COMPASS: The Congressional Runway In September

August 20th, 2026

Congress remains out for August recess but conservatives face a high-stakes window when they return to Washington. With the House back in session on August 31 and the Senate on September 14, conservatives have just a short runway to deliver any last wins before Congress goes out of session in October for the midterms.

First, the good news. Congress appears to have averted another government shutdown that many in Washington expected to dominate the run-up to the November election. The Senate passed a bipartisan continuing resolution (H.R. 6500) in a vote of 90-6 to fund the government at current levels through December 11, 2026. The House passed its own version earlier, and the two chambers now need to reconcile the differences to get a bill to the President’s desk before funding lapses on September 30. Importantly, a continuing resolution holds the line by freezing appropriations spending and also frees up conservatives to focus on bigger priorities.

The SAVE America Act is the top priority. The SAVE America Act would require states to obtain proof of citizenship when registering an individual to vote, purge the voter rolls of all non-citizens, and require that individuals must present photo identification before voting. These are not partisan ideas. In April, a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found that 68 percent of registered voters support the bill, including 90 percent of Republicans. In July, a Fox News poll reported that roughly 8 in 10 registered voters support voter ID requirements.

Not only is it widely popular, but the SAVE America Act is also critical for preserving the integrity of America’s elections. In case you missed it, the Department of Homeland Security released a preliminary review in July estimating that more than a quarter of a million non-citizens could be registered to vote in just four states (California, New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania). Imagine how many could be registered in all 50 states.

While the House has already passed multiple iterations of the SAVE America Act, it will unfortunately take 60 votes to get it through the Senate, and Majority Leader John Thune has thus far been unable to get it done after failing to embrace the “talking filibuster” strategy proposed by Senator Mike Lee and written about and discussed extensively by CPI’s Rachel Bovard. Senate Republicans did try to advance the bill’s most popular piece, the photo ID requirement, but Democrats blocked it, and the measure fell short of the 60-vote threshold with a final vote of 52-46.

This leaves budget reconciliation as the last realistic path forward. Congress has already used reconciliation twice recently—first to enact the One Big Beautiful Bill last summer, and more recently to fund the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the remainder of Trump’s presidency. 

Because reconciliation bypasses the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster, it offers conservatives their best shot at enacting the provisions of the SAVE America Act… provided the language survives the Senate’s arcane parliamentary rules.

Before any of that can happen, however, the Senate needs to swiftly pass a budget resolution—which they chose not to do before they left for August. The House has already passed its own version of the budget, and only when the two Chambers’ budgets are synced up and identical can Republicans begin the hard legislative work of enacting SAVE Act provisions through the reconciliation process. 

Bottom line, conservatives—especially in the Senate—need to find some urgency and fortitude when they return to Washington in September. Otherwise, they (and the American people) are headed for a frustrating fall.

ICYMI…

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