[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 164 (Tuesday, September 22, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5770-S5775]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                REMEMBERING JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG

  Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues in 
mourning an American hero, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We called Ruth 
Bader Ginsburg the ``Notorious RBG,'' and we called her that for a 
reason. She lived an inspiring and historic life, and her advocacy and 
public service changed America for the better.
  As a lawyer and a public servant and as a woman, I owe so much to 
Justice Ginsburg, and I know I am not alone. I join so many women in 
this body and across this Nation who will simply not allow for Ruth 
Bader Ginsburg's legacy to be diminished or disrespected.
  Today, that means standing up and speaking out about what is at stake 
right now in this country. We are 8 months into a global pandemic--the 
worst public health crisis of our lifetime. It has taken 200,000 
American souls and cost millions of Americans their jobs and their 
economic security.
  Now, President Trump knew that this pandemic was deadly, and he 
refused to take decisive action early in order to control the virus. He 
still has no plan to this day, and he has refused to lead. He has 
continued to put politics over science, and he still insists the virus 
will just go away.
  In fact, this pandemic will not just go away, and in Wisconsin and in 
States across our country, things continue to get worse. As our Nation 
fights this unprecedented public health crisis, President Trump 
continues his efforts, spanning the past 4 years, to sabotage our 
healthcare system and make it harder for people to get the coverage 
that they want and that they desperately need.
  Since the President took office, more and more Americans are going 
without health insurance with each passing year. More than 6 million 
American workers have lost access to their employer-sponsored health 
insurance since the very beginning of this pandemic.
  Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, they have a safety net in place 
that allows them to sign up for a healthcare plan while they are 
unemployed. But right now, we should be making it easier, not harder, 
for people to get healthcare. We should be building on the progress 
that we made with the Affordable Care Act by providing additional 
support for the navigators and those who provide enrollment assistance. 
We should be extending open enrollment and making sure that Americans 
know that they have options for comprehensive coverage.
  But, instead, President Trump has doubled down in his support for a 
Federal lawsuit to eliminate the Affordable Care Act completely, 
including the protections for millions upon millions of Americans who 
have preexisting health conditions. And, mind you, a positive test for 
COVID-19 is a preexisting condition.
  Let me say that again. During the worst public health crisis of our 
lifetimes, President Trump and Republicans support a Federal lawsuit to 
eliminate the Affordable Care Act completely--taking healthcare away 
from

[[Page S5771]]

millions of Americans, including those with preexisting conditions. And 
that, plain and simple, is the Republican healthcare plan--eliminating 
the Affordable Care Act.
  If Senate Republicans disregard the very precedent that they set, 
ignore the fact that there is an election in 6 weeks where many 
Americans are already voting, and push to fill this Supreme Court 
vacancy with a judge committed to furthering their anti-healthcare 
agenda, it will mean the end of the Affordable Care Act and the end of 
guaranteed protections for people with preexisting health conditions.
  Just like that, our Nation will be thrust back to a time where the 
insurance companies wrote the rules, when a cancer diagnosis or 
diabetes or asthma meant insurance companies could drop the ER 
coverage, charge astronomical premiums for the coverage or, worse, 
could decline to cover you at all and leave you with the bill.
  I have stood in this Chamber and told story after story of 
Wisconsinites who depend upon the Affordable Care Act and are worried 
about what a future without it might look like, stories of mothers who 
lie awake at night wondering how they will be able to afford a 
lifesaving procedure for a child, and stories of fathers who don't know 
if they will be able to afford the insulin that a son may need.
  I have shared my own story. As a 9-year-old, I got sick--really sick. 
I was hospitalized, but, ultimately, I fully recovered. But then I was 
denied health insurance for much of my youth because I had been labeled 
as a child with a preexisting health condition.
  These stories are real, and there isn't a Senator in this body who 
hasn't heard one or dozens or hundreds of stories just like this from 
their own constituents. I implore my colleagues on the other side of 
the aisle to listen to your constituents now.
  Justice Ginsburg was one of the deciding votes to save healthcare 
each time it had been challenged in the Supreme Court. She was one of 
the deciding votes on case after case threatening a woman's right to 
make her own healthcare decisions about her own body. Justice Ginsburg 
was protecting our healthcare and women's reproductive freedom, and she 
bore the weight of that for the last years of her life through her own 
battles with cancer. She fought for as long as she could because she 
knew what was at stake.
  Justice Ginsburg has earned the right to rest now, and my deepest 
condolences go out to her children, her grandchildren, her family, and 
her friends for their loss. I urge my Republican colleagues not to 
diminish her tremendous contributions to our Nation and not to 
disrespect her decades of service by casting aside her dying wishes and 
their own precedent in forcing through a nomination with only 42 days 
before the election.
  I urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, instead of suing 
in court to overturn the Affordable Care Act, to work with us on a real 
healthcare plan, and work with us to protect quality, affordable 
healthcare that America's families need. That is why we are here.
  My promise today to my constituents and my colleagues is that I will 
not stop fighting to save healthcare for millions of Americans. This is 
the fight that brought me to public service in the first place, and I 
will not stop now. I will keep working to protect access to quality, 
affordable healthcare for all, and I will keep fighting on behalf of 
the many, many Wisconsinites who depend on it
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Ernst). The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, the Russian Federation has a 
Constitution, and if you read Russia's Constitution, you would know 
that Russia is a democracy. Why? Because their Constitution guarantees 
the existence of a vibrant, multiparty political system. The Russian 
Constitution prohibits the use of extrajudicial force or torture by the 
government. Their constitution says: ``Censorship of the media is 
prohibited.''
  Russia is a democracy if you read their Constitution, but Russia 
isn't a democracy, of course. It is a dictatorship. One man rules. No 
one has the right to dissent. There is no freedom of the press. All of 
that is under the penalty of death.
  Now, why is this? Well, it is because democracies aren't made by 
their founding document. The document is just a piece of paper--
parchment, in our case--with words written on it, and these words are 
just that: They are words. Democracy doesn't work unless its leaders 
choose to follow the rules that those words prescribe, but also to 
operate in the spirit of the values that undergird those words.
  Vladimir Putin will proudly tell you that, technically, Russia 
adheres to its Constitution. Now, that is not true, obviously, but what 
Putin has done over the years is just slowly erode a democratic system 
by using every single inch of discretion allowed to him by that 
Constitution to make democracy functionally impossible. He will say 
that censorship doesn't exist because there isn't an explicit 
censorship law, but we all know that he has used every informal 
mechanism available to him to make sure that there is no room--no 
room--for the independence of the press.
  Something stunning happened here 4 years ago. A Supreme Court vacancy 
arose through the death of Justice Scalia. The Constitution says that a 
new Supreme Court Justice can't be seated unless he or she gets an 
affirmative vote from the Senate, and every single nominee--at least 
those who weren't withdrawn by the President--essentially got a vote 
from the Senate before 2016 because, you see, the Founding Fathers 
didn't actually require the Senate to vote. They didn't because they 
assumed that leaders of good faith would, of course, fulfill that 
responsibility to hold a vote. They never considered that the Senate 
might stretch its discretion under the Constitution so broadly to 
refuse to consider a nominee simply because they didn't like the 
President who made the nomination.
  The Founders didn't actually micromanage democracy. They set these 
broad rules, and they trusted that we would all act in good faith 
toward each other and with a patriotism toward our Nation in filling in 
the details.
  But that is not how 2016 went down. Senate Republicans said they were 
setting a new precedent: When a nomination is made in the last year of 
a President's term, the Senate shouldn't act on it. The Senate, in that 
case, Republicans said, should wait for the outcome of the election and 
let the President who wins make the selection.
  Now, what Senator McConnell and Senator Graham have said is pretty 
definitive. It is well covered. But there were lots of Senate 
Republicans who are still here who were equally definitive about the 
rules they were establishing.
  For instance, the senior Senator from Florida said:

       I don't think we should be moving forward on a nominee in 
     the last year of [a President's term]. I would say that even 
     if it was a Republican president.

  That was the rule that Republicans repeated over and over and over 
and over and over and over. They are not telling the truth if they try 
to spin it differently, and we all know this.
  So you may ask: Why does it matter that they weren't telling the 
truth? Why does it matter that Republicans didn't honor their word? Why 
does it matter that they are willing to bend the rules, no matter the 
promises they have made in the past, whenever it suits them in order to 
gain political advantage?
  Well, it is back to the bet that the Founding Fathers made. They just 
didn't anticipate a moment like today, when truth doesn't matter, when 
lying is normal, when honor is dead. They left us a bunch of wiggle 
room in the Constitution, knowing that we had to treat each other well, 
with respect, with a concern for precedent, in order to have a 
functional democracy.
  Senator Alexander, whom I greatly admire, said in his statement the 
other day that nobody should be surprised that Republicans are going to 
confirm a Supreme Court nominee before the election, notwithstanding 
the fact that the election has already started and that it also wipes 
out the precedent that they just claimed was so sacred 4 years ago.
  That statement is really revealing. Whether he meant it or not, what 
he is saying is that nobody should be surprised by now that Republicans 
are just willing to do whatever it takes--even making up complete 
fabrications,

[[Page S5772]]

like a new rule against confirming Justices in an election year--in 
order to accumulate more power.
  That is a really dangerous place for this body to head, because the 
Constitution does provide all sorts of room to push that document to 
its limits, to dispense with all fairness and honor and fair play, and 
to just seek power, no matter the costs.
  I know this sounds silly, but it is not. There is nothing in the 
Constitution that prohibits the majority party in this body from, for 
instance, denying all staff to minority Members. There is nothing 
stopping the majority party from banning all minority party Members 
from speaking on the floor. And once you don't care about fairness, 
once you can just change precedent on a dime just to accumulate power, 
then, there is really no end.
  I get it that a comparison to Russia seems a little tortured and a 
little strained, but, honestly, this is how democracies fall apart--
when power becomes more important than the rule of law, our sense of 
fairness, or even loyalty to country; when your word means nothing; 
when no one can count on anyone to stay true to what they say; when 
there is nihilism, trump's patriotism.
  There are new rules in the Senate now. We get that. There are new 
rules. Republicans might pretend like they existed before today, but 
they didn't. This breaks the glass like nothing else did before it.
  Finally, let me ask this: To what end? Why is it so important that 
Republicans so nakedly grab for power and reset the very rules of how 
the Senate operates--rules that were so important 4 years ago?
  It is not coincidental that the case that the Supreme Court is due to 
hear days after the election is a case that has to do with something 
the Republicans have been trying so desperately and unsuccessfully to 
do for 10 years--repeal the Affordable Care Act and end healthcare for 
20 million Americans and protections against rate gouging for 130 
million with preexisting conditions
  It is worth repeating this. I know my colleagues have said it before, 
and they will say it after, but if Republicans are successful in 
appointing an anti-ACA Justice to the Supreme Court--and President 
Trump has made it clear that he is not putting anyone up for the 
Supreme Court who isn't willing to strike down the Affordable Care 
Act--then we will have a humanitarian catastrophe on our hands in this 
country because days after the election, a case is to be heard that 
will be heard by that new Justice that asks to invalidate the entirety 
of the Affordable Care Act--not in pieces, not over time, but 
immediately, the whole thing. That is 25 million people losing access 
to healthcare--Medicaid and the State and Federal exchanges--in the 
middle of a pandemic.
  Think about that. Think about 25 million--the equivalency of 
something like 10 to 15 different States--all losing healthcare right 
off the bat, when COVID is raging in this country.
  As Senator Baldwin said, COVID is a preexisting condition. We are 
just learning what it does to your body, but it may ravage it. And, 
ultimately, everyone in this country who knows they have COVID or finds 
out about it through antibody tests down the line will have their rates 
jacked up if the Affordable Care Act goes away.
  Spare me the talk of a replacement coming. I have been in this body 
long enough to know that there is no replacement coming. Republicans 
have been talking about it for 10 years.
  The Affordable Care Act will be invalidated by this Court with this 
new nominee. Nothing will replace it. Millions of people will lose 
their healthcare.
  The reason this nomination is being pushed through is, yes, because 
Republicans care about power more than anything else but also to make 
sure that the Court around the corner from here does what the American 
people wouldn't let Congress do.
  Remember, Congress could not repeal the Affordable Care Act because 
the people wouldn't let Congress do it. But nobody is going to be 
fooled about this end-around. By the time this nominee comes before 
this body, nobody is going to be mistaken about the consequences for 
Americans' healthcare.
  I know that a lot of people think Democrats are foolishly naive. How 
could we be surprised by this treachery, this about-face of precedent 
on election-year confirmations, when Republicans have been changing the 
rules of the Senate at light speed for 5 years?
  First it was unprecedented denial of a vote for a Supreme Court 
nominee in 2016. It never happened before in American history. Then it 
was the abolition of the 60-vote requirement for Supreme Court 
nominees. Then it was the restriction of debate on judges and political 
appointees so that nobody could actually see how wildly unqualified the 
people Donald Trump was appointing to office were. Then it was the end 
of blue slips so that even more radical nominees could be put on the 
bench. It has been just one power grab after another.
  So, yes, we probably have seen this coming, and we probably should 
have known that a party so committed to ending health insurance for 20 
million Americans would do anything to make that happen.
  But I was naive. I still had hope. I still believed that honor was 
alive in this place. I still thought that when people said things, they 
meant it, and they would stick to it. I still thought that we could 
save the Senate.
  I believe in my heart that Republicans are going to rue the day that 
they made nakedly clear that a Senator's word means nothing, where this 
place is simply a vehicle to compile as much power as quickly as 
possible, no matter the cost.
  American democracy is not just the Constitution. It is us. It is the 
decisions we make every single day. It is the way we treat each other. 
It is the decision as to whether we care about our word mattering. This 
month, as it stands tonight, democracy's flicker just got a whole lot 
duller.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts
  Ms. WARREN. Madam President, ``trailblazer,'' ``icon,'' ``titan,'' 
``Notorious RBG''--those are just a few of the words that describe the 
Honorable Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away last Friday. But 
there is another of Justice Ginsburg's title that I will always hold 
dear: ``friend.''
  As a young mother and a baby law student at Rutgers's Law School, I 
had almost no examples of female lawyers or female law professors. Like 
so many young women who were trying to do something as seemingly 
outlandish as going to law school, it was a really lonely undertaking.
  Ruth was one of the few women whom we could see--a woman who had made 
it, and, even better, a woman who was fighting for other women.
  As I arrived at Rutgers, Ruth had left Rutgers for Columbia Law 
School. Rutgers was a small family, and all the women and the men knew 
about her. She was putting together the Women's Rights Project at the 
ACLU to give her a way to fight for equality in the courts. Her sharp 
legal mind and stubborn determination were already legendary, and we 
were sure she would change the world. And she did.
  I am forever grateful for her example to me and to millions of young 
women who saw her as a role model. I am also forever grateful that she 
made real change, opening doors that had remained stubbornly closed.
  Justice Ginsburg may have been tiny, but she stands among the 
greatest fighters for justice our Nation has ever seen. She turned 
every barrier into an opportunity for change. And when she became the 
second woman in our Nation's history to sit on the Supreme Court, she 
continued her fight for justice, blazing a trail for women's rights, 
laying out the framework for protecting our democracy, and helping to 
secure justice for the most vulnerable. Ruth Bader Ginsburg changed the 
world, and I will miss her.
  While I mourn her loss, I also hold close one of the things I loved 
most about Ruth: She was a fighter. We honor her memory by fighting for 
the things that Ruth Bader Ginsburg fought for during her long career: 
a woman's right to make decisions about her own body, healthcare for 
millions of Americans, Dreamers who have made a home here, voting 
rights, LGBTQ rights, workers' rights, union rights, and making our 
Nation a place where no one is more likely to be murdered or imprisoned 
or discriminated against because of the color of their skin, how they 
worship, or who they love.

[[Page S5773]]

  Yes, it is a long list. Ruth defended it all, and now she is gone, 
and because she is gone, these rights and values are all on the line, 
vulnerable to being snatched away by another rightwing tilt of the 
Supreme Court.
  Justice Ginsburg's replacements will determine who the highest Court 
in the land works for--women and sick kids and workers and immigrants 
or billionaires and giant companies and rightwing politicians who want 
to shrink our democracy in order to stay in power.
  Ruth left our Nation a note before she died, and her words were 
clear. She said that her most fervent wish was that her replacement not 
be named until a new President is installed.
  Senator McConnell has already told us how to deal with the death of a 
Supreme Court Justice in an election year--a Justice whom Senator 
McConnell treated with respect.
  In 2016, Justice Scalia died a full 269 days before the Presidential 
election--months before any American would be able to cast a vote. But 
in 2016, that didn't matter to Senator McConnell and his Republican 
henchmen. They locked arms and insisted there could be no confirmation 
until after the next President had been elected and sworn in.
  Now, in 2020, the world is evidently different. Senator McConnell has 
made it clear that the practice he used when Justice Scalia died would 
not be used when Justice Ginsburg died.
  On the very same night that Justice Ginsburg passed, Mitch McConnell 
announced that he and Donald Trump would move immediately to name a new 
Supreme Court Justice, despite the fact that voting is already underway 
across the country and there are only 42 days before the election is 
completed.
  Democrat or Republican, the American people know that is not right. 
Democrat or Republican, the American people know that treating a 
Supreme Court vacancy as an opportunity for a naked partisan no-holds-
barred power grab is burning down the pillars of integrity that support 
our Senate, our courts, and our democracy. Democrat or Republican, the 
American people will judge these choices for what they are--shameful.
  If this feels personal, that is because it is. Ruth Ginsburg was a 
personal hero, for me and for millions of other women.
  Ruth Ginsburg was a woman who never let any man silence her. The most 
fitting tribute to her is to refuse to be silenced and to name exactly 
what Donald Trump and Senate Republicans are trying to do: steal 
another Supreme Court seat.
  This kind of sleazy double-dealing is the last gasp of a desperate 
party that is undemocratically overrepresented in Congress and in the 
halls of power across our country, the last gasp of a corrupt 
Republican leadership numbed to its own hypocrisy that doesn't reflect 
the views of the majority of Americans or the values that we hold dear, 
the last gasp of a rightwing, billionaire-fueled party that wants to 
hold onto power a little longer in order to impose its extremist agenda 
on the entire country.
  And if Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans ram this nomination 
through, it is our duty to explore every option we have to restore the 
Court's credibility and integrity; every option to expand our 
democracy, not shrink it; every option to ensure that a working single 
parent and a millionaire corporate executive have equal justice in our 
courts; and every option to ensure that all Americans are represented 
in our institutions.
  The list of what is at stake if Republicans get their way and their 
extremist agenda finds a home in the Nation's highest Court is truly 
staggering.
  Ruth Bader Ginsburg voted to protect healthcare for millions of 
Americans. In a 5-to-4 decision, healthcare was saved for millions of 
people. But in the midst of a global pandemic with more than 200,000 of 
our loved ones dead from a virus raging out of control, Mitch McConnell 
and Senate Republicans want to install a Justice who will rip that 
healthcare away.
  The Supreme Court will hear arguments just days after the election on 
whether the Affordable Care Act should be overturned. If Justice 
Ginsburg is replaced with a McConnell-Trump choice, the 5-to-4 decision 
that saved healthcare by a single vote could be overturned.
  That would strip away protection from anyone with preexisting 
conditions. It would tell people with diabetes or high blood pressure 
or cancer, people who have had strokes, people who have had hundreds of 
other diseases, conditions, and events: You are on your own--no 
protection from an insurance company that just wants to cut off your 
insurance policies.
  It would let insurance companies charge women more simply because 
they are women. It would end the requirement that insurance companies 
cover young people up to the age of 26. It would gut Medicaid.
  And if you are one of the millions of Americans who has had COVID and 
survived, well, gutting the ACA would allow insurance companies to deny 
coverage because of it. COVID could become your preexisting condition.
  Three years ago, Mitch McConnell couldn't get the votes to repeal the 
Affordable Care Act, even in his own Republican-controlled Senate. And 
why? Because this is not what the American people want. They want 
access to healthcare and protection for people with preexisting 
conditions.
  But Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump have a plan B, a plan to advance 
their rightwing agenda even if most Americans don't want it, and 
McConnell and Trump seem to think that, if they can steal another 
Supreme Court seat, they will get it.
  There is more at stake. Ruth Bader Ginsburg voted to protect the 
rights of all women to make their own decisions about their bodies. 
Just a few months ago, in another 5-to-4 decision, Ruth Ginsburg's vote 
was crucial to the Supreme Court overturning a Louisiana law designed 
to make it harder for women to access abortion care.
  Trump promised to appoint a Supreme Court Justice who will overturn 
Roe, and his two Supreme Court picks have already delivered, agreeing 
to let Louisiana restrict a woman's right to choose
  Nineteen States now stand ready to gut abortion protections if the 
Supreme Court overturns Roe, and now Senator McConnell and Senate 
Republicans want to hand them one more Justice so they can get the job 
done.
  Ruth Bader Ginsburg also voted over and over for the principle that 
American citizens should have an equal right to vote and an equal voice 
in our democracy. She issued a scathing dissent in Shelby County v. 
Holder, the Supreme Court decision overturning part of the Voting 
Rights Act.
  As the pandemic continues to sweep the Nation, the Supreme Court has 
blocked attempts to make it easier for Americans to safely cast their 
vote. Just in April, in a 5-to-4 decision with Justice Ginsburg 
dissenting, the Court reversed a lower Federal court's decision to 
expand the deadline for absentee voting in Wisconsin by 6 days.
  Republicans know that, to stay in power, they need to make it harder 
for all Americans to participate in the democratic process, and they 
want a Supreme Court Justice who will be committed to rolling back 
voting rights for decades to come.
  Ruth Bader Ginsburg understood the threat that climate change poses 
to our children's and our grandchildren's future. She joined in the 
opinion in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, another 5-
to-4 ruling, which required the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas 
emissions from automobiles.
  The Trump administration and congressional Republicans have actively 
rolled back regulations that keep our air clean and our water safe, and 
they are committed to putting another Justice on the Supreme Court who 
will help advance their anti-environment agenda and block any 
government attempts to tackle the dangers of climate change.
  Ruth Bader Ginsburg understood the importance of protecting the 
rights of workers to join together and fight for fair pay and working 
conditions. In Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, she joined the minority in 
a 5-to-4 decision dissenting from the Court's ruling that employers can 
ban workers from joining together to demand protections against wage 
theft and other abuses. A Supreme Court Justice handpicked by Trump and 
McConnell could turn back the clock even more on workers' rights.

[[Page S5774]]

  Throughout her life, Ruth Bader Ginsburg fought for justice and 
equality for all Americans, and now Americans across this country are 
following in Justice Ginsburg's footsteps. Americans are speaking out 
and demanding change, and they are voting. With a pandemic raging out 
of control, thanks to the incompetence and the corruption of Donald 
Trump and his Republican enablers, with a battered economy and millions 
of people out of work, with Americans across the country calling for an 
end to the systemic racism that has cut short the lives of countless 
Black men and women, Americans understand now more than ever that this 
year's elections will determine the direction of our Nation for 
generations to come.
  Today, Ruth is gone, but her life's work endures. We will honor her 
with action and channel our grief into change. We are at the cusp of a 
brighter day in our Nation, and this is the moment. We must tap into 
the reserves that we didn't know we had.
  We tap into the reserves bequeathed to us from fighters we have 
recently lost--like Justice Ginsburg and Congressman Elijah Cummings 
and Congressman  John Lewis--and from the knowledge that we cannot--we 
will not--leave our children worse off.
  Three years ago I watched our Nation rise up in the face of 
impossible odds and defend healthcare when Donald Trump and Mitch 
McConnell wanted to strip away care from millions of Americans. We face 
those same odds today as we again fight to protect the healthcare of 
those same Americans and to protect so much more.
  But I have hope because I know that this is a righteous fight, and I 
know that millions of other Americans are also in this fight.
  Before she died, Ruth gave us our marching orders: Do not fill this 
Supreme Court seat until after the election when the next President is 
installed. We have our call to action. We honor her legacy by 
continuing the fight for justice, for equality, and for dignity--the 
fight for a world where we finally make those words ``equal justice 
under law'' real.
  Now I would like to spend just a little bit of time focusing on 
Justice Ginsburg's legacy by reading just a few of the statements by 
her that really stood out to me as I reflected on her work.
  At a 2012 symposium to honor the 40th anniversary of Justice Ginsburg 
being hired as the first woman with full tenure at Columbia Law School, 
two of Justice Ginsburg's former clerks, Abbe Gluck and Gillian 
Metzger, now both law professors themselves, had a public conversation 
with their former boss.
  They asked Justice Ginsburg how she ended up working with the ACLU, 
which became a major part of her legendary career, and she began her 
answer by discussing the time that she lived in Sweden. Here is what 
she said:

       My eyes were opened up in Sweden. This was in '62 and '63--
     women were about a quarter of the law students there, perhaps 
     three percent in the United States. It was already well 
     accepted that a family should have two wage-earners. A woman 
     named Eva Moberg wrote a column in the Stockholm Daily paper 
     with the headline, ``Why should the woman have two jobs and 
     the man only one?'' And the thrust of it was, yes, she is 
     expected to have a paying job, but she should also have 
     dinner on the table at seven, take her children to buy new 
     shoes, to their medical check-ups, and the rest. The notion 
     that he should do more than take out the garbage sparked 
     debates that were very interesting to me. Also in the months 
     I spent there, a woman came to Sweden from Arizona to have an 
     abortion. Her name was Sherri Finkbine. She had taken 
     thalidomide and there was a grave risk that the fetus, if it 
     survived, would be terribly deformed. So she came to Sweden 
     and there was publicity that she was there because she had no 
     access to a legal abortion in her home state. Well, that was 
     at the start of the 60s. I put it all on a back burner until 
     the late 60s when the women's movement came alive in the 
     United States.
       My students, then at Rutgers, asked for a course on sex 
     discrimination and the law. And I went to the library and 
     inside of a month read every federal court decision on gender 
     discrimination--no mean feat at all because there were so 
     few, so very few. Also I had signed up as a volunteer lawyer 
     with the ACLU of New Jersey, more because it was a 
     respectable way of getting litigation experience than out of 
     ideological reasons, I will admit. Complaints from women 
     began trickling into the office, new kinds of complaints. For 
     example, women who were school teachers were required to 
     leave the classroom the minute their pregnancy began to show 
     because, after all, the children shouldn't be led to think 
     that their teachers swallowed a watermelon. Anyway, these 
     were women ready, willing, and able to work, but forced out 
     on so-called maternity leave, which meant ``You're out, and 
     if we want you back, we'll call.''
       Another group of new complainants were women who had blue-
     collar jobs and wanted the same health insurance package for 
     their family that a man would get. A woman could get health 
     insurance for herself, but she wasn't considered the 
     breadwinner in the family. Only the man got family benefits. 
     And just to indicate the variety, there was a wonderful 
     summer program at Princeton. The National Organization for 
     Women complained about it. Princeton had already become co-
     educational. The summer program was for students at the end 
     of sixth grade. It was a Summer in Engineering program. The 
     children came on campus, they had an enriched program in math 
     and science. There was just one problem: it was for boys, not 
     girls. I should also mention one other complainant. Abbe 
     Seldin was her name. She was the best tennis player in her 
     Teaneck, New Jersey high school, but she couldn't be on the 
     varsity team. There was no team for girls, and although she 
     could beat all the boys, she couldn't be on the team.
  So all this was under way. People were lodging complaints they were 
either too timid to make before or they were sure they would lose. But 
in the 1970s, they could become winners because there was a spirit in 
the land, a growing understanding that the way things had been was not 
right and should be changed.
  They brought those complaints, and Ruthie Ginsburg is one of the 
people who helped make those changes. As we all know, Justice Ginsburg 
went on to become one of the fiercest advocates for women's rights our 
Nation has ever seen.
  On the Supreme Court, Justice Ginsburg became famous for her 
dissents. She was asked about this, and I think her response is worth 
sharing.

       [Y]ou can let out all the stops when you're a dissenter. I 
     would distinguish two kinds of dissent. There's the great 
     dissent written for a future age--the Brandeis and Holmes 
     Free Speech dissents around the time of World War I are 
     exemplary. They are the law of the land today. Another kind 
     of dissent aims to prompt immediate action from the 
     legislature. The Lilly Ledbetter case is a recent example. I 
     should tell Lilly Ledbetter's story because some of you may 
     not know it.
       Lilly Ledbetter worked as an area manager for a Goodyear 
     Tire Plant. She was hired in the 70s, then the only woman 
     doing that job, and was initially paid the same as her male 
     colleagues. Over time, her pay slipped. She might have 
     suspected it but she didn't know it for sure because 
     Goodyear, like most employers, didn't give out its wage 
     records. One day, she found a little slip in her box at the 
     plant; it listed the salaries of the men employed as area 
     managers. Compared to Ledbetter's salary, the disparity was 
     startling, as much as forty percent. In the years of her 
     employment at Goodyear, she'd done a pretty good job, earning 
     satisfactory performance ratings, so she thought she had a 
     winnable case. She filed suit and won in the district court, 
     gaining a substantial jury verdict. On appeal, Goodyear 
     argued that Ledbetter sued too late. She should have sued 
     within the 180 days Title VII says, within 180 days of the 
     discriminatory incident, so if you count from the very first 
     time her pay slipped, that would have been back in the 70s. 
     The Supreme Court agreed that her claim was untimely, which 
     meant the jury's verdict for damages was overturned.
       My dissenting opinion pointed out that a woman in 
     Ledbetter's position, the only woman doing a job up till then 
     done only by men, doesn't want to rock the boat. She is 
     unlikely to complain the first time she suspects something is 
     awry. She will wait until she has a secure case. My opinion 
     suggested that if she had sued the first time her paycheck 
     was lower, had she found out about it, she probably would 
     have lost because the excuse would have been ``She doesn't do 
     the job as well as the men.'' But after twenty years, that 
     argument can't be made with a straight face. By then, she has 
     a winnable case. The Court's answer, she sued too late. She 
     argued that every paycheck renewed the discrimination. I 
     agreed. My dissenting opinion concluded: The ball is now in 
     Congress's court to amend Title VII to say what I thought 
     Congress meant all along. Within two years, the Lilly 
     Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was passed. It was the first piece of 
     legislation signed by President Obama. The audience to which 
     my dissent appealed was Congress. Congress picked up the ball 
     with a little help from many groups that prodded the 
     legislators to amend Title VII.

  This is a reminder that Justice Ginsburg used all of her tools to 
make change.
  Speaking of dissents, in 2014, Justice Ginsburg was asked about the 
worst ruling this current Court had produced. Her unambiguous answer 
foreshadows the dangers we face today. This is what she said:

       If there was one decision I would overrule, it would be 
     Citizens United. I think the notion that we have all the 
     democracy that

[[Page S5775]]

     money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is 
     supposed to be. So that's number one on my list. Number two 
     would be the part of the health care decision that concerns 
     the commerce clause. Since 1937, the Court has allowed 
     Congress a very free hand in enacting social and economic 
     legislation.
       I thought that the attempt of the Court to intrude on 
     Congress's domain in that area had stopped by the end of the 
     1930s. Of course health care involves commerce. Perhaps 
     number three would be Shelby County, involving essentially 
     the destruction of the Voting Rights Act. That act had a 
     voluminous legislative history. The bill extending the Voting 
     Rights Act was passed overwhelmingly by both houses, 
     Republicans and Democrats, everyone was on board. The Court's 
     interference with that decision of the political branches 
     seemed to me to be out of order. The Court should have 
     respected the legislative judgment. Legislators know much 
     more about elections than the Court does. And the same was 
     true of Citizens United. I think members of the legislature, 
     people who have to run for office, know the connection 
     between money and influence on what laws get passed.

  And one last note, almost a year later, Justice Ginsburg's opinion 
hadn't changed. Let me read from a New York Times report about the 
remarks she delivered at Duke Law School:

       In expansive remarks on Wednesday evening, Justice Ruth 
     Bader Ginsburg named the ``most disappointing'' Supreme Court 
     decision in her 22-year tenure, discussed the future of the 
     death penalty and abortion rights, talked about her love of 
     opera and even betrayed a passing interest in rap music.
       The Court's worst blunder, she said, was its 2010 decision 
     in Citizens United ``because of what has happened to 
     elections in the United States and the huge amount of money 
     it takes to run for office.''
       She was in dissent in the 5-4 decision.
       The evening was sponsored by Duke University School of Law, 
     and Justice Ginsburg answered questions from Neil S. Siegel, 
     a professor there, and from students and alumni.
       Echoing a dissent last month, she suggested that she was 
     prepared to vote to strike down the death penalty, saying 
     that the capital justice system is riddled with errors, 
     plagued by bad lawyers, and subject to racial and geographic 
     disparities.
       She added that she despaired over the state of abortion 
     rights.
       ``Reproductive freedom is in a sorry situation in the 
     United States,'' she said.
       ``Poor women don't have choice.''

  That was our Ruth Ginsburg, concerned to the very end about how law 
affects all of the people it touches.
  Ruthie, we will miss you
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I come to the floor tonight to join my 
colleagues to honor the life of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Before I 
do, though, I would like to first of all thank my colleague from 
Massachusetts for reviewing the many legal decisions that Justice 
Ginsburg had been involved in and their significance.
  I am so glad to be out here tonight as you took time in your 
perspective on the importance of those cases. We definitely need to 
remember that these decisions, these words, set the stage for so many 
things to come before the American people and for working families. 
Thank you for that.

                          ____________________