[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 108 (Tuesday, June 22, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4671-S4691]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          LEGISLATIVE SESSION

                                 ______
                                 

             FOR THE PEOPLE ACT OF 2021--MOTION TO PROCEED

  The VICE PRESIDENT. Under the previous order, the Senate will proceed 
to legislative session to resume consideration of the motion to proceed 
to S. 2093, which the clerk will report.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 77, S. 2093, a bill to 
     expand Americans' access to the ballot box, reduce the 
     influence of big money in politics, strengthen ethics rules 
     for public servants, and implement other anti-corruption 
     measures for the purpose of fortifying our democracy, and for 
     other purposes.

  The VICE PRESIDENT. Under the previous order, the time until 5:30 
p.m. is equally divided between the two leaders or their designees.

[[Page S4672]]

  The Senator from Michigan.
  Ms. STABENOW. I rise today to encourage all of my colleagues to 
support the motion to proceed that is in front of us.
  We might disagree about the underlying bill. In fact, we do disagree. 
Republicans and Democrats disagree about the underlying bill, but that 
fact shouldn't prevent us from even having a discussion about the bill 
and about the issue. It is what we were sent here to do, to talk about 
the important issues that face the American people.
  I can't think of anything more important, anything more fundamental 
to our democracy than the freedom to vote. That is what we are talking 
about, the freedom to vote. We are sent here to make our best 
arguments, to try to persuade Members who don't see the issue in the 
same way that we do, and in the end, to vote on important legislation 
like the bill that is in front of us to protect our freedom to vote as 
Americans.
  I want to thank Senator Manchin for being willing to engage in this 
process in good faith and for his hard work on the issue. I have to 
wonder why my Republican colleagues won't do the same. What are they so 
afraid of? It is hard to believe that they are afraid of even having 
the debate--even having the debate. Are they afraid that if the 
American people hear both sides, the American people will figure out 
what they are trying to do? After all, the aim of the For the People 
Act is simply to protect Americans' freedom to vote and ensure their 
voices are heard.
  Sadly, these rights are under attack all across the country, 
including Michigan. State lawmakers have introduced at least 389 bills 
to make it harder to vote in 48 States. In 2021, at least 14 States 
have enacted 22 new laws to take away people's freedom to vote. It is 
clear this is part of a coordinated, nationwide assault on a 
fundamental right that my friend, the late Congressman John Lewis, 
called ``precious, almost sacred.''
  Right now in Michigan, Republicans in the legislature are trying to 
push through a package of bills that will make it much harder for 
people to vote.
  Some analysts have even described the bills as being worse than the 
ones in Georgia, except we aren't watching them try to criminalize 
water.
  Why are they doing this in Michigan? Well, let me go back again. 
Michigan is traditionally a tickets-winning State, what you would call 
a purple State. In 2010, Michigan elected a Republican Governor. Two 
years later, Michigan helped give President Barack Obama a second term. 
Two years later, we reelected the Republican Governor, and 2 years 
later, Michigan supported Donald Trump by the narrowest margin of any 
State, just over 10,000 votes.
  After that election, Democrats did not start a massive effort to take 
away people's freedom to vote. We got to work. We organized. We 
listened to people about their concerns, and we worked hard to gain 
people's support for the next election. That is what you usually do, 
rather than trying to stop people from voting.
  We did that hard work in Michigan, and you know what, we won the next 
election. In 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, more people in Michigan 
voted than ever before, 5.5 million of us. And Michigan voters clearly 
and resoundingly chose Joe Biden to be our next President and Kamala 
Harris to be our next Vice President of the United States and the 
President of the Senate. They won by more than 150,000 votes. That is 
14 times Donald Trump's margin in 2016.
  But what did the Trump campaign do? Well, their campaign--his allies 
filed eight lawsuits in our State, lost every one. And in the only case 
that was appealed to the Michigan Supreme Court, the court declined to 
hear the case, despite having a majority of Republican justices. 
Republicans know that Michigan's election was fair, the results were 
accurate, and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won our State.
  The people of Michigan voted. Michigan counties verified it. Our 
State certified it. There was no evidence of fraud that would begin to 
suggest that we need legislation like what Michigan Republicans are 
pushing. The Republicans just didn't like who Michiganders voted for. 
That is the same thing that is happening here. Republican colleagues 
don't like being in the minority. They don't like who people voted for. 
Well, you have a choice. You could work hard, try to gain people's 
trust, try to do things for people, win the next election, or you can 
try to take away their freedom to vote.
  I mean, think about it. Think about the fact, in Michigan, 
Republicans didn't like who we voted for, so they are coming after the 
voters. They are coming after the voters. We know this is happening all 
across the country. It is wrong. It is un-American, frankly. And that 
is why we need this legislation, to protect our freedom to vote and to 
stop billionaires from buying elections.
  We are committed to making sure people have their freedoms protected, 
and we are committed to making sure that billionaires are not buying 
our elections as well. We want to end the partisan gerrymandering that 
makes people's votes count--some count more than others--or rig the 
system. And we are committed to making sure that the wealthiest people 
in the country are not buying elections.
  Why is this important? We have seen how so-called dark money groups 
that don't have to report anything, funded by a handful of billionaire 
donors, pour unlimited amounts of money into our elections in an 
attempt to influence the outcome. It is easy to understand why the 
average voter might feel their voice isn't being heard.
  The For the People Act takes the crucial steps to give voters their 
voices back. It includes disclosure requirements so that citizens have 
a right to know who is giving them money, who is behind those dark 
money donations. It reforms the Federal Election Commission so they can 
better enforce the election laws already on the books, and it takes 
steps to protect our elections from foreign influence.
  I, for one, think these are essential to our democracy. I know my 
Senate Democratic colleagues feel the same. However, Senate Republican 
colleagues disagree.
  So let's pass this motion to proceed so we can talk about it, so we 
can have a debate about it. Michigan voters made their voices heard. 
The American people made their voices heard in the election. We need to 
be debating this issue and making sure that our voices are being heard 
across the country.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The VICE PRESIDENT. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The VICE PRESIDENT. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, this afternoon, we will have before 
us, as Members of the Senate, legislation that is entitled the For the 
People Act.
  Before I speak to the For the People Act, S. 1, I want to make clear 
to colleagues that I have been keenly focused, interested in ensuring 
that when we have elections in this country, that they are free, they 
are fair and they are accessible to all, that barriers to voting should 
be placed on the sidelines.
  For the past three sessions of Congress now, I have been the only 
Republican cosponsor of the Voting Rights Advancement Act. This was a 
measure that in prior Congresses was led by Senator Leahy, and I was 
pleased to be able to join him as a cosponsor. That measure has now 
been introduced on the House side as the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, 
a measure to basically reestablish the preclearance system, which was 
in place until 2013, and then it was pretty much upended with the 
Supreme Court ruling in Shelby.
  I certainly and absolutely intend to cosponsor that measure again 
under its new name, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. I will work with 
Senator Leahy, I will work with Senator Manchin--I will work with 
anybody on this initiative to help update this formula to ensure that 
we do have just exactly that, access to voting that is equal, that is 
fair, that is free from discrimination.
  I note at the outset of my comments this morning the support for that 
legislation so that, again, folks understand that I fully understand 
that access to the ballot in this country is not perfect and, again, 
that I have stood behind legislation to ensure that our elections

[[Page S4673]]

are fair. We have come a long way. We have come a long way, but I think 
we all recognize that there is a long path ahead of us.
  So let me turn to S. 1, the For the People Act. My fear is that this 
measure does not move us further down the path. If you look at the 
bill, it is wholly partisan. Unlike the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, 
which is very narrowly focused on voting rights, S. 1 has been 
described as sprawling. It has been described as ambitious, which is 
fair. Ambitious is not a bad thing, but it is clearly, clearly very 
broad, and it certainly contains some noteworthy goals, but I fear that 
there are provisions contained within S. 1 that take it too far or that 
I think are bad policy or that I simply think are beyond the power of 
Congress to regulate.
  My concern, and I shared this with many, is that the bill that we 
have in front of us is not so much about voting rights as it is a 
Federal takeover of the election system--and a partisan Federal 
takeover of the election system.
  The way the bill is being advertised--that somehow or another, we 
can't count on States to do elections right or fairly--is a premise 
that I have a problem with. I come from a State where we were under 
preclearance for a long period of time. We recognize that. We had a 
history that was not one that I think we were proud of in terms of 
ensuring that there was fair and open, equal access to all. But what we 
have seen in the State and how we have worked through that process that 
was in place some years back is that we have come to this place where 
we can--we have demonstrated that we can run a proper and an honest 
election. We have proven this time and again.
  Much of my concern about what we have in front of us is that when you 
nationalize something, when you have kind of a Federal overall 
oversight, it ends up being a one-size-fits-all mandate coming out of 
Washington, DC, and in many cases doesn't work in a place like Alaska.
  There are certain aspects of S. 1 that I absolutely do support. Early 
voting. We shouldn't be limited to just the day of the election. I 
think we recognize that. What we can do to ensure that early voting is 
there I think is important to us.
  I come from a State where, if you want to vote absentee, there is no 
excuse required. You can just vote absentee because it is more 
convenient to you. I will tell you, I was really surprised to find out 
how many States do not allow for that. I think that is something we 
need to address. I am in support of that.
  I think we need to be doing more when it comes to ease of voter 
registration. Again, in the State of Alaska, we have put in place ways 
to make it easier for folks to register. But, again, I am looking at 
what we have done in Alaska, proud of some of the measures we have put 
in place, but I recognize that we did this without DC prescriptives or 
mandates of uniformity.
  So in walking through some of the concerns that I have--I mentioned 
making voter registration easier. Well, the For the People Act mandates 
automatic voter registration. OK. Maybe a good idea. In Alaska, what we 
have put in place is that Alaskans are automatically registered--unless 
they specifically opt out, they are automatically registered to vote 
when they sign up for their Permanent Fund dividend. This is obviously 
very exclusive and unique to one State and one State alone. But under 
this measure that we have in front of us, it would require State 
election officials to automatically register any eligible unregistered 
citizens.
  So I am looking at that and I am saying: All right, well, if we allow 
for automatic registration on the PFD--there are a lot of Alaskans, 
believe it or not, who do not sign up for the PFD or are not eligible 
for the PFD. So is the State going to have to have two different 
systems here in terms of how we meet this mandate?
  I am looking at it and saying: Well, that is a fair amount of Federal 
micromanagement here. If the State wants to implement an automatic 
system, it should do so, as Alaska did, but without the threat of the 
Federal Government looming behind them, making sure the i's are dotted 
and the t's are crossed in precisely the way the Election Assistance 
Commission thinks they should be. I don't think we want to make the 
administration of elections involve even more burdensome efforts or 
more cost. It is something that you look at and say: Let's make sure we 
can allow for easier registration, but let's not impose burdensome 
mandates.
  Early voting requirements is another issue. The bill requires at 
least 15 days of early voting. This is something, again, in Alaska that 
we already do. It works great, but it also requires that each polling 
place must be open for at least 10 hours a day. So we are basically 
back here in Washington, DC, telling us in Alaska that you have to have 
your polling place open for 10 hours a day.
  Think about this in the context of a small community. I will take a 
super small community, Arctic Village. About 150 people total live 
there in the village--not 150 voters but 150 people total. It wouldn't 
make sense. It wouldn't make sense for the State to maintain poll 
workers for at least 10 hours per day, for at least 15 days, in a 
community like Arctic Village. The whole town can practically vote in 
an hour. But that is not the point here. The point is, you are imposing 
a Federal mandate in a one-size-fits-all approach that just might not 
fit well there.
  One provision in the bill that I have some significant concerns about 
is requiring same-day voter registration across the country. Again, in 
Alaska, we think we have been doing a pretty fair job as to how we run 
our elections. I think it is reasonable that we be allowed to establish 
voter registration deadlines that work for the administrators in their 
respective States.

  I know some people are surprised, but the fact is, we don't know 
everything best back here in terms of how to implement or how States 
should be implementing. States should have the latitude to implement a 
registration system that works with the State's geography, with their 
IT infrastructure, and with their election funding and other 
limitations they may have.
  Forcing States to allow ballot harvesting--this is another area I 
have a problem with. This practice involves paid campaign operatives 
going out, collecting ballots, and returning them to be counted. I 
don't know. I look at this one and see so many ways in which this can 
be abused and exploited.
  If a State wants to permit this practice with certain parameters that 
the State thinks would prevent abuses, that is fine, but not all States 
should be forced to do so by the Federal Government and be made subject 
to DC's idea of what actually works here.
  Maintaining voter rolls. I think we all want to make sure that voting 
rolls are current or accurate, but the provisions in S. 1 really go 
very far. The bill would require States to secure ``objective and 
reliable evidence.'' This is a term that is not actually defined in the 
bill, and they have to be able to establish that before removing a 
voter. What is not considered objective and reliable is a failure to 
vote or the failure of a voter to respond to a notice sent by the State 
informing the voter that they have been removed. So you are going to 
have a situation here where this undefined term will result in people 
who have long since left the jurisdiction actually remaining on the 
voter rolls.
  Then there is the issue of restructuring the Federal Election 
Commission. From its very inception, this was designed to be--this was 
meant to be a body that was bipartisan to specifically ensure that no 
political party would grant its candidates an unfair advantage in 
elections. So you have got a restructuring that is proposed here that I 
think presents a flaw. It would reduce the number of seats on the FEC 
from six to five, two members each from the two major political parties 
and one ostensibly Independent. So what this could mean is that a 
President could simply find someone who would vote in his or her favor 
each time but who never registered as a member of a particular 
political party.
  This newly partisan FEC would also be given the responsibility of 
handing out loads of cash from the public coffers. I take issue with 
this, and I think that you have a fair amount of folks in my State and 
across the country who do take issue with that as well in terms of 
public funding.
  S. 1 creates a new structure of public financing of campaigns that 
matches

[[Page S4674]]

small dollar donations on a 6-to-1 basis. So I look at that, and, 
again, I have concerns about why anyone thinks it is a good idea to 
have even more money in politics. But it is easy to me to see how this 
could be exploited by a partisan board holding the purse strings here. 
So, again, I look at that as a particular example of, what are we doing 
with this in this voting rights bill?
  I mentioned in my introduction here that I feel that you have many 
provisions in this measure that are likely unconstitutional. To start, 
while Congress has broad authority to regulate the times, places, and 
manner of congressional elections, our powers are much more limited in 
how a State chooses to appoint electors to the electoral college. 
There, we may only determine the time of choosing electors and the day 
on which they should give their vote. So every provision that 
purportedly changes State laws regarding how a State chooses its 
electors could face significant and I think justified challenges in 
court.
  There are numerous provisions that try to criminalize speech that is 
almost certainly protected. Even the ACLU opposed several parts of this 
bill on the grounds that it would unconstitutionally limit the speech 
of citizens as well as compel speech, neither of which is acceptable. 
Just 2 years ago, the Fourth Circuit invalidated a law that was nearly 
identical to a provision that is contained in this bill.
  Another issue is the issue of tax returns and whether or not Congress 
can mandate candidates for President to release their tax returns. I 
think it is only reasonable that they should do so, but the concern 
that I have is, the Constitution is really pretty clear in outlining 
the requirements to be President, and releasing tax documents is not 
one of those. So it just kind of presents a challenge there. Can we 
direct that? There is an issue.
  Requiring States to create redistricting commissions may also be 
unconstitutional since Congress cannot coerce or commandeer the 
mechanisms of State government. Congress also likely doesn't have the 
authority to require States to permit convicted felons to vote or the 
ability to impose an ethics code on the Justices of the Supreme Court.
  So while these may be good ideas, is the constitutional authority 
there? I think there is a real question to that.
  So my concern--and I am coming to the end of my comments here--my 
concern about this measure is that while the title is strong, ``For the 
People,'' I am not certain that this measure will do what those who 
have hoped that it would do will do--it will make administering 
elections more difficult, more expensive, and subject to Federal 
micromanagement.
  Again, I mentioned the issue of questions of constitutionality and 
whether aspects of it will be thrown out. Passing this into law could 
result in messy litigation that leaves the state of election law 
uncertain for years to come.
  I mentioned my concern about one-size-fits-all. That is challenging. 
We are a pretty amazing 50 States, but we are all a little bit unique. 
But how States have leeway or latitude in determining what works I 
think is important.
  So I recognize that we are at a place and a time when credibility and 
faith in our institutions are at a really weak moment, a very weak 
moment, and so when we think about the things that are core to our 
institutions, one of those fundamentals is the fairness of our 
elections and also ensuring that we are taking an approach in this 
Nation where all people feel that the election process is for them as 
equal and fair as it is for their neighbor down the street or their 
fellow American all the way across the country. How we are able to 
deliver on this promise is something that we need to continue to strive 
toward.

  So I am going to continue to work on voting rights reform. I am going 
to be doing that through the template of the John Lewis Voting Rights 
Act. Americans need to have faith in our institutions. They need to 
know that our elections are fair; that they are easy and accessible for 
all; and we can't instill that trust with a wholly partisan effort. We 
have got some work to do. We have got a lot of work to do, and it is 
important work.
  I yield the floor.
  The VICE PRESIDENT. The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. BENNET. Madam President, when I got up this morning, the furthest 
thing from my mind was that I was going to have a chance to see you 
today. And since I am seeing you today, I want to say thank you. I want 
to say thank you for your role in this administration and in leading 
the Biden administration to make a proposal that was passed in the 
American recovery plan that is going to cut childhood poverty in this 
country almost in half this year.
  And what people should know is not only that the President--the 
President sitting here--led that effort at the White House, but she led 
it from the very beginning. She was one of the original sponsors of 
that legislation. And even though the President's budget has said we 
ought to make it--extend it to 2025, I just want to let you know that 
we are still fighting here to make it permanent, and I think we should 
make it permanent.
  We have already had--this is why I am here today. But we have already 
had Columbia University tell us that there is going to be an eight 
times annual return on the investment that we make as part of the 
recovery because instead of mitigating for the problem of kids in 
poverty, we will actually be eliminating poverty for almost half the 
kids in this country--for millions of American children. And not only 
that, over 90 percent of American kids are going to benefit from this 
Biden-Harris tax cut that is in this package.
  So I just want to say thank you for that. And we have got to keep 
working on it, and I agree that it ought to be extended for years and 
years and years. For me, that means permanent. We are going to keep 
trying to do that, so thank you.
  And thank you for leading on the issues that we are here to talk 
about today because this is the moment that we are challenged in ways 
that we have never been challenged before.
  Five months ago--a violent mob stormed this floor 5 months ago trying 
to stop the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the 
next. And they took us out of this room, and they took us to one of the 
Senate office buildings. And I was watching the television as I was 
there, and all I could think about was what is the rest of the world 
thinking about when our Capitol is being stormed by a violent mob of 
our own citizens--by a violent mob of our own citizens--and not just 
what our adversaries are thinking, not what is Russia thinking, what is 
China using with this footage, what are the Iranians going to do with 
this footage, but what are people like my mom and her parents who were 
Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust and, after making it through one 
of the worst moments in human history, were able to rebuild their 
shattered lives in this country, in the United States of America?
  And to think about similarly situated people all over the planet for 
whom this is the greatest hope still for freedom and for liberty, for 
democracy itself--that is what is at stake, as least as far as I am 
concerned in this debate.
  And I know the President understands this well, and I hope others 
understand this well; that even before January 6, our democracy was 
under attack. It was under attack as a result of gerrymandering. It was 
under attack because of the way special interests controlled the agenda 
on this floor and down the hall. It was under attack because of voter 
suppression that nobody in the 21st century imagined we would ever see 
in our country again, not to mention the fact of Citizens United, which 
unleashed the floodgate of money, of billionaires, to control our 
political system.
  This is an effort to separate the American people from their exercise 
in self-government. It is an effort to destroy the American people's 
confidence in their exercise in self-government. And making it harder 
for people to vote is a huge piece of this puzzle.
  Now, this isn't the first time in our history that we have been 
confronted by this kind of stuff. I have said before, and it is 
absolutely true, that you go back to the founding of this country. It 
is a story of, on the one hand, the highest ideals that have ever been 
written down by human beings and the worst instincts that have ever 
been conjured by human beings. In our case, that was enslaving other 
human beings.
  And our history is a story of that battle between those highest 
ideals and

[[Page S4675]]

those worst instincts. And every single time Americans have stepped up 
and they found a way to make our country more democratic, more fair, 
and more free--small ``d'', democratic--and that is what we have to do 
again. That is our job now because, today, in ways that were 
unimaginable to me when I was in college, except when I read it in the 
history books, anti-democratic forces are stronger than anytime since 
Jim Crow. And it is true. That is a fact.
  What I was reading back in the 1980s about laws that had been fought 
against in the 1960s, they are back in 2020. If you think I am 
exaggerating, here are some examples. In Georgia, there are bills to 
undermine nonpartisan election officials so that politicians can 
overturn outcomes they don't like; in Arizona, the same kind of thing, 
a partisan election audit; in Florida, a bill to restrict vote by mail; 
State legislators attempting to give themselves the power to toss out 
an election, as I said, that they don't like. These are laws all across 
the country. There are 250 or so of these laws that are being passed.
  And, by the way, not a single one of those is being passed with a 
Democratic vote--a vote from a Democrat--in 250 legislatures. And you 
know what else doesn't exist in any one of those legislatures? The 
filibuster does not exist in any one of those legislatures. We need to 
stand up for our democracy, and that is why we need to pass the For the 
People Act.
  The bill includes commonsense reforms that are broadly supported by 
the American people. I know--we know these reforms work because they 
have worked in Colorado, where we banned gerrymandering. We have 
automatic voter registration. We have early voting. We have vote-by-
mail. We have increased election security. This is all nonpartisan. 
This is all common sense.

  This was done by--this wasn't done by Democrats. It was done by 
Republicans and Democrats working together. What is the result? We have 
the second highest voter turnout rate in the country--72 percent. I am 
so sick and tired of saying that. I want us to be No. 1 so that I don't 
have to hear from Senator Klobuchar how Minnesota is No. 1. I come 
here, and I have to say we are No. 2. That is not good enough. We need 
to be No. 1.
  But if we had this across the country, the agenda in Washington would 
look more like what the American people actually sent us here to do. So 
this isn't just about voting rights, although that is very, very 
important. It is not just about elections. That is very important. But 
we could finally, probably, create universal healthcare in this 
country, improve our schools, make sure that we had an economy that 
when it grew, it grew for everybody, not just the top 10 percent. We 
would probably stop spending our time cutting taxes for the wealthiest 
Americans when our income inequality has never been higher. Although, 
now that I mention that, I realize, because of the President's 
leadership and President Biden's leadership, we have actually already 
started to do that because we cut taxes now for the vast majority of 
Americans because of the work that they have led.
  We can change the destiny of America. That is what we can do. And 
that is what this exercise in self-government is about. We can show 
that we can compete with the Communist Government in China and send a 
signal to people like my grandparents all across the world that 
American democracy is stronger than ever and that they should trust it; 
they can count on it and maybe get a piece of it for themselves; that 
we remain a beacon of freedom and self-government and that we remain 
committed not to our worst instincts but to our highest ideals.
  I would encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support 
this legislation. And with that, I thank my colleague from North 
Carolina for his indulgence.
  I yield the floor.
  The VICE PRESIDENT. The Senator from North Carolina.
  Mr. TILLIS. Madam President, welcome back, and thank you for giving 
me an opportunity to talk about the bill that we will have before us in 
about an hour and a half.
  I have to stand here and rise in opposition to the For the People 
Act. I think you could appropriately title it the ``Fool the People 
Act.'' We are going to be voting on it later today, but it would 
dramatically alter election laws across our country.
  I have been in the Senate for 6\1/2\ years, and this ranks up there 
as one of the worst bills that I have seen come before this body. I 
know my friends on the other side of aisle like to talk about it as 
being essential for protecting democracy, but in the face of text that 
could be patently unconstitutional and taking away the rights of States 
to administer their elections, I find it hard to believe that it is 
anything but a motivated attempt to federalize the Nation's election 
system.
  The For the People Act would achieve it through a number of, I think, 
overreaches. I am only going to talk about a few.
  For one, voter ID. The For the People Act would essentially render 
null voter ID laws across this country. Instead of an ID, which most of 
us have, and virtually, I think, every citizen should have, you would 
simply just sign an affidavit to say you are who you say you are. I 
heard the Georgia law, for example, brought up as providing egregious 
limits or obstacles to proving who you say you are.
  In a hearing a month or so ago, we had an official from Georgia in a 
Judiciary Committee, and I said: Could you explain to me what the 
challenge is? So if somebody gets an absentee ballot like you do in 
North Carolina--we have no-excuse absentee balloting. We have had it 
for years. I supported it. I voted that way several times. We had 
people say that it was just an egregious imposition to note a 10 or 12 
character driver's license or government ID number on the affidavit. 
That is all it is. You don't have to send a copy of it. You just simply 
have to write a number down.
  So if you have an ink pen--I guess you could argue if you don't have 
a writing instrument, then maybe that is an overreach or an imposition 
on a voter. I don't think it is. And even in the Georgia law that has 
been castigated by some of my friends on the other side of aisle, they 
even provide for people who want to vote, who may not have a 
government-issued ID, other documents that can be used in their place.
  We talked about hundreds of bills that have been filed by Republican 
legislators without a single Democratic vote that are like the Georgia 
bill that I just described, which I think is arguably a fair bill. But 
most of these bills are things that Democrats and Republicans should be 
able to agree on. You should cleanse your voter rolls. You should make 
sure that people who have died and people who could be registered in 
one or more States are cleared from the voter rolls just to prevent 
fraud and abuse, not necessarily perpetrated by any one party but just 
because the data could be out of date.
  And, you know, back on voter ID, I find it remarkable that we have a 
measure before us that we are going to be voting on today, a simple ID 
requirement that 80 percent of Americans just this week in a poll said 
they think is reasonable. Now, you have to also understand that we make 
accommodations. If you don't have an ID in North Carolina, we moved 
heaven and Earth to make sure--you need a government-issued ID, I 
believe, to be able to move through society, to get a hotel room, and 
to get on an airplane. I had to provide--I had surgery a couple of 
months ago. I had to present an ID to get admitted into the hospital. I 
think we are disenfranchising people from the rest of society by not at 
least making sure that they can identify who they are. There is no 
argument. You can't get on a plane without an ID. You can't travel 
internationally without an ID. You can't get healthcare without an ID. 
But for some reason, to do something, to exercise our right and our 
privilege to vote, we think that we don't need an ID.
  I also worry about a provision in this bill that would allow 
nationwide ballot harvesting. There are only a couple of States that 
allow ballot harvesting. What does that mean? You have a worker coming 
up, going door to door, and encouraging somebody to vote. It may be 
somebody who doesn't want to vote. But now, you are up there to capture 
their ballots and bring bunches of ballots to the polls.
  Ballot harvesting is legal in some States--I know California. It is 
not legal in our State. In fact, there was a

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Republican candidate who ultimately withdrew himself after winning a 
race after there were a couple hundreds ballots that were supposedly 
harvested. I don't think he knew about it, but there was a campaign 
operative that did it, and it cost him an election.
  I will tell you one thing that I really do believe, that if the 
Founding Fathers were here in this Chamber today, they would really be 
scratching their heads, and it is the idea of taxpayer-funded 
elections. Make no mistake about it, Federal, State, and local dollars 
are used to make sure that we have election machines, that we have poll 
workers, that we have access. We can always improve access to the 
polls, but in this bill, they are saying, and people in North 
Carolina--if you were paying attention last year, my race was, all in 
with me and my opponent, $296 million. There were a lot of ads on TV.
  I had my friends call me up, screaming at the TV when they were mean 
to me. And I am sure I had my opponent, who is a friend of mine, say 
the same thing. But now, what we are going to do, if we were to pass 
this bill, is say: Tom Tillis supporters are going to have to have 
money spent and directed to his opponent to try and beat him, and vice 
versa--millions and millions of dollars.
  And in States like North Carolina--not only North Carolina taxpayers 
but taxpayers from across this country--will see their taxpayer dollars 
come to North Carolina to influence an outcome in a campaign that could 
be a thousand miles away. That is, I think--taking taxpayer dollars and 
then spending them on something that they are personally opposed to or 
offended by is something that I don't think the Founding Fathers would 
have ever envisioned as being appropriate for this great Nation.
  So, ladies and gentlemen, today at about 5:30--I think a little 
after--the For the People--or as I said, the ``Fool the People''--Act 
is going to be before us, and it is going to fail. We know it. Senator 
Schumer knows it.
  So why are we doing it? Are we doing it for messaging points? Or are 
there some far-left liberals that just want the vote on the floor, 
knowing full well it is not going to pass? Have we actually tried to do 
any work to figure out what role the Federal Government should play in 
actually improving election outcomes that ultimately need to be 
administered by the State? No, that hasn't happened.
  So today, we are going to come on the floor. This measure is not 
going to move forward. And somebody may be fooling--I don't know--far-
left groups just to say we tried. But they didn't try because if they 
tried, they would have reached across the other aisle and tried to 
figure out something that made sense that could pass with 60 votes.
  The For the People Act is far afield from what our Founding Fathers 
envisioned. Can we improve our election processes across this country? 
Yes, but I would prefer to have the 50 laboratories of democracy figure 
out how to improve it and have other States implement it, perhaps even 
other States in the northeast that have far fewer voting days than we 
do in North Carolina. They could learn from that.
  Maybe we should create standards and incentives for that sort of 
stuff, but not a Federal takeover of the state of the elections in this 
country. And for that reason, I will be opposing the For the People 
Act.
  Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Murphy). The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from North Carolina 
for his thoughts.
  We are on the cusp of a vote here on legislation that would 
dramatically change the way we conduct our elections in this country. 
As my colleague said, are all elections perfect? No. But I have to tell 
you, I am really proud of what we do in Ohio. We make it easy to vote; 
we also make it hard to cheat, and that is the right balance.
  This bill, S. 1, is called the For the People Act, but what it 
actually does is it strips away control from people in Ohio and 
elsewhere to build the right election laws in our own States and 
centralizes that control here in Washington, DC. That is not consistent 
with the Constitution or the Federalist Papers. In addition, some of 
those proposed changes attempt to undermine the First Amendment rights 
that we hold so dear as Americans.
  I am proud of the way we conduct our elections in Ohio, in part 
because we have high turnout. In fact, we had record turnout last year, 
and that is great. And I don't want to leave it up to Federal employees 
here in Washington, DC, to determine how our system should work in 
Ohio, which is what this legislation would do.
  I mentioned the Constitution earlier. It gives the primary power over 
election administration to the States. It is very clear about that. It 
also says in Federalist 59, which is Alexander Hamilton, who was the 
guy most interested in these Federalist issues--he said it is clear 
that the Federal Government should only get involved in very 
extraordinary situations.
  Last fall, 5.97 million Ohioans cast a vote--that is a record, as I 
said--and it represented 74 percent of eligible voters in Ohio. Despite 
that and despite the challenges of running the largest election in our 
State's history during an unprecedented pandemic, we ran what was 
wildly reported on the right, on the left, by the media as a secure and 
successful election--in fact, I think the most successful election we 
have ever had. Our State-run, bipartisan county boards of election, 
with two Democrats and two Republicans in each county, were able to do 
that because they know what is best for Ohio and they are held 
accountable.
  But this partisan bill claims Washington, DC, somehow knows better. 
S. 1 strips the power from accountable, democratically elected State 
representatives in my State and around the country to determine 
congressional districts and hands that over to a Federal panel, again, 
staffed by unelected, unaccountable third parties and a computer 
program. Again, I think it should be something that is part of what 
election representatives are held to account for, is how we draw our 
congressional districts.
  It mandates the controversial practice of ballot harvesting. I don't 
like ballot harvesting. I think it makes it easier for partisan 
operatives on both the right and the left to conduct outright voter 
fraud.
  It would force taxpayers to fund the political campaigns of 
candidates they don't support. It turns the Federal Election Commission 
into a tool of whichever party controls the White House. So instead of 
being even, it would actually be lopsided and be partisan.

  It seemingly contradicts the 26th Amendment by forcing States to let 
individuals register to vote as early as 16 years old, and then it 
could allow those 16- or 17-year-olds to vote by banning State voter ID 
laws. The vast majority of Americans support voter ID laws. It is a 
fact. Republicans, Democrats, and Independents think you ought to have 
some sort of ID when you come vote, but this bill bans that safeguard.
  I could list other serious flaws with the proposal, but the bottom 
line is that this legislation has been presented as a safeguard for 
democracy when it actually contains some radically undemocratic 
provisions.
  I am in favor of State-level, commonsense efforts to increase voter 
confidence in our elections. We absolutely should do that. We need to 
protect democracy by ensuring, again, that people know it is easy to 
vote. It is accessible. That is good. We should all want that. But we 
should also make it hard to cheat and be sure we have security in our 
elections so people know they have trust in the system, that their vote 
is going to count, as it should. Again, that is what we do in Ohio.
  I don't think this legislation furthers those objectives. Instead, I 
think it would amount to a Federal takeover of our election system, 
which has always been in the domain of the States.
  Our government is built on a carefully constructed framework of 
checks and balances, including between the branches of government. I 
cannot support legislation that would run so counter to what the 
Framers of the Constitution intended and the election system that works 
well in my home State of Ohio.
  I yield back.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.
  Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, I, too, rise in opposition to S. 1 and 
urge a no vote.

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  The bill that the Senate will be asked to consider today is a truly 
radical piece of legislation. It turns out, because of that, it is an 
unpopular piece of legislation, the kind of bill the Senate was created 
to help stop from becoming law. S. 1 seeks to transform the way we do 
elections in this country and to do so on a narrow, partisan basis.
  Here is what Americans need to understand about this legislation.
  First, it would strip away the power of the States to run elections 
and hand it to the Federal Government, showing a complete lack of trust 
in local and State leadership.
  It would also spend millions of taxpayer dollars to help politicians 
run ads for their campaigns. Taxpayers would suddenly have to finance 
partisan messages they may strongly disagree with, raising serious 
First Amendment questions.
  S. 1 would nullify sensible voter ID laws across the country, 
including voter identification laws in predominantly Democrat States, 
like Connecticut and Delaware.
  And the legislation would also give the Federal Government the right 
to draw congressional district lines, even though States have done this 
since the beginning of our republic.
  At its root, this bill is based on a myth. And I consider my words 
here. It is based on a lie, and that lie is that voting rights are 
somehow under attack in States like Georgia and Texas. This is utterly 
absurd, and I think the voters in those States understand that. The 
election reforms recently passed in Georgia, for example, have actually 
expanded access to the ballot box, making it easier to vote, but also 
making it harder to cheat.
  The new Georgia law does this, among other things. It expands the 
window for early voting. The new Georgia law allows no-excuse mail-in 
voting to continue. It adds 100 new ballot dropboxes. It allows voters 
to get a government-issued ID for free, and it increases transparency 
in elections, for example, making sure the ballot counting does not 
stop in the middle of the night, as we have seen in past elections.
  These reforms are entirely reasonable and widely popular across 
Americans and were based on broad input from the local stakeholders.
  My colleagues who are pushing S. 1 say they are trying to save 
democracy, but, in fact, the bill would actually harm democracy. S. 1 
would undermine the security of the ballot box, causing more and more 
Americans to question the outcome of our elections. We should be 
working to strengthen trust in democracy, not weaken it.
  The only thing bipartisan about this bill is the opposition to it. In 
my home State of Mississippi, every Member of the House of 
Representatives--Democrat and Republican--voted against this 
legislation, including Democrat Representative Bennie Thompson, a 
chairman of a committee in the House of Representatives, the chairman 
of the Democratic National Convention of 2020, who said he voted 
against it because it was opposed by his constituents.
  The ACLU has come out against S. 1, saying that some provisions 
``unconstitutionally impinge on the free speech rights of American 
citizens and public interest organizations''--hardly a rightwing 
conspiracy group, the ACLU.
  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, along with 300 other organizations, 
have said this legislation is ``fundamentally incompatible with the 
American tradition and the principles enshrined in our Constitution.''
  And when you ask the public about the specific proposals in this 
bill, many Americans--conservative and liberal, Democrat, Republican, 
and Independent--are outright opposed.
  According to a recent poll, 81 percent of people say they are 
concerned with allowing voters to vote without any form of photo ID. 
Eighty-three percent say they are concerned with ballot harvesting 
practices, this practice of having party operatives go door to door and 
pick up large numbers of ballots to turn them in. Sixty-eight percent 
of Democrats are opposed to so-called ballot harvesting. And 50 percent 
of people say they oppose taxpayer dollars being used to pay for 
political campaigns. This, again, cuts across party lines.
  So it is clear that S. 1 is not popular. It is squarely at odds with 
the views of the majority of the American people.
  Every Senator who votes yes will need to prepare to explain to voters 
why they wanted to overturn State voter ID protections, allow ballot 
harvesting, force taxpayers to pay for political campaigns, and enact a 
partisan Federal Election Commission. That is why S. 1 should be 
rejected this afternoon, and that is why it will be rejected.
  Thank you.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SHELBY. Mr. President, this afternoon, I want to discuss my grave 
concerns with S. 1.
  Many have said that this political power grab is a solution in search 
of a problem. I agree with that. This bill contains, I believe, a 
number of alarming provisions that would have a devastating impact on 
our Nation's electoral process. It would make our elections more 
chaotic and less secure.
  This legislation contains more than 800 pages of bad policies that I 
believe America does not need and does not want. I believe that the 
strength of our election system is in its diversity, allowing each 
State to determine what is best for them. S. 1 would force a single, 
partisan view of elections on more than 10,000 jurisdictions across the 
country.
  For example, State and local election administrators would be forced 
to change, one, how they register voters and which voting systems they 
use; how they handle early voting and absentee ballots; and how they 
maintain voter lists.
  It makes election fraud easier to commit and harder to detect by 
allowing unlimited ballot harvesting, undermining voter ID laws, and 
making it more difficult to maintain accurate voting lists. A recent 
university poll found that 80 percent of Americans support requiring a 
form of identification before a person can vote. Think about it--80 
percent.
  Remember, now, presently, Americans are required to present a photo 
ID to do a number of things. We all do it every day: at the airport to 
board a commercial flight; in a hospital for any outpatient or 
inpatient procedure; at the pharmacy to purchase over-the-counter sinus 
medication and certain prescriptions; at the bank to open a bank 
account; to apply for a mortgage; to drive, buy, or rent a car; to get 
married; to purchase a gun; to rent a hotel room; to donate blood; to 
obtain a passport; to pick up packages at the U.S. Post Office. We all 
do this every day.
  This legislation would permanently tip the scales in favor of the 
Democrats by politicizing the Federal Election Commission, pouring 
Federal tax dollars into campaigns and chilling free speech. Do 
Americans really want their taxes going toward a Federal campaign fund 
that would finance the expenses of all candidates running for Congress?
  S. 1 would reverse years of improvements that have been made in many 
States, improvements that protect the security, integrity, and the 
credibility of our elections. Each State, I believe, should be left 
with the freedom and flexibility to administer its own respective 
elections, without interference from the Federal Government.
  S. 1 mandates ballot drop boxes, which increase the risk of fraud by 
allowing people other than the voter to drop off marked ballots outside 
of the view of election officials.
  As I mentioned before, this bill provides government funding for 
campaigns: $6 of Federal funding for every $1 from small donors. My 
gosh, it would be a windfall for a lot of incumbents. This essentially 
forces Americans to fund candidates they don't agree with and support 
attack ads against those they do agree with.
  It federalizes redistricting, putting in place one set of Federal 
rules for redrawing congressional districts--something that has 
traditionally been a role for each State.
  Lastly, Mr. President, S. 1 requires States to give felons the right 
to vote once they are out of prison.
  While this is a bad bill all around, I believe these are some of the 
top worst provisions and the provisions that American people oppose the 
most: One, gutting State voter ID laws, again; two, spending taxpayer 
dollars on political campaigns; three, allowing unlimited ballot 
harvesting; and four, turning the Federal Election Commission into a 
partisan operation. So just

[[Page S4678]]

to name those, among others, are reasons to vote against this bill.
  I think the American people do not want this, and they do not deserve 
to be the recipients of such harmful policy. I do not support this 
bill, and I trust that a majority of the Senate will not vote 
accordingly.
  Thank you
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, the right to vote is the hallmark of a 
democracy. It is what distinguishes us from authoritarian regimes where 
elections are tainted, if they are held at all, where the free and fair 
elections that define America do not exist.
  President Abraham Lincoln once said elections belong to the people. 
Voting is an action we choose to take to exercise a fundamental freedom 
our Constitution grants to the people. So when we hear of a bill 
entitled ``For the People,'' we naturally would assume at first that it 
must be enhancing our democracy, but a closer examination suggests 
otherwise. In fact, S. 1 would take away the rights of people in each 
of the 50 States to determine which election rules work best for their 
citizens.
  Let's start with some indisputable facts. This legislation was first 
introduced in 2019, prior to last year's Presidential election. It was 
not considered in the Senate. It did not become law. Nevertheless, 
according to the Census Bureau, the 2020 election saw the highest voter 
turnout in the 21st century. Equally significant, Asian Americans and 
Hispanic Americans voted in record-high percentages, and there was 
higher turnout across all racial groups, including Black Americans, 
than in 2016.
  The Census Bureau also asked eligible, nonvoting Americans why they 
didn't vote in 2020. The majority of respondents said that they were 
not interested, didn't like any of the candidates, were too busy, or 
simply forgot.
  The point is, with the record-high turnout in 2020, it is very 
difficult to make the case that this bill is necessary, as some have 
said, to save our democracy.
  This is a bill that was introduced to enhance partisan messaging, not 
to enhance participation in our elections, as the over-the-top rhetoric 
about this bill highlights. Consider, for example, the debate over 
Georgia's new election law. In many ways, Georgia's election law 
actually makes it easier for citizens to vote than in other States that 
have not been subject to the same backlash.
  Georgia allows no-excuse absentee ballots. Delaware, New York, 
Massachusetts, and Connecticut do not. Georgia's new law provides a 
minimum of 17 in-person early voting days. Delaware, New Jersey, and 
Connecticut had no in-person early voting days at all in 2020. Although 
New Jersey enacted a new law to allow early voting earlier this year, 
to great fanfare, it actually has 8 fewer early voting days than 
Georgia. Despite having these and many other different election rules, 
Delaware, Connecticut, and Georgia had very similar levels of Black 
voter turnout in the 2020 election. Massachusetts, by contrast, had 
just more than half the Black voter turnout of Georgia.
  This information contradicts the underlying premise in S. 1 that we 
must overturn the laws of every State in our Nation in order to 
preserve the right to vote.
  This legislation would force numerous changes to laws in States that 
have been successfully conducting elections for a very long time. Let 
me use the State of Maine as an example--a State that consistently 
ranks at or near the top of the Nation in voter participation, I am 
pleased to report. Maine does not have early voting. Maine does not 
allow ballot harvesting. Maine does not count absentee ballots that 
arrive after the polls close on election night. Maine does not allow 
voters to receive absentee ballots automatically without requesting 
them. Yet, in 2020, 71 percent of Mainers cast a ballot. That is 4\1/2\ 
percentage points above the national average.
  These results further demonstrate that, absent a compelling need, the 
Federal Government should not be preempting the election laws of all 50 
States.
  Now, let's examine the burdensome list of Federal mandates that 
advocates of this bill would impose on each and every State. Allow me 
to highlight just a few of the significant flaws.
  The bill would require States to allow ballot harvesting, where third 
parties, usually political operatives, collect ballots from voters. 
This raises obvious and significant concerns about voter intimidation, 
coercion, and ballot security.
  The bill would prohibit voter ID, overturning existing law in 35 
States. It would require that absentee ballots be accepted up to 7 days 
after the election, which could lead to chaos and distrust, 
particularly in close races.
  The bill would transform the Federal Election Commission into a 
partisan entity, which would jettison the requirement for bipartisan 
agreement on significant issues and lead to partisan enforcement.
  Another problem with this bill is that it would allocate billions of 
Federal dollars to congressional campaigns, forcing Americans to 
subsidize the campaigns of politicians with whom they vigorously 
disagree or simply dislike. Even very wealthy officeholders would be 
eligible for public financing. Do we really need more money in 
political campaigns when Federal funds could be used to combat the 
opioid epidemic or to reduce hunger among children or to spur economic 
development and the creation of more jobs?
  Now, Mr. President, there are, of course, times when it is compelling 
and appropriate for Congress to intervene. The Voting Rights Act of 
1965 is an excellent example.
  It was passed at a time when many Americans, particularly Black 
Americans, faced overwhelming barriers designed to prevent them from 
voting.
  Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is still in effect today. It 
prohibits voting practices and procedures that are discriminatory. It 
also allows the Department of Justice to sue any State or local 
government to enforce this provision.
  Certainly, there are improvements that can be made in our election 
laws. For example, I support efforts to disclose dark money in 
campaigns. I support mandatory reporting to the FBI if a foreign 
government contacts a political campaign with an offer of assistance. 
And I have worked with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to 
provide generous grants to States so that they could better secure 
their voting infrastructure against cyber threats and foreign 
intrusions.
  Unfortunately, S. 1 is not legislation that could ever form the basis 
of a reasonable, bipartisan elections reform bill. And it is far more 
likely to sow more distrust in our elections than to ease the partisan 
divisions in our country. For the reasons that I have discussed, I 
shall cast my vote against this flawed bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon to 
urge my colleagues to support this important legislation. And I 
listened to my colleague from Maine on her remarks and I take her at 
her word. If there would be any chance to work on these election issues 
in the future, I guarantee we are all ears.
  I say that because I come from the State of Washington, and we have a 
very high election turnout. We have a very high election turnout rate 
because we have a vote-by-mail system that has been developed over a 
long period of time. My colleague knew my predecessor, Slade Gorton, 
who was a three-term Senator. In the 2000 election, I won by 2,229 
votes, and I am forever grateful to Senator Gorton for having faith in 
that election. That election that included provisional ballots and 
signatures and all sorts of things that people really understood. I 
think that is the principle here. Our election in the State of 
Washington is based on your signature.
  That is the way it is now when you vote in person, and it is the way 
it is when you vote by mail. So our system has a lot of security in it, 
and this legislation that is before us today is to make sure that these 
rights--these civil rights and constitutional rights of individuals--
are upheld throughout the United States of America.
  Now, I understand some of my colleagues may not like the ethics 
reform or campaign finance reform in the underlying bill. I support 
those provisions. But at the heart of this debate is

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whether we are going to fight to make sure that the Federal Government 
does its job on constitutional rights. I feel like there is a little 
bit of hiding going on in this discussion about whether we have a role, 
that this is somehow left up to the States. It reminds me of when Rosa 
Parks was sitting on a bus. We didn't say it is just up to those 
individual States. Or when people were denied equal accommodations at 
hotels, we didn't say it was just up to those States. And we certainly 
didn't say, when people used police dogs trying to intimidate women to 
vote in the 1960's, that it was just up to those States.
  No, no, no. We did something about it. We passed the 1964 Civil 
Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. We did that because 
intimidation was happening, and we needed to correct for it. So I hope 
that our colleagues will think about this issue because to me, it is 
the same debate we are having on criminal justice reform. So many 
people on the other side of the aisle said: You know what, this is up 
to local police departments, and it is just up to the local 
governments, and that is all there is to it.
  No, that is not all there is to this. This is about whether we do our 
job in upholding these constitutional rights when certain States don't 
do that.
  And so these American voting rights are guaranteed by our 
Constitution. The 15th Amendment provides that voting rights cannot be 
abridged on the account of race, color, or previous condition of 
servitude. The 19th Amendment, which turned a hundred years old last 
year, provides that voting rights cannot be denied on account of sex. 
The 26th Amendment provides that Americans 18 years of age or older 
cannot be denied the right to vote on account of age.
  Generations of Americans fought for these rights over many decades, 
and they didn't come easy to us as a Nation. Nor should we overlook, 
now, these issues as we think that these rights, these constitutional 
obligations that we should be fighting for and should uphold, are 
facing challenges at the local level.
  I know that my colleagues say that these are State rights to hold 
these elections. Article I, section 4 of the Constitution empowers 
Congress to make or alter rules for Federal elections. The U.S. Supreme 
Court has repeatedly upheld this authority as broad and comprehensive. 
The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the election clause gives Congress 
the authority to ``override state laws to regulate federal elections.''
  Now, this was in a pretty famous case in 2015. In the majority 
opinion in the Arizona State Legislature v. the Arizona Independent 
Redistricting Commission, Justice Ginsburg wrote, ``The dominant 
purpose of the elections clause, the historical record bears out, was 
to empower Congress to override state election rules. The clause was 
also intended to act as a safeguard against manipulation of electoral 
rules by politicians and factions in the States to entrench themselves 
or place their interests over those of the electorate.''
  So these issues are very clear. It is calling on us to make sure that 
we uphold those constitutional rights. But according to the Brennan 
Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, at least 14 
States, from Georgia, Florida, Oklahoma, and many others, have enacted 
voting rights since the 2020 election to restrict individuals. My 
colleagues have been out here talking about some of those restrictions, 
and I think those that place undue burdens on individuals are something 
that we should be addressing. Yes, States have been at a different pace 
in allowing vote-by-mail, but we should be empowering people. We should 
say that we want to empower more people to vote under a system that is 
fair and gives them those opportunities to do so.
  So there are at least 64 bills restricting voting rights moving 
through 18 State legislatures, and I think that we should be making 
sure here that we have clarity on what will help us continue to empower 
the public to cast their vote.
  The For the People Act, S. 2093, is a comprehensive bill that makes 
voting easier. It also authorizes $1.7 billion in new federal grants to 
help secure the security of our voting system. Again, I like our vote-
by-mail system in Washington State. It is based on my signature to the 
ballot that is checked at the ballot. I can tell you in the last 
election because of the ruses and various things that went on, 13 
different people said that they voted on my behalf. But they didn't. 
And our election system caught that. They knew that it wasn't me, and 
they checked the signature on the ballot, and they knew that it was me. 
So even though the system has had people who are trying to cause 
distrust and discord about whether we have the right system, it is 
working. And the more we empower people, the better our democracy.
  This legislation requires the Director of National Intelligence to 
report on threats to election infrastructure, including cyber threats, 
and requires the President to develop and implement a national strategy 
for protecting U.S. democratic institutions. I know that these are 
things that we should be updating. Throughout our history, following 
the civil war and reconstruction, there were localities that used 
discriminatory tactics like poll taxes and literacy tests to keep 
African Americans from voting. The Black community endured both of this 
kind of intimidation.
  And in the years that followed, Americans have protested and marched 
for these voting rights. And out of this struggle, Congress passed, and 
President Johnson, signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting 
Rights Act to make sure that we kept these promises of our 
constitution. So the Federal Government has had to intervene and we 
have done so I am glad that we did.
  So I hope that we will continue to say that these provisions that are 
so important to guaranteeing the right to franchise for Americans, are 
there, and that they are continuing to be modernized. I hope that what 
we will do today is the start of an effort to focus on this.
  I take my colleague at her word. I am sure she is sincere about 
wanting to vote to help do something on election and our democracy. We 
need to start that process today. We need to move forward, we need to 
address these issues. We can't live in a world where we are not allowed 
to move forward on a very close election in Washington State. That 
wasn't the only one we had. We had another one, I think, was decided by 
probably, you know, a few hundred votes. And were there issues? Yes. 
And guess what. The system resolved it. The system found any mistakes.
  I keep mentioning, you know, a gentleman who basically when it got 
down to that somebody thought this was a Governor's race that was going 
to get down to 10 or 15 votes, basically decided to say that he had 
voted for his wife who had passed away, and admitted it because he knew 
in the end that they were going to find out. And he thought it was 
better to come forward and say I made a mistake. She had already 
passed. I sent in her ballot. It wasn't something I should have done, 
and we have a system that can work based on our signatures. It can and 
does today. When you go in to vote in person, you sign your name, and 
that is the signature, and that is the security of the system. And it 
has allowed us to trace and find and now expand to vote-by-mail. And it 
is time for us to say: Let's not make voting harder in the United 
States of America through a system that basically disenfranchises 
people, but make a system in the United States of America that is about 
giving people these opportunities so that people can feel this 
enthusiasm that we see when we successfully pull this off.
  And what we need to be doing here is to show States that an 83 
percent voter turnout in the State of Washington is a great victory. A 
high turnout is a great participatory system, and that is what we 
should be striving for with these reforms that are about security and 
about our constitutional rights. I hope our colleagues will support 
them.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Senators be 
permitted to speak prior to the scheduled vote: Blunt, for up to 15 
minutes; Merkley, for up to 15 minutes; Klobuchar, for 10 minutes; and 
Senator Schumer, for 5 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, when I look at this substitute, I am 
reminded of the adage, the new boss is the same

[[Page S4680]]

as the old boss. In this case, the new bill is the same as the old 
bill. It has a different number, but it still maintains the same flawed 
policies that S. 1 maintains.
  Obviously, the majority would like to pass this bill or they wouldn't 
have labeled it their most important piece of legislation for this 
Congress. The House of Representatives labeled the same bill, ``H.R. 
1,'' their most important piece of legislation for this Congress.
  The changes basically give election officials more time to implement 
policies that I don't think we need, and I think the changes don't make 
the bill less bad. In fact, what the bill does is it creates a new boss 
for elections, but the new boss is the Federal Government. It is not 
about voting rights. It doesn't add any group or any individuals to the 
group of people who can vote, the kind of thing that Congress has done 
in the past, starting in the first century of the country and moving on 
until today. It is, frankly, a politically motivated, Federal takeover 
of the election systems that would make, in my opinion, elections more 
chaotic, less secure, less nimble in their ability to deal with 
individual circumstances that occur on election day.

  (Mr. MARKEY assumed the Chair.)
  The strength of the election system is the diversity of the election 
system. This is what President Obama thought in 2016. He may not still 
believe that, but I still believe it.
  S. 1 would force a single partisan view of elections on more than 
10,000 voting jurisdictions across the country, taking control away 
from States, taking control away from local officials--frankly, they 
are the closest people to the voters--and instead giving it to people 
in a far-away national capital without the same sense of importance of 
the people believing that what happened on election day at your 
precinct is what the voters intended to have happen that day and that 
the people who were voting were the people who were legally able to 
vote, not people who may have voted somewhere else--not people who may 
no longer live in the jurisdiction they are voting in and no longer 
qualified to vote for that county official or that State representative 
or whoever, but people who are legally able to vote.
  I think this makes fraud easier to commit and, frankly, harder to 
detect. What we should be doing is making it easier to vote and harder 
to cheat. I think what we are doing here is making it easier to cheat 
and harder to find it out.
  We allow, in this bill, if it was the law, unlimited ballot 
harvesting. This is where anybody can go around and collect ballots 
and, theoretically, be sure that they get to the election authority, 
but who knows? Who knows what ballot got lost in the mail and what 
ballot never got in the mail? One of the things the ballot harvester 
would develop a pretty good sense of is how the person voted whose 
ballot they were harvesting.
  This bill undermines popular voter ID laws that more than half of the 
States have implemented.
  It makes it more difficult to maintain accurate voter lists.
  It permanently tips the scales in favor of our friends on the other 
side by politicizing the Federal Election Commission--a Commission that 
was established, just like our Ethics Commission in the Senate, with an 
equal number of one party and no imbalance. This politicizes the 
Federal Election Commission. It makes it a partisan Agency, not a 
bipartisan policing Agency.
  It pours Federal funds into campaigns, and it chills free speech--bad 
policy, I think, in search of a problem.
  Democrats have said this is necessary to increase voting rights, 
particularly for minorities, but the overall turnout in the year 2020 
was about two-thirds of all the voters--the highest percentage of 
voters who participated in over a century. What we have here is an 
election that had the highest level of participation in over a century. 
Most States had their highest voter turnout in 40 years, and we decide 
we need to change the system.
  S. 1 isn't just about bad policy; it is about what Democrats have 
seen as a political imperative.
  Frankly, this has been the bill that Democrats have offered for about 
the last 20 years. It varies a little bit from time to time, but about 
20 years ago and maybe before that. I was a chief election official in 
our State at that time. I don't remember Democrats offering this before 
20 years ago. But starting about two decades ago, every couple of years 
and certainly every time Democrats get in the majority in the House, 
they pass this bill or one almost exactly like it.
  When asked about what it would take to maintain the current majority 
in the House, Speaker Pelosi said: Well, it would be better if we could 
pass H.R. 1 and S. 1. Now, that sounds like she thinks there is a 
political advantage there. I respect the Speaker's political judgment 
and always have respected Speaker Pelosi's political judgment. Her 
judgment would be that this would be better for Democrats than not 
changing the current election law.
  S. 1 is really full of unnecessary and, as it turns out, unpopular 
provisions under the label ``Would you like to vote for a bill that 
would secure democracy?'' Well, of course. Who wouldn't want to be for 
securing democracy? Fortunately, this bill has been around long enough 
that people have begun to understand what is in it--the same list that 
has been out there before.
  This bill would render State voter ID laws meaningless by requiring 
States to allow affidavits in lieu of identification. In other words, 
you say who you are at the polling place. Well, anybody who is going to 
try to cast a ballot at the polling place they shouldn't cast is 
probably also likely to be willing to say they are qualified to vote at 
that election.
  In a recent poll, a poll that came out this week, 80 percent of 
Americans supported voter ID laws. Another poll just a couple of weeks 
ago showed national support for voter photo ID was 75 percent. That 
included 69 percent of Black voters and 60 percent of Democrats.
  So we have a principal position of this bill that 80 percent of all 
voters--at least 75 percent of all voters and 60 percent of Democrats 
are for, but this bill changes that law that makes sense to almost 
everybody.
  This bill requires that unlimited ballot harvesting that I talked 
about just a minute ago. The only time I recall a congressional 
discussion recently about ballot harvesting was last year when the 
House of Representatives refused to seat a Republican-elected Member 
because that campaign had used ballot harvesting. Now we have a law 
that requires every State not to prohibit ballot harvesting. The risk 
of fraud, the risk of every ballot not getting to the place ballots 
need to be certainly increases when you hand them to a ballot 
harvester--usually somebody paid by a campaign or a party to go around 
and collect ballots and someone whose motivation to get those ballots 
all turned in may not be everything you want it to be.
  Sixty-two percent of respondents in one poll said ballot harvesting 
should be illegal. It is another provision in this bill that clearly is 
not a popular provision if people begin to look at it.
  Again, voting to protect democracy--sure, that is popular. But the 
way this bill does it, when people look at it, is not popular.
  The bill requires States to give felons the right to vote in Federal 
elections when they are out of prison. Some States do that; some States 
don't. Of course, if this bill passed, every State would have the 
choice of going ahead and doing that or having two sets of voter rolls, 
one for Federal elections and another one for non-Federal elections. 
That, of course, makes no sense at all. What this bill anticipates is 
that no matter what States wanted to do, this is a provision they would 
have to adopt.

  There is another way to get that done: Go to State legislatures and 
explain the value of having that changed if that change needs to be 
made.
  This bill restricts the ability of States to maintain accurate voter 
rolls. Many States--States with Democratic Governors or Democratic 
secretaries of state, Democratic legislatures--have worked hard to see 
that they had a system in place where you would periodically check and 
see if the people who are registered to vote are still where they 
registered to vote from.
  Our State--I think a lot of States--if you move to another county and 
register to vote there, you are supposed to

[[Page S4681]]

say as part of that process who you could notify to get you off the 
voter rolls, but there is no requirement that that has to happen. A 
periodic check of the voter rolls was seen not too long ago as a huge 
protection of democracy. This makes it much harder to do. But a 2018 
poll found that 77 percent of Americans supported this kind of voter 
roll maintenance.
  Frankly, it would be pretty hard to come up with a bill that had so 
many major tenets that were so out of step with what people think the 
government ought to do and what they want their State government to do 
and in most cases where State governments are doing this.
  This bill provides government funding for campaigns--$6 of Federal 
money for every dollar raised from small donors. Small donors is under 
$200. Frankly, if you were doing this, there would be--the current 
Members of the Senate, under this bill, could receive up to, 
collectively, $1.8 billion from the Federal Government to run their 
campaigns, to attack their challenger, or whatever they want to do with 
their campaign money--$1.8 billion to do that. It is pretty easy to 
qualify for this money.
  We saw people raise money in the first quarter of this year. That 
would have qualified--in the case of our friend the Senator from Texas, 
Senator Cruz, somewhere between $25 and $30 million would go to his 
campaign. We had a markup on this bill in the Rules Committee. Not a 
single member of the Rules Committee, Democrat or Republican, including 
Senator Cruz, thought Senator Cruz should get $24 or $25 million from 
the Federal Government for his campaign.
  The bill creates a partisan Federal Elections Commission. It gets rid 
of that bipartisan makeup that has been there from the very start.
  This bill chills free speech in that it creates a disclosure document 
that makes people really reluctant to give money to other groups who 
aren't candidates who like to talk about elections.
  It federalizes redistricting. S. 1 would put in place one set of 
Federal rules for redrawing congressional districts. That has always 
been the role of the States. If the State wants to give that to 
somebody besides the legislature, they can do that, and many States 
have done that. But States have been the constitutionally designated 
place to determine how they draw congressional maps in their own 
States.
  Even if a State manages to comply with all these requirements, under 
this bill, the Justice Department would have to be involved. Under this 
bill, the court of jurisdiction in all cases on redistricting would be 
the Federal court in Washington, DC, not the Federal court in the 
circuit that Missouri is in. You wouldn't even start at the district 
court in Kansas City or St. Louis. The Federal court in Washington, DC, 
would be the place you would go.
  Of course, the purpose of the bill is to bring all these election 
decisions to one place. The idea that the best decisions are always 
made in Washington, DC, on all topics is an idea that most Americans 
don't agree with. There are things they think we can do and should do 
and can only do because they can't do them any other way, like defend 
the country and set big national priorities. But for well over 200 
years now, local election officials responsible for the sense of 
credibility of what happens on election day have done this job. I think 
they have done it well.
  This bill would require States to take burdensome actions and make 
expensive changes in their election systems. Even if the States have 
already adopted some of the so-called reforms, they in all likelihood 
would have to make changes in their system to comply.
  So the Federal takeover of elections shouldn't happen. I urge my 
colleagues not to support it happening. The American people don't want 
to see the things imposed on our election system that are in this bill. 
I urge my colleagues to vote against this harmful legislation.
  I yield the floor.
  The VICE PRESIDENT. The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, every day that I have the honor of 
coming to work in the hallowed halls of this building--a symbol to the 
country and to the world of America's commitment to liberty and to 
justice, freedom, and democracy--I am humbled. I am humbled by the 
faith and responsibility that the people of Oregon have placed in me to 
advocate on their behalf. I am humbled by the responsibility of 
exercising the power of this office to use the opportunity to lift up 
all Americans, to create a foundation for families to thrive, to tackle 
significant challenges like human rights and global warming.
  But among all these responsibilities one is the highest, which is to 
defend our constitutional Republic, and in that Constitution, the 
single most important power given to every American is the right to a 
voice and a vote, a voice and a vote in the decisions of this 
government and the direction of our Nation.
  As we saw all too clearly on January 6, when this very building was 
attacked by a mob intent on burning the ballots of millions of 
Americans, democracy based on free and fair elections is far from 
guaranteed. Each generation, each new set of Senators and House Members 
has the responsibility to defend it anew.
  The sad truth, however, is that a violent mob storming the Capitol 
isn't the only way to attack our democracy. It can also be attacked by 
the quiet plotting of powerful and privileged individuals who hate the 
concept of government of, by, and for the people, and they work to 
undermine and corrupt the workings of our Republic to produce, instead, 
government by and for the powerful.
  In his inaugural address, our second President, John Adams, remarked 
that, ``we should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose 
sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous 
should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent 
elections.''
  Well, my friends, our democracy--our elections are being infected. 
Our elections are under siege from gerrymandering, which destroys the 
principle of equal representation. Our system is under siege from dark 
money, enabling billionaires and powerful corporations to buy our 
elections. It is under siege by State laws being passed week to week 
right now that target specific communities to prevent them from voting, 
thereby manipulating the outcome of elections.
  Indeed, at least 22 laws have been enacted in 14 States since January 
to infect our free and fair elections to deliberately erect barriers 
meant to make it harder for targeted groups of Americans to vote, to 
silence the voices of students and low-income Americans, of Native 
Americans and seniors, of Black and Brown Americans who have fought too 
long and too hard to have their voice and their vote stolen from them, 
ripped from them now.
  We have a responsibility as United States Senators to ensure every 
American's freedom to vote, just as this institution sought to do more 
than half a century ago, when in this Chamber we passed the 1965 Voting 
Rights Act. We have a responsibility to ensure that every American's 
voice is heard and that our elections reflect the will of the people.
  We can fulfill that responsibility by enacting national standards for 
voting to ensure that every American can have a say in the key 
decisions impacting their daily lives, a ``say'' expressed through the 
ballot box.
  That ballot box is the beating heart of our Republic, and those who 
seek to erect barriers to citizens having access to it are committing a 
crime against our democracy. We have to stop that criminal action 
against the rights of Americans. We must create those national 
standards by taking up this bill, the For the People bill, debating it, 
and ultimately passing it, to defend our Constitution.
  The For the People Act is comprehensive. It does popular, commonsense 
things to put the American people back in charge of their government 
and their country. It sets national standards so every American has 
equal freedom to vote, no matter where they live. In this country, if 
you are an American, you have the right to vote, plain and simple, full 
stop. It doesn't matter what your ZIP code is or your income or the 
color of your skin or your religious beliefs. You have the right to 
vote.
  Many of the State laws restricting voting are designed to eliminate 
early voting--in person or by mail--and we know exactly why. It is 
because the

[[Page S4682]]

leaders in these States know how easy it is to manipulate the vote on 
election day. In these targeted communities, the States' leaders wants 
to be able to decrease the number of polling places, reduce the hours, 
change the locations, put polling places in locations with limited 
parking, put out false information about the date of the election, and 
purge targeted voters from the roll of registered voters, knowing that 
when they show up on election day, it is too late to correct the error 
and be able to exercise their right to vote.
  The antidote to these horrendous, racist attacks on the freedom and 
right of every American to vote is early voting in person and by mail, 
and this act guarantees 15 days of early voting. It sets forth the 
opportunity to acquire an absentee ballot, to return the ballot by mail 
or through dedicated dropboxes.
  The second big goal in national standards set forth in the For the 
People Act is to stop billionaires from buying elections. Elections in 
America are intended to reflect the will of the people, not the will of 
the powerful and privileged. Thomas Jefferson once described this as 
the ``mother principle,'' saying that ``governments are republican only 
in proportion to how they embody the will of the people.''
  If the megawealthy can flood our campaigns with billions of dollars 
sent through shell companies, untraceable money, and manipulate the 
outcome of the elections, then Jefferson's mother principle is murdered 
because the outcome serves the powerful, not the people.
  The For the People Act says the people should have an equal chance of 
being heard and that the people listening ought to know who is actually 
behind those voices and those messages. It does that by creating an 
``honest ads'' policy so political ads people see online have to 
disclose who is paying for them, and it does that by requiring the 
disclosure of megadonors contributing to political campaigns.
  Now, if you or I give a modest donation to a campaign, that campaign 
has to disclose who we are. Shouldn't the same thing that is true for 
an average American be true for the megadonors? This standard sets that 
equal standard.

  Third, the national standards set forth in this bill restore equal 
representation by ending gerrymandering, the process by which we draw 
congressional districts to favor one party over another and, by doing 
so, attack the sacred principle of equal representation.
  This creates a lot of bias in the House of Representatives down the 
hall. Take Michigan. In 2012, 2014, and 2016, the majority of the 
Michiganders voted for one party at every level of government, but 
because of gerrymandering, the other party held a decisive advantage in 
the statehouse, in the State senate, and in the congressional House 
delegation.
  The For the People Act defends, restores the principle of equal 
representation. It does it by creating independent redistricting 
commissions, made up equally of Democrats, Republicans, and 
Independents. That means candidates running for office actually have to 
use the power of their ideas, the persuasion of their personality, not 
a rigged system to hold power.
  Finally, the standards in this bill target corruption by addressing 
and eliminating conflicts of interest. Public servants should serve the 
public, not themselves. That includes Members of Congress, the 
administration, and for the first time ever, the Supreme Court. This 
bill does that by striking down outrageous and corrupt conflicts of 
interest, strengthening divestment requirements, saying that the 
President and Vice President have to use a blind trust or limit their 
personal holdings to assets that don't pose a potential conflict of 
interest.
  It slows the revolving door between public service and K Street. It 
requires Cabinet Secretaries to recuse themselves from any issues in 
which a previous employer or client has a financial interest.
  The bill requires candidates for Vice President or President to 
disclose their tax returns to prevent hidden conflicts of interest. It 
creates a code of ethics for the Supreme Court, something all other 
Federal judges already have.
  None of these four principles is about helping one political party 
over the other. In fact, the provisions I have just laid out are wildly 
popular among the American people. An overwhelming supermajority of 
Democrats, Republicans, and Independents support these four principles. 
It is as bipartisan as you can get.
  Even when it is broke into specific provisions, three out of four 
Americans--Democrats, Republicans, Independents--say they support these 
reforms because they believe in the vision of government of, by, and 
for the people. It is in our DNA.
  Americans believe that dark money should not be able to flood our 
elections. They believe billionaires and corporations should not be 
able to buy elections. They believe our Nation is ill-served by corrupt 
conflicts of interest. They believe in the vision and ideals of our 
``we the people'' Republic, and this bill is meant to do just one 
thing: make real the promise of democracy for all Americans.
  But powerful special interests don't want that. It threatens their 
hold on power by ending the ways they have rigged the system, and so 
they are all about striking down this bill.
  Why is that? We hear how Republican leaders say that they like this 
rigged system. Apparently, they like dark money in campaigns helping to 
buy elections. Apparently, they like targeting groups of individuals to 
prevent them from voting, taking us back to the racist efforts that 
existed before the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Apparently, they like 
gerrymandering, thinking it is a sort of the political power down the 
hall, which political scientists says it is. But should it be principle 
or power that we fight for here?
  It should be the principle and the oath of office we took to uphold 
the Constitution.
  Standing before a crowd on a November afternoon to dedicate the 
Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg, 4 months after that 
momentous battle, President Lincoln remarked that they were gathered 
together to not only dedicate it to the men who had fallen in battle, 
but to the ideal for which they gave their lives, ``That government of 
the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the 
Earth.''
  Today, it is our responsibility to carry that ideal forward and to 
ensure that government of the people, by the people, and for the people 
shall not perish from the United States of America. We in this Chamber 
must pass the For the People Act.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The VICE PRESIDENT. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The VICE PRESIDENT. Without objection, it is so ordered
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Madam President, today the Senate is voting on 
whether to consider the For the People Act, also known as S. 1. I 
encourage all my colleagues to support Senate consideration of this 
crucial election reform bill.
  This legislation would put a stop to new State laws across the 
country that are making it harder for Americans to register to vote and 
to cast their ballots. So far this year, at least 389 bills to suppress 
the ability to vote have been introduced in 48 States. At least 22 of 
these new bills have become law in 14 States.
  These newly enacted laws undermine the right to vote from every 
direction: They create new and unnecessarily strict voter ID laws, 
which make it harder to vote for the 11 percent of U.S. citizens who do 
not have a government-issued photo ID, many of whom are elderly or low-
income. They reduce the timeframes for early voting, a critical method 
of voting for many working Americans. And they impose severe 
limitations on voting by mail, a strategy that many States have used to 
significantly increase voter turnout over recent years.
  These attacks have shown no signs of letting up. In Texas, a 
restrictive voting bill is pending before the State legislature that 
continues to get worse the longer it is considered. In its current 
form, the Texas bill would cut early voting hours, ban drive-through 
voting, limit vote-by-mail, and add new voter ID requirements for mail-
in ballots, along with a host of other restrictions on the right to 
vote.

[[Page S4683]]

  These restrictions are harmful to our democracy. We should be working 
to make it easier for more people to vote, not making it harder. The 
right to vote is a bedrock principle of our democracy. Unfortunately, 
many States are using unfounded conspiracy theories of voter fraud as 
an excuse to pass laws to weaken that fundamental right.
  That is why we must pass the For the People Act. This bill will help 
to ensure that all Americans are able to vote, free of unnecessary 
hurdles and burdens. It includes a number of commonsense reforms that 
anyone who believes in the health of our democracy cannot possibly 
oppose in good conscience.
  For example, one provision of S. 1 requires that States allow voters 
to register to vote online. In an age when you can cash a check, buy a 
car, and conduct a doctor's appointment entirely online, there is no 
reason a voter should not be able to register to vote online.
  The bill also invests in the health of our election infrastructure by 
securing our voting systems against foreign attacks. The security of 
our voting systems should not be a partisan issue.
  In addition, S. 1 would ban partisan gerrymandering and require 
States to draw their congressional districts using independent 
redistricting commissions, like we do in California. Voters should be 
able to choose their representatives; representatives should not be 
able to choose their voters.
  We need to empower the voice of every American in our democracy. We 
need to make these commonsense reforms to our elections.
  I understand that some of my colleagues have disagreements with 
specific parts of the bill. I would urge them to let the legislation 
come before the Senate and seek to amend it. But to deny this body the 
ability to even debate and consider such an important bill as this is 
unacceptable.
  The time for these reforms is now. I hope that my colleagues on both 
sides of the aisle will support this important legislation.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I come to the floor to speak in 
support of proceeding to debate legislation that is critical to our 
democracy, legislation that is based on two simple ideas: that 
Americans must be able to freely choose their elected officials and 
that government must be accountable to the people, not to those with 
the most money. These are not Democratic or Republican ideas; they are 
core American ideas. But for too long, these rights have been under 
attack, which is why we need the critical democracy reforms in the For 
the People Act.

  I am honored to be leading this legislation with Senators Merkley and 
Schumer and to have worked with my colleagues as chair of the Rules 
Committee, worked with my colleagues in the House and civil rights and 
democracy reform groups and you, Madam President, to bring this bill 
forward today.
  The freedom to vote is fundamental to all of our freedoms. It is how 
Americans control their government and hold elected officials 
accountable. It is the bedrock of our government. It is the founding 
principle of our country, and it has stood the test of wars, of 
economic strife, and yes, a global pandemic. But protecting this right 
has not always been easy.
  Throughout our country's 245-year history, we have had to course-
correct and take action to ensure that democracy is for the people and 
by the people and that it has lived up to our ideals.
  At the beginning of this year, we were reminded on January 6 that it 
is up to us to protect against threats to our democracy, to ensure that 
it succeeds.
  I still remember that moment at 3:30 in the morning when Senator 
Blunt and I and, yes, Vice President Pence walked from this Chamber 
with the two young women with the mahogany box full of those last 
ballots to get over to the House to finish our job so that you, Madam 
President, were declared the Vice President and President Biden was 
declared the President. That is upholding our democracy. That is doing 
it together, Democrats and Republicans doing our job. And what this 
bill is about to me, this bill is about carrying on that torch to 
protect our democracy.
  Today, the vote to begin debate on this legislation will likely get 
the support of all 50 Democrats. Senator Manchin, along with the rest 
of our caucus, has made clear to the country that standing up for the 
right to vote is bigger than any one person or thing. It is about us. 
It is about us as Americans. I deeply appreciate the work he has put 
into the proposal he is putting forward today, and I look forward to 
continuing our discussions with him. He is doing this in good faith. 
There are many good things in that proposal. And today we are here 
together to reaffirm we will not give up this fight. It is just 
beginning.
  The 2020 election showed that you can make it safer to vote while 
giving voters the options that work for them. If it is vote-by-mail--I 
see my colleague Senator Smith here. Minnesota is so proud of our same-
day registration. That has worked for us. It has made us No. 1 in voter 
turnout in the country time and time and time again. Many States during 
the pandemic took steps exactly like that, extending options for 
voters, like safe vote-by mail, and now 34 States have no-excuse vote-
by-mail--34 States. The result? More than nearly 160 million Americans 
voted--more than ever before and in the middle of a pandemic.
  I still remember those voters in the primary in Wisconsin standing in 
makeshift garbage bags with makeshift masks over their faces in the 
middle of a rainstorm, in the middle of a pandemic, standing in line to 
vote. And in an election that the Trump Department of Homeland Security 
declared was the most secure in our history, the American people 
elected, yes, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
  But in the wake of that historic election, there has been a 
pervasive, coordinated, and overwhelming effort to undermine the 
freedoms of voting in future elections, with over 400 bills introduced 
in legislatures across the country. Twenty-two laws to restrict voting 
have been enacted in 14 States, and 31 more bills to roll back the 
right to vote have passed at least 1 chamber of a State legislature.
  As Reverend Warnock put it in this Chamber in his maiden speech as 
Senator, ``Some people don't want some people to vote.'' That is what 
is going on here.
  The new law in Georgia makes it harder to request mail-in ballots, 
drastically limits ballot drop boxes, and makes it a crime to hand 
water and food to voters waiting in line to cast their ballots, when in 
previous elections, Georgians have stood in line for up to 10 hours to 
vote.
  One of the new Montana laws ended same-day registration on election 
day after it had been in practice in the State for 15 years, and 
Senator Tester is joining me in trying to bring this practice across--
when we introduced that bill--across the Nation.
  In the weeks ahead, similar bills are expected to pass in even more 
States, including Texas, where the Governor has promised to call the 
legislature into special session to pass a bill to restrict voting that 
was blocked at the end of regular session thanks to the heroic efforts 
of Democrats in the Texas State Legislature who blessed us with their 
presence just last week.
  These are not empty threats; they are real efforts to disenfranchise 
regular Americans from voting--senior citizens, people with 
disabilities, people who can't stand in line for 10 hours just to wait 
to vote.
  In the face of these efforts to roll back voting rights in so many 
States, the For the People Act is about setting basic national 
standards to make sure that all voters in this country can vote legally 
in the way that works for them, regardless of which ZIP Code they live 
in, regardless of whether they live in a big city or in a suburb or out 
in a small town in western Minnesota. It is about reducing the power of 
Big Money in our elections by ending secret spending by billionaires 
and special interests. It is about making anti-corruption reforms to 
ensure that politicians work for the people, not for themselves.
  Republicans have said that this bill is designed to provide a 
political advantage, but, as a former Republican Commissioner of the 
Federal Election Commission who chaired under George Bush, Trevor 
Potter, has said in explaining his support for this bill--and he 
appeared as a witness in my hearing for this bill--he said:

       This bill does not give power to any particular party over 
     another; it gives power back to the voters.


[[Page S4684]]


  Giving power back to the voters is exactly what we need.
  There is an amplified attack on the right to vote this year, but we 
have seen serious efforts to restrict voting rights since the Supreme 
Court gutted the Voting Rights Act 8 years ago. The Voting Rights Act 
of 1965 marked the cornerstone achievement to the civil rights movement 
and became a law because of the tireless work of people like John Lewis 
who put their lives on the line to secure voting rights for all. Fifty-
six years later, we are still fighting that battle. At the same time, 
we haven't had meaningful campaign finance or ethics reform.
  Our democracy desperately needs the proposals in this bill. And guess 
what. The American people agree. Yes, this bill is bipartisan, except 
right here in this place. It is bipartisan because one poll released 
recently found that 78 percent of Americans, including 63 percent of 
Republicans, support making early in-person voting available for at 
least 2 weeks before election day. That is a proposal in our original 
For the People, and it is in the managers' amendment that we are voting 
for cloture on, and it is in Senator Manchin's proposal.
  Another poll found that 83 percent of likely voters support public 
disclosure of contributions to groups involved in elections--also the 
DISCLOSE Act in all three proposals. Yet some of my Republican 
colleagues want to limit disclosures. By the way, disclosures were 
championed by Justice Scalia. Yet what happened in our committee 
hearing on this, our markup? Republicans filed amendment after 
amendment to gut those provisions of the bill.
  So while they make claims--my friends on the other side of the 
aisle--that this isn't popular, it is just not true. They claim it is 
not bipartisan. It is just not true. The bill contains nine bipartisan 
bills, including the Honest Ads Act, which I first introduced with 
Senator John McCain and Senator Warner, and now Senator Lindsay Graham 
took up that cause. Our provision--that provision would finally hold 
the social media companies accountable to make sure that there are 
disclaimers and disclosures on political ads.
  There is the work that I have done with Senator Lankford and with 
you, Madam President, when you were in the Senate to make sure we have 
backup paper ballots. We still have eight States that don't have backup 
paper ballots. That provision is in this bill.
  Many of the bill's provisions have already been adopted in red, blue, 
and purple States and have the support of Governors and election 
officials from both parties.
  Twenty-one States have same-day voter registration, including red 
States like Idaho, Wyoming, and Iowa. That is great, but our question 
should be, why don't all 50 States have it, especially when the 
Constitution of the United States specifically says that Congress can 
make and alter rules for Federal elections? It is as clear as the words 
on the page. Twenty States have automatic voter registration laws, 
including Alaska, Georgia, and West Virginia. Forty-five States allowed 
all voters to vote by mail in the 2020 election, and 44 States have 
early voting.
  What this bill does is takes the best of the best and puts in place 
minimum standards so that no matter what State you call home, you have 
access to the ballot box. That is why Senator Merkley has worked so 
hard on this legislation. That is why Senator Schumer made this bill 
Senate file No. 1.
  The bill that we are voting to advance includes changes that directly 
respond to concerns about implementation from both Democratic and 
Republican States and local officials. We heard those concerns, and the 
Democrats on the Rules Committee, which included Senator Warner and 
Senator King--we worked on that managers' amendment and made it easier 
for rural areas, extended the time system, and got at their concerns. 
And then Senator Manchin has come up with more ideas and more things we 
can do to make the bill strong.
  We heard from election officials that requiring States to accept 
mail-in ballots for too long after election day would delay them from 
certifying the results, so we shortened the window.
  I could go on and on and on. In good faith, we have worked to make 
this bill work for America, and now it is time to allow for debate on 
this bill.
  Our Republican friends on the other side of the aisle say this bill--
this is one thing Senator McConnell would say in the hearing--that it 
would cause chaos. I say this: Chaos is a 5-hour wait to vote. Senior 
citizens standing in the hot Sun for 5 hours, for 10 hours--that is 
chaos. Chaos is purging eligible voters from voter rolls and modern-day 
poll taxes and one ballot box for a county of 5 million people, which 
is exactly what they did in Harris County, TX. That is exactly what is 
happening in that State right now. Chaos is voters in Wisconsin waiting 
in line to vote for hours in the rain in their homemade masks and 
plastic garbage bags. The angry mob on January 6 that came into this 
very Chamber, that spray painted the columns, that attacked police 
officers, that injured people left and right--that is chaos.
  As I said from the stage on Inauguration Day under that bright blue 
sky where you could still see the spray paint at the bottom of those 
columns and the makeshift windows we had in place--I said this: This is 
the day our democracy picks itself up, brushes off the dust, and does 
what America always does: goes forward as a Nation under God, with 
liberty and justice for all. We cannot do that if Americans are 
disenfranchised, if they are not part of our democracy.
  Republicans have sadly made it clear that this is not legislation 
they are willing to negotiate or even debate. They won't even give it a 
week. They won't even give it a few days. Just last week, they held a 
press conference to tell the American people that they don't believe 
Congress should act to protect the right to vote or get rid of secret 
money in our elections. So, honestly, I would love to get support from 
the other side of the aisle, but we have to be honest--I don't expect 
we are going to get it.
  So, my Republican colleagues, this is not the end of the line for 
this bill. This is not the end of the line. This is only the beginning 
because if you have your way, those voters won't even be at the end of 
the line. They are not going to be able to vote.
  In the Rules Committee, we will be holding a series of hearings--not 
just one hearing, a series of hearings--and we are taking it on the 
road for the first time in a long time. We are going to Georgia and 
holding a field hearing there so we can hear firsthand from people in 
the State on what is happening and why we must carry out the 
constitutional duty in this Chamber to act.
  I urge my Republican colleagues to recognize the work being done in 
States to restrict the freedom of Americans to exercise their sacred 
right to vote. Our Nation was founded on the ideals of democracy, and 
we have seen for ourselves in this building how we can never take it 
for granted.
  We can't let State legislatures get to pick and choose who votes and 
what votes get counted. That is not how democracy works. I urge all of 
my colleagues to do what the American people are asking us to do and to 
do what is right. Vote today to bring us closer to passing legislation 
to strengthen our democracy. We can't wait in line, and we can't make 
the people of America wait in line. The time to do this is now.
  I yield the floor.
  The VICE PRESIDENT. The majority leader.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, first, let me thank so many of my 
colleagues, including our chair of Rules, the Senator from Minnesota; 
our lead sponsor on this bill, Senator Merkley; and so many others who 
have done so much on this legislation.
  Now, what makes a democracy a democracy? It is the right of citizens 
to choose their own leader; to forge their own destiny, rather than 
have it decided for them; the right to vote; the right that generations 
of Americans have marched and protested to achieve; women who reached 
for the ballot; and marchers who were bloodied on a bridge in Selma; 
the right that generations of American soldiers fought and died to 
defend, buried now in patriot graves from Normandy to Gettysburg.
  And, right now, it is a fact--a fact--that voting rights are under 
assault in America in a way that we have not seen in many, many 
decades. Republican State legislatures are limiting polling hours, 
locations, and ballot

[[Page S4685]]

drop boxes, raising new ID barriers for students, making it a crime to 
give food and water to voters in line, and in States like Texas, trying 
to move Sunday voting hours so it is harder for Black churchgoers to go 
to the polls after services.
  It is the most sweeping voter suppression effort in at least 80 
years, targeting all the ways that historically disenfranchised 
voters--Black and Brown Americans, students, the working poor--access 
the ballot.
  We can disagree about solutions to this problem, about which policies 
might be more effective, but we should all agree this is a problem. We 
should all agree that protecting voting rights is worthy of debate, and 
that is what this next vote is about. Should the U.S. Senate even 
debate--even debate--how to protect the voting rights of our citizens?
  The story of American democracy is full of contradictions and halting 
progress. At the time of our Constitution's ratification, you had to 
be, in most States, a White, male, Protestant landowner to vote. How 
many in this Chamber--how many of us would have been able to 
participate in those first elections?
  The truth is, many of us, particularly on our side of the aisle, 
would not have been able to vote. But ever since the early days of the 
Republic, Americans launched mighty movements, fought a bloody civil 
war, and, yes, passed Federal election laws to expand the franchise 
until there were no more boundaries.
  Are we in a backslide here in the 21st century? Are we going to let 
reactionary State legislatures drag us back into the muck of voter 
suppression? Are we going to let the most dishonest President in 
history continue to poison our democracy from the inside or will we 
stand up to defend what generations of Americans have organized, 
marched for, and died for--the sacred, sacred right to vote, the thing 
that makes a democracy a democracy.
  I plead with my Republican colleagues. Stand up, my Republican 
colleagues. Stand up to a man who has lied. We all know he has lied. 
You know he has lied about our elections. Do not let this man lead you 
around by the nose and do permanent damage to our democracy. At least 
have the decency and honor to let this Chamber debate. I urge my 
colleagues to vote yes.
  I yield the floor.


                             Cloture Motion

  The VICE PRESIDENT. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the 
Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
  The bill clerk read as follows

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to 
     proceed to Calendar No. 77, S. 2093, a bill to expand 
     Americans' access to the ballot box, reduce the influence of 
     big money in politics, strengthen ethics rules for public 
     servants, and implement other anti-corruption measures for 
     the purpose of fortifying our democracy, and for other 
     purposes.
         Charles E. Schumer, Jeff Merkley, Amy Klobuchar, Jacky 
           Rosen, Sheldon Whitehouse, Richard J. Durbin, Jon 
           Ossoff, Tammy Baldwin, Debbie Stabenow, Brian Schatz, 
           Sherrod Brown, Ron Wyden, Elizabeth Warren, Raphael 
           Warnock, Benjamin L. Cardin, Edward J. Markey, Bernard 
           Sanders.

  The VICE PRESIDENT. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum call 
has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the 
motion to proceed on S. 2093, a bill to expand Americans' access to the 
ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics, strengthen 
ethics rules for public servants, and implement other anti-corruption 
measures for the purpose of fortifying our democracy, and for other 
purposes, shall be brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 50, nays 50, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 246 Leg.]

                                YEAS--50

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Coons
     Cortez Masto
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Gillibrand
     Hassan
     Heinrich
     Hickenlooper
     Hirono
     Kaine
     Kelly
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Lujan
     Manchin
     Markey
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Murphy
     Murray
     Ossoff
     Padilla
     Peters
     Reed
     Rosen
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Sinema
     Smith
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Warnock
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--50

     Barrasso
     Blackburn
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Braun
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Collins
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Cramer
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hagerty
     Hawley
     Hoeven
     Hyde-Smith
     Inhofe
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Lankford
     Lee
     Lummis
     Marshall
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Portman
     Risch
     Romney
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott (FL)
     Scott (SC)
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Tuberville
     Wicker
     Young
  The VICE PRESIDENT. On this vote, the yeas are 50, the nays are 50.
  Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn not having voted 
in the affirmative, the motion is rejected.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President.
  The VICE PRESIDENT. Mr. Majority Leader.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I want to be clear about what just 
happened on the Senate floor. Every single Senate Republican just voted 
against starting debate--starting debate--on legislation to protect 
Americans' voting rights. Once again, the Senate Republican minority 
has launched a partisan blockade of a pressing issue here in the U.S. 
Senate, an issue no less fundamental than the right to vote.
  I have laid out the facts for weeks. Republican State legislatures 
across the country are engaged in the most sweeping voter suppression 
in 80 years, capitalizing on and catalyzed by Donald Trump's Big Lie. 
These State governments are making it harder for younger, poorer, 
urban, and non-White Americans to vote.
  Earlier today, the Republican leader told reporters that ``regardless 
of what may be happening in some States, there's no rationale for 
Federal intervention.'' The Republican leader flatly stated that no 
matter what the States do to undermine our democracy--voter suppression 
laws, phony audits, partisan takeovers of the local election boards--
the Senate should not act.
  My colleagues, if Senators 60 years ago held that the Federal 
Government should never intervene to protect voting rights, this body 
would have never passed the Voting Rights Act. The Republican leader 
uses the language and the logic of the southern Senators in the 1960s 
who defended States' rights, and it is an indefensible position for any 
Senator--any Senator--let alone the minority leader, to hold. Yet that 
was the reason given for why Republicans voted in lockstep today: 
Regardless of what may be happening in some States, there is no 
rationale for Federal intervention.
  That is both ridiculous and awful. All we wanted to do here on the 
floor was to bring up the issue of voting rights and debate how to 
combat these vicious, oftentimes discriminatory voting restrictions, 
and today, every single Democratic Senator stood together in the fight 
to protect the right to vote in America. The Democratic Party in the 
Senate will always stand united to defend our democracy.
  I spoke with President Biden earlier this afternoon as well. He has 
been unshakeable in his support of S. 1, and I want to thank the 
President and the Vice President for their efforts. But regrettably--
regrettably--our efforts were met by the unanimous opposition of the 
Senate minority.
  Once again, Senate Republicans have signed their names in the ledger 
of history alongside Donald Trump, the Big Lie, and voter suppression, 
to their enduring disgrace. This vote, I am ashamed to say, is further 
evidence that voter suppression has become part of the official 
platform of the Republican Party.
  Now, Republican Senators may have prevented us from having a debate 
on voting rights today, but I want to be very clear about one thing: 
The fight to protect voting rights is not over, by no means. In the 
fight for voting rights, this vote was the starting gun, not the finish 
line. Let me say that again. In the fight for voting rights, this vote 
was the starting gun, not the finish line.
  As many have noted, including my friend Senator Warnock this morning,

[[Page S4686]]

when John Lewis was about to cross that bridge in Selma, he didn't know 
what waited for him on the other side. He didn't know how long his 
march would be, and his ultimate success was never guaranteed, but he 
started down that bridge anyway. Today, Democrats started our march to 
defend the voting rights of all Americans. It could be a long march, 
but it is one we are going to make.
  Today, we made progress. For the first time in this Congress, we got 
all 50 Democrats unified behind moving forward on a strong and 
comprehensive voting rights bill. And make no mistake about it, it will 
not be the last time that voting rights comes up for a debate in the 
Senate.
  Republicans may want to avoid the topic, hoping that their party's 
efforts to suppress votes and defend the Big Lie will go unnoticed. 
Democrats will not allow that. Democrats will never let this voter 
suppression be swept under the rug.
  We have several serious options for how to reconsider this issue and 
advance legislation to combat voter suppression. We are going to 
explore every last one of our options. We have to. Voting rights are 
too important, too fundamental. This concerns the very core of our 
democracy and what we are about as a nation, so we will not let it go. 
We will not let it die. This voter suppression cannot stand, and we are 
going to work tirelessly to see that it does not stand.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The VICE PRESIDENT. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Peters). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                           U.S. Supreme Court

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am delighted to follow the majority 
leader and his strong remarks about the beginning of the process of 
passing S. 1, not only to deal with the question of voting rights but 
to deal with the question of the dark money plague that is infesting 
our democracy and taking the power over decision making in this body 
and in this building away from regular people and putting it into the 
hands of not only special interests but of special interests who are 
happy to operate in secret.
  One of the ways in which this power has been deployed has been with 
respect to the judicial branch of government. And I am here now for my 
third speech in ``The Scheme'' series to draw attention to this 
problem.
  In the first two ``Scheme'' speeches, I described the corporate power 
game plan offered by lawyer Lewis Powell to the U.S. Chamber of 
Commerce and the subsequent effectuation of that game plan by Justice 
Lewis Powell, appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court 2 months--2 months--
after his secret corporate power game plan went to the chamber. The 
execution of the Powell plan was one of three converging threads that 
led to the scheme to capture the Court.
  The Powell plan, thread one, was a political response recommended for 
America's traditional corporate elite, which had been traumatized by 
the social upheaval of the 1960s. The second thread, thread two, was a 
separate strain of American ire that had been simmering on our 
society's fringe for many decades. The extremists on this simmering 
fringe were traumatized by things long accepted as mainstream by most 
Americans.
  The fringe resentments shifted with the varying tides of news and 
events but regularly boiled over against several targets. One was the 
role of Jewish people in finance, the press, Hollywood, and--after 
FDR--in government. Another was the improving economic and social 
condition of minorities. Another was the arrival of immigrants, 
particularly non-European immigrants; but backlash to immigration from 
Ireland and Italy had been profound, as my home State experienced back 
under the Know-Nothings. Other resentments sprang from imaginary 
events, conspiracy theory delusions, and crackpot ideas.
  This persistent strain along the American fringe was chronicled in 
Pulitzer Prize-winning Richard Hofstadter's 1964 essay, ``The Paranoid 
Style in American Politics,'' later a popular book. This latent strain 
of paranoid extremism showed itself in groups like the John Birch 
Society, which never gained social or political acceptance. It was fed 
and nurtured by a handful of rightwing foundations set up by a few 
colossally rich and politically irate and frustrated families. It 
boiled up in the Presidential campaign of Senator Barry Goldwater, 
which ended in one of the worst landslide defeats in American history. 
It drove the occasional aspirations of the Libertarian Party, whose 
extremist platform suffered predictable but humiliating crushings at 
the polls. All of this defeat, over all of these decades, concentrated 
the strain, isolated its most persistent and determined elements, and 
added to it an emotional payload of resentment.
  One target of this fringe was the existence of government regulation. 
The Libertarian Party, in 1980, ran on a platform of ending Social 
Security, ending Medicare, closing the post office, undoing the 
American highway program, stopping public education, and eliminating 
all our public regulatory agencies--even the Federal Aviation 
Administration that keeps planes from bumping into each other.
  This platform barely attracted 1 percent of the vote, an unsurprising 
but humiliating crushing. That humiliating crushing was suffered by 
David Koch, Libertarian Party candidate for Vice President, and the 
party's major funder. The Koch family is spectacularly, unimaginably 
rich. Privately held Koch Industries pours hundreds of millions of 
dollars into their pockets every year. The family annual income exceeds 
most families' dreams of lifetime wealth. The Kochs have social 
ambition, putting their names on educational TV programs, art centers, 
and university buildings. They are not the sort of people who take 
humiliation well. They are also not stupid, and the family has long and 
sometimes dark international experience, including odious efforts in 
previous decades to build factories for evil regimes.
  Made confident by the arrogance of wealth, driven by extremist 
ideology, spurred by the resentment of humiliating political rejection, 
experienced in the devious ways of the international world, steeped in 
the corporate skills of long-term planning and patient execution, and 
with unlimited resources to indulge themselves, the Koch brothers, 
Charles and David, were uniquely positioned to take this longstanding, 
latent, extremist fringe and amplify it and direct it, by plan, in 
secret, and over decades if need be.
  If front groups needed to be set up, so be it; subsidiaries were a 
familiar concept. If identities needed to be laundered off money they 
gave, so be it; telling lawyers to find or design a way to do that was 
familiar. If fringe groups needed to be coordinated to work 
collectively with each other, so be it; organizing with others through 
trade associations and lobbying groups was familiar activity. And if 
money needed to be spent, well, so be it; money was no object, and 
getting people to do things for you for money is a familiar practice of 
the very rich.

  The nurture and guidance of the Kochs breathed new strength and 
life--and deregulatory purpose--into the nativist far-right fringe. 
Meanwhile, in the regulatory arena, waited the third of the three 
threads. Major corporate interests--from the railroads first to banks, 
chemical companies, and polluting industries--had assembled, over time, 
a quietly powerful presence to help them in administrative Agencies; to 
make sure that regulation was friendly to business, and, even more than 
that, under the right circumstances, with the right people and 
pressures, could be turned to advantage of the regulated industry.
  In administrative hearings and rulemakings, regulated industries 
regularly outgunned public interest groups. Law firms dedicated to this 
lucrative corporate regulatory practice sprouted. Gleaming stables were 
kept of well-tended professional witnesses who could reliably spout the 
corporate line in Agency proceedings.
  Companies played the long game in these regulatory Agencies, of 
accreting minor victories, step-by-step, inch-by-inch, but that 
together summed up to major gains. Many of these gains were deeply 
buried in the weeds of arcane

[[Page S4687]]

policy and technical detail, inscrutable to the general media and so 
invisible to the general public.
  Revolving doors spun between regulatory Commissions and industry, so 
that Agency decision makers often reflected the values, priorities and 
interests of the regulated industry, not the general public. At the 
extreme, the regulatory Agency became servant to the industry master--a 
phenomenon well known and well documented as regulatory capture. I 
wrote a separate book on this, ``Captured,'' so I won't dwell on it at 
great length here. It is enough to note that regulatory capture is so 
common that it has been a robust field of academic research and writing 
now for decades, both in economics and in administrative law.
  So these three socioeconomic strands converged. America's regular 
corporate elite took up the Powell memo strategy of emboldened 
political engagement, seeking to reclaim their power and restrain the 
unwelcome changes roiling American society. The extremists of great 
wealth brought to the rightwing fringe and its motley array of 
extremist groups an unprecedented strategic discipline, unlimited 
resources, and the tactics of hard-edged corporate organization. The 
regulatory capture apparatus was there for the hiring, eager to pursue 
the new prospects offered by big industries and eccentric billionaires. 
Out of this slumgullion of immense wealth, extreme political ambition, 
and expertise at regulatory capture, how long would it take for people 
to start thinking about capturing not just regulatory Agencies but 
courts--indeed the U.S. Supreme Court?
  As it turned out, not long. The Court had made itself a target of the 
rightwing. Brown v. Board of Education provoked massive resistance 
across the South out to defend segregated public schools. Roe v. Wade 
provoked, as it still provokes, the religious right. So did Engel v. 
Vitale, restricting prayer in schools. Griswold v. Connecticut offended 
those upset by the sixties sexual revolution. Miranda v. Arizona, Mapp 
v. Ohio, and Gideon v. Wainwright offended the tough-on-crime crowd. To 
the far right, the Supreme Court offered a bounty of things to hate. 
Even without the Powell Memo's corporate plan of ``exploiting judicial 
action'' ``with an activist-minded Supreme Court,'' the Court would 
likely have been an irresistible target.
  But with that plan and that recommendation, it began to come 
together. And so the scheme was launched, fed by three political 
tributaries: one, the corporate plan in Lewis Powell's memo to the 
Chamber; two, the resurgent Koch-powered, far-right fringe; and three, 
the eager, available mercenaries of regulatory capture.
  The effort to capture the Court has likely been the most effectual 
deployment of rightwing and corporate resources into our common 
American political life, and America is now a very different place as a 
result of it. Much of it, like the proverbial frog in the proverbial 
pot, we have even gotten used to, and we accept it now as normal, when 
it isn't.
  To be continued.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, I rise today to celebrate a win for the 
country. Today, the United States rightfully failed to advance the 
``Corrupt Politicians Act,'' meaning that this bill will not come to 
the Senate floor for a final vote. This is a huge win for the citizens 
of the United States. This is a huge win for democracy, and it is a 
huge win for the integrity of our elections.
  The ``Corrupt Politicians Act'' is the most dangerous legislation we 
considered in the Senate in the 9 years I served in this body. It is an 
attempt by Senate Democrats at a brazen power grab. It is an attempt by 
Democrats to federalize elections and to ensure that Democrats won't 
lose control for the next 100 years.
  This bill isn't about protecting the right to vote. It is precisely 
the opposite. It is about taking away the right to vote from the 
citizens and giving it instead to the corrupt politicians in Washington 
who want to stay in power.
  The ``Corrupt Politicians Act'' would strike down virtually every 
commonsense voter integrity law adopted by States across the country. 
Thirty-six States have adopted voter ID laws, a reasonable and 
commonsense step to protect the integrity of elections that over 70 
percent of Americans support and over 60 percent of African Americans 
support. In fact, recent polling now shows support for voter ID at over 
80 percent, thanks, no doubt, to the relentless assault to voter ID 
mounted by Senate Democrats. The ``Corrupt Politicians Act'' would 
repeal the vast majority of these voter ID laws.
  Likewise, 31 States prohibit ballot harvesting, the corrupt practice 
of paying political operatives to collect other people's ballots. What 
would the ``Corrupt Politicians Act'' do? It would strike down all of 
those laws in 31 States and would mandate ballot harvesting nationwide. 
It would mean that paid political operatives from the Democratic 
National Committee could go to nursing homes and collect votes--some of 
those votes, no doubt, from individuals who may be no longer competent 
to make a decision. The reason 31 States have acted to ban ballot 
harvesting is it invites voter fraud. An unscrupulous operative can 
fill out the ballot for a senior citizen who no longer has the capacity 
to make a decision, and if that senior citizen has the temerity to vote 
in a way the operative doesn't like, there is nothing to prevent the 
operative from throwing that ballot in the mail and simply not sending 
it in, only sending in the ballots that happen to comply with their own 
political preference. If you care even one whit about election 
integrity, striking down every prohibition on ballot harvesting is 
precisely the wrong step to take.
  The ``Corrupt Politicians Act'' would also automatically register to 
vote anyone who comes in contact with the government. So if you get a 
welfare check, you get an unemployment check, you get a driver's 
license, you go to a State college or State university, you are 
automatically registered to vote. What is the problem with that? The 
problem with that, as the authors of the bill know, is that would 
register millions of illegal aliens to vote. Millions of illegal aliens 
come into contact with the government, and automatic registration is 
designed to register millions of illegal aliens.
  How do we know this? We know this, among other things, because the 
bill explicitly immunizes the State officials who would be registering 
illegal aliens to vote. It grants a safe harbor and says, when you 
illegally register illegal aliens, you will have no liability. If you 
care about the integrity of elections, registering millions of illegal 
aliens to dilute and steal the votes of legal American citizens is 
exactly the opposite way to go.
  Not only that, many States have reasonable restrictions on felons and 
on criminals voting. What does the ``Corrupt Politicians Act'' do? It 
strikes all of those down and instead mandates that all felons should 
be allowed to vote--murderers, rapists, child molesters all allowed to 
vote because Democrats have made the cynical calculation that if 
millions of illegal aliens are allowed to vote and millions of 
criminals and felons are allowed to vote, that those individuals are 
likely to vote Democrat and Democrats want to stay in power.
  The bill also prevents States from correcting voter rolls and from 
removing people who passed away. You can't go in when someone's dead 
and say, you know, dead people shouldn't be voting. No, this bill 
mandates: Leave the dead people on the rolls--another step designed to 
invite fraud.
  Moreover, the ``Corrupt Politicians Act'' is welfare for politicians. 
This bill is designed to give hundreds of millions of dollars every 
year to corrupt incumbent politicians to keep them in power. It 
matches, for contributions under $200, 6 to 1 Federal funds so that the 
Members of this body would receive, collectively, over a billion 
dollars in Federal funds to stay in power. That is great if you are a 
corrupt politician who wants to prevent a challenger from ever 
defeating you. And if you want to prevent the voters from making a 
different choice, then you flood

[[Page S4688]]

them with Federal funds to make it so you can't beat corrupt 
incumbents, but that is not what you do if you want to protect the 
right to vote.

  This bill is brazen. It is so brazen that the joke really is admitted 
in one provision of the bill. The Federal Election Commission was 
created in the wake of Watergate, designed to protect integrity in our 
elections. It was, from the beginning, designed to be bipartisan--three 
Republicans, three Democrats--because Congress recognized that a 
partisan Federal Election Commission would be deeply injurious to our 
democracy, that to have a Federal Election Commission with any 
integrity, it needed to be bipartisan, which means you needed a 
bipartisan majority to act in order to ensure that neither party 
weaponizes the Federal election laws.
  What does the ``Corrupt Politicians Act'' do? It turns the Federal 
Election Commission into a partisan body, shifts it from three 
Republicans and three Democrats to three Democrats and two Republicans. 
It turns it into an arm of the Democratic Senate Committee, in effect. 
Nothing in this bill is as cynical as that provision. We are in a 50-50 
Senate. We have close elections in this race.
  The Presiding Officer is a sophisticated political player. I want you 
to ask for a second, in a close election, in the weeks before the 
election, if the Senate majority leader had the ability to launch 
investigations from the Federal Election Commission, to bring 
prosecutions from the Federal Election Commission to sue the political 
opponents of the majority, how much would that invite abuse?
  I understand right now Democrats are in power of both Houses of 
Congress and the White House. Power can be intoxicating. But I do want 
to point out it wasn't that long ago that the Presiding Officer and I 
were both in this body--4 years ago--when there was a Republican 
President and a Republican House and a Republican Senate. You didn't 
see the Republican majority try anything as brazen as the ``Corrupt 
Politicians Act.'' You didn't see a Republican majority trying to rig 
the game, trying to change the rules so that Republicans could never be 
defeated in the next election. You didn't see the Republican majority 
trying to turn the Federal Election Commission into a partisan weapon.
  I ask you, what level of comfort would you have as an elected 
Democrat if Mitch McConnell had control of the Federal Election 
Commission, if it were Republican partisan agents? I think you would be 
entirely justified in being concerned that it would be used as a 
political weapon to hurt you. Your last election was a relatively close 
election. Imagine 2 weeks before the election if a Republican Federal 
Election Commission had mounted a sweeping investigation in the massive 
campaign finance violations by the incumbent Senator who happened to be 
of the party that was out of power. You would rightly feel that it was 
grotesquely unfair; yet that is what every Senate Democrat just voted 
to create.
  You know, the most pernicious aspect of this bill has been the racial 
demagoguery that it has invited. We have heard the Senate majority 
leader invoke, in booming terms, specters from our sorry history of 
racial discrimination in the past. The Senate majority leader has used 
the phrase ``Jim Crow 2.0'' repeatedly--as has the President of the 
United States, as has the Vice President of the United States--
deliberately inflaming racial tensions, suggesting that laws, 
commonsense voter integrity laws in States like Georgia and Texas, 
things like requiring voter ID or requiring signature verification on 
absentee ballots, are somehow a modern manifestation of Jim Crow. That 
is a grotesque lie.
  The majority leader knows that. The President of the United States 
knows that. The Vice President of the United States knows--they know 
they are lying. But, ironically, they inadvertently said something that 
is accurate about this piece of legislation. Jim Crow legislation was 
grotesque and ugly. It was legislation that was drafted, without 
exception, by Democratic politicians. Jim Crow was written by 
Democratic politicians, and its purpose, when the Jim Crow laws were 
written, were to prevent the voters from ever voting out of office 
Democratic politicians. It is one of the ugliest chapters of our 
Nation's history. And thankfully, we repudiated Jim Crow.
  Well, the majority leader used the phrase ``Jim Crow 2.0,'' and 
inadvertently, he is right, but not about what he is describing. He is 
right about the ``Corrupt Politicians Act.'' The ``Corrupt Politicians 
Act'' follows the exact same pattern that Jim Crow did. It is partisan 
legislation, written by elected Democrats, designed to keep elected 
Democrats in office and to steal the right to vote from the citizenry 
to decide on somebody else. Democracy is too important for that.
  And the kind of cynical racial demagoguery that we have seen around 
this bill, while ignoring the substance of it--and I will point out the 
media has been eager to ignore the substance of it. The media says: 
Should we protect the right to vote? Yes, we should protect the right 
to vote.
  This bill takes away your right to vote. This bill is designed to 
prevent the voters from choosing to throw the bums out--the most 
fundamental right of any voter to throw the bums out, whether they are 
one side or the other side. We the people have sovereignty, and this 
bill, the ``Corrupt Politicians Act'' was designed to take that power 
from the people and give it to the politicians in Washington.
  So today was a victory. It was a victory for the American people. It 
was a victory for democracy. It was a victory for the Constitution. And 
it was a victory for the rule of law.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Hassan). The Senator from New York.


                   Unanimous Consent Request--S. 1520

  Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Madam President, I rise today for the 13th time to 
call for every Senator to have the opportunity to vote on a 
commonsense, bipartisan bill, the Military Justice Improvement and 
Increasing Prevention Act.
  This bill would ensure that members of our military would get the 
justice and the justice system that their sacrifices deserve. We do not 
have time to delay. I began calling for a floor vote on this bill on 
May 24. That is 29 days ago. Since then, it is estimated that 1,624 
servicemembers will have been raped or sexually assaulted. More will 
have been victims of other serious crimes.
  Many of them will feel that there is no point in even reporting the 
crime because they have no faith in the current military justice 
system. That is because right now, if a servicemember reports a crime, 
the case and their fate will be put into a commander's hands.
  This bill argues, instead, that our servicemembers who are victims of 
serious crimes or who are accused of serious crimes should have those 
cases reviewed by an impartial, trained, military prosecutor. It does 
not say that commanders are removed from their responsibility with 
regard to the military justice system. It doesn't say that commanders 
are relieved of their responsibility of ensuring good order and 
discipline. Under this bill, commanders will still have the full array 
of tools to implement good order and discipline--counseling, 
restriction, confinement, protective orders, rank reduction, 
nonjudicial punishment, summary court-martial, and even special court-
martial. None of these change under the law.
  In addition, under today's system, only 3 percent of commanders have 
the right to do convening authority for general court-martial. So the 
truth is, it is a small number of commanders who will be even affected 
by this legislation. But I can promise you, the view from the 
servicemembers will be significant because they will now see that if 
they are someone who has been assaulted or harassed or had any justice 
need, that the person reviewing the case would be highly trained and 
unbiased. And if you are a Black or Brown servicemember who is 
disproportionately punished under the current system, you would know 
that the decision maker was impartial, unbiased, and highly trained. 
This change is something that will help both victims of sexual assault 
and also defendants' rights.
  For serious crimes, we need both pieces of this puzzle, and this bill 
provides both. It will still allow commanders to take the 
administrative steps to send a message to their troops about what is or 
is not tolerated, and 97 percent of them have to do that

[[Page S4689]]

every day without having convening authority for general court-martial. 
It will allow for victims and their families to get real justice.
  The Military Justice Improvement and Increasing Prevention Act will 
deliver the results that our servicemembers and their families deserve 
without compromising command authority. That is what our allies have 
said. The UK, Germany, Israel, Australia, the Netherlands, and Canada 
have all testified to our body in various hearings and various 
committees that they saw no diminution in command control and no 
diminution in the ability to prepare and train troops.
  The truth is that this is a reform whose time has come, and every 
minute we delay, we are not standing by our servicemembers. It is a 
change that has been supported by veterans groups across the country. 
Whether it is the Iraq and Afghanistan association of veterans, whether 
it is the Vietnam veterans association, whether it is the Foreign 
Legion or the Veterans of Foreign Wars, military veterans support this 
bill.
  This is a change whose time has come, and I request that we have a 
floor vote to decide this.
  Sixty-six Senators on a bipartisan basis support this. The committee 
has been addressing this issue for 8 years. We have already passed 250 
smaller reforms, none of which has had a dent on the problem. It is 
time to do the reform that survivors have asked for and that veterans 
organizations support.
  I ask unanimous consent that at a time to be determined by the 
majority leader in consultation with the Republican leader, the Senate 
Armed Services Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 
1520 and the Senate proceed to its consideration; that there be 2 hours 
for debate equally divided in the usual form; and that upon the use or 
yielding back of that time, the Senate vote on the bill with no 
intervening action or debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. REED. Madam President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. REED. Madam President, I would like to thank my colleague from 
New York for her work to move this issue forward. But once again, I 
would object to the request for the reasons I have previously stated.
  In addition, today the ranking member of the committee, Senator 
Inhofe, released the written views of each member of the Joint Chiefs 
of Staff, which he had requested on Senator Gillibrand's proposed 
legislation.
  I understand that some in our body might discount these views of 
senior military leadership, and that is their prerogative. But I do 
believe it is important that their voices be part of the public 
discourse. They have dedicated their lives to the service of this 
Nation. They have led troops in combat. They have experienced all of 
the issues that face commanders and face subordinates. They have a 
unique, I think, position within the system. In addition, the military 
will have to implement whatever system Congress devises, and it will 
require their expertise and skill.
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the 
Record a letter from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to 
Senator Inhofe
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                      Chairman of the Joint Chiefs


                                                     of Staff,

                                                   Washington, DC.
     Hon. James M. Inhofe,
     U.S. Senate,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Inhofe: Thank you for your continued support 
     and sincere interest in assessing the impact of proposed 
     legislation on the Armed Forces. As I understand the scope of 
     the ``Military Justice Improvement and Increasing Prevention 
     Act of 2021,'' the draft bill would remove the commander from 
     decisions for all non-military offenses and felony cases 
     punishable by one year or more, including the following: 
     prohibited activities with military recruits or trainees by a 
     person in position of special trust: wrongful broadcast or 
     distribution of intimate visual images: murder; manslaughter: 
     death or injury of an unborn child; child endangerment; rape 
     and sexual assault; mails: deposit of obscene matter; rape 
     and sexual assault of a child; other sexual misconduct; 
     larceny and wrongful appropriation; fraudulent use or credit 
     cards, debit cards, and other access devices; false pretenses 
     to obtain services; robbery; frauds against the United 
     States; bribery; graft; kidnapping; arson, burning properly 
     with intent to defraud; extortion; aggravated assault; 
     assault with intent to commit murder, voluntary manslaughter, 
     rape, sexual assault, rape of a child, sexual assault of a 
     child, robbery, arson, burglary, or kidnapping; maiming; 
     domestic violence; stalking; perjury; subordination of 
     perjury; obstructing justice; misprision or serious offense; 
     wrongful refusal to testify; prevention or authorized seizure 
     of property; noncompliance with procedural rules; wrongful 
     interference with adverse administrative proceeding; and 
     retaliation,
       The Uniform Code of Military Justice exists to provide 
     justice and to maintain good order and discipline, both of 
     which directly contribute to unit cohesion and U.S. military 
     effectiveness in combat. The military is unique in that 
     commanders must maintain good order and discipline in order 
     to successfully perform on the battlefield under the most 
     intense of circumstances. Commanders' orders must have the 
     force or law, and all within his or her unit must acknowledge 
     this authority. With this responsibility to enforce the rule 
     of law comes accountability.
       It is my professional opinion that removing commanders from 
     prosecution decisions, process, and accountability may have 
     an adverse effect on readiness, mission accomplishment, good 
     order and discipline, justice, unit cohesion, trust, and 
     loyalty between commanders and those they lead. However, in 
     the specific and limited circumstance of sexual assault, I 
     remain open-minded to all solutions. This is a complex and 
     difficult issue. I urge caution to ensure any changes to 
     commander authority to enforce discipline be rigorously 
     analyzed, evidence-based, and narrow in scope, limited only 
     to sexual assault and related offenses.
       As I am sure you are aware, the Secretary of Defense 
     established the Independent Review Commission on Sexual 
     Assault in the Military on February 26, 2021, chartered to 
     address the multiple aspects and factors of this issue. It is 
     my belief we have not made sufficient progress in recent 
     years to eliminate sexual assault, and we have consequently 
     lost the trust and confidence of many Soldiers, Sailors, 
     Airmen, Marines, and Guardians in the chain of command's 
     ability to adjudicate these serious crimes. I intend to 
     reserve judgement until I have an opportunity to review the 
     final recommendations of the Independent Review Commission to 
     determine the merits of any such recommendations vis-a-vis 
     proposed legislation currently in the Senate and House of 
     Representatives.
       I remain committed to providing you my candid personal 
     views and will do so after I have reviewed the 
     recommendations of the Commission. I look forward to 
     providing you my personal assessment on this matter in the 
     near future.
           Sincerely,
                                                   Mark A. Milley,
                                               General, U.S. Army.

  Mr. REED. Madam President, I won't quote from this letter at length 
now, but I would just point out that the Chiefs are open-minded about 
changing the way we prosecute sexual assault and harassment within the 
ranks. So am I. In fact, I think that is something that I hope becomes 
clear in our progress legislatively moving forward. But they 
nevertheless stress the importance of ensuring that any change Congress 
enacts must be carefully tailored to address the problems we are trying 
to solve, and the critical problem we are trying to solve is sexual 
assault, sexual harassment, any kind of crime dealing with sexual 
misconduct.
  In addition, adequate time and resources must be afforded for 
implementing any of the changes that we propose. The nature and the 
magnitude of change we are contemplating here is complex; we have to 
make sure we do this right.
  Further, we have heard over the past few years from the leadership of 
the military service Judge Advocate Generals' Corps, who have uniformly 
opposed these changes in nature and scope. These are the military 
lawyers, the very military justice experts to whom this bill would 
invest authority currently reserved to commanders. I believe we should 
listen to them as well and move prudently and deliberately to address 
the problem at hand.
  So, as I have said a number of times already, I intend to include the 
administration's recommendations that derive from the President's 
Independent Review Commission in the markup of the Defense bill, 
subject to amendment, not to move the bill on the floor without the 
chance for my colleagues in the committee to have their voices heard. 
These ladies and gentlemen have dedicated themselves to military policy 
for many years. They are experts in different dimensions of this issue, 
and they will add significantly to the debate.
  To simply take a bill and send to it the floor without amendments I 
think is not the way to proceed. I anticipate a bill that will be 
strengthened through debate and discussion and deliberation by the 
committee.

[[Page S4690]]

  With that, I would reiterate my objection to Senator Gillibrand's 
request.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
  The Senator from New York.
  Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Madam President, I disagree with the chairman 
because the service chiefs and commanders for the last 8 years have 
objected to any serious reform. In fact, they have said time and again 
``Trust us. Trust us. We will get this right'' and have objected to any 
major reform.
  In fact, that is what they did anytime we tried to reform the 
military--they objected on the same basis, using the same words, when 
we tried to repeal don't ask, don't tell. They objected in the same way 
when we tried to allow women to get credit for being in combat. They 
objected in the same way when we integrated the military.
  So to hear these objections over and over again after the committee 
has studied this issue for 8 years and allowed 250 reforms to be put 
into the NDAA--all of which were OK by the DOD--just flies in the face 
of reality.
  The military has demanded sole responsibility of these cases for the 
8 years that I have worked on this issue, and have they dented the 
problem? No. Sexual assaults were estimated at 20,000 by the military 
last they counted. Has the rate of cases going to trial increased? No. 
Has the rate of cases that have ended in conviction increased? No. So 
under no measurable has the DOD got a handle on this.
  For the chairman to say it has to go through the committee, this 
issue has been going through the committee for 8 years. In fact, when I 
passed bipartisan reform with people like Senator Joni Ernst on the 
safe to report language, it was taken out in conference by the same DOD 
staff who didn't want it in there in the first place.
  So under the chairman's view, this bill could certainly go through 
committee. We have more than half of the members. But I promise you, it 
will be watered down or taken out in conference because the chairman 
and the ranking member are against it, and they have the authority to 
do so. So he is not offering a fair process.
  The fact that this bill has 66 cosponsors--how many bills in America, 
in this body, have the support of Ted Cruz and Liz Warren, of Mitch 
McConnell and Senator Schumer? None. This is the kind of bipartisan 
bill that this country is yearning for, the kind of commonsense reform 
that can protect servicemembers.
  While the chairman is so interested in supporting what the generals 
and the admirals and the top commanders want, why does he not listen to 
the servicemembers themselves, to the people who have suffered sexual 
assault, to the people who have suffered racial bias in prosecution? 
Those are the people he should be listening to, not the top brass.
  We have deferred to them the entire 10 years I have been on this 
committee, and in the entire 10 years, our committee has failed. It is 
time to bring this bill to the floor.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                       For the People Act of 2021

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, just a short time ago on this Senate 
floor, we witnessed a low point for this body. We witnessed every 
Republican Senator voting against moving forward to consider 
legislation to strengthen our democracy. We witnessed all 50 Republican 
Senators voting to block consideration of the For the People Act.
  I don't know why people are afraid of debating this issue, which is 
so fundamental to our country at this particular point in time. This 
bill, the For the People Act, has many important provisions. One of 
them, of course, is to establish minimum national standards, to make 
sure that every eligible American voter can access the ballot box. That 
should be something we all want. We should want every American eligible 
to vote to be out there exercising his or her right to vote, to 
participate in the decision making in our democracy. And yet not a 
single Republican Senator voted to proceed with that debate, even 
though this bill is more important now than ever before because we see, 
as we speak, Republican State legislatures, in so many places around 
our country, voting to erect barriers to the ballot box.
  We see this in State after State, a pure partisan power play to rig 
the rules, to win elections by subtraction--not to win elections 
through the hurly-burly debate over the issues of the day, not to win 
elections by talking about the agenda that somebody is advocating and 
why someone should vote for a particular candidate. That is the way it 
is supposed to be. But these are legislatures that are putting up 
barriers to make it harder for people to access the ballot and 
specifically designing these barriers to try to limit participation by 
people of color and by younger voters.
  We saw that even before the aftermath of this election. We saw it in 
the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision in Shelby v. Holder. We saw 
Texas and North Carolina and other States adopting these kind of 
restrictive voting laws. You don't have to take my word for it; the 
U.S. courts took a look at the North Carolina law that was passed a 
number of years ago and said that they targeted African-American voters 
with ``surgical precision'' to try to keep them from accessing the 
voting booth, and that is exactly the kind of thing that is going on 
now in State after State around the country: trying to win, not by the 
addition and multiplication of democracy, but by subtraction and by 
division.
  And so why are these States doing this at this moment? They are doing 
it because of the Big Lie that was perpetrated in the aftermath of our 
Presidential election, a lie that the former President persists in 
spewing and repeating to this very moment, the lie that he was somehow 
cheated or robbed out of an election that led to the attack on this 
Capitol on January 6.
  It is that lie that is giving rise to these actions in State 
legislatures. It is that lie that sadly led this body just a short 
while ago to block consideration of a bill to establish a commission to 
look at what happened on January 6. That bill, too, was filibustered 
just like this one, in order to prevent the American people from 
getting to the bottom of the Big Lie. Republican Senators blocked that, 
too. They don't want the country to know, and they are perfectly happy 
to allow all these State legislatures to put up barriers to voting as 
part of that Big Lie narrative.
  And we know it is a big lie for so many reasons. Of course, President 
Trump and his campaign took their claims to courts throughout the 
country. Over 60 courts said those were ridiculous claims. President 
Trump's own Justice Department and his Attorney General, former 
Attorney General Barr, before he stepped down, said there was no 
wrongdoing in this election that would change any kind of outcome.
  The President's point person at the Department of Homeland Security, 
responsible for monitoring the integrity of elections, has testified 
before Congress and said very clearly that the 2020 Presidential 
election was the most secure election in American history--most secure 
in American history. That is from the person in charge of election 
integrity in President Trump's own administration.

  So why are all these States enacting these barriers to voting after 
an election that the Trump Homeland Security Department said was the 
most secure in history? It is because so many people turned out and 
voted in that secure election and they didn't like the outcome.
  So when you don't like the outcome in elections, instead of taking 
your case to the American people and saying, Vote for us next time 
because here is our agenda for the country, here is what we are going 
to do--instead, they decided they are going to try to win by putting up 
barriers to try to prevent those large turnouts, especially from people 
of color, and we saw younger voters come out in 2020.
  So the decision to block this bill from debate is just a continuation 
of protecting the Big Lie. It is a continuation of protecting the Big 
Lie that is being fueled around the country by Donald Trump's 
continuous fraudulent claims, which unfortunately have seized the 
Republican Party.

[[Page S4691]]

  We saw what happened in the House of Representatives. Liz Cheney, a 
stalwart conservative, ousted from her leadership position because she 
didn't pay homage to the former President. That is what is going on 
here. That is what is going on in the House, and that is what is 
reflected in this vote today, the refusal to even debate a bill to 
strengthen our democracy. Come to the floor, tell us what you don't 
like, tell us what you want to do. Do you really believe that what 
these State legislatures are doing is a good thing for our democracy?
  I know it is easier not to have to talk about that, easier to ignore 
that, but we are not going to let this issue go away. We are going to 
be here week after week to make sure that we continue to push this For 
the People Act.
  Now, in addition to the provisions to establish minimal protections 
so every eligible voter can access the voting booth, the For the People 
Act also has a number of very important provisions that are 
overwhelmingly popular with the American people. One of them is the 
incorporation of what is known as the DISCLOSE Act.
  The DISCLOSE Act does a very simple thing: It gets rid of secret 
corporate money being plowed into our elections through these secret 
super PACs. You know what happened after the decision in Citizens 
United were two things. One, corporate money could flow in unlimited 
amounts into elections, but the Supreme Court at the time said: You can 
at least be aware of who is spending this money if you pass laws to 
make sure it is transparent.
  In fact, a lot of the Justices who voted to overturn the Citizens 
United--excuse me, voted to allow corporate money in politics, who were 
the majority in Citizens United, have also said in that same opinion 
that they essentially expected Congress to enact laws to ensure 
transparency.
  In fact, eight of the nine Supreme Court Justices in that case took 
that position. Yet the Republican leader, who in the early 2000s called 
for more transparency when it came to money being spent in elections, 
is taking the opposite idea: We don't want the public to know who is 
spending all that money. We want it to be secret.
  I think most of us would agree and I know the American public agrees 
that they have a right to know who is spending millions and millions of 
dollars to try to influence their votes. We know that because survey 
after survey shows that Republicans, Democrats, and Independents all 
agree that they should know who is spending all of this dark money.
  When you see a TV commercial that says, ``Paid for by the Committee 
for America,'' you should know who is financing that ad to try to 
influence your vote. It is a very simple principle. Voters have a right 
to know. It was a principle agreed to by conservative jurists like 
Justice Scalia. And yet the position of the Republican Senators today 
was: We don't even want to talk about that. We don't even want to 
debate that provision.
  By the way, that provision, the DISCLOSE Act, passed the House back 
in 2010, and it came here to the U.S. Senate, and the Senate version of 
the DISCLOSE Act was debated on this Senate floor, and 59 Senators at 
that time voted to proceed with the bill.
  You might say: 59 Senators, that is the majority; why didn't it pass? 
Because of the filibuster rule. They needed 60. And 59 Senators said: 
We want disclosure. And 59 Senators said: Get rid of secret money. But 
because of the filibuster rule, it didn't pass. It couldn't get to 
final passage on a simple majority.
  If that had passed back in 2010, we wouldn't have our airwaves 
flooded with secret money today. We would have done what the American 
people wanted. The DISCLOSE Act is in this bill now, and once again, 11 
years later, Republican Senators are filibustering the bill for the 
DISCLOSE Act.
  They don't want the American people to know who is spending all of 
that money, mostly corporate money, flowing underground under the radar 
screen through our political system to try to elect candidates of the 
choice of whatever special interests are spending that money. They 
don't want you to know who they are, who is spending all that money to 
elect people. So why don't we all agree we are going to get rid of 
secret money? Apparently, we don't even want to debate that.
  Another provision that is universally popular with the American 
people is the idea that we should have nationwide nonpartisan 
congressional districting. Let's draw congressional districts not based 
on politics but based on some nonpartisan criteria.
  I think we all heard the line that it should not be the case that 
politicians are picking the voters. Voters should pick their elected 
officials. These days, people can draw congressional district maps with 
incredible precision with the use of computers. You can literally try 
and draw a congressional district designed to get exactly the 
electorate they want.
  I don't think that is the way the Founders expected it to end up 
working, to get a computer that could draw these districts with that 
kind of precision and accuracy. And so one of the other important 
provisions in the For the People Act is, Let's draw congressional 
districts so that, we, the people, can make these decisions without the 
lines having been drawn to predetermine the outcome. That is also in 
this bill.
  It also has some other important provisions that I support to try to 
reduce the impact and influence of big money contributors to allow 
people with lesser means to be able to contribute to elections and have 
some element of public financing so that the system is more geared 
toward the public interest than relying exclusively on the private big 
contributions. That is another provision that is in the For the People 
Act.
  Some people may disagree with that. Come to the floor, debate it, 
offer an amendment to get rid of it, let's vote. But what we saw today 
was a refusal to engage in the democratic process of debate in 
consideration of a bill. They used this provision, the filibuster 
provision, to block a bill to help protect and strengthen our 
democracy, and that is a sad and shameful day in the U.S. Senate.
  But I am going to end with this. This issue is not going away. I was 
glad to see that even as every Republican Senator voted no, every 
Democratic Senator united together to say, We stand for the idea that 
we should have some minimal national standards for access to the ballot 
booth to protect our democracy and that we should get rid of secret 
money in politics.
  Every Democrat said, Let's proceed to debate a bill that has those 
important provisions in it. And so we are not going away. This is a 
vote that may be a temporary setback, but it is my strong view that, at 
the end of the day, democracy will prevail in the sense that it will be 
strengthened and that the American people are not going to stand for a 
process that reinforces the Big Lie that was perpetrated on this 
country.
  And so the good news--the good news, as I said, is every Democratic 
Senator said yes to moving forward, and we will find a way to get this 
done. We will find a way to protect our democracy.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.

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