Washington Times: Why I Voted Against the Latest SAVE Act
A recent post on The Federalist called out and named 14 Republicans who voted against the continuing resolution and SAVE Act flimflam. Passing the SAVE Act at the end of September, less than 50 days before the election, would have had no impact on election security in the 2024 election. To argue otherwise is self-delusion.
If one wanted to be petty, one might suggest that the play was like a border photo-op.
Every one of the 14 Republicans who voted against the charade voted for the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, helping to send it to the Senate months ago. Most were co-sponsors of the bill.
The assertion that including the SAVE Act as part of the continuing resolution would have guaranteed its passage is self-delusion. The bill would have moved to the Senate for consideration, and in the Senate, the SAVE Act would have been stripped from it. The result would have been the grotesque continuing resolution that we got and no SAVE Act — again.
If by some miracle the SAVE Act passed the House and the Senate and was signed into law by President Biden, it couldn’t have been implemented in time for the 2024 election. Why not? Because Speaker Mike Johnson was bringing it to the House floor after voting in the presidential election had already begun in some states.
The ploy would have worked only if Mr. Johnson had been willing to pause government spending if the Senate stripped the SAVE Act from the continuing resolution. That was something that the speaker has said he will never do. Thus, the CR+SAVE plan was doomed to fail, not because of Republicans who voted no, but because House leaders and many Republicans preferred narratives to tangible results. Again, like Kamala Harris’ border photo-op.
The Federalist post said that the SAVE Act “would prevent noncitizens from voting in this coming election by requiring them to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote.” This is not accurate, because of the implementation issue noted above.
Many supporters of the CR+SAVE Act plan privately acknowledged that while the act wouldn’t take effect in time for the election, “at least we would build the narrative.”
But we are already winning the narrative: 80% of Americans, regardless of party affiliation, say that border security is the top issue in this election. They lay the blame, appropriately, on the Biden-Harris administration.
Some sincere conservatives, including the author of the piece in The Federalist, have taken to task the most conservative and some of the staunchest border hawks in Congress to argue something that simply isn’t so. Former President Donald Trump was right when he urged defeat of the CR+SAVE ploy unless there was a guarantee that the election would be fair. The speaker’s proposal couldn’t deliver that.
Instead, the SAVE Act would have been stripped in the Senate, and we would have been left with the horrible continuing resolution we ultimately got.
Were there other options? Yes. I offered 10 amendments to the resolution, all of which were rejected by my Republican colleagues. My amendments would have defunded the Soviet-style legal pursuit of Mr. Trump, defunded the CBP One App and defunded the horrible Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela parole program.
Here are some of the programs and agencies that the CR+SAVE Act proposal would have funded:
•Mr. Biden’s radical executive order 14019, which calls on agencies to promote “access to voting” (which means that federal agencies and departments are to register even illegal aliens)
•The CBP One app, which brought more than 800,000 aliens into the United States illegally in the last year
•Legal representation for illegal aliens
•The salary of Robin Dunn Marcos, director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, who has presided over the loss of more than 300,000 unaccompanied minors during the Biden-Harris administration
•Sanctuary cities
•Those benefiting from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program
•All border insecurity programs, including parole for immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, transporting over 500,000 illegals into the U.S. last year
Are you willing to push the CR+SAVE plan, knowing you will lose the SAVE Act in the Senate while continuing to fund policies that give incentives to illegal immigration and facilitate voting by illegal aliens? In other words, undermining the purpose of the SAVE Act altogether, all the while adding $1.5 trillion to the national debt so you can build a narrative?
I wasn’t prepared to talk about requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote while funding more illegal immigration. That’s what the CR+SAVE plan did. And that’s why I voted no.
Andy Biggs represents Arizona’s 5th Congressional District.