The House laid out a lengthy to-do list with just four days left until members head out for their monthlong August recess after weeks of revolt paralyzed the floor.
House GOP leadership hopes to pass four major pieces of legislation set to hit the floor this week: a budget resolution for $95 billion reconciliation, a $1.15 trillion defense spending bill, short-term government funding, and congressional stock trade ban legislation.
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The SAVE America Act, a voter identification and elections bill, has been attached to the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act through a procedural loophole. Language from the voter ID bill has also been added to the stock trade ban and reconciliation budget resolution.
President Donald Trump urged Republicans in a Truth Social post to unify and pass the budget resolution while getting “AS MUCH of THE SAVE AMERICA ACT as possible in a Budget Bill.” The latest plea comes as many on the right flank of the Republican Conference have pledged to block the bill absent the full SAVE America Act.
“If we get full SAVE, I’m in,” Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) told the Washington Examiner last week.
Passage of all of these items is an uphill battle for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), as he continues to navigate an ultra-slim majority while only affording to lose a handful of votes depending on attendance.
The House has been at an impasse for the last month due to a group of members holding up legislative items following months of the Senate’s inability to pass the SAVE America Act.
But the voter ID bill — the president’s top legislative priority — has not been the only headache for leadership on the House floor.
Just last week, House GOP leadership was forced to pull a vote on a veterans bill after a group pledged to tank the legislation over concerns of benefit cuts.
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Johnson announced last week that they would be moving a continuing resolution through mid-December to fund the government in an effort to avoid a government shutdown before the November election.
The House is also planning to move forward with the Stop Insider Trading Act, which requires a public seven-day notice before a lawmaker, spouse, or dependent children can sell stock. While the bill appeases some concerns about congressional stock trading, it would still allow lawmakers to retain their existing stock holdings, a provision that has been forcefully rebuked by Democrats.
This bill, with the SAVE America Act attached, is not expected to garner Democratic support after GOP leadership backed it over bipartisan legislation crafted by a group of lawmakers earlier this Congress.
Reps. Seth Magaziner (D-RI), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) wrote in a joint statement, before the bill passed out of committee earlier this year, that the legislation does “nothing to remove conflict of interest that arises from owning or selling existing stocks.”
The House is hoping to advance a third reconciliation blueprint after it passed out of committee last week. The bill still has hurdles as House Republicans remain wary of the Senate to preserve key priorities in the party-line spending package.
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The resolution includes spending instructions for four committees: the House Administration Committee at $10 billion, the House Armed Services Committee at $60 billion, the House Agriculture Committee at $12 billion, and the House Intelligence Committee at $13 billion. There are no spending offsets in the resolution.
Much of this legislation has little path to success if passed out of the House containing the SAVE America Act, which has failed in the Senate.
