Tangle - The SAVE Act and government funding.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

Are you new here? Get free emails to your inbox daily. Would you rather listen? You can find our podcast here.

Today's read: 13 minutes.

I'm coming to Washington D.C.

On Wednesday, October 9, I’ll be in D.C. to moderate a series of panels on bridging political divides in the U.S. The event will feature experts from George Mason, Georgetown, American, George Washington and Johns Hopkins, and it will also include some networking opportunities with the panelists and me. It’s free to attend, and you can get tickets here. 

Quick hits.

1. The Israeli military said it carried out airstrikes on more than 1,300 locations, targeting Hezbollah’s military infrastructure. The strikes killed approximately 500 people, including dozens of women and children, and wounded more than 1,600. (The strikes) Separately, the Pentagon announced the U.S. is sending a small number of additional troops to the Middle East as the conflict in Lebanon escalates. (The announcement)
2. Federal prosecutors revealed that the suspect in the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump had written a letter earlier this month detailing his plans months before the incident. Prosecutors also said they plan to charge the suspect with attempting to assassinate Trump. (The latest)
3. The U.S. Commerce Department proposed a ban on Chinese software and hardware in vehicles with “connected car” technology, which would effectively bar Chinese cars and trucks from the U.S. market. (The proposal)
4. Telegram CEO Pavel Durov said the messaging app will begin providing users’ IP addresses and phone numbers to authorities in response to valid legal requests less than a month after Durov was arrested on charges of complicity in illegal content on the platform. (The comments)
5. The latest New York Times/Siena polling shows former President Trump leading Vice President Kamala Harris in Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina. (The polls)

Today's topic.

On Sunday, congressional leaders introduced a bipartisan spending bill to fund federal agencies until December 20, avoiding a government shutdown when the new fiscal year begins on October 1. The agreement, announced by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), will fund federal agencies at their current levels — with a provision for $231 million in additional funding for the U.S. Secret Service — pushing negotiations over the full-year spending bill until after the election. 

Previous iterations of the spending bill tied temporary government funding to the passage of the SAVE Act, which would require citizens to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote. Citizenship is already a requirement to vote, but the SAVE Act would amend an existing law to add new documentation requirements. It would also require states to establish a process for citizens who cannot provide documentary proof of their citizenship to be able to submit other documentation to register to vote. 

On September 18, the House voted 220-202 against the spending deal paired with the SAVE Act, with every Democrat and 14 Republicans voting against it. Speaker Johnson then dropped the SAVE Act from the spending bill to gain the necessary bipartisan support, despite objections from the Republican Party’s conservative flank and presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) said House Republicans plan to vote on the bill under suspension, which would require support from two thirds of the House to pass rather than a simple majority.  The situation mirrors a similar showdown between Johnson and the conservative House Freedom Caucus in January of this year, once again prompting the Speaker to choose between aligning with Democrats or the party’s conservative bloc. 

In a letter to his colleagues, Johnson called the decision to leave out the SAVE Act “not the solution any of us would prefer,” adding that a government shutdown before the election would be “political malpractice.” Meanwhile, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY) said that Congress is on a “bipartisan path to avoid a government shutdown,” signaling his conference’s willingness to cooperate.

Speaker Johnson referred to the bill as “very bare bones,” with only a few additions. The bill requires the Secret Service to cooperate with congressional investigations in order to receive its funding increase, and also provides funding to aid with disaster relief and the presidential transition. A House vote on the new spending deal could come as soon as Wednesday. 

Below, we’ll cover what the right and left are saying about the spending bill. Then I’ll give my take.

What the right is saying.

• The right says the funding showdown underscores how ineffective this Congress has been.
• Some criticize Republican leadership for failing to fight for their priorities. 
• Others say the SAVE Act is common sense legislation that should be passed.

The Washington Examiner editorial board argued “this Congress has failed. Let the next one fund the government.”

“14 House Republicans voted ‘no’ and two voted ‘present’ on a sensible ‘continuing resolution’ bill to keep the government operating through next March while ensuring that only U.S. citizens can vote in this fall’s elections. Their obstinacy, combined with that of all but three Democrats, killed the bill for now and made another stupid government ‘shutdown’ more likely when the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30,” the board wrote. “The 16 Republicans are mostly the usual suspects more interested in theater than good governance or achievable conservative results.”

“These Republicans play the part of Schumer’s useful idiots. Whereas a continuing resolution would keep spending within the last budget deal’s mild limits, Schumer wants more spending. He knows he can, as always, blame a shutdown on Republicans who couldn’t even get a majority for their own leadership’s continuing resolution,” the board said. “Now that a short-term funding bill has failed, it is time to move to a longer spending bill. A six-month continuing resolution would push the battle over 2025 spending into the next Congress, rather than leaving it in the hands of this year’s infamously ineffective Congress.”

In Townhall, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) wrote “you can’t win a budget battle you’re not willing to fight.”

“If the Speaker and House Republicans truly desired that the SAVE Act receive a Senate vote, and more pointedly, be passed and sent to the desk of Joe Biden for consideration, the Speaker would have voiced that demand. He would have been jawboning for that during the seven-week recess. In fact, he would have demanded that the last week in July,” Biggs said. “The Speaker never, to my knowledge publicly or behind closed doors, stated that his objective was to actually see that the SAVE Act was passed…or, even got a Senate vote.

“Further, someone who really, truly wanted the SAVE Act would not have weakened his position. He would not have foreclosed any stick or carrot to obtain his objective. But, the Speaker said he would never shut the government down. In fact, by sending Schumer the CR + SAVE, the Speaker actually gave Schumer a continuation of the spending levels and policies that Schumer and Leftists want,” Biggs wrote. “What Americans needed was a willingness to fight to get the SAVE Act passed. And you don’t win a fight that you aren’t fighting. And, giving Schumer his spending and his policies without condition isn’t fighting, it’s capitulation.”

In RedState, Brandon Morse said “there’s no excuse to not pass the SAVE Act.”

The SAVE Act is “probably one of the most important things we could do to help our election stay secure and as free of fraud as possible. This is a no-brainer. Passing this would solve the problem of people voting who shouldn't, which is a chief concern for many. No one should be opposing this, and anyone who does is highly suspect of wanting fraud to happen,” Morse wrote. “While it's illegal for a non-citizen to vote already, an illegal citizen voting in our elections is as easy as checking a box that says you're a citizen in much the same way a child can get access to a porn site by claiming he or she is over the age of 18.”

“Democrats claim this isn't necessary, saying that the ‘trust me, bro’ method is good enough and that non-citizens could face up to five years in prison for violating election laws. The issue is that Democrats aren't even imprisoning illegals for assaulting people, including police officers,” Morse said. “The other argument from Democrats is that the SAVE Act is, of course, racist because it disadvantages minorities… How would it make it harder for people of color to vote or get registration to do so? No one ever says. It's been suggested that minority communities are too ignorant to understand how to get registered, which is an insanely racist thing to suggest, but even then, I'm not sure if this is a valid excuse to leave our system-wide open for fraud."

What the left is saying.

• The left admonishes House Republicans for another funding fight that benefits no one. 
• Some say the GOP continues to show it is not capable of governing. 
• Others call the SAVE Act a pander to Trump to solve a nonexistent problem.

The Bloomberg editorial board said the “latest shutdown fight feels awfully familiar.”

“The idea, for House Speaker Mike Johnson, was to give his more fanatical Republican colleagues a chance to vent about immigration before moving on to a more realistic bill,” the board wrote. “Then Donald Trump chimed in. Selfish and destructive as ever, he raged on social media, demanded that Congress pass the citizenship measure, and he seemed to endorse a shutdown if he didn’t get his way. Johnson duly pulled the resolution, and here we are: no progress, with the clock ticking.”

“Meanwhile, the country’s real problems are getting worse. Budget showdowns of this kind — whether over funding bills or the statutory debt ceiling — are an ugly way to make policy, but they can succeed in restraining spending if negotiated prudently. Johnson’s predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, secured $1.5 trillion in deficit reductions over a decade during last year’s debt-limit negotiations. This is not that: Johnson won’t win any good-faith concessions from Democrats by attaching a hopeless, unrelated citizenship measure to this bill,” the board said. “Yet a sustained effort to cut spending is indeed necessary. America’s current fiscal trajectory simply isn’t sustainable.”

In MSNBC, Hayes Brown wrote “the House GOP has 'concepts of a plan' to prevent a shutdown.”

“This plan was always destined to fail — and Johnson knew it. House leadership had already pulled the bill from the floor last week when it became obvious it lacked the Republican support necessary to pass,” Brown said. “And as has often been the case with this GOP majority, the objections came from two different wings of Johnson’s caucus. On one hand you have the far-right members of the ‘chaos caucus,’ who are opposed to the current spending levels continuing without reductions. Republican defense hawks, on the other hand, were mad at the idea of not raising defense spending for a full half-year.

“Democrats, meanwhile, weren’t about to support the SAVE Act, which would impose new hurdles on registering to vote to supposedly prevent the illegal and extremely rare act of noncitizens’ attempting to cast a ballot,” Brown wrote. “Even if the GOP had managed to pass the bill, it would be dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate and face a veto if it somehow reached President Joe Biden’s desk… We’ve been through this exact scenario too many times now to assume that Republicans will learn their lesson based on this embarrassment.”

The New York Daily News editorial board argued “Mike Johnson’s noncitizen voting bill is not about integrity.”

“That Johnson described [non-citizen voting] as ‘the most pressing issue right now’ goes to show not only how out of touch his wing of the Republican Party is with ordinary voters, who are by and large concerned with things like the cost of child care and food, but with reality itself,” the board said. “We challenge Johnson or anyone of his backers to produce evidence — any evidence — that noncitizen registration or voting is a significant issue in any respect. It is both exceedingly rare and, in such cases when it has happened, almost invariably the result of confusion or misinformation as opposed to ill-intent.”

“This is also one of the relatively few crimes where the perpetrator is expected to sign their full name and address to do it, and where it is quite easy to check if they’ve committed the offense. Johnson is pushing to solve a problem that does not exist, but the reasons go beyond simple political posturing,” the board wrote. “The reason is that every ‘election integrity’ effort Donald Trump and his allies undertake inevitably ends up targeted at making voting itself more difficult, particularly for the folks they don’t really want voting.”

My take.

Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• The SAVE Act would create more problems than solutions.
• We have better ways to address election security, and some states are already pursuing them.
• Holding up government funding over a Republican messaging bill that won’t pass the Senate is a perfect symbol of Congress’s dysfunction.

The government funding debate is so tortuous, over-dramatized, and redundant that I’m going to mostly talk about the SAVE Act here.

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with some friends about a new program at NYU that provides free tuition for any student who comes from a household earning less than $100,000 per year. I asked my friends what percentage of American households they thought earned more than $100,000 per year. The answers varied from about 45% to 80%.

The real answer is 37%.

I see this theme pretty consistently from more educated Americans who spend their days debating politics: They typically think other Americans have a lot more than they do. This is relevant in discussions about voter fraud, too, where well-off people ask questions like "Who doesn't have a photo ID?" or "Who can't prove they are a citizen?". The answer, to both, is probably more than you think. For instance, almost one in ten American citizens of voting age (roughly 21.3 million people) don't have proof of citizenship readily available.

When pundits like Brandon Morse from RedState (under "What the right is saying") say that anyone who opposes the SAVE Act “is highly suspect of wanting fraud to happen,” it is partisan nonsense. I care a great deal about voter and election fraud — so much so that I've dedicated literally hundreds of thousands of words to it — and I oppose the passage of the SAVE Act. Not because I want voter fraud to be easy, but because the bill is half-baked, poorly written messaging that’s not designed to become law but to let writers like Morse claim Democrats want noncitizens voting.

Here's how it works right now: When you register to vote, the federal government requires you to sign an attestation under penalty of perjury that you are a U.S. citizen. States then validate applicants’ information against government data to ensure they are citizens living in the place they say they are. Some states have stricter requirements or have attempted to introduce new ones, but broadly this is the requirement under federal law.

The system works pretty well, which isn't surprising. Non-citizens (whether they are here legally or illegally) are not particularly keen on risking deportation, arrest, or jail time to cast a single ballot. Try to imagine a noncitizen who cares enough to vote illegally and is willing to risk being thrown in jail or booted from the country; the center of that venn diagram is pretty small.

We know this, by the way. It's not a presumption. Dozens of studies, including from conservative groups, have affirmed it, as have law enforcement records in states that have spent millions investigating voter fraud and voter data in states where new laws have been introduced. 

Now, the SAVE Act would require individuals to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote. According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, “Eligible documents include a REAL ID-compliant identification indicating U.S. citizenship; a valid U.S. passport, military ID and service record; a government-issued photo ID showing U.S. birthplace; or a government-issued photo ID that does not indicate birthplace or citizenship and a valid secondary document.” 

This seems like a common sense proposal, and in theory — much like voter ID — I support it wholeheartedly. Why wouldn’t I want people to prove they are citizens to register to vote?

We can find the answer in Arizona, which began requiring proof of citizenship to vote in 2004. In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that those additional documentation requirements were preempted by existing law and violated the Voting Rights Act. Arizona then created a "federal-only list" to prevent some voters from casting ballots in state elections while allowing voters who could not provide proof of citizenship to vote only in federal elections. 

What Arizona learned was the people on that list were typically not noncitizens, but college students, homeless people, and other transient populations who were trying to vote but often didn’t have the documentation to prove they were citizens. Along the way, the state complicated its voter rolls, creating a new list of voters who can cast ballots only in federal elections. The problem is so bad that nearly 100,000 Arizona voters were almost inadvertently prevented from voting in state and local races this fall.

Now, the SAVE Act that Republicans are trying to pass would instruct states to implement a process where citizens who don't have proof of citizenship can submit other documentation and sign an attestation under penalty of perjury to vote in federal elections… which they already do. That means the bill’s net effect is to add new costs and hurdles to recreate the system we already have — all with the risk of complicating the system or disenfranchising voters like we’ve seen in Arizona. This is not a good use of your taxpayer dollars.

On top of all this, the SAVE Act becomes effective on the date of enactment, giving states no time to update their process, voter rolls, or systems. The good news is we have much better options available, like improved data sharing across states, which makes it even easier to determine someone’s eligibility to vote. Some states are already using that data to require proof of citizenship to register; others, like Texas, found 7,000 noncitizens who were registered to vote (0.039% of the state’s registered voters, over three years) simply by cleaning up their voter rolls. A photo ID requirement, paired with government-provided identification, is also a good option. 

What we don't need is a clunky, vague, federal law implemented hastily to throw the system into chaos and probably block out millions of eligible voters six weeks before an election. Nor do we need more state laws like Arizona’s that will become mired in lawsuits and complicate the system. The best argument for passing any of these bills is to instill more confidence in the system we have now — a goal I certainly support. But I’m not interested in trading more confidence for less functionality when all the evidence we have indicates this isn’t a serious problem.

As for the continuing resolution, it’s hard to find the words anymore. Republicans (once again) did a weeks-long dance about threatening to shut the government down, which everyone knew and predicted would end just like this.

Instead of any real debate about how to save the government money in the places where we spend the most — Social Security, healthcare, and the military — the two sides wasted weeks on a bunch of TV hits then ordered more of the same, but with a side of pork for the Secret Service.

What was the point, again? Didn’t Speaker Johnson say he’d emphasize voting on appropriations bills individually? It shouldn’t feel like a pipe dream to imagine a functional Congress, but here we are.

Take the survey: What do you think of the spending bill and SAVE Act? Let us know!

Disagree? That's okay. My opinion is just one of many. Write in and let us know why, and we'll consider publishing your feedback.

Help share Tangle.

I'm a firm believer that our politics would be a little bit better if everyone were reading balanced news that allows room for debate, disagreement, and multiple perspectives. If you can take 15 seconds to share Tangle with a few friends I'd really appreciate it — just click the button below and pick some people to email it to!

• Email Tangle to a friend by clicking here.
• Share Tangle on X/Twitter by clicking here.
• Share Tangle on Facebook by clicking here.

Your questions, answered.

Q: Note to self: Follow up on the Ben Sasse story.

Tangle: In an “Under the Radar” feature in August, we linked to a story from the University of Florida’s student newspaper about former Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse (R) stepping down from his position as University of Florida president. In that edition, we wrote that “Sasse cited his wife's health as his reason for leaving, but he had also come under fire after tripling his office's annual spending (from $5.6 million to $17.3 million in his first year) while awarding lucrative contracts to big-name consulting firms and high-salaried remote positions to his former U.S. Senate staff and Republican officials.”

A few readers wrote in to say that we should follow up on the story once we got more information, in light of a statement Sasse released around the same time that we first covered the story. In a lengthy post on X, Sasse defended his decisions by saying that important initiatives like the ones he had taken up require funding, and that it’s not uncommon to hire trusted staff from previous roles to head those initiatives.

Sasse may have a point in general, but nothing we’ve learned since has helped to exonerate him: He paid former staffers exorbitant salaries, spent $4.7 million — 83% of his predecessor’s total budget —  on a report from McKinsey, and will continue to earn $1 million a year from the university in a professor emeritus and board advisor position. 

As Jeremiah Poff wrote in the Washington Examiner, “Reforming higher education did not require him to spend millions of dollars to increase the salaries of his former staff. It also did not require him to spend millions on expensive consultants or a threefold increase in travel expenditures for his office.”

Want to have a question answered in the newsletter? You can reply to this email (it goes straight to my inbox) or fill out this form.

Under the radar.

Officials in Pinal County, Arizona, are working to combat skepticism about the integrity of their election system by providing new levels of visibility into the process. Since the 2020 election, Pinal County has built a $32 million election headquarters with halls of windows to allow observers to easily watch the vote counting while adding scores of cameras throughout the inside and outside of the building. Election workers will also attach GPS devices onto the cages that transport equipment and ballots to and from polling sites, creating a record of every movement, and the wiring for machine tabulators will run through transparent grates (instead of drywall) to prove the machines are not connected to the internet. “When you know in your soul there is nothing to hide, being open about the process is a no-brainer,” said Pinal County Recorder Dana Lewis (R). The Washington Post has the story. 

Numbers.

• 5. The number of appropriations bills (out of 12) passed by the House this year.
• 0. The number of those appropriations bills passed by the Senate this year.
• 6. The number of years in a row that Congress will have passed zero out of 12 appropriations bills to fund the government by the Oct. 1 deadline, if it fails to do so this year. 
• 33.7%. The percentage of U.S. federal debt held by the public in 2000.
• 99.0%. The percentage of U.S. federal debt held by the public in 2024.
• 30. The number of votes suspected to have been cast illegally in the 2016 election out of a sample of 23.5 million votes in 42 jurisdictions, according to a study from the Brennan Center for Justice. 
• 85. The number of confirmed cases of non-citizens voting between 2002 and 2022, according to the Heritage Foundation. 
• 51%. The percentage of Americans who say they are concerned about non-citizens voting in the 2024 election, according to a September 2024 poll from Scripps News/Ipsos. 

The extras.

• One year ago today we had just written a Friday edition on FBI entrapment.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the ad in the free version for Nice News.
• Nothing to do with politics: A hiker just traversed the Appalachian Trail in a record 40 days and 18 hours.
• Yesterday’s survey: 1,552 readers responded to our survey on the Hezbollah device explosions with 59% in support. “The purpose of war is to kill people and break things until one side just can't take it any more. Hezbollah is on its knees. Finish this before they regroup. Both sides will benefit in the end,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

From 1979 to 2009, social psychologist Sara Konrath found a decline in empathy among young people. Yet, when her research was expanded to include data up through 2018, she and her research team discovered that American college students and high school seniors are demonstrating increasing levels of empathy. The study showed these teenagers and young adults sought to understand others’ perspectives and exhibited compassion for others at higher rates than in previous years. CNN has the story. 

Don't forget...

📣 Share Tangle on Twitter here, Facebook here, or LinkedIn here.

🎥 Follow us on Instagram here or subscribe to our YouTube channel here

💵 If you like our newsletter, drop some love in our tip jar.

🎉 Want to reach 135,000+ people? Fill out this form to advertise with us.

📫 Forward this to a friend and tell them to subscribe (hint: it's here).

🛍 Love clothes, stickers and mugs? Go to our merch store!