Dexter Barbay

Hello Senator Thune, Let's expose what you're really doing with "reconciliation." You announced it yesterday, eleven months after the House passed the SAVE America Act. You're not trying to pass this bill. You're trying to kill it in a way you can blame on process. Here's how we know: Reconciliation requires the Senate parliamentarian to rule that provisions are "budgetary." Citizenship verification is not budgetary. Photo ID mandates are not budgetary. The parliamentarian will gut the bill. Then you'll shrug and say "we tried." We see through you. Meanwhile, you WON'T use the tools that actually work: Rule XIX limits each senator to two speeches per legislative day. Keep the Senate in continuous session, file cloture daily, and the filibuster exhausts in ~12-20 days. You dismissed it as "complicated." Because if you tried and succeeded, you'd have to actually pass the bill. Harry Reid nuked the filibuster in 2013 when he wanted results. Mitch McConnell changed Senate rules THREE times and canceled the August recess. Chuck Schumer used reconciliation within months on a 50-50 Senate. You have 53 seats. You've changed nothing, canceled nothing, and waited eleven months. Now let's talk donors: • Goldman Sachs: $150K to you - top H-1B user • Google: $75K - lobbies against E-Verify • Meta: $72.5K - Zuckerberg's FWD[.]us pushes mass immigration • Wells Fargo: $90K - banks undocumented immigrants Same corporations sponsor Punchbowl News, where you sit for "Fly Out Days" which nobody watches except Congress staffers and K Street lobbyists who pays premium bucks for legislative intelligence. Their reporter then telegraphs to the audience the SAVE Act "will ultimately fail." Corporate money flows to you AND to the outlet that frames your inaction as inevitable. We see the loop. You called grassroots anger a "paid influencer ecosystem." YOU are the paid influencer. You take the wrong side of a 80% issue because you are indistinguishable from a K Street mouthpiece, and an ineffective one to boot who won't bend the rules to get anything passed. What we want: 1. Force a real talking filibuster. 2. Stop hiding behind process. 3. Pass the SAVE America Act. YOU will become the reason that we will have our butts kicked in midterms. Not Candace Owens, not Nick Fuentes, not anyone else. You and you alone, and all because you want to make the 200 or so viewers of Punchbowl Fly Out Days happy. You're living in a K Street information bubble, addicted to the comforts and praises of lobbyists masquerading as journalists. You mistake the steak and martini dinners you get invited to as your own constituents. You are not "moderate." The SAVE America Act has 98% support among Republicans. Name one other thing that has 98% support. You are an extreme minority who prides himself on being a calm leader, when in reality you are well in the running for the most ineffective Majority leader of all time. Prove me wrong. Do the bare modicum of effort. Not symbolic. Actual effort. Cancel the recess. Get SAVE America Act passed.