House passes SAVE America Act anti-voting measures in budget reconciliation, stock trading bills

President Donald Trump took a step closer to slaying his white whale Wednesday and enacting the SAVE America Act, a sweeping voter suppression measure that the Senate has repeatedly refused to pass.

The House voted 216-214 on a budget reconciliation framework that includes $10 billion worth of election-related grants over a 10-year period for coaxing states into adopting anti-voting measures like those in Trump's pet proposal. The $95 billion package also includes funding for the Iran war and bailouts for farmers hurt by Trump's tariffs.

It's still unclear what will be in the final reconciliation bill; now that the budget resolution has been approved, individual House committees will go about drafting the legislation. The reconciliation process allows Senate Republicans to bypass the filibuster's 60-vote threshold and pass legislation with a simple majority.

Separately, the House passed a ban on members of Congress trading stocks that also included a provision requiring voters to provide photo identification in order to cast a ballot — though Democrats broadly viewed the bill as a partisan messaging stunt.

Despite Republican control of the Senate, it is unlikely that Trump will see any version of SAVE enacted ahead of the midterms.

Legislation passed through reconciliation must be budgetary in nature. The Senate parliamentarian, the chamber's procedural umpire, ruled last month that the SAVE America provisions did not fit the bill, leading Trump to call for her ouster.

Even if these new, still-unknown provisions aren't removed procedurally, the last time the Senate voted on the SAVE America Act, four Republicans voted against it, meaning it failed to receive even a majority's support.

Johnson's whip team had to overcome some last-minute opposition from within their own party to enact the budget resolution, with some conservatives objecting to the framework's lack of offsetting cuts to pay for the spending.

The House also passed a bill designed to jam Democrats. The Stop Insider Trading Act would prevent members of Congress and their families from buying individual stocks — a proposal extremely popular with Democrats and voters in general. But Republicans attached a voter ID provision to the bill ahead of the floor vote.

"Republicans cannot credibly present this legislation as a good-faith effort to end congressional stock trading," Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) said in a press release. "Instead, this bill is a Trojan horse — using the premise of congressional ethics reform to advance a broader effort to restrict access to the ballot box."

In the end, the bill passed 232-198, with 13 Democrats joining Republicans in support.