[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 51 (Thursday, March 18, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1635-S1637]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                    Remembering Robert Gutz Thompson

  Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, I rise to honor the life of a noble 
veteran, a beloved husband, father, grandfather, friend, brother, 
uncle, and someone I had been fortunate enough to call my dear brother-
in-law, Robert Gutz Thompson.
  What I always admired about Bob was his unparalleled work ethic and 
determination to learn and serve and to inspire those around him. Bob 
was a graduate of the University of Wyoming, Class of 1961. He then 
joined the military and entered flight training in 1963, and he was 
designated as a naval aviator in 1964. From the day he was motivated to 
join the military to his military retirement in 1983, he showcased 
steadfast dedication and a commitment to excellence that can only be 
matched by his loving devotion as part of our family.
  Bob proudly served our Nation for more than 20 years and leaves 
behind a distinguished legacy of military history, including service 
aboard the USS Intrepid, the USS Randolph, the USS Lexington, and the 
USS Forrestal. He flew thousands of flight hours throughout his 
distinguished career. He trained other pilots. He commanded naval 
units, and he was deployed multiple times, including to the North 
Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and the Arctic Circle. He 
earned the Navy Achievement Medal for his performance as Landing Signal 
Officer during a winter deployment to the North Atlantic.
  In 1967, he joined the VS-30 squadron and reported to Key West, FL, 
as an instructor pilot. In 1970, he was awarded the Navy Commendation 
Medal for recovering aircraft within the Arctic Circle. In 1972, Bob 
was selected for and attended the Naval War College in Rhode Island and 
then was assigned to the Naval Air Station Cecil Field, in Florida, to 
lead the squadron's relocation operations.
  In 1976, he served aboard the USS Forrestal as operations officer. In 
1979, Bob assumed command of the VS-30 squadron, where he deployed with 
his beloved Diamondcutters to the Mediterranean. Later that year, Bob 
received orders to the Pentagon to work on what is now known as GPS. 
His assignments were tough--squadron executive officer, squadron 
commander, instructor pilot, and so many more--but he was always 
tougher than they were. It is unbelievable the leader he was to all of 
those who served and served with pride.
  Put simply, Bob was one of the most generous, kind, hard-working, and 
inspirational people I ever knew. My whole family and I adored Bob ever 
since he joined the family, and Bob's passing has left a deep impact on 
all of us. This is also an important time to celebrate Bob's life and 
the profound feelings of joy and pride that he brought to all of us.
  While Bob wasn't born in West Virginia, he certainly was a 
Mountaineer, through and through, in his heart and soul and was a 
dedicated fan of his beloved WVU sports teams, especially football and 
basketball.
  When visitors come to our little State, I jump at the chance to tell 
them we are home to the most hard-working and patriotic people in the 
Nation. We have fought in more wars; we have shed more blood; and lost 
more lives for the cause of freedom than most any other State. We have 
always done the heavy lifting, and no one has ever complained.
  We have mined the coal, forged the steel that built the guns and 
ships and factories that have protected and continue to protect our 
country to this day.
  I am so deeply proud of what West Virginians like my brother-in-law 
Bob Thompson have accomplished and what they will continue to 
accomplish to protect the freedoms that we all take for granted and 
hold so dear.
  We have every reason to be proud and to stand tall knowing that West 
Virginia is the reason Americans sleep peacefully at night. It is 
because of all of our veterans, past and present, that we can proudly 
proclaim ``Mountaineers Are Always Free,'' and we are all so very, very 
proud of our Bob for being a vital part of our legacy.
  What is most important is that he lived a full life, surrounded by 
his loved ones. I extend all of our condolences to

[[Page S1636]]

my dear sister Janet, Bob's beloved wife of 56 years; his daughter Mary 
Jo; his son Peter; granddaughter Isabella; his siblings, Mary, Greg, 
Kathy, and Clark; his 24 Thompson nieces and nephews; his brothers-in-
law John and Rock; sister-in-law Paula; and his 45 Manchin nieces and 
nephews.
  Again, we extend our most sincere condolences for our shared loss of 
this remarkable--absolutely remarkable person. The unwavering love that 
Bob had for his family, his friends, and our Nation will live on 
forever in the hearts of all who had the privilege of knowing Robert 
Gutz Thompson. God rest, Bob.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.


                       For the People Act of 2021

  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I want to join my fellow Senators in 
remembering Senator Manchin's family, his sister, and the rest of his 
family as they deal with the loss of his brother-in-law.
  I want to talk today about a draft I just received--a bill we are 
actually going to have a hearing on next week--S. 1, the so-called For 
the People Act.
  This bill is the companion act to the House version of H.R. 1. I 
actually think it is even longer than H.R. 1, which I would have 
thought impossible. It is over 800 pages. I think they will be 
introducing the final version in the next day or so, and that is a good 
thing, since we are supposed to have a hearing on it in the middle of 
next week.
  It packs a lot of what I consider bad changes relating to election 
administration, campaign finance, redistricting, and so much more into 
those 800 pages, but there is a lot of space there to pack things in.
  I would have to take a lot more time than I have got today to talk 
about all the things in the bill that I have had concerns about, but I 
would say, to start with, this idea that one size fits all, this 
Federal takeover of elections, can't be in the interest of voters in 
our country.
  It would force a single and, I believe, a partisan view of elections 
and how they should be run in 10,000 different jurisdictions in the 
country. I don't know how you do that. I don't know how you take 10,000 
jurisdictions and try, at the Washington, DC, level in legislation, to 
determine changes like how they would register voters. Every State, 
under this bill, would do it exactly the same way--which voting systems 
they would use; how they would handle early voting and absentee 
ballots, no matter how long they had been doing it one way that worked 
for voters in their State; and how they maintain their voter list, 
whether you can go in and verify whether people on the voter list were 
still there.
  We used to think that was a critically important protection in the 
election system; that you knew that the voters that had registered to 
vote in a jurisdiction actually were still in that jurisdiction. It was 
actually, in every State, a bragging point of responsible election 
administration. That would largely go away in this bill.
  This bill would require States to make ballot drop boxes available 
for 45 days prior to the Federal election. Those are boxes that--it 
even designates the locations and tells the local jurisdiction how they 
need to handle those ballots as they come out of the boxes and would be 
processed.
  Remember, these are not mailboxes. They would be the ballot drop 
boxes all over the jurisdiction, if you could find one.
  It would mandate unlimited ballot harvesting. That is a process where 
one person could collect and submit as many ballots as they could 
collect and submit. You know, in recent elections, we have seen ballot 
harvesting as a real problem in these elections. Not only does one 
person have your ballot and get that ballot to where it should be, 
frankly, one of the problems always with ballot harvesting is maybe a 
person who knows voters pretty well would collect 20 and put 18 in the 
mailbox or take 18 to the vote counting area and the other two just 
somehow don't get there.

  Unlimited ballot harvesting, prohibited in many States--and, in fact, 
in recent years the Democratic House of Representatives failed to seat 
an elected Representative in North Carolina because that person had 
used ballot harvesting.
  The bill would require States to allow felons to vote in Federal 
elections. If you didn't like that, in this case, you could have two 
sets of voter registrations, one for Federal elections and one for all 
other elections.
  And, by the way, if you did that, you would also have to have two 
different sets of ballots for an election day that had both local and 
State and Federal issues on the ballot.
  And this bill would require that all of these changes be made 
quickly. Even jurisdictions that recently have changed their processes 
and spent a lot of time talking to people about those changes over 
maybe 2 years or 4 years would suddenly be told, no, you have to change 
them one more time. And maybe it is a day here or a day there, but that 
makes a big difference if you have already got in your mind how far 
before an election you have to register to vote or transfer your 
address or things that election administrators work on all the time.
  You know, my first elected job was as the county clerk in Greene 
County, Springfield, MO, where I was the chief election authority. We 
had a county of about 180,000 people in it, lots of registered voters, 
but you had to take that very seriously.
  And later I was the chief election authority in our State for 8 years 
as the secretary of state, and I know how much planning goes into the 
elections. I know how seriously local officials take it.
  I also know how difficult it could be if every change you made had to 
be cleared some way with somebody in Washington, DC.
  You know, States can often take years to transition to a new ballot 
system or transition to a new way they do things. They also can do it 
very quickly if they need to, and we saw that happen in a number of 
States last year.
  I think this bill, if it did pass, really doesn't allow the time you 
need for planning.
  The diversity of our election system is one of the great strengths of 
our system. There is bipartisan agreement on that. I have quoted 
President Obama on this before, but he said in 2016: ``There is no 
serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you can even 
rig America's elections, in part, because they are so decentralized and 
the numbers of votes involved.''
  This bill would undo that decentralized strength. It would undo that 
local and State responsibility for having laws that voters who vote for 
you understand you need to apply in the fairest and best way you can. 
The bill would make our system less diverse, less secure.
  Unfortunately, this bill doesn't just stop at election 
administration. It takes the campaign finance system and changes it 
dramatically.
  You know, when the Federal Elections Commission was created in the 
early 1970s, it was a six-member Commission. It was to be bipartisan. 
This turns it into a five-member Commission, with whoever is the 
President being able to appoint the third member on one side to always 
outvote, if they need to, the two members on the other side.
  There have been many times, obviously, in the history of the Federal 
Election Commission when the vote has been 3 to 3 or 2 to 2, whatever 
the makeup was at the time. This would do away with that and basically 
turn the Commission from a bipartisan Commission into a prosecutorial 
body, where one side always has the majority if they want it. I think 
voters should and would be very concerned about that.
  It would allow the Chair of the FEC to make key staffing changes. It 
would allow judges to review cases, even when the Commission found no 
violation of the law.
  In addition, the bill would create a system of public financing for 
political campaigns by matching certain contributions with Federal 
dollars. The match would be 6 to 1. So in the matchable, low-dollar--
whatever you define that to be--contributions, if you raise $100,000 of 
those contributions, you would have $700,000. Six hundred thousand of 
those dollars could have been used by the Federal Government for other 
things rather than to finance politicians in a campaign.
  Now, I understand why politicians would like that. I have raised as 
much money as most people in this body have raised, and, you know, the 
idea

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that just the Federal Government would come in at some point and give 
me $6 for some percentage of those that I raised might be pretty 
appealing, but I think it would be wrong.
  It takes jurisdiction away from the States into how to draw 
congressional districts. Now, this is going to be inconvenient if it 
passes because the Constitution specifically says the State 
legislatures decide how to draw a congressional district. It doesn't 
say the Congress of the United States tells the State legislatures how 
to draw congressional districts, but this bill would do that.
  The bill requires redistricting commissions. It dictates who would 
serve on the commissions. It sets the criteria and the procedures for 
how you draw the maps. It lays out how the commissions have to take 
public input.
  And if that weren't bad enough--it doesn't stop there--it even 
determines which courts act on all redistricting cases. And this would 
be a dramatic change where, again, you have a one-size-fits-all system 
in a country that clearly is not a one-size-fits-all country.
  Since very few States currently have commissions like that, it would 
set a lot of deadlines that we don't currently have. Districts drawn 
using 2020 census data would all but be guaranteed to be drawn by 
Federal courts just because of the time that this bill sets out.
  But the Federal court drawing the district isn't the big problem. The 
big problem is forever you have changed this and forever you have put 
the DC Circuit as the ultimate circuit to determine all redistricting 
cases. We have never thought that power belonged in Washington, DC, 
before, but this bill does.
  It is an unprecedented power grab by the Federal Government at the 
expense of the States. I think it is a transparent attempt to stack 
elections in favor of one party. Election law should not be about a 
single party.
  If this bill were to pass, it would do nothing, in my view, to 
bolster public confidence in elections. In fact, I suspect most 
election officials around the country would begin to say: I would like 
to be able to do something about that problem, but we will have to 
clear that with Washington, DC, first.
  I think the divisions in the country would be worse, not better. 
Successful election laws are passed on a bipartisan basis. We did that 
with the Help America Vote Act after 2000. We provided assistance and 
some direction with the finances, but we didn't change a single State 
law after 2016. We left that up to the States. We created bipartisan 
impact when we did that.
  We should continue to put the strength and the security of the 
country's elections before party. We should continue to oppose the 
efforts of a single party to make sweeping partisan changes in our 
election system. I don't talk to anybody who doesn't think that this 
bill, as a similar bill passed the House, would pass the House on a 
purely partisan basis. That would be a bad idea.
  I encourage my colleagues to look carefully at S. 1, and I think if 
you do, a majority of the Senate will not support this bill.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa is recognized.