cheat.” The House passed the GOP-backed bill in February but it has stalled in the Senate.

“And the Senate needs to be willing to do the hard work to make sure that that happens,” Lee said. “If we put it on the floor tomorrow and we announce that we’re going to debate it until it passes, I’m confident that we can get there.”

Bream pressed on the need for Republicans to get over 48 votes in order to pass the bill, and that it would still not pass without blowing up the filibuster. Lee noted that the bill passed in the House without majority support.

“Now, while it’s true, we’re 10 votes shy of cloture, of forcing debate to a close, that doesn’t mean that we couldn’t pass it,” he continued. “There are a couple ways to get there. One would be nuking the filibuster, as you pointed out, that appears not likely to happen. But the other way is to exhaust the other side, to continue to debate the bill until it passes.”

The Utah Republican added that dragging out the debate until the bill passes “needs to be used from time to time in situations like this one.”

“The truth is, we haven’t tried what I believe it takes to get the SAVE America Act passed, which is to put it on the floor and to say we’re going to debate this for weeks,” Lee said. “And we’ll stay through weekends. We’ll stay through previously scheduled recesses if necessary, but we’re going to stay on this bill until it passes.”

The bill would require Americans to show proof of citizenship in order to register to vote and to show ID in order to cast a ballot. Democrats have argued that limitations on college students and married women could disenfranchise them from voting, and that it could discourage people of color from casting their ballots.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said last week that there are not enough votes to bypass the filibuster in order to pass the SAVE America Act. Trump has called on Senate Republicans to scrap the regular filibuster — the 60-vote threshold to pass most legislation in the upper chamber — to pass it.

Trump then paused his nomination of U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and urged Senate Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act and reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a key spy authority that expired earlier this month.

House Republicans are divided over this new gambit. Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said that attaching Section 702’s renewal to the SAVE America Act, something that Thune has ruled out as an option, would be “a Hail Mary.” He added that Trump “doesn’t seem to understand the Senate.”

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