Congressional Record, Volume 163 Issue 20 (Monday, February 6, 2017)

[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 20 (Monday, February 6, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S943-S952]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

APPOINTMENTS

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair, in accordance with Public Law 93-
618, as amended by Public Law 100-418, on behalf of the President pro
tempore and upon the recommendation of the chairman of the Committee on
Finance, appoints the following members of the Finance Committee as
congressional advisers on trade policy and negotiations to
International conferences, meetings and negotiation sessions relating
to trade agreements: the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch), the Senator
from Iowa (Mr. Grassley), the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Crapo), the
Senator from Oregon (Mr. Wyden), and the Senator from Michigan (Ms.
Stabenow).
The Chair announces, on behalf of the majority leader, pursuant to
the provisions of Public Law 114-196, the appointment of the following
individuals to serve as members of the United States Semiquincentennial
Commission:
Members of the Senate: the Honorable Tom Cotton of Arkansas, and the
Honorable Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania.
Private Citizens: Cathy Gillespie of Virginia, Daniel DiLella of
Pennsylvania, Lucas Morel of Virginia, and Tom Walker of Alabama.
Mr. LEE. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. HARRIS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Ms. HARRIS. Mr. President, my parents met when they were graduate
students at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1960s when
they were active in the civil rights movement. In fact, my sister and I
joke that we grew up surrounded by a bunch of adults who spent their
full time marching and shouting for this thing called justice.
I was part of only the second class to integrate Berkeley, CA, public
schools almost two decades after the U.S. Supreme Court declared that
separate was inherently unequal in the great case of Brown v. Board of
Education--a case, I might add, that was supported by an amicus brief
from the then U.S. Attorney General.
In fact, it was the lawyers in Brown v. Board of Education--Thurgood
Marshall, Charles Hamilton Houston, and Constance Baker Motley--who
inspired me at a young age to become a lawyer.
Simply put, it is likely that had the U.S. Supreme Court not decided
the

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way it did in Brown v. Board of Education, I would not be standing here
as a Member of the U.S. Senate.
So then, as a direct beneficiary of landmark rulings by the U.S.
judicial system and the American judicial system, I am acutely aware of
the lasting and profound impact our courts can have on the everyday
lives of Americans. It is with a deep sense of respect and admiration
for the role of our justice system that I rise to oppose the nomination
of Senator Sessions to be the next Attorney General of the United
States.
The mission of the Department of Justice is clear: ``To enforce the
law and defend the interests of the United States according to the law;
to ensure public safety against threats, foreign and domestic; to
provide Federal leadership in preventing and controlling crime; to seek
just punishment for those guilty of unlawful behavior; and to ensure
fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.''
It is those words--``justice for all''--that best articulate the
spirit behind our judicial system.
I am a career prosecutor. In fact, I started my work as a young
deputy district attorney in the Alameda County District Attorney's
Office. That office was once led by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice
Earl Warren. Every time I filed a case, it would never read with the
name of the victim versus the name of the defendant. It always read
``the people'' versus the defendant because in our democracy, in our
great judicial system, we have rightly said a harm against any one of
us is a harm against all of us, especially because we know that harm is
most often directed at some of the most vulnerable and voiceless among
us. So we rightly have declared that as a civil society, we will not
require them to fight alone. We will stand with them. Justice for all.
This point is what raises my question of whether this nominee can
fulfill the role and responsibility of this job. Let's be clear. This
is not a debate about a President's nominee. It is not simply a debate
about a President's nominee. This is a debate about the fundamental
ideals of our country--ideals that date back to the founding of our
country and those great words we spoke in 1776: ``We hold these Truths
to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among
these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.''
All men are created equal, with unalienable rights. In other words,
President Lincoln was fulfilling the promise first made in the
Declaration of Independence, a promise that made clear the basis for
legal equality derives not through a right that is given but from
natural rights--rights that have been endowed upon us by our Creator;
rights that cannot and should not be taken away or given up.
So let us recognize that civil rights are not given through the
enactment of a law or the publication of a court decision. Rather, our
inherent civil rights are fulfilled when we guarantee them through the
implementation and enforcement of the law.
Well-meaning people indeed can argue over the best means to ensure
our fundamental rights, but it is crucial that we do not allow
ourselves to be drawn into a suggestion that enforcing civil rights is
favoring one group over another. Protecting civil rights is not about
taking care of someone else. It is in our common interests. It is in
each of our self-interests.
Liberty for each of us depends on liberty for all of us. It is just
like the Department of Justice's mission, which articulates in those
three words, ``justice for all.''
This is the Department's charge. It is its mission, and the next
Attorney General of the United States must use his powers as a
prosecutor to uphold it.
This brings me to the troubling and, frankly, unacceptable record of
the nominee for this office. It is the U.S. Department of Justice that
is charged with enforcing the rights of those trying to cast a ballot,
but Senator Sessions cheered the Supreme Court's decision to gut the
Voting Rights Act, used his power as a U.S. attorney to prosecute three
African-American Civil Rights activists in Alabama, and then called the
NAACP ``un-American.''
It is the U.S. Department of Justice that addresses systemic
inequalities that we know, unfortunately, still exist in our criminal
justice system and have led to mass incarceration--but Senator Sessions
led the opposition to bipartisan sentencing reform.
It is the U.S. Department of Justice that investigates and prosecutes
crimes motivated by hate based on race, religion, gender, nationality,
disability, or sexual orientation of its victim--but in the 1990s, when
lawmakers worked to pass hate crime legislation after the brutal
killing of Matthew Shepard, Senator Sessions was a vocal opponent.
It is the U.S. Department of Justice that uses the power of the
prosecutor to protect women who have been victims of crime--but Senator
Sessions voted no when both Democrats and Republicans came together to
reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, which gives support and
assistance to survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault,
including members of our LGBT community.
It is the U.S. Department of Justice that defends that most
fundamental right of freedom to worship--but it was Senator Sessions
who was one of the most outspoken defenders of then-candidate and now-
President Donald Trump's unconstitutional Muslim travel ban which, by
the way, was roundly denounced by many of his fellow Republicans.
It is the U.S. Department of Justice that enforces Federal laws
prohibiting employment practices that discriminate on the grounds of
race, sex, religion, and national origin. But Senator Sessions has
opposed the Paycheck Fairness Act, Lilly Ledbetter Act, and the
Employee Non-Discrimination Act.
It is the U.S. Department of Justice that implements the Americans
with Disabilities Act. But when both Democrats and Republicans worked
to reauthorize the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which
provides resources to children with special needs, Senator Sessions
said that providing educational services for these children ``may be
the single most irritating problem for teachers throughout America
today.''
Whether you are the father of a special needs child in a classroom, a
woman trying to earn fair pay, an African-American man in a voting
booth, or a victim at a police station trying to report a crime,
Senator Sessions has not been your advocate.
As a former U.S. Attorney General, the great Bobby Kennedy once said:

We must recognize the full human equality of all our people
before God, before the law, and in the councils of
government. We must do this, not because it is economically
advantageous, although it is; not because the laws of God and
man command it, although they do; not because people in other
lands wish it so. We must do it for the single and
fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do.

The right thing to do. That is what makes us special as a country.
That is what makes us right. That is what makes us great--our values
and our ideas. It is the belief that no matter who you are, whether
young or old, rich or poor, gay or straight; whether you are a child
from Oakland or a child from Birmingham; whether you came here by plane
to escape the hardships of war and torture or by foot to build a better
life; whether you have been the victim of gun violence or opioid
addiction; whether you are paid less than others doing the same work or
stopped at a red light because of the color of your skin, you deserve
an Attorney General who recognizes the full human quality of all
people.
It is what led Attorney General Herbert Brownell, when there was
rampant voter discrimination and intimidation here in the United
States, to create in the United States Department of Justice the Civil
Rights Division, whose mission is to ``uphold the civil and
constitutional rights of all Americans, particularly some of the most
vulnerable members of our society.''
It is what led Attorney General William Rogers to forcefully demand
the integration of an elementary school at the Redstone missile center
in Alabama when the children of Black servicemembers were being denied
entry.
It is that commitment that led Bobby Kennedy to send 500 U.S.
marshals to Oxford, MS, to escort a young Black man, James Meredith, to
enroll at Ole Miss. It is what led U.S. Attorney General Elliott
Richardson to resign rather than do the bidding of a corrupt President
during Watergate.
It is what led my friend, Attorney General Eric Holder, to sue the
State

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of Arizona over SB 1070, a law that led to the unjust racial profiling
of immigrants and to say that the U.S. Government would no longer
defend a law that prevented LGBT Americans from expressing their love
for one another.
It is what led Attorney General Sally Yates, on a Monday evening this
month, to stand up and refuse to defend a Muslim ban.
More than most Cabinet positions, the U.S. Attorney General enforces
the principles that are the founding of our country, but I have seen no
evidence in his record or testimony that Senator Sessions will approach
this office in furtherance of these noble ideals. The gains our country
has made are not permanent, and it is incumbent on the Attorney General
of the United States to fight for the civil rights of all people.
No one said it better than Coretta Scott King:

Freedom is never really won. You earn it and win it in
every generation.

If Senator Sessions won't, then it is incumbent upon the rest of us
to persist.
I urge my colleagues to vote no.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the nomination
of Senator Sessions to be the next Attorney General. I believe one of
the most important jobs of a U.S. Attorney General is to protect the
people's right to vote.
In the tumultuous days of the early 1960s, on a hot afternoon, I
watched on a grainy black and white TV as Dr. King delivered his
memorable ``I Have a Dream'' speech on the steps of the Lincoln
Memorial.
His soaring, spiritually laced speech challenged us to commit our
lives to ensuring that the promises of American democracy were
available, not just for the privileged few but for ``all of God's
children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and
Catholics.''
``Now is the time,'' Dr. King urged, ``to make real the promises of
democracy.'' He stressed that a central promise made to the citizens in
a democracy is the right to vote and to have that vote counted. He
said: ``We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot
vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to
vote.''
Half a century has passed, and our country has changed with the
times, but one thing has not changed. The right to vote for ``all God's
children'' in America is still under assault. Unbelievably, we are not
so very far from the problems of 1963. Despite the passage of time and
landmark civil and voting rights legislation, five decades later there
is still considerable voter suppression in this country.
In fact, several States have recently enacted restrictive laws
cutting back voting hours on nights and on weekends, eliminating same-
day registration, and basically making it harder for people to vote.
Standing in between a citizen and the voting booth is a direct
contradiction to the vision of equality put forth by our Founding
Fathers. In 1776, they declared that all men were created equal, but
many in our country had to wait another 94 years before the 15th
Amendment to the Constitution granted citizens the right to vote--
though not all citizens. Ratified in 1870, the amendment states: ``The
right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race,
color, or previous condition of servitude. The Congress shall have
power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.''
It still took another 50 years before women in America were allowed
to vote. After her arrest for casting a ballot in the Presidential
election of 1872, Susan B. Anthony delivered a number of speeches in
Upstate New York on women's suffrage. In those speeches, she noted that
the right of all citizens to vote in elections is key to a functioning
democracy.
Specifically, one line from her speech stands out. ``And it is a
downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings
of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing
them by providing the democratic-republican government--the ballot.''
After the passage of the 19th Amendment granting women the ballot, it
took another 45 years before our Nation belatedly enacted the Voting
Rights Act of 1965 intended to guarantee every U.S. citizen the right
to vote. Does this principle really hold true in practice?
The continued voter suppression of which I speak may not be as
blatant as it once was with Jim Crow laws and poll taxes and literacy
tests and the like, but it is still very much with us.
In recent years, it is obvious that hurdles have once again been
placed between the voting booth and the young and minority voters. A
devastating blow was dealt by the U.S. Supreme Court when it gutted the
Voting Rights Act in 2013. Our Nation's highest Court struck down a
central provision of the law that was used to guarantee fair elections
in this country since the mid-1960s, and that includes the guarantee of
elections in my State of Florida since that time.
Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to protect our right to
vote. It required States with a history of voter suppression to get
Federal approval before changing their voting laws. And for nearly five
decades, the States had to prove to the Department of Justice why a
change was necessary and demonstrate how that change would not harm
voters.
In a 5-to-4 decision, the Court declared that part of the law was
outdated. It essentially rendered a key part of the law void until a
bitterly partisan and gridlocked Congress can come up with a new
formula for determining which States and localities need advance
approval to amend their right-to-vote laws. The majority justified its
ruling in the Court by pointing out that we no longer had the blatant
voter suppression tactics once used to disenfranchise targeted voters
across the country. I vigorously disagree because removing much needed
voter protections also prevents the Federal Government from trying to
block discriminatory State laws before they go into effect. In essence,
States and local jurisdictions are now legally free to do as they
please.
In fact, just moments after the decision, the Texas attorney general
said his State would begin ``immediately'' honoring local legislation
that a fellow court had imposed ``strict and unforgiving burdens'' on
many Texans attempting to cast a ballot.
As has been noted, the right to vote was not always given to all
American adults, but our laws adjusted as we became a more mature and
tolerant democracy. But the reverse is what has been happening in
America today and especially in Florida.
Since the 2010 election, in addition to cutting back on early voting,
North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Florida have approved voting
restrictions that according to some experts are targeted directly at
reducing turnout among young, low-income, and minority voters who
traditionally support Democrats.
One study by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University
School of Law reviewed the crop of similar disenfranchisement laws that
were enacted after the 2010 decision. All told, the center found that
as many as 5 million Americans could be adversely affected by these
voting laws, and there is a clear political impact as a result of these
disenfranchisement laws.
Two University of Massachusetts professors conducted a study that
found that there was a clear pattern associated with the voter
restrictions in the various States. According to Keith Bentele and Erin
E. O'Brien, States were more likely to pass limits on voting that
elected those Republican Governors, those States that increased their
share of Republican lawmakers, and those States that became more
electorally competitive under Republicans.
In 2011, the Florida legislature and State officials reduced a number
of early voting days. They reduced them from 2 weeks down to 8 days,
including very conveniently canceling the Sunday right before the
Tuesday election, a day that had historically seen heavy African-
American and Hispanic voting.

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State officials countered that registered voters would still have the
same number of hours and that they could still vote early, only in 8
days instead of 2 weeks. Well, it didn't work out that way. Florida
also made voting harder for people who had been recently moved to
another county and had an address change, such as college students,
after it subjected voter registration groups to penalties and fines for
mistakes--voter registration, mind you, penalties, and fines if you
didn't turn it in within a certain number of hours.
They were so burdensome that the League of Women Voters challenged
the provision in Federal court and they won but not before Jill
Cicciarelli, a Florida teacher, had helped her students preregister to
vote and ended up facing legal troubles as the result of her well-
intentioned public service. A schoolteacher, teaching a government
class, getting her kids preregistered, so when they became 18, they
could vote, and she got in trouble with the State of Florida. The New
Smyrna Beach High School civics teacher unwittingly ran afoul of the
State's new convoluted election law. Cicciarelli, it turned out, hadn't
registered with the State before beginning the drive and didn't submit
forms to the elections office within that short number of hours.
``You're talking about a high-energy teacher who cares about her kids,
cares about her community and cares about her country,'' is how the New
Smyrna High School principal, Jim Tager, described the situation.
Thankfully, the Voting Rights Act allowed the Federal Government to
go before a panel of Washington, DC, judges who found that Florida's
2011 reduction of early voting--which I have just chronicled--here is
what the court said, ``would make it materially more difficult for some
minority voters to cast a ballot.'' As a result, Florida had to restore
96 hours of early voting.
Even with these added protections, the next election in 2012 was a
fiasco. Lines outside the polling places were prohibitively long, with
some people waiting up to 8 hours to cast their vote. I am not kidding
the Senate. There were lines in Dade County, Miami Dade County, 7 and 8
hours. By the way, some of those lines, there wasn't a nearby bathroom.
Faced with calls for extending poll hours, the Governor of Florida
failed to do what its two Republican gubernatorial predecessors had
done: extend voting hours in some of the most swamped polling places to
give folks enough time to exercise their right to vote.
In fact, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology analysis found that
in 2012, Florida had the Nation's longest waiting lines to vote at an
average statewide of 45 minutes. More than 200,000 voters in Florida
gave up in frustration because the lines were so long. They didn't vote
that year. According to another analysis by Ohio State University, in
the Orlando Sentinel, they are the ones who came up with that 200,000
figure, and they aren't done yet.
As if the 2011 restrictions weren't enough, an elections official in
Miami-Dade County, in 2012, said that restrooms would be closed to
voters at polling sites in private buildings over a handicap access
dispute, even though there were bathrooms in those private buildings
where the polling place was. The State's top election official in 2012
also told one of our 67 local election supervisors not to allow voters
to submit absentee ballots at remote dropoff sites. She, by the way, is
a Republican supervisor of elections. She told the State Department
Division of Elections to kiss off; that she was running the elections
and she was going to make sure there were enough places around that
county where, if they had an absentee ballot, it was going to be
convenient for them to go and drop off that absentee ballot than having
to take it miles and miles to one place, that the Division of Elections
at the State level was telling them to go to that Supervisor of
Elections. She knew what she had to do to make it easy for voters to
vote, and she stuck to her guns.
At the same time, that same Division of Elections in the Department
of State, denied a request from the city of Gainesville in a municipal
election. They denied the request to use the University of Florida
campus building for early voting. A move that was viewed by some--more
than some--as an assault on student voting by making it more difficult
for students to find a place to vote.
By then, I had asked the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, for an
investigation into the changes in Florida's voting law. In response,
the Attorney General wrote to warn the Governor of Florida that the
Justice Department would be ``carefully monitoring'' Florida's
elections. ``During your tenure, your State has repeatedly added
barriers to voting and restricted access to the polls,'' the Attorney
General wrote. ``Whenever warranted by the facts and the law, we will
not hesitate to use all tools and legal authorities at our disposal to
fight against racial discrimination, to stand against
disenfranchisement, and to safeguard the right of every eligible
American to cast a ballot.''
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record
the letter from the U.S. Attorney General to the Governor of Florida,
dated July 21, 2014.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Office of the

Attorney General,

Washington, DC, July 21, 2014.
Hon. Rick Scott,
Governor of Florida, The Capitol, Tallahassee, FL.
Dear Governor Scott: In recent years. I have heard from
public officials and citizens of Florida expressing their
deep concern that certain changes to Florida election law and
procedures have restricted voter participation and limited
access to the franchise. Because the right to vote is one of
our nation's most sacred rights, I strongly urge you to
reevaluate laws and procedures that make it harder for
citizens to register and to vote so that all eligible
Floridians can easily and without burden exercise their right
to vote.
Generations of Americans took extraordinary risks and
willingly confronted hatred and violence--including in your
home state--to ensure that all American citizens would have
the chance to participate in the work of their government.
The right to vote is not only the cornerstone or our system
of government--it is the lifeblood of our democracy. Whatever
the precise contours of federal law, we each have a civic and
moral duty to protect, and to expand access to, this right.
For this reason, I am deeply disturbed that during your
tenure your state has repeatedly added barriers to voting and
restricted access to the polls. For example, changes in 2011
significantly narrowed the early voting window that had
previously enabled thousands of Floridians to cast ballots.
As the three judge court in Florida v. United Stares, 885 F.
Supp. 2d 299 (D.D.C. 2012), observed, the law threatened ``a
dramatic reduction in the form of voting that is
disproportionately used by African-Americans'' that would
have made it ``materially more difficult for some minority
voters to cast a ballot than under the benchmark law,'' in
part because the decreased opportunity for early voting would
produce increased lines at the polls during the remaining
hours. Id. at 333. Accordingly, the court refused to approve
reduced early voting hours with respect to the five counties
in Florida covered by the Voting Rights Act's preclearance
provision.
Indeed, Florida's decision to reduce early voting
opportunities in the 2011 legislation was widely recognized
as a disaster. A report released by the Orlando Sentinel in
January 2013 found that at least 201,000 Florida voters did
not cast ballots on Election Day 2012 because they were
discouraged by long lines at polling places. I am pleased
that last year you signed legislation that restored early
voting days. However, I have grave concerns that there
remains a troubling pattern in your state of measures that
make it more difficult, not easier, for Floridians to vote.
For example, as part of the same 2011 law, the state imposed
rules on organizations that helped register individuals to
vote that were, in the words of a federal court, ``harsh,''
``impractical,'' ``burdensome,'' and ``unworkable.'' League
of Women Voters of Fla. v. Browning, 863 F. Supp. 2d 1155
(N.D. Fl. 2012).
Most recently, the federal courts have concluded that in
2012, Florida violated the National Voter Registration Act of
1993 (NVRA) by conducting a systematic program to purge
voters from its voter registration rolls within the 90-day
quiet period before an election for federal office. In doing
so, Florida used inaccurate and unreliable voter verification
procedures that harmed and confused voters. Arcia v. Fla.
Sec'y, of State, 746 F.3d 1273 (11th Cir. 2014).
Florida is one of just eleven states that continue to
restrict voting rights even after a person has served his or
her sentence and is no longer on probation or parole; and in
2011, you made it more difficult for individuals who have
served their sentences to regain the right to vote by
eliminating automatic restoration of rights for non-violent
felons and requiring a five year waiting period before felons
convicted of non-violent crimes can apply to have their
rights restored. Approximately ten percent of the entire
population is disenfranchised as a result

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of Florida law. The justifications for denying citizens'
voting rights for life, especially after they have completed
their sentence and made amends, are unpersuasive. On the
contrary: there is evidence to suggest that offenders whose
voting rights are restored are significantly less likely to
return to the criminal justice system. For example. a study
recently conducted by a parole commission in Florida found
that, while the overall three-year recidivism rate stood at
roughly 33 percent, the rate among those who were re-
enfranchised after they'd served their time was just a third
of that.
And there are a number of other troubling examples
involving recent changes:
In 2013, Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner issued a
directive to county officials who supervise elections stating
that they should never solicit the return of absentee ballots
at any place other than supervisors' offices. Many have
expressed concern that this directive will significantly
reduce the number of places to return an absentee ballot and
will have a negative impact on citizens whose jobs, access to
transportation, or addresses make it difficult to return
ballots to supervisors' office which, especially in large
counties, may be miles away.
This year, Gainesville, in an attempt to avoid the long
lines that characterized the 2012 election, sought approval
to use the University of Florida's student union as an early
voting site. Secretary of State Detzner denied the request.
As a result, it is more difficult for University of Florida
students--who have to travel to alternative early voting
locations miles off campus--to participate in early voting.
In April, it was reported that the Miami-Dade County
Elections Department had a policy, according to an email from
an Assistant County Attorney, ``not to permit access to
restrooms at polling sites on election days.'' As you know,
in 2012, Miami-Dade County had some of the longest lines and
waiting times to vote in the United States. Some voters
reported waiting as much as six hours. Many of the people
stuck in lines need to use bathroom facilities in order to
remain in line and be allowed to vote.
Whether or not these changes would ultimately be found to
violate specific federal laws, they represent a troubling
series of efforts to limit citizens' ability to exercise the
franchise. And I write to you today to make clear that the
Department of Justice is carefully monitoring jurisdictions
around the country--including throughout Florida--for voting
changes that may hamper the voting rights we are charged with
protecting. Whenever warranted by the facts and the law, we
will not hesitate to use all tools and legal authorities at
our disposal to fight against racial discrimination, to stand
against disenfranchisement, and to safeguard the right of
every eligible American to cast a ballot.
Sincerely,
Eric H. Holder, Jr.,
Attorney General.

Mr. NELSON. The Attorney General cited problematic actions of the
Governor's chief elections official, including purging from the voter
rolls suspected noncitizens--a move that eventually was blocked after
outright opposition from county election supervisors.
So in light of this evidence and following a widespread public
outcry, what do we do now? As we say, it may not be as obvious as poll
tactics and all the other blockades to voting, as we have seen in the
past, particularly by all of the marches and so forth during the 1970s
civil rights era. It might not be as obvious, but there are all these
subtle attempts. So what do we do?
I submit that though the problem is complex, the answer is relatively
simple. As Americans who cherish the right to vote, we must turn to
those schemers and say: There is a promise of democracy that we will
not allow you to break. We have an obligation to keep this promise of
democracy for our children.
Congress may be dysfunctional, but we must continue to push lawmakers
for a fix to the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court struck down
on a 5-to-4 vote, a key provision. We ought to be making it easier to
vote, not harder. I believe no one should have to wait more than one-
half hour to vote.
So I joined with others a few years ago to introduce a bill in
Congress aimed at making that standard 30-minute wait time based on the
January 2014 recommendation of a bipartisan Presidential Commission on
Election Administration. Keep in mind what President Johnson said a
half century ago: ``The vote is the most powerful instrument ever
devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible
walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.''
Also remember what Dr. King said:

So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the
right to vote, I do not possess myself. I cannot make up my
mind--it is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic
citizen, observing the laws I have helped to enact--I can
only submit to the edict of others.

Don't we owe it to all our children the right to possess themselves
if this is to be a truly free and fair democracy? I believe that two of
the most fundamental rights in our democracy are the right to vote and
the right to know whom you are voting for and the right to have the
confidence that vote is going to be counted as you intended.
If that were not enough, just as concerning as the ongoing efforts to
suppress certain votes in this country is the amount of undisclosed and
unlimited money that is sloshing around in our campaigns.
The Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United has opened the
floodgates and allowed the wealthiest Americans to spend unlimited
amounts of money to influence our elections. Allowing such unlimited,
undisclosed money into our political system is corrupting our
democracy.
I have strongly supported several pieces of legislation, such as the
Disclose Act, to require groups who spend more than $10,000 on
campaign-related matters to identify themselves. Tell the people who is
giving the money by filing a disclosure report with the Federal
Elections Commission. But that is not what the Supreme Court decision
required.
The American people have a right to know whom they are voting for--
not just the name on the ballot but who is behind that name on the
ballot. The Supreme Court itself said that ``transparency enables the
electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to
different speakers and messages.''
I believe we as a Congress have a moral obligation--a moral
obligation--to correct what has happened to our system and to ensure
that our voters have the information they need to make an informed
decision on election day.
So this Senator has spoken on two subject areas--the right to vote
and the amount of undetectable, unannounced, undisclosed, and unlimited
money in our elections. For these and many other reasons I have stated
and have not stated and the reasons mentioned in these remarks, I will
vote no on the confirmation for Attorney General.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). The Senator from Missouri.
Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, we are coming to the conclusion of weeks
now of debate on the nominee to be the Attorney General of the United
States, and we still have other debates to have on other people before
this process ends. In fact, somebody observed this week that you have
to go back to the very founding of the government, to the first
administration of George Washington, to find a time when it has taken
longer to put a Cabinet in place, and George Washington only had to
find four people in a government that was just trying to establish
itself. But we are taking a maximum amount of time on a Cabinet and a
Presidential nomination that usually happen quickly.
There has traditionally been an understanding in our country that
when the President is elected--the importance of the President being
able to put his stamp on the government as quickly as possible. And
eventually we will be able to say his or her stamp on the government.
But up until now, Presidents have had that opportunity. I read
somewhere that from President Garfield right after the Civil War
through Franklin Roosevelt, that Cabinets--those were put in place in
the first days of every one of those administrations, often even the
very first day.
What we have seen in this debate is also the questioning of people's
motives, not just their decisions. I don't quote Vice President Biden
often, but one of the quotes I have heard him give often and one I have
agreed with in all my time here is that it is appropriate to question
somebody else's decisions in public debate, particularly when you are
debating your colleagues, who have also been elected to these jobs as
well, but it is frankly not appropriate to question their motives. When
we start doing that, that is always a mistake.
When I was the whip in the House, I used to tell freshman Members of
the House: You are going to enjoy this opportunity and be better at it
while you are here if you can vigorously fight for what you are for but
if you will also believe that in virtually 100 percent of

[[Page S948]]

the cases, the person on the other side of that debate is as well
motivated and as genuine as you are. You can be wrong and not be evil.
You can be wrong and not be badly motivated.
You know, elections do have consequences. Every person we are talking
with on this floor in this debate was elected to the Senate.
I think Senator Sessions will be confirmed Attorney General, so
sometime later this week, one of our number will have been appointed to
this job. But these are people who come to this process as the
Constitution determines, and they serve here as representatives of both
the State they represent and the Constitution and what it stands for.
In the case of Senator Sessions, we have a colleague who has been
here for 20 years. Anybody who has been here less than that served
every day of their time in the Senate with Senator Sessions. People who
have been here longer than that have served all 20 years with Senator
Sessions. I don't know how you can do that and not see the quality he
brings to that job every day.
He and I have not always voted the same. In fact, there is probably
no Member here with whom I have always voted the same. But he comes
with a background of integrity.
He started as an Eagle Scout. I think he was a Distinguished Eagle
Scout. I am not even sure I know the difference between an Eagle Scout
and a Distinguished Eagle Scout; I thought all Eagle Scouts were
distinguished. But starting even then, Jeff Sessions has always stood
out a little above the crowd.
He has four decades of public service. In 1975, he became an
assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District in Alabama. Half a
dozen years after that, he became the U.S. attorney in that district.
He held that job for 12 years until he became the attorney general of
Alabama. People trusted him to take that those responsibilities. In
1997, as I said, he came to the Senate.

He has been a senior member of the Judiciary Committee for some time
now. He has worked across party lines, and he has done that in fights
for justice and fights on behalf of the victims of crime and, frankly,
on more than one occasion, fights to be sure that those accused of
crimes also had their day in court, and after they had their day in
court, it was Senator Sessions who was instrumental in leading the
fight for the Fair Sentencing Act.
Senator Sessions was very involved in the Paul Coverdell act for
forensic sciences to be sure that the evidence that was in court would
be unassailable to every extent possible. He has been vigorous in
wanting to be sure those accused of crimes had justice, as well as
those who were the victims of crime.
When I came to the Senate, Senator Coons and I--a Democrat from
Delaware and a good friend of mine. I am thinking about him in this
week that his father passed away. When we came to the Senate 6 years
ago, we formed the Law Enforcement Caucus. Senator Sessions was a great
supporter of that effort.
When we were able to reauthorize in the last Congress the Victims of
Child Abuse Act--this is a law that provides Federal assistance to
locations in virtually every State--22 in the State of Missouri--where
kids who have been the victims of crime or a witness to crime have a
place to go and get the information out of their lives that needs to
get away from them so they can get on to the next thing that happens, a
law that protects our most vulnerable children and is designed to hold
the perpetrators of crimes on those children or crimes those children
witness--allows that to be dealt with in the right way. Senator
Sessions was a great advocate for that.
He has been endorsed by the major law enforcement associations of the
country, as well as many of his colleagues. The law enforcement
associations that say Jeff Sessions would be a good Attorney General
are the Fraternal Order of Police, the National Sheriffs' Association,
the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the Major Cities
Chiefs Association, the Major Counties Sheriffs' Association, and the
list goes on.
Then you get to the victims of crime groups who have endorsed Senator
Sessions.
Five former U.S. Attorney Generals and one former FBI Director are on
that list. They are saying that Jeff Sessions would be a good person--
in the case of five of them--to hold the jobs they held, and they know
more about that job than any of us do: Michael Mukasey, Alberto
Gonzales, John Ashcroft, Bill Barr, Ed Meese III. All, along with FBI
Director Louis Freeh, have endorsed Jeff Sessions for this job.
There has been some discussions of his relationship with African
Americans. We have African-American endorsements from his State but
also from the former Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice; our
colleague Tim Scott, who will be here later this afternoon, and I
intend to be here for his remarks; and Larry Thompson, the former
Deputy Attorney General. These are people who know Jeff Sessions and
know what he has to offer to that job.
It is a job of great responsibility. Seldom will we as Senators have
an opportunity to confirm someone to that job or any other job that we
know as well as Senator Sessions. We know his family. We know his
recent addition of twin grandchildren to his family just a little over
a year ago. We know how much he cares about them. We know the moments
that he has reached out to each of us as we have had challenges or
things we needed help with.
I think he will do a great job as Attorney General. I believe that
will happen later today. I think the country and the Attorney General's
office will be in good hands late today when Jeff Sessions undoubtedly,
I am confident, becomes the Attorney General.
I look forward to that vote later today and then getting on to the
next nominee, Dr. Price, whom I served with in the House. Any
discussion that there have not been ideas that were alternatives to the
Affordable Care Act--people just have not been paying attention to Dr.
Tom Price all the time he has been in the Congress or as budget
director and haven't paid attention to him as a practicing physician.
He is another great nominee at a time when we really need to set a new
course.
We are going to see that happen in both the Attorney General's office
and at HHS, and I look forward to what we do as those move forward.
I also look forward to what may not be the official maiden speech but
what I think will be the first speech on the floor for our new
colleague, John Kennedy.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I rise to support the nomination of Jeff
Sessions to be the next Attorney General of the United States of
America, and I would like to explain why.
It seems to me that most Americans don't care about the politics on
Capitol Hill. They don't particularly care about the politics in the
Senate, and they don't especially care about the politics in
Washington, DC. Most Americans are too busy earning a living. These are
the Americans who get up every day, they go to work, they work hard,
they obey the law, they try to do the right thing by their kids, and
they try to save a little money for retirement.
Most Americans I think are fairminded, and most Americans are
commonsensical. They understand that when they elect a President, the
President can't do the job alone. He gets help, and he starts with
appointing members of his Cabinet. Of course, the Senate has to provide
advice and consent and confirm those appointees.
Most Americans understand that a President--whoever the President--is
not going to pick his enemies to do that. He is not going to pick
somebody he doesn't trust. He is not going to pick someone to advise
him if he is not qualified. He is going to pick someone he is on
friendly terms with. He is going to pick somebody who is competent. He
is going to pick somebody who is experienced. That is what President
Trump has done. That is what President Obama did. That is what
Secretary Hillary Clinton would have done, had she been elected
President.
Now, President Trump has nominated Senator Jeff Sessions. I recognize
that not all Americans and not all Members of the Senate agree with his
political positions. Some folks don't agree with his political party.
Some folks don't like him because they don't like the person who
appointed him. I

[[Page S949]]

get that. Some folks may not even like the part of the country he is
from. That is OK. This is America. In America, you can believe anything
you want to believe, and as long as you don't hurt anybody, you can say
it.
But it seems to me that no reasonable person, if they look at Senator
Jeff Sessions' record, can argue that he is not qualified, if by
qualified you mean that he has any potential to be a great Attorney
General.
This is a man who has served as a State attorney general. This is a
man who was a U.S. attorney not for 1 year or 5 years or 6 years. For
12 years he served as a U.S. attorney. This is a gentleman who has been
a U.S. Senator for 20 years, three terms, and three times the good
people of Alabama have sent Jeff Sessions to this body.
Most people here know him. They have had lunch with him. They have
met his family. They have worked with him on bills. They have worked
against him on bills. They know him, and they know he is qualified.
There has been a lot of discussion about whether Senator Sessions
will respect the rule of law. He will. He understands the difference
between making policy, as Congress does, and executing policy. I have
no doubt whatsoever that Senator Sessions, as the next Attorney
General, will be more than willing to enforce laws that he might not
necessarily agree with.
There has been some discussion about Senator Sessions and the Bill of
Rights. Senator Sessions understands the importance of personal
liberty. I listened very attentively in the Judiciary Committee. He was
asked a lot of questions about our Constitution. It is clear to me that
Senator Sessions understands that the Bill of Rights is not for the
high school quarterback. The Bill of Rights is not for the prom queen.
The Bill of Rights is there to protect the unprotected, the man or
woman in America who might want to do things a little differently. He
understands that very, very clearly.
At some point, we all have to stop regretting yesterday, and we have
to start creating tomorrow, and that is the point we are at.
I unconditionally support Senator Jeff Sessions to be the next
Attorney General of the United States of America.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lee). The Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. SCOTT. Mr. President, before I get into my speech regarding
Senator Sessions, I wanted to talk a little bit about what occurred
last night.
First, there is no doubt in my mind that the letter written by
Coretta Scott King should be read by each and every Member of this
Chamber. Regardless of whether you disagree with her conclusions, her
standing in the history of our Nation means her voice should be heard.
What I took issue with last night and the true violation of rule XIX in
my eyes were the remarks shared last night originally stated by Senator
Kennedy--not Coretta Scott King--Senator Kennedy.
Whether you like it or not, this body has rules, and we all should
govern ourselves according to the rules.
There is no doubt that last night emotions were very high, and I am
not necessarily happy with where that has left us today. The Senate
needs to function. We need to have a comity in this body if we are to
work for the American people. This should not be about Republicans and
Democrats. It is not about us; it is about the American people.
If we remember that point as we move forward, our Nation will be able
to heal where we hurt. We will be able to disagree without being
disagreeable. This should be the norm, not a unique experience in
public discourse.
Before I decided to give this speech, I had the privilege last night
around midnight of having to sit in the Chair and presiding. My good
friend Cory Booker was making an eloquent presentation about where we
are on issues of race in this Nation. He was talking about the South,
and he was talking about the pain, the suffering, and the misery.
Today, as I want to share my thoughts on Jeff Sessions and how I have
come to my conclusion, I thought it was important for me to not try to
persuade people but to simply inform, because this issue is not simply
the issue about our next Attorney General. This is really an issue
about all of us--not all of us as Senators but all of us as members of
the American family. This is an issue that digs deep into the core of
our souls, deep into the core of our Nation, deep into who we can be,
who we should be, and how we will get there.
So my objective here, as I speak, will not be to somehow persuade the
other side that your decision is wrong. I don't think that is my
responsibility nor my intention. My goal isn't even to persuade those
who believe that Jeff Sessions will not be a good U.S. Attorney General
that they are wrong. I simply want to share information. I want to
share facts. I want to share, as Paul Harvey used to say, ``the rest of
the story,'' because if you read the news reports, you walk away with a
clear picture based on facts but not necessarily a clear picture based
on truth. There has been a distortion in many arenas, in many echo
chambers about who he is and why I support him.
My good friend Cory Booker last night spoke about a true American
hero, John Lewis. John Lewis is an American hero. I know that this may
or may not be popular with everyone in the Chamber or everyone in
America on the conservative side or the liberal side, but the reality
of it is this. He was beaten within an inch of his life so that I would
have the privilege--not to stand in the Chamber but--to vote, to simply
vote.
We should all thank God for the sacrifices of men and women so that
people like myself, Cory Booker, and Kamala Harris would be allowed one
day not to simply vote but to serve in the most unique, powerful, and
one of the most important legislative bodies in the world today. It is
the sacrifices of men and women of color who fought against injustices.
We stand as a nation on the shoulders of these giants. I know that I
don't have to remind my mother or my family, but just as a reminder to
those who are listening to the conversation, when I leave the Senate
one day, I am still going to be Black, an African American--Black every
day, Black every way, and there is no doubt.
This is an important part of the conversation because, as I read
through some of the comments of my friends on the left, you will wonder
if I ever had an experience as a Black person in America. I want to get
to that in just a few minutes.
God, in His infinite wisdom, made me Black, born in Charleston, SC,
for a purpose. I am blessed to be who I am, and I am equally blessed to
be a Charlestonian. Our country, the South, and, specifically, my State
have suffered through difficult and challenging times around the issue
of race. My grandfather, who passed away at 94 years old last January,
knew a very different South. I remember listening to him talking about
his experiences of having to step off of the sidewalk when White folks
were coming. He learned early in life: Never look a White person in the
eyes. He was in his forties in the 1960s. His whole life view, his
paradigm, was painted with a broad brush. Separation, segregation,
humiliation, and challenges.
It was in my home city of Charleston where the Civil War began. It
was in my home city of Charleston where nearly 40 percent of all the
slaves that came to America would come through in Charleston, SC. It
was a Charlestonian who came up with the concept written into our
Constitution of three-fifths of a man--a Charlestonian.
But it was also Charlestonians who, in 2010 had a choice between
Strom Thurmond's son and a young--I use that word liberally--African-
American guy named Tim Scott.
The evolution that has occurred in the South could be seen very
clearly on this day in Charleston. The very first shots of the Civil
War were in Charleston. They gave me the privilege of representing them
in Congress, over the son of Strom Thurmond, over the son and the
namesake of one of the most popular Governors in South Carolina,
Carroll Campbell, Jr. I thank God that the South Carolina that I have
come to know, the South that I have had the experience to enjoy is a
different South. It is a different Charleston than my grandfather knew
in his 94 years. But my life has not been one of privilege, of promise.
As I said just a few nights ago, I was born into a single parent
household, living in poverty, nearly flunking out

[[Page S950]]

of high school. I have been called everything that you can think of
from a racial perspective--good, not too often bad, very consistently.
So I understand that there is room for progress. There is a need for us
to crystallize what we are fighting about, who we are fighting for, and
how we are going to get there.
This is an important day and an important issue, and the U.S.
Attorney General is perhaps one of the most important decisions I will
make about the Cabinet of President Trump. I will tell you that, for
me, this has been a challenging journey, one that I have not taken
lightly because, as I said earlier, I am going to be Black when I leave
this body, and so when I think about some of the comments and some of
the challenges for Jeff Sessions around the 1986 process, the trial of
the KKK and the trial of the Turner family, an African-American
couple--they were defendants he brought to court--I have heard it, and
I wanted to know more about what it is we are talking about, not by
reading it in the paper but by calling folks in Alabama, understanding
with new eyes who Jeff Sessions is--not the guy I serve with but the
guy who will have the most powerful position in law enforcement. I
wanted to know firsthand who he was before he was nominated and how he
would respond in a room filled with African-American leaders.
I and my best friend in Congress, Trey Gowdy, for a very long time
throughout South Carolina have held meetings of African-American
pastors and leaders coming together with law enforcement to try to
bridge the gap that is obviously broken, bridge the gap that obviously
exists between law enforcement and African-American leaders. So I
brought Jeff Sessions down to see from a distance how he interacts with
these African-American pastors, hear the tough questions on Walter
Scott and other issues so I can have an appreciation and affinity of
how the Justice Department under his leadership would act.
I take this responsibility seriously, and I wonder if my friends in
the Chamber have had a chance to see what others think--not the
political echo chamber, not the organization, but run-of-the-mill
people.
So I had that experience, and I will tell you that without any
question, the conclusion that I have drawn is a pretty clear
conclusion. I am glad that I dug into the issue. I am glad I took the
time to know Jeff Sessions the best I can from what I have read from
1986, what I saw in my own home city of Charleston, with a provocative
history on race.
We are at a defining moment in our country, not because of the
Attorney General, not because of the debate we are going through in
this body, but because our country is being pulled apart from extremes
on both ends. This is not healthy for our country. Too often, too many
particularly on the right are found guilty until proven innocent on
issues of race, issues of fairness. I say that because, as I think
about some of the comments that have come into my office over the last
several weeks, I am used to being attacked. If you sign up to be a
Black conservative, the chances are very high you will be attacked. It
comes with the territory, and I have had it for 20 years, two decades.
But my friends and my staff are not used to the level of animus that
comes in from the liberal left who suggest that I somehow am not
helpful to the cause of liberal America and therefore I am not helpful
to Black America because they see those as one and the same.
I brought some of the pages of chats that I have from folks, the
comments I get from Twitter about my support of Jeff Sessions:
Tracy V. Johnson sent in ``Sen. Uncle Tim Scott.''
``Everyone from SC who happens to be a left winger knows that Tim
Scott is an Uncle Tom. [``S''] is documented.'' ``S'' is not for Scott;
it is for fertilizer.
SGaut says: ``A White man in a black body: Tim Scott backs Jeff
Sessions for attorney general.''
Until 3 weeks ago the only African-American chief of staff in the
U.S. Senate out of 100 was the chief of staff for a Republican. The
second African-American chief of staff in the U.S. Senate is the chief
of staff of a Republican. Yet they say of my chief of staff that she is
``high yella,'' an implication that she is just not Black enough.
I go on to read from folks who wanted to share their opinions about
my endorsing Jeff Sessions:
``You are a disgrace to the Black race!''
Anthony R Burnam @BurnamR says: ``You an Uncle Tom Scott aren't you?
Sessions. How does a black man turn on his own.''
Anthony B. from @PoliticalAnt says: ``Sen. Tim Scott is not an Uncle
Tom. He doesn't have a shred of honor. He's a House Negro, like the one
in Jango.''
He also writes--I guess Anthony Burnam has been active on my Twitter
feed--that I am ``a complete horror . . . a black man [who is] a
racist.''
``Against black people''
``Big Uncle Tom [piece of fertilizer]. You are a disgrace to your
race.''
I left out all the ones that use the ``N'' word. I just felt that
would not be appropriate.
You see, what I am surprised by, just a smidgeon, is that the liberal
left that speaks and desires for all of us to be tolerant does not want
to be tolerant of anyone who disagrees with where they are coming from.
So the definition of ``tolerance'' isn't that all Americans experience
a high level of tolerance; it is all Americans who agree with them
experience this so-called tolerance.

I am not saying this because it bothers me because, frankly, I have
experienced two decades of this. You don't necessarily get used to it,
but you don't find yourself as offended by it all. I just wish that my
friends who call themselves liberals would want tolerance for all
Americans, including conservative Americans. I just wish that my
liberal friends who are self-described liberal would want to be
innocent until proven guilty and not guilty until proven innocent.
So back to my findings on Jeff Sessions. I brought Jeff Sessions to
Charleston. And you can read about it in the Post and Courier, the
local newspaper. The pastor said that Jeff Sessions was warm and
friendly, engaging and competent.
Now, I will say that the response from the NAACP and the NAN, the
National Action Network, about the meeting that I had with the African-
American pastors--that it was outrageous that I would invite African-
American pastors to meet with this guy and they didn't have an
invitation. So I invited two of their leaders. I didn't tell anyone who
was coming because I wanted folks to come into the room and make their
own decisions and come to their own conclusions. They decided not to
come. Maybe it was because a conservative invited them. I don't know
why. But I wanted everyone to have a chance, and they did. It was
interesting.
Here are some other interesting facts that I have not seen often in
the press, which I think is a very important point.
All of us who engage in conversations around this Nation about race
and justice, to only have part of the story is just an unfortunate
reality that we should get used to that I haven't gotten used to. But
the reality is, 50 years ago, in 1966, Senator Sessions campaigned
against George Wallace's wife for Governor. As a Senator, Jeff Sessions
voted in favor of a 30-year extension of the Civil Rights Act. He was
one of only 17 Republicans to support the first Black Attorney General,
Eric Holder. He spearheaded the effort to award the Congressional Gold
Medal to Rosa Parks, an Alabama native and civil rights icon.
As Cory Booker, my good friend from New Jersey, said last night as I
presided, he and Jeff Sessions worked wonderfully well together in
awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to the foot soldiers of the civil
rights movement in Selma, AL.
Here is another part of the story that just hasn't seemed to break
through the threshold of our national media on Jeff Sessions' support
within the Black community. As I started making phone calls to leaders
in Alabama who were Black and Democrats, I was very surprised at what I
started hearing about Jeff Sessions. I will start with an Alabama
native, Condoleezza Rice, who is not a Democrat but who is an Alabama
native. She said: Sessions has worked hard to heal the wounds in
Alabama brought on by the ``prejudice and injustice against the
descendants of slaves.''
Willie Huntley, an African-American assistant U.S. attorney under
Jeff

[[Page S951]]

Sessions, now an attorney in Mobile, AL, has known Jeff Sessions for
more than 30 years and said in an interview that he has never
encountered racial insensitivity from Sessions in the three decades
they have known each other.
Alabama Senate Democratic leader Quinton Ross said of Jeff Sessions:
``We have talked about things from civil rights to race relations, and
I think anyone--once you gain a position like that, actually
partnership has to go aside because you represent the United States and
all the people. . . . I feel confident [Jeff Sessions] will be an
attorney general that will look at it from all perspectives to just do
what's right for the citizens of the United States.''
That is from an African-American Democratic leader in the Alabama
State Senate, Quinton Ross.
From former Obama administration Surgeon General Regina Benjamin: ``I
think he'll be fine. I consider him a friend. . . . At least he will
listen as attorney general. My hope is that he'll do what is best for
the American people.''
Former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson says this. Larry is 71
years old, so we are not talking about folks who grew up in my New
South that I talked about earlier. Still we are working through it,
but, boy, we have changed. This is a 71-year-old who says of Jeff
Sessions: ``He doesn't have a racist bone in his body.'' He said: ``I
have been an African American man for 71 years. I think I know a racist
when I see one. Jeff is far from being a racist. He's a good person, a
decent person.''
Gerald Reynolds, former chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil
Rights: ``During my discussions with Senator Sessions and his staff, it
was clear that the senator has a strong interest in ensuring our
nation's antidiscrimination laws are vigorously enforced. Senator
Sessions is a man of great character and integrity, with a commitment
to fairness and equal justice under the law.''
Just a few more.
Fred Gray. Fred Gray is an iconic figure in civil rights, for those
of us who may not be familiar with him. Fred Gray is an African-
American civil rights attorney. He represented the Reverend Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. He represented Rosa Parks. He represented the Tuskegee
men who were exploited in the syphilis experiment by the government.
This is what he said in this letter from 2016:

What would be more noteworthy for the State of Alabama than
having an Alabamian follow in the footsteps of the late Mr.
Justice Hugo Black? Previously I have expressed appreciation
for your acts herein stated. I look forward to working
with you in any future capacity in which the Lord permits
you to serve.

That is a quote from a letter that he wrote to Jeff Sessions.
We are talking about a hero of the civil rights era. We are talking
about the lawyer for Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, and the
Tuskegee men. We are not talking about someone who doesn't understand
and appreciate the weight and the importance of civil rights in this
Nation.
William Smith was hired as the first African-American Republican
chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee by Jeff Sessions. He
said:

Jeff Sessions is a man who cared for me, who looked out for
me, and who had my best interests in mind. So, anybody who
says anything different simply doesn't know Jeff Sessions.

One last statement. This is an important one from my perspective.
I mentioned earlier that there was a case against a couple, the
Turner couple, where Jeff Sessions was the prosecutor, and the Turners
were being prosecuted for some voter rights issues. Interestingly
enough, what you don't hear in the news, by the way, is that the case
was brought by other African Americans in Alabama against an African-
American couple, the Turners. This is from Albert Turner, Jr., the son
of the two defendants in that case. He says:

While I respect the deeply held positions of other civil
rights advocates who oppose Senator Sessions, I believe it is
important for me to speak out with regard to Senator Sessions
personally. First, let me be clear. Senator Sessions and I
respectfully disagree on some issues. That won't change when
he is the Attorney General of the United States. And I expect
that there will be times, as it is with all politicians, when
we will legitimately disagree and I will be required by my
conscience to speak out. I look forward to those constructive
debates, if necessary. However, despite our political
differences, the Senator and I share certain Alabama and
American values, including love of our State, its people, and
our country.
I have known Senator Sessions for many years, beginning
with the voter fraud case in Perry County in which my parents
were defendants. My differences in policy and ideology with
him do not translate to personal malice. He is not a racist.
As I have said before, at no time then or now has Jeff
Sessions said anything derogatory about my family. He was a
prosecutor at the Federal level with a job to do. He was
presented with evidence by a local district attorney that he
relied on, and his office presented the case. That is what
prosecutors do. I believe him when he says that he was simply
doing his job.

Jeff Sessions has also worked on civil rights cases, including the
KKK murderer Henry Hays in 1981.
Jeff Sessions worked with the Department of Justice attorneys, the
FBI, county investigators, and the county district attorney to solve
the murder of a 19-year-old African American, Michael Donald. Sessions
and the U.S. Attorney's Office prosecuted ``Tiger'' Knowles as an
accomplice, obtaining a guilty plea and a life sentence in Federal
court. After hard investigative work, Sessions shifted the case of the
KKK murderer Henry Hays to the State court where he received the death
penalty, which was not available at that time at the Federal level.
USA v. Bennie Jack Hays is another successful case against the KKK
that Jeff Sessions participated in.
In Conecuh County in 1983, Jeff Sessions joined in bringing the first
lawsuit in the history of the Department of Justice to stop the
suppression of African-American voting rights. In United States v.
Conecuh County, the DOJ Civil Rights Division, along with Jeff
Sessions, sued white Conecuh County election officials, including the
chair of the local Republican Party.
Finally, Dallas County. In 1978, the Department of Justice used
Dallas County, AL, to replace its at-large election system and go to a
single-member district so that African Americans would have a better
chance to be elected. Jeff Sessions supported it, the ACLU supported
it, as did the DOJ's Civil Rights Division. They were successful.
Finally, on the criminal justice issue that I support, according to
Senator Dick Durbin, who said during the confirmation hearing that Jeff
Sessions saved thousands upon thousands of years of Black men's lives
because of his push to reduce the disparity between crack and powder
cocaine from 100 to 1, to where it is today. Jeff Sessions even fought
against the Bush administration to bring that disparity down.
In conclusion, as I reflect on the brave men and women who have
shaped this country, who have fought for my freedom, for me to
participate fully in this Republic--the greatest experiment of self-
governing the world has ever known--we have an obligation to judge a
man not by the color of his skin nor by the State of his birth, but by
the story his life tells and by the content of his character.
Jeff Sessions has earned my support, and I will hold him accountable
if and when we disagree moving forward.
Thank you, Mr. President.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I see the majority leader of the Senate. I
will suspend until he has finished.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I just wanted to congratulate the
Senator from South Carolina for a very, very meaningful and effective
presentation on behalf of our colleague, Senator Jeff Sessions.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I too wish to congratulate my colleague
from South Carolina on his remarks. We don't share the same view on
this, but he is an important voice in the Senate, and I am glad that he
is a colleague on the Education Committee in the Senate.
As a matter of fact, the other day I said that I wish the President
had the sense to appoint him Education Secretary. The kids whom I used
to work for in the Denver Public Schools would have been very, very
well served by him.
The President, of course, is entitled to choose his team, and that is
partly

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what elections are about. The Attorney General, more than any other
Cabinet official, must be the people's lawyer, an advocate for the rule
of law above all else.
My office has received nearly 23,000 calls and emails opposing this
nomination. Many of them I cannot read today on the floor for fear of
violating the Senate rules. But it is clear from these comments that
young Coloradans who came to the United States and know no other
country but this country, who arrived here illegally, but, through no
fault of their own, fear they will be deported back to a country they
don't know--it is clear to me from the comments that I have received in
these letters that Coloradans in the LGBTQ community fear that an
Attorney General Sessions would turn a blind eye toward discrimination.
It is clear from these comments that Senator Sessions has not earned
the confidence of many Coloradans who may soon rely on him to protect
their rights and to identify abuses of constitutional power. And
Coloradans, many of whom I know, fought for equality and justice during
the civil rights movement, and fear that it will turn back much of the
progress we have made.
We have a disagreement about Senator Sessions' role before he came to
the Senate, but the fundamental reason I object to his nomination as
Attorney General is that he led the fight in 2013 against our
bipartisan effort to reform the broken immigration system in the United
States. And I sat here on this Senate floor night after night after
night listening to the Senator use fear and inaccuracies to derail our
best chance in years to fix this broken immigration system.
Now, in time, I have come to understand that people come to this
floor and they don't always--they are not always accurate in what they
say. Sometimes they don't mean to be accurate; sometimes they are just
mistaken. That was the first time I had ever heard that kind of
relentlessness, saying things that just weren't right. I am being
careful with my language because of last night's ruling.
He claimed that our bill--and, by the way, that bill, unlike almost
anything that has happened in this place in the 8 years that I have
been here--started out as a bipartisan effort, four Democrats and four
Republicans working together for 7 or 8 months in a room trying to
solve each other's issues.
There is a lot about the Senate today that the American people should
not and cannot be proud of, and I will come to that in a minute. But as
to the work of the Gang of 8, I would have been happy for people to
have seen what happened behind closed doors in those 7 months. It is
how the Senate ought to operate. It went to the Judiciary Committee
where Democrats and Republicans together amended the legislation. They
made it better. And then it came to the floor of the Senate and we had
more amendments, and it passed with 68 votes.
It still hasn't passed the House. It has never even gotten a vote on
the floor of the House of Representatives.
Senator Sessions claimed during that debate that our bill would have
``dramatically increased incidence of criminal alien violence,
officially legalizing dangerous offenders, while handcuffing
immigration officers from doing their jobs.''
He claimed it would have legalized ``thousands of dangerous criminals
while making it more difficult for our officers to identify public
safety and national security threats.''
Senator Sessions claimed our bill would lead to a ``huge increase in
immigration,'' invite a flood of immigrants into our Nation who would
steal jobs from ``struggling American workers.''
These claims are demonstrably untrue. If our bill had become law, we
would have secured our borders, we would have bolstered internal
security, we would have better protected American workers, and we would
have strengthened our economy.
Contrary to his characterization of what was in that bill, the 2013
bill provided far greater security than President Trump's plan.
The first two words in the title of that bill were ``border
security.'' That has been completely ignored by the critics. It has
been completely ignored by people who want to make an issue out of this
in national campaigns. But the reality is it provided billions of
dollars toward new technologies to monitor the border. It called for
the building of a 700-mile fence. By the way, none of the rest of it
would come to pass until we took care of the border.
Nearly 20,000 new Border Patrol agents--four times more than ordered
by President Trump and double the current number--and not paid for by
raising taxes on the American people at our border with Mexico, not
paid for in a way that would destroy our trading relationship with
Mexico, but paid for by fees that people were paying as they were
becoming lawful in the United States of America. It had protections in
the bill for American workers to ensure that employers hired American
labor first. I know he objected to this, and I understand we had a
difference of opinion, but the bill included a tough but fair path to
citizenship, requiring people to go through background checks as part
of a long path to citizenship.
During the Presidential campaign, Senator Sessions advised President-
Elect, now-President Trump on immigration policy. In fact, my
understanding is the President's immigration Executive orders--
including one being challenged in court--mirror Senator Sessions'
positions. These positions are antithetical to our history, to our
values, to whom we are as a country.
Last Friday was the highlight of my year. I got on a plane and I left
Washington--that was pretty good in and of itself--to go home to
Colorado. On Friday, I went to Dunn Elementary School in Fort Collins,
CO, where Kara Roth's fifth grade class welcomed 26 new Americans from
13 countries to the United States. It is an International Baccalaureate
program in this elementary school. This is an annual event.
We were there in the gym, and the fifth graders were there singing; a
young girl had won an essay contest on ``What it Meant to be in
America.'' There was a color guard. Kids came in wearing their Boy
Scout uniforms to post the colors, the American flag, and the flag of
Colorado. The fourth graders were there watching what they would be
doing next year as fifth graders.
There was no need for a politician to tell anybody in that room that
America is an exceptional country. No politician needed to say that to
the fifth graders in Mrs. Roth's class who were studying the
Constitution and studying immigration. We certainly didn't need to tell
that to the immigrants from all over the world. I think I mentioned,
they were from 13 different countries.
One of the great parts of the ceremony was when they asked people to
stand up to the country from which they came, and fifth graders also
stood up if they were from that country. There were kids from China;
there were kids from Mexico standing up in this fifth grade class;
incredibly, three kids from Libya whose parents are at the university
in some capacity in Fort Collins.
As always in these naturalization ceremonies, people had tears in
their eyes because as one of them once said to me at another time in
Colorado, his dream had come true the minute he became a citizen of the
United States because he knew his children would be citizens of the
United States of America. Everybody in the room knew that.
What is important for us is these fifth graders' perspective on
American government, on democracy, and on the history of this Republic
I think probably may not be quite exactly right because they, thank
goodness, have been untarnished by special interests, untarnished by
campaign money and partisan fighting, and power struggles that have
nothing to do with the American people or their priorities.
Their view of what the essence of self-government is all about is
really what it is all about. It is really what we are supposed to be
doing here: a commitment to a republic and democracy, a commitment to
the rule of law, a commitment to the separation of powers. The stuff
they are reading in their little Constitution just like this one is
what this place is supposed to be about. It is supposed to be what we
are doing here. It is the reason why I am objecting to this nomination.