MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The House has just one week left before lawmakers head back to their districts for the August recess.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
House Speaker Mike Johnson has a lot he wants to get done in that week - more money for defense, the president's election integrity bill, a stock-trading ban for lawmakers and extending funding for the federal government past the general election in November.
MARTIN: NPR Congress reporter Eric McDaniel is here with us to tell us more. Good morning, Eric.
ERIC MCDANIEL, BYLINE: Hey. Glad to be here.
MARTIN: You know, some of the things on that list are politically sensitive. We're just a few months away from the midterm elections. You've been reporting on this. Are lawmakers willing to take these tough votes?
MCDANIEL: Yeah, just a few months away from the midterms, but let's also talk about the moment we're in now. President Trump is again escalating his war with Iran. More American troops have died. Gas prices, as of this morning, are again over $4, according to AAA. And polling shows the cost of living and affordability are Americans' chief concerns. And that's the context that Republicans have, with maybe a two-vote margin in the House, when they're hoping to take votes on the president's priorities before they head home to sell their record to constituents in hopes of getting reelected this fall.
Now, gerrymandering and partisan sorting all mean that fewer lawmakers are actually at risk of losing their jobs than you might assume. But when the margin of control in Washington is so slim, there are still maybe a dozen or so Republicans who are probably sweating the idea of casting a vote to, say, give billions more to an expanding war effort as part of what's known as a reconciliation bill without anything new to pay for that spending when political headwinds are already blowing against them.
MARTIN: Eric, aren't there more popular things on the agenda, too? I think the congressional stock-trading ban and, you know, voter ID requirements - my recollection is that those are backed by pretty big majorities in polls.
MCDANIEL: Yeah. That's right. And I think there's a chance that that combined bill could narrowly pass if Speaker Mike Johnson can convince Republicans to stay united on a procedural step required before the final vote. That's a big if. And it's doomed in the Senate, where, unlike the reconciliation bill, it requires a full 60 votes to pass.
Some Republicans have objections because this version of the stock-trading ban allows members to keep the stocks they already own, which in theory means they could still be swayed to vote in their own interests rather than in the interests of their constituents. Democrats also share that concern, and many of them also oppose the voter ID requirements.
MARTIN: What about the proposal to fund the government through the November election?
MCDANIEL: Republicans are worried that Democrats will not cooperate on funding the government before the current deadline at the end of September. Republicans want to go ahead and lock in current funding levels now for a few months in order to avoid an election-time shutdown. They still might face objections from people in their own party who want to use the leverage of a preelection deadline to extract concessions for their own pet projects, like reducing government spending or any number of other things.
MARTIN: Has President Trump weighed in on any of this?
MCDANIEL: The president cares about Congress doing one thing and one thing only. That's passing his SAVE America Act. It's an election integrity bill. As evidenced by his speech last Thursday, the president's laser-focused on the idea that there was and remains rampant election fraud in the United States.
I should say Republican and Democratic election officials all around the country say that's just not true. But House Republicans are attaching the SAVE America Act to lots of unrelated legislation in order to try and force the Senate to pass it. That won't work. The Senate would, again, require 60 votes to pass it. There are only 53 Republicans, only 52 voting right now, with Mitch McConnell's extended absence. Democrats don't support the bill, meaning they're not going to add to that math. Congress is, as Senate Republican Majority Leader John Thune says, bound by arithmetic.
MARTIN: That is NPR Congress reporter Eric McDaniel. Eric, thank you.
MCDANIEL: Thanks so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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