Congressman Cline is prepared to shut down the federal government in order to force through a bill making it harder than ever for eligible people to vote.

This is how he’s trying to sell it:

WHSV reported:

Republicans [in Congress] are pushing to include the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE Act, in any measure that would extend federal spending. The legislation would require prospective voters to show proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote.

During a conversation with WHSV, Virginia Sixth District Rep. Ben Cline said the GOP will stick to its guns to save the SAVE Act, even in the shadow of a government shutdown.

“If Democrats want to shut down the government over allowing illegals to vote, that’s on them,” Cline said. “That’s pretty ridiculous that they would do that … We think it’s a reasonable, fairly straightforward piece of legislation that would need to be on a continuing resolution to keep the government running, and also make sure that our elections are secure.”

President Joe Biden has promised to veto the SAVE Act if it reaches his desk, writing that “states already have effective safeguards in place” against voter fraud.

Virginia Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan explained why she and other Democrats oppose the measure.

McClellan noted that the only methods to prove citizenship under the SAVE Act “just happen to be the ones that cost money.”

“You won’t be able to use your state driver’s license,” she said, adding that the easiest option “you could use is a passport. It costs money. A lot of Americans don’t have passports.”

McClellan further noted that it can be difficult for some people to obtain their birth certificates, which can be necessary to prove citizenship, and those who have changed their names — for marriage or other reasons — often struggle to “reconcile that in order to prove their citizenship.”

McClellan said the issue is personal, invoking her family’s history with the poll tax.

“Look, I took my oath of office on the Bible in which my father kept his poll tax receipt,” she said. “I am not voting for a modern poll tax just so that they can say they’ve done something to keep noncitizen voters from doing something that is already illegal, punishable by up to five years in federal prison, and that there’s very little evidence is a widespread problem.”

Despite Cline’s alarm about supposed hordes of illegal immigrants voting, it simply isn’t a serious problem. As the Brennan Center for Justice explains:

Imagine you’re an undocumented person living in the United States. You’ve come to this country seeking a better life for you and your family. Or maybe your parents brought you here seeking the same when you were a child. You spend your life living in very real fear that you might be noticed by the government and be deported — perhaps to a country you’ve never known. There’s an election coming up, the outcome of which will surely impact your life. But you know you can’t vote because you’re not a citizen. Would you risk everything — your freedom, your life in the United States, your ability to be near your family — just to cast a single ballot?

Of course you wouldn’t. It’s a federal crime for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. It’s also a crime under every state’s laws. In fact, under federal law, you could face up to five years in prison simply for registering to vote. It’s also a deportable offense for noncitizens to register or vote. And sure, people make bad decisions and commit crimes all the time. But this one is different: by committing the crime, you create a government record of your having committed it. In fact, it’s the creation of the government record — the registration form or the ballot cast — that is the crime. So, you’ve not only exposed yourself to prison time and deportation, you’ve put yourself on the government’s radar, and you’ve handed the government the evidence it needs to put you in prison or deport you. All so you could cast one vote. Who would do such a thing?

The answer is: just about no one. Every legitimate study ever done on the question shows that voting by noncitizens in state and federal elections is vanishingly rare. That includes the Brennan Center’s own study of 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 general election. We found that election officials in those places, who oversaw the tabulation of 23.5 million votes, referred only an estimated 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting for further investigation or prosecution. In other words, even suspected — not proven — noncitizen votes accounted for just 0.0001 percent of the votes cast.

In other words, the SAVE Act– which Cline believes is so vital that he’s willing to shut down the federal government to pass it– is a “solution” to a non-existent problem that would only prevent voting by the tens of millions of American citizens lacking passports or ready access to their birth certificates.

Like so much of what Cline says and does on immigration and other issues, it’s performative nonsense.