[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 7 (Tuesday, January 11, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S129-S130]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                   Recognition of the Majority Leader

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, let me begin with the following figure: 
55 million people; that is the estimated number of eligible voters who 
now live within States that have passed legislation restricting the 
right to vote and potentially undermining the electoral process.
  Today, President Biden will travel to one such State, Georgia--home 
to one of the most egregious voter suppression and election subversion 
laws we have seen in a long time. I believe the President will give a 
strong speech and will urge that we in the Senate change the rules so 
that we can prevent these awful and nasty laws from being implemented. 
In an address to the Nation, he will use the bully pulpit of the 
Presidency to make the case that the time has come for the Senate to 
pass voting rights legislation and take whatever steps necessary to 
address this Chamber's rules in order to accomplish that goal.
  The Senate is going to act as soon as tomorrow. It is my intention 
to, once again, bring legislation to the floor to fight back against 
the threats to democracy and protect people's access to the ballot.
  Once again, I urge my Republican colleagues to take up the flag of 
the traditional Republican Party, not only of Lincoln but of Reagan and 
H. W. Bush and W. Bush and vote yes to move forward so we can have a 
debate like the debate we just had or the discussion we just had. But 
if Republicans continue to hijack the rules of the Senate to prevent 
voting rights from happening, if they continue paralyzing this Chamber 
to the point where we are helpless to fight back against the Big Lie, 
we must consider the necessary steps we can take so the Senate can 
adapt and act.
  For the past few months, Senate Democrats have been holding talks 
within our caucus to discern how we can best move forward to restore 
the function of the Senate and, more importantly, pass legislation to 
defend democracy and protect voting rights. Last night, I held another 
round of talks with a number of my colleagues about the path forward, 
and we did so again this morning.
  Over the past few days, our Republican colleagues have escalated 
their attacks against our efforts to pass voting rights legislation.
  Listen to this one: Last night, the Republican leader worked to place 
a number of ``gotcha'' bills onto the legislative calendar as some sort 
of payback for pursuing legislation to protect the sacred right to 
vote. He was basically saying: Here are 18 bills that Democrats don't 
like. Let's go for 50 votes on those. Well, I proposed to the 
Republican leader, in a unanimous consent request, that it would be 
perfectly fine with us taking votes on his bills on a simple majority 
threshold if, in exchange, he agreed to do the same for the Freedom to 
Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Of 
course, the Republican leader immediately objected--immediately 
objected--to having all of them done with 50 votes: the 18 bills he 
proposed and our 2 voting rights bills.
  The Republican leader made clear last night that the true worry on 
the other side isn't about the rules of the Senate--rules they were 
perfectly happy to change to pursue their own objectives when they were 
in the majority. Republicans, in truth, are afraid of the possibility 
that legislation to defend democracy, to fight the power of dark money, 
and to protect voting rights could move forward in this Chamber.
  As I mentioned to my colleague from Texas, that is not all 
Republicans. That is not Republicans out in the country--a lot of them 
want to protect voting rights--but it is the Republican Party as now 
run by, and it is fair to say run by Donald Trump, who has propagated 
the Big Lie that the election was stolen and that he really won, even 
though he lost by 7 million votes and even though he has no evidence--
nor have the commentators to that effect. Now we have at least 
Republicans in the Senate and the House and in lots of State 
legislatures completely going along with this Big Lie.
  The danger there is that it jaundices our democracy. If people of 
color, if young people, if older people, if people in urban areas feel 
that their right to vote is being diminished compared to other 
people's--because they are not aiming this at everybody--democracy 
begins to wither. We have not seen an assault on voting rights since 
the days of the Old South, since the forties and fifties and sixties 
and seventies. Why would we want to regress? Why would we want to 
regress? So we must fight back.
  Now, I understand our Republicans are going to continue their 
opposition through a flurry of speeches, decrying any effort 
by Democrats to undo these voter suppression laws and make it easier 
for Americans to vote.

  By the way, I would remind my colleagues that this has been the grand 
tradition of America. When the Constitution was written, in most 
States, you had to be a White male Protestant property owner to vote. 
No one says let's go back to those days. In general, America, with our 
march to freedom and our march to equality, embodied in our 
Constitution and in the great minds of the Founding Fathers--the 
greatest group of geniuses ever assembled--has marched forward. There 
have been regressions, but we have marched forward. We Democrats want 
to continue that march. We want to stop these types of laws.
  The Republican leader doesn't have much to say so he has latched onto 
a talking point. He said the Big Lie is actually the warnings of voter 
suppression that come from Democrats, even though there are so many 
laws that are, obviously, done to suppress votes, and a lot of these 
Republican legislators say it openly.
  So I would say to the Republican leader that his attempts to 
misdirect from the danger of Donald Trump's Big Lie and to try to say 
it is Democrats who are doing it is gaslighting, pure and simple. There 
is no evidence--no evidence.
  The leader did it again yesterday and today on the floor, implying 
one more time that because the 2020 election was, indeed, successful, 
somehow voter suppression doesn't exist. Now, I answered my friend from 
Texas when he held up that chart. The Republican leader cherry-picked 
examples to distract from the real, unmistakable changes that are 
taking place in the States.
  I would ask the Republican leader and the Republican Senator from 
Texas and every other Republican, if the 2020 election were as 
successful and secure and safe as he says it was, then why have 
Republican State legislators rushed to make it harder for people to 
vote in the aftermath of the 2020 election? Why can any Republican 
cling to the view that the election was stolen--Donald Trump's Big 
Lie--when John Cornyn, my friend from Texas, is up there, with a chart, 
saying the 2020 election was successful, and the Republican leader said 
the same thing?
  Doesn't that rebut Donald Trump? Doesn't that rebut those who came to 
the Capitol, motivated by Donald Trump's propagation of the Big Lie? 
Doesn't it rebut all of the State legislators who want to make it 
harder to vote if the 2020 election were successful?
  Despite the Republican leader's best efforts, I have yet to hear from 
my Republican colleagues as to why it is OK for States like Georgia to 
make it a crime to give food and water to people who are waiting on 
line at the polls when we hear that, in minority areas and in urban 
areas, the lines are much longer than in rural areas.
  I have yet to hear from Republicans why States like Texas and Arizona 
have made it a felony--a felony--for nonpartisan election workers to 
send

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unsolicited mail ballot applications to voters. What is wrong with 
sending that? What is wrong with encouraging people to vote? The 
participation in elections is much higher in many Western countries 
than in ours.
  Again, Texas didn't just prohibit nonpartisan election workers from 
sending mail ballots out to voters. They made it a felony--a felony. 
These States have effectively made it a crime--a crime--for election 
workers to proactively help people to vote. Where is the justification?
  Where is the evidence of this massive fraud that Donald Trump talks 
about? No one gives any. Yet they predicate their policy moves here in 
the Senate on that.
  To date, I have heard no explanation from the other side why States 
like Texas, Iowa, and Montana have reduced polling locations and hours. 
In Iowa, early voting of any kind has been cut by 9 days. How does that 
make the election more secure? Why is that in the grand tradition of 
making it easier for Americans to vote?
  In Georgia, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the 
leading newspaper of Atlanta, the number of absentee drop boxes in four 
large counties in Atlanta, in the Atlanta area, will drop from 111 to 
23--111 to 23. One of the justifications is that these boxes are no 
longer helpful, but this ignores the fact that over 300,000 voters used 
them in the last election--the last successful election, according to 
my friend from Texas. Republicans know that most of the people who used 
those drop boxes, of course, were Democrats. They tend to use them 
more, and that is why they are cutting them off.
  The examples go on and on, unfortunately. This is not just a one-off 
or in one State or another. This is a massive campaign, which, if we do 
nothing, will continue and get worse.
  States like Texas, Florida, Kansas, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Montana 
have passed laws making it harder--harder--to register to vote.
  States like Alabama, Iowa, and Texas have passed laws that increase 
the potential for people with disabilities.
  And, again, in Georgia, one rural county, Lincoln County, is trying 
to limit their polling places to just one in the whole county--just one 
place to vote for an entire county--causing people to potentially drive 
as many as 23 miles to cast a ballot. This wouldn't make voting easier. 
It turns it into a burden.
  The truth is, our Republicans can't defend these laws. They are not 
going to mention them here today. Let's hear some Republicans defend 
these laws and point to evidence of the massive fraud that they say 
motivates them to do it. It is bunk--bunk.
  The policies they have put forward have one purpose--one purpose 
only: making it harder for younger, poorer, non-White, and typically 
Democratic voters to access the ballot, to give Republicans a partisan 
advantage at the polls by making it harder for democratic-leaning 
voters to vote.
  Again, in a democracy, when you lose an election, you figure out why 
and try to win over the voters you lost. You don't stop the voters you 
lost from voting. That is what happens in autocracies, in places like 
Hungary, where Donald Trump just endorsed Orban, who is whittling away 
at democracy in Hungary.
  It is cynical--cynical--for our Republican colleagues to argue that 
just because these voter suppression laws don't spell their intentions 
out in the open, that there is nothing sinister at play. But these laws 
have real impact, potentially divisive.
  In Arizona, Mr. President, your State, the secretary of state has 
concluded that new laws could purge as many as 200,000 voters from 
their early voting list. And as you know better than me, Arizona has a 
long tradition of early and mail-in voting that, I think, was set up by 
Republicans, if I am not wrong.
  In Georgia, over 1.3 million voters used absentee ballots in the last 
election, which could now be affected by the restriction.
  Senate Democrats in Iowa argue that if today's voter suppression laws 
had been in effect in 2020, over 6,500 absentee ballots would not have 
been counted in the last election.
  This isn't all that difficult to comprehend. When you pass laws that 
raise barriers to voting, fewer people end up voting. That is a fact. 
So as the President will say later, we are approaching a decisive 
moment for the country.
  Voting rights, defending democracy have long been bipartisan issues 
in this Chamber. The Voting Rights Act of 1964 is one of the crowning 
achievements not only of the civil rights era but of the history of 
this Chamber. It is in no way a power grab to say the Senate will pass 
laws that make it easier, simpler, and safer for American citizens to 
exercise their most fundamental right. That has been part of the grand 
tradition of this country--usually, as I mentioned several times 
before, bipartisan.
  I will add: As we proceed, we cannot hang our hats on the false hopes 
of inadequate or sometimes chimerical solutions.
  Substituting the Electoral Count Act for the much needed reforms that 
we have in the Freedom to Vote and John Lewis Voting Rights Act is 
insufficient, unacceptable. Obviously, it doesn't affect the House and 
Senate. Obviously, it is not immediately urgent because it affects 
2024. But most importantly, scorekeeping matters little if the game is 
rigged, and the game is in danger of being rigged if State Republicans 
empower themselves to arbitrate the results of future elections instead 
of it being arbitrated by what traditionally has happened in America by 
nonpartisan election workers.
  So we need to work in this Chamber to pass real solutions that go to 
the heart of the problem. We need to proceed with the John Lewis Voting 
Rights Act. We need to proceed with the Freedom to Vote Act.
  All of us in this Chamber must make a choice about how we will do our 
part to preserve our democratic Republic. We can't be satisfied in 
thinking that democracy will win out in the end if we are not willing 
to put in the work to defend it.
  So we need to pass these bills so our democracy can long endure after 
this present danger. To continue blocking these efforts is to offer an 
implicit endorsement of Donald Trump's Big Lie, which, unfortunately, 
is alive and well in 2022.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. TUBERVILLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to complete my 
remarks before the scheduled recess.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.