[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 8 (Wednesday, January 12, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S168-S169]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Voting Rights

  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, last week, the Vice President of the United 
States told us that a riot that happened here in the U.S. Capitol last 
year was the equivalent of the day in which Japan attacked us at Pearl 
Harbor and the United States was pulled into a world war that took the 
lives of over 3 percent of the world's population.
  And yesterday, we were treated to the President telling us that 
election laws that are being passed by various States across the 
country over the last year are basically the same, the equivalent, of 
the segregation that existed in this country in the 1950s and 1960s and 
before.
  Now, look, if your daily routine is to wake up in the morning and 
turn on MSNBC as you ride your Peloton and then you go on Twitter as 
you are drinking your caramel macchiato and then you are reading the 
New York Times as you are eating your avocado toast, I imagine all this 
makes perfect sense to you. After all, for these people, they believe 
this ridiculous narrative that every Republican--every Republican--is 
an insurrectionist, probably a racist, wants to overthrow the U.S. 
Government, and wants to destroy democracy.
  The good news is that the overwhelming majority of Americans happen 
to live back here on planet Earth. And what they are worried about, to 
the extent they even pay attention to any of this stuff that has been 
said over the last 2 weeks--what they are really worried about is the 
fact that everything costs more; you go to the grocery store and the 
shelves are empty; they have a small business and they hire someone on 
Monday who just disappears on Thursday and never comes back; you have 
got, every day, thousands of people illegally entering the United 
States across an open border; and, by the way, we have a surge in 
violent crime and lawlessness across the country. That is probably what 
they are worried about--in fact, I know it is--on a daily basis.
  But to the extent they have paid attention to any of this, let me 
tell you something. First of all, I think almost everyone would tell 
you that what happened on January 6 here was a terrible thing; it 
should never have happened; and it should never happen again.
  But I don't care how many candlelight vigils and musical performances 
you have from the cast of ``Hamilton,'' you are not going to convince, 
at least most normal and sane people, that our government last year was 
almost overthrown by a guy wearing a Viking hat and Speedos. OK?
  And I don't care, you know, how many of these speeches the President 
gives in which he shouts out this hyperbole and all this melodrama, you 
are not going to convince people that having a State pass a law that 
says, for example, that you have to produce an identification is the 
same as segregation.
  Nevertheless, despite the fact that that is what most people in this 
country are worried about--inflation and all these other things--that 
is not what we are working on here. That is not what we will spend this 
week on. That is not what the priority of this administration has been. 
That is not what the President is giving speeches about. You may care 
about inflation back home. They care about the fact--their crisis is 
that there are some laws in this country, for example, some States in 
this country, that do not automatically force everyone to register to 
vote. They just automatically register them. Well, that is the crisis.

  They don't care that store shelves are empty. In fact, they have 
denied that the store shelves are actually empty.
  For them, the real problem is that States have laws, for example, 
that don't allow these roving gangs of activists to bully people into 
turning over their ballot so they can show up at 6:59 p.m. on election 
day and just dump it on an elections official.
  And by the way, they don't seem overly concerned that there are 
Americans that will be fired or not allowed into a restaurant unless 
they can produce their papers, their vaccine card.
  The real problem is how dare you ask them to produce a voter ID--a 
photo ID in order to vote. That is their real problem.
  So how can this be? I mean, how can there be such an enormous 
disconnect between what real people in the real world care about and 
are talking about on a daily basis and what we are going to spend our 
time talking about here and these speeches that have been given over 
the last week?

[[Page S169]]

  It isn't about the Capitol riot. Everyone agrees the Capitol riot was 
terrible and shouldn't have happened--I think most everyone does. But 
these are some of the same people who downplayed over 700 riots, 
thousands of cases of looting that happened in America in the summer of 
2020.
  It most certainly isn't about election laws that have been passed in 
the last year. They have been pushing these same bills with different 
titles and different names--they have been pushing all of this for the 
better part of a decade.
  And it certainly isn't about voting rights. It is easier than it has 
ever been in the history of the United States to register to vote and 
to vote. And the proof is that in 2020, we had the highest turnout in 
over 100-and-something years. This isn't about any of that.
  If you are paying attention, let me tell you what this is about. This 
is about power. It is about power. This is about changing the rules of 
the Senate so they have the power to ram through--to ram through--an 
election law. And this is about ramming through an election law to make 
sure that they never lose power, to make it easier to win elections for 
them and, therefore, have power for perpetuity.
  You want to talk about defending democracy? Let's talk about the 
Americans, real people, who are afraid to donate to a political 
campaign, to put a bumper sticker on their car, to tell people who they 
voted for. They are afraid because they don't want to get canceled; 
they don't want to get boycotted; they don't want to get harassed--so 
they are afraid. They don't want to get smeared.
  Do you want to talk about totalitarianism? Let's talk about the fact 
that the Attorney General of the United States has said let's go after 
some of these parents complaining at school boards and treat them as 
domestic terrorists.
  And, listen, if you want to talk about segregation, then let's talk 
about a system of education that is both separate and unequal, divided 
between the people who can afford to spend $50,000 or $60,000 a year to 
send their kids to a fancy school where they get SAT tutoring and they 
get all kinds of advantages and the thousands--no, millions--of 
American parents who are Hispanic and African American and others who 
have no choice whatsoever as to where their kids go to school. They 
have no voice. They have to send their kid to the school the government 
tells them.
  These people don't care about any of this because it is about power. 
It is not just the power to change election laws. We have seen it. It 
is about the power to tell you what you are allowed to say. It is about 
the power to tell you where you are allowed to go. It is about the 
power to tell you what you are allowed to do. It is about the power to 
intimidate, to destroy, to smear, to call a racist, a bigot, a hater 
anyone who dares get in your way, anyone who dares disagree with you. 
It is about the power to do that.
  Well, let me tell you something. I was raised by and have lived my 
entire life alongside people who lost their country, the country of 
their birth, to power-hungry people just like that.
  I warn you, do not stand by and allow it to happen to this one.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.


                               January 6

  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I wish it were the case that everyone 
agrees that what happened here on January 6 was an abomination, but 
that is simply not true. That is simply not true. Many of my Republican 
colleagues will say the right things on the Senate floor--occasionally 
will whisper the right things to us when the cameras aren't watching. 
But a recent poll--a nonpartisan Monmouth University poll--asked 
Republican voters whether or not they thought January 6 was a 
legitimate protest. And guess what. Half of Republican voters in this 
country say that the invasion of this Capitol that involved chants for 
the death of the Vice President, a gallows outside the U.S. Capitol--
half of Republicans believe that that was a legitimate protest. Seven 
out of ten Republicans today don't believe that Joe Biden is the 
legitimate President. They believe that Donald Trump won the election, 
despite the fact that he lost by 7 million votes.
  And the reason for that is mostly that the leader of the Republican 
Party, Donald Trump, has been legitimizing violence, urged those 
protests and that insurrection attempt, cheered them at the end of the 
day on January 6, and also because we have seen mostly silence from 
mainstream Republicans who know better but don't want to pick a fight 
with President Trump.
  So, yes, we are worried about the future of our Republic. We are 
worried about the future of our Republic because a mainstream political 
party has gotten behind the idea that power matters more than 
elections; that violence is a legitimate means of protest.
  So this idea that everybody agrees that January 6 was an abomination 
just isn't true. It is not true, and that is, in part, why we are so 
worried.