- President Donald Trump canceled the signing of a housing bill on Wednesday.
- It's part of a push to pass the SAVE America Act, which requires photo ID for voting and proof of citizenship.
- Senate Republicans have long lacked the votes to pass the bill due to filibuster challenges.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump canceled his plan to sign a bipartisan affordable housing bill on Wednesday in an effort to pressure his fellow Republicans to pass a long-stalled package of national voting restrictions that has aggravated party fissures and shown the limits of his power.
Trump has said he will join Senate Republicans at a closed-door lunch on Wednesday afternoon to lobby them to pass the voting measure called the SAVE America Act, his top legislative priority. The act would require a photo ID to vote in federal elections and proof of citizenship to register, while compelling states to turn over their voter registration rolls to the federal government.
"Today's Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency," Trump wrote in a social media post. Some Republicans indicated it may be a largely symbolic gesture: it can become law anyway if the president does not sign within 10 days, and lawmakers believe they have enough votes to override a presidential veto.
But Trump's determination may not be enough. Although Republicans control 53 of the Senate's 100 seats, they lack the 60 votes needed to meet the chamber's filibuster threshold for most bills, which accounts for five failed votes on the measure or its provisions since mid-March.
'Hard realities'
Republicans say they also do not have enough votes to meet Trump's repeated demands to eliminate the filibuster and pass the bill with a simple majority.
"Those are just hard realities. And I think people at some point have to come to grips with that," Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters in what may be a preview of his conference's message to Trump.
Senate Republicans have also rejected Trump's call for other hardball tactics, such as attaching the SAVE America Act to must-pass legislation or firing a Senate official who blocked it from a recent spending package.
Backers of the bill say they should not abandon efforts to pass a top Trump priority.
"For every bill up here, when it starts, there's not enough votes," said Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, a supporter of the legislation who invited Trump to Wednesday's meeting. "We're going to have a nice conversation to see if we can figure out how to get this across the finish line."
Rare visit
Presidential visits to Congress are rare, and Wednesday's meeting comes at a time when relations between Trump and his party in the Senate are at a low ebb.
With less than five months until a November midterm election that threatens 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 intelligence official.
And on Tuesday, Republican Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul and Bill Cassidy joined Democrats to pass legislation to halt military action against Iran.
That drew a sharp rebuke from Trump on social media: "Four Republican Losers voted with the Dumocrats, and Iran asked my people, "what does that all mean?" These Senators have just made my job more difficult, but I will get it done, one way or another, because I always get it done!" the president said in a post.
Critics of the voting legislation, including Senate Democrats, say the bill targets a nearly nonexistent problem of non-citizen voting, but would disenfranchise American citizens who do not have ready access to a passport or birth certificate.
Some Republicans say their efforts could be better spent on other issues.
"Every minute we spend on it, we're not spending on something that can get my colleagues reelected," Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, told reporters.
Contributing: Susan Heavey
