By David Morgan
WASHINGTON, June 30 (Reuters) - Republican leaders sent the U.S. House of Representatives home two days early for their July 4 break on Tuesday, after a group of party hardliners blocked a major defense bill, demanding Senate passage of President Donald Trump's voter ID legislation.
A procedural vote needed to open debate on the National Defense Authorization Act and other legislation failed 224-198 after more than a dozen hardline Trump allies led by Representative Anna Paulina Luna
broke with party leadership for failing to allow the SAVE America Act's voter ID requirements to be attached to the defense bill as an amendment.
The hardliners, who also brought the House floor to a standstill last week, pose a deepening political crisis for Republican leaders and the party's legislative agenda, months before November's midterm elections, in which Democrats are favored to take control of the House, and possibly even the Senate.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, who has a slim 218-212 seat Republican majority, initially told reporters that party leaders would spend the next day and a half working to overcome internal differences and move toward passage of the NDAA, an annual bill that sets policy for the Pentagon.
But later on Tuesday, Republican leaders announced the last floor action of the month: a 420-0 vote to compel the release of records identifying House members who have used taxpayer dollars to settle sexual misconduct charges against them. More votes had been scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday. But now, the House is not scheduled to return until July 13.
"This is life with a small margin, small majority, and we'll work through it," Johnson had told reporters before sending lawmakers home.
The SAVE America Act 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. Trump has said he also wants the bill to eliminate universal mail-in voting, a proposal that some Republicans oppose.
Democrats and voting rights groups say the legislation would disenfranchise Americans who lack ready access to passports and birth certificates in order to address noncitizen voting, which research shows is exceedingly rare.
After last week's blockade, Johnson met with Trump at the White House, and Trump later called on Republicans in a social media post to "unify, and stop voting down 'Rules' or threatening to do so."
HOLDOUTS
But the holdouts were unfazed.
“I will vote for the rule if you allow my amendment for voter ID, plus proof of citizenship, to be placed into the text of the NDAA. They’re saying they won’t. So now you saw what happened,” Luna, a Florida lawmaker, told reporters after the failed vote.
Rather than allow her amendment, Johnson offered to merge the NDAA with the SAVE America Act through a procedural maneuver that would send both bills to the Senate as a single package once the defense measure passed the House. He has also said Republicans plan to add portions of the voting reform act to a separate budget bill.
Luna rejected both offers, saying that neither would succeed in getting the legislation through the Senate, where the measure has languished for months. Senate Republicans, who have a 53-47 seat majority, say they do not have the 60 votes needed to pass the measure under the chamber's filibuster rule, or the 50 votes necessary to eliminate the filibuster.
The Senate is expected to pass its own version of the defense bill, raising the odds that any voter ID language would be removed in talks aimed at reaching a compromise between the two chambers.
Other hardliners said they also opposed the vote in protest over the leadership's failure to act on proposals involving border security and unidentified aerial phenomena.
(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
