[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 132 (Wednesday, July 28, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5115-S5116]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             VOTING RIGHTS

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, now on a different matter, the massive, 
massive taxing-and-spending spree that Democrats want to ram through 
this summer has problems that go even beyond inflation, rising costs, 
and massive tax hikes.
  The problem is not just Democrats' jaw-dropping $3.5 trillion 
pricetag. It is also the long list of bad liberal policies that this 
reckless taxing-and-spending spree is supposed to purchase.
  I spoke yesterday about just a few of those bad ideas. They are 
talking about amnesty for illegal immigrants, socialist price-fixing 
that would leave us with fewer new prescription drugs, fewer new 
treatments, and fewer new cures.
  They want to permanently change the child tax credit into welfare 
with no--no--work requirements; smuggle in big chunks of the Green New 
Deal.
  And in case all of this were not enough, some Senate Democrats want 
to use this taxing-and-spending spree to grab control over all 50 
States' election laws. I thought we just had that debate a couple of 
weeks ago.
  Remember, for several years now, our Democratic friends have claimed 
that every successive election proved they needed to grab partisan 
control over our democracy. In 2016, 2018, and 2020, win or lose--win 
or lose--when foreign

[[Page S5116]]

interference occurred and when it did not occur, every possible result 
has been claimed as proof that Washington Democrats should rip up our 
democracy's rule book and write a new one that benefits them.
  The latest phony justification has been the false notion that a few 
States' mainstream voting laws equal some kind of assault on democracy 
as we know it. Of course, that is absolutely utter nonsense. Americans 
want it to be easy to vote and hard to cheat. Voter ID protections are 
hugely popular. Basic voter roll maintenance is common sense.
  The new law in Georgia, for example, provides for more flexible early 
voting and absentee voting than many blue States, including New York. 
But the facts weren't about to stop the Democrats' big lie. The absurd 
comparison to Jim Crow segregation and all kinds of other horrors have 
continued apace.
  To provide a little more context about this fake hysteria, we can 
also look internationally. As one columnist recently observed in the 
Washington Post, the balance struck by the State of Georgia amounts to 
``one of the most expansive voting access laws in the world. Most other 
countries do not allow no-excuse absentee voting, and dropboxes are 
also virtually unknown elsewhere,'' other democracies around the world. 
``If Georgia's elections are undemocratic, then almost all of our 
democratic allies are also undemocratic.''
  If liberal activists and woke corporations believed their own 
rhetoric, they wouldn't stop at boycotting and threatening the State of 
Georgia. They couldn't possibly. They would be busy trying to divest 
from most of our NATO allies and essentially the rest of the entire 
developed world.
  Some European countries allow mail-in voting, but most do not. We 
constantly hear from our socialist friends how we should be emulating 
Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark. Well, none of them allow in-
country postal voting--not a one. Bring on the boycotts, I guess.
  And you don't even want to hear about early voting. Goodness 
gracious. But France, Spain, Germany, Italy, the UK, Ireland--not a day 
of in-person early voting in any of those countries, none of them. That 
is according to an international NGO that studies democracy.
  So, remember, the Texas and Georgia laws codify a whole lot of early 
voting, mail-in voting, and lots of election-day voting.
  And this is supposed to be the death of democracy? Some outrage on a 
global and historic scale?
  Give me a break. What nonsense.
  Even going by Texas's new proposals, there will be voting by mail in 
Paris, TX, but not in Paris, France. There would be almost 2 weeks of 
in-person early voting in New Berlin, TX, but zero days in Berlin, 
Germany. I am sure Democrats will be yelling at the Fortune 500 to 
boycott Europe any day now--any day now.
  Of course, the reality is that these moving goalposts are absolutely 
fake. The frantic outrage is phony. It is all meant to justify a 
political power grab that Democrats have had written and waiting since 
years before any of these new State laws, which are supposedly 
prompting it--yet another awful plank that my colleagues across the 
aisle want to hide in the reckless taxing-and-spending spree they hope 
to ram through Congress.

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