Mike Johnson warns House GOP against holding up legislation in response to SAVE America Act

House Speaker Mike Johnson warned his colleagues at the Capitol on Monday against attempting to hold up the chamber's agenda in hopes of getting the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act, saying that doing so would be "self-defeating."

The comment comes as Republican anger over Senate Democrat opposition to the voter ID bill threatens to hold up the annual National Defense Authorization Act this week, according to The Hill. 

“To my colleagues, whomever is thinking that stopping the work of House Republicans to make Americans safer right now and to bring down the cost of living — impeding that progress just because stubborn Senate Democrats won’t do the job of the American people is self-defeating," Johnson told reporters. "It doesn’t make any sense."

It also comes after some GOP lawmakers last week blocked unrelated legislation from coming to the floor.

Johnson also emphasized his plans to include aspects of the SAVE America Act in the budget reconciliation bill later this year, which would help dodge the 60-vote threshold that Republicans need in the Senate.

“Remember we passed it three times in the House, and we intend to pass it again,” Johnson said of the voting rule. “But the only way to get that to the president’s desk, we’ve been shown many times, is to put it on a reconciliation bill. So, that is in process. We have a plan to do that, to tie it to reconcile the budget, which should clearly pass the Byrd rule, the Byrd test over there.”

Florida GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna has rejected the idea of trying to pass it via reconciliation, stating that it would not pass the "Byrd rule" as Johnson believes, which requires anything included in a reconciliation bill to be a budgetary matter.

"This cannot be done. It is impossible," she insisted on X. "It will not pass the Byrd bath. I have amendments that should be made in order."

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.