By David Morgan
WASHINGTON, June 24 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump pressured U.S. Senate Republicans on Wednesday to pass a divisive package of national voting restrictions, after stunning lawmakers by abruptly cancelling a signing ceremony where they hoped to showcase newly passed bipartisan legislation to address the high cost of housing.
During a rare visit to the U.S. Capitol, Trump met with Senate Republicans over lunch for a discussion marked by an angry exchange with one senator and lengthy remarks by the president that did little to ease recent tensions or forge a path forward for Trump’s aims, according to lawmakers and aides.
“We had a really great meeting,” Trump told reporters afterwards. “For the most part, we have a really well-unified party.”
Trump’s aim was to persuade Senate Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require a photo ID to vote in federal elections and proof of U.S. citizenship to register, while compelling states to turn over their voter registration rolls to the federal government. The bill, which faces vehement opposition from Democrats, passed the House of Representatives in February but has since languished in the Senate.
The housing bill, meanwhile, had been meant to show that lawmakers were addressing the high cost of living — which Reuters/Ipsos polls show as voters’ top concern heading into the November midterm elections when Trump’s Republicans will be trying to defend their narrow majorities in Congress.
“There is a huge group of people who really appreciate what the president’s doing right now, and it’s the Democrat party. We’ve got to get our act together and stop surprising people and stop having conflicting messages,” Senator Thom Tillis said.
“This housing bill was a very clear bipartisan effort to address some of the basics of affordability, and we are here? It makes no sense,” added the North Carolina lawmaker, who said last year he would retire from Congress after clashing with Trump.
That made him the first of a handful of Senate Republicans who Trump has helped to push toward the exits, putting Republicans’ 53-47 majority in play.
Trump said on social media that he would not sign the housing bill into law until the SAVE America Act has been passed.
QUESTIONS ABOUT VOTING BILL
Critics, including Democrats, say the bill targets a nearly non-existent problem of non-citizen voting, but would disenfranchise American citizens who do not have ready access to a passport or birth certificate.
Senate Republicans insist that they do not have the votes to meet the 60-vote filibuster threshold for passing the bill. Nor can they muster support for eliminating the filibuster and passing the legislation with a simple majority.
Senator Tommy Tuberville, a former college football coach, likened the subsequent lunch meeting to a half-time session between players and their team’s head coach. “The president did a hell of a job of getting his message over, and sometimes in a loud voice,” the Alabama Republican said.
There were no signs that anyone had changed their position after hearing from Trump, who has undermined relations between the White House and Senate Republicans in recent weeks by disrupting legislation with controversial initiatives and providing no briefings for lawmakers on his peace deal with Iran.
HEATED MOMENTS ON IRAN
During the meeting, an argument over Iran erupted between Trump and Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, one of four Republicans who joined Democrats on Tuesday to pass legislation to halt U.S. military action against Iran.
“I make no apologies for standing up to the president,” said Cassidy, who told reporters that he asked Trump for more public transparency on Iran and said he would support further war powers actions until senators are briefed on the peace deal.
“He raised his voice. I lost my temper. That’s not appropriate. It’s the Irish in me. But I again matched his tone and his volume, and it went back and forth,” added Cassidy, who lost his reelection bid last month to two Trump-aligned primary challengers.
With less than five months until the midterms that threaten to end their majority, Senate Republicans have begun to resist Trump on several fronts: They forced him to abandon a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, and expressed outrage over his pick of an ally with no intelligence background as the top U.S. intelligence official.
Trump has repeatedly dismissed concerns about the high cost of living, telling reporters at the White House earlier this month, “I love the inflation” when asked about rising gas prices caused by the Iran war. Gas prices have eased below $4 per gallon nationwide since Washington and Tehran reached a ceasefire but remain substantially higher than they were before the war.
(Reporting by David Morgan; additional reporting by Susan Heavey; Writing by David Morgan and Jonathan Allen; Editing by Scott Malone, Andy Sullivan, Edmund Klamann, Alistair Bell and Deepa Babington)
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