[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 8 (Wednesday, January 12, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S171-S179]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Filibuster

  Mr. COTTON. Madam President:
  Right now, we are on the precipice of a constitutional crisis. We are 
about to step into the abyss. I want to talk for a few minutes why we 
are on that precipice and why we are looking into the abyss.

       Let me first ask a fundamental question: What is the crisis 
     that calls for the undoing of two centuries of tradition? . . 
     . Are . . . Senators merely doing their jobs as legislators, 
     responding to a generalized public calling for the abolition 
     of the filibuster? Clearly not. It is not the American people 
     at large who are demanding detonation of the nuclear option.
       [T]he nuclear option is being pushed largely by the 
     radioactive rhetoric of a small band of radicals who hold in 
     their hands the political fortunes of the President.
       Constitutional scholars will tell us that the reason we 
     have these rules in the Senate--unlimited debate, two-thirds 
     to change the rules, the idea that 60 have to close off 
     debate--is embodied in the spirit and rule of the 
     Constitution. . . . That is what the Constitution is all 
     about, and we all know it.
       It is the Senate where the Founding Fathers established a 
     repository of checks and balances. It is not like the House 
     of Representatives where the majority leader or the Speaker 
     can snap his fingers and get what he wants. . . . On 
     important issues, the Founding Fathers wanted--and they were 
     correct in my judgment--that the slimmest majority should not 
     always govern. . . . The Senate is not a majoritarian body.
       The bottom line is very simple: The ideologues in the 
     Senate want to turn what the Founding Fathers called the 
     cooling saucer of democracy into the rubber stamp of 
     dictatorship. . . . They want to make this country into a 
     banana republic where if you don't get your way, you change 
     the rules! Are we going to let them? It'll be a doomsday for 
     democracy if we do.
       I, for one, hope and pray that it will not come to this. 
     But I assure my colleagues, at least speaking for this 
     Senator . . . I will do everything I can to prevent the 
     nuclear option from being invoked not for the sake of myself 
     or my party but for the sake of this great Republic and its 
     traditions.

  Those are powerful words, but they are not mine. Every word of my 
speech today was originally spoken by our esteemed colleague, the 
senior Senator from New York, Chuck Schumer. Senator Schumer spoke so 
eloquently in defense of the Senate's rules, customs, and traditions 
when the fortunes of his party looked a little different. My, how times 
have changed. Now it is Senator Schumer's fingers that are hovering 
over the nuclear button, ready to destroy the Senate for partisan 
advantage.
  Think about it. The narrowest majority in Senate history wants to 
break the Senate rules to control how voters in every State elect 
Senators. Could there be a better argument to preserving the Senate's 
rules, customs, and traditions?
  So, before it is too late, let us reflect on the wise and eloquent 
words of Senator Schumer's, words that are as true today as they were 
when he spoke them, even if Senator Schumer is singing a different tune 
today.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, the Senate is designed to be a place 
where the Members of the minority party and the millions of Americans 
they represent are heard. In this Senate, the minority could not be any 
bigger. In fact, if the minority were any bigger, we would be in the 
majority. This is a 50-50 Senate, and it is no time to take away the 
protections that the Senate for almost 200 years has afforded to the 
minority. The considerations given to the minority are important not 
only to the Senators and the millions of people they represent, but I 
think they are important in how the country moves forward.
  I served in the House. I like the House. I watch the House as closely 
as any Senator does. Every time the House changes, the House passes a 
bunch of pretty dramatic legislation. Then it comes to the Senate. That 
dramatic legislation they passed in the House doesn't go anywhere in 
the Senate. When the House changes again--and it has a number of times 
in the last 20 years--the other side comes in and passes legislation 
that reverses all of that and maybe does a little dramatic legislation 
of their own that also doesn't go anywhere when it gets to the Senate.
  If all laws were passed by a simple majority, there would be the 
potential for the majority to rewrite the country's laws constantly, no 
matter how small the shift in power was. It is always a mistake, 
frankly, to act like you have a mandate if you don't have one. It is a 
mistake for the country to change direction dramatically before the 
country has had time to think about it. The bureaucratic whiplash could 
be enormous. The economic impact could be enormous of the changing 
policies on regulation and taxes and everything else in a dramatic way 
every time one side gets some small advantage over the other side.
  For the past year, we have heard a constant refrain from our 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle that the legislative 
filibuster--the supermajority to move to finalize a piece of 
legislation--must be reformed. At the present moment, we are hearing it 
must be reformed only, maybe, for elections, that we should have a 
carve-out for elections. Just a few weeks ago, it had to be reformed to 
have a carve-out for the debt ceiling. I am sure, if we had done either 
of those things, in a few weeks, we would be talking about a third 
carve-out. And what are we doing it for? We are doing it for what I see 
as a federalization of the election process.
  When asked in a Morning Consult/POLITICO poll that was just released 
today--so this is something the American people have just weighed in on 
today. When they were asked which of the three voting ideas that were 
polled should be a top priority of the Congress in the voting area--one 
was reforming Congress's role in counting electoral votes; one was 
expanding voting access; one was expanding the oversight of the State 
changes in elections--they were all beaten by ``none of the above.'' 
``None of the above'' got more votes in that poll than some of the top 
priorities the Democrats were talking about.
  We hear that we have to extend the Voting Rights Act. We have even 
titled the Voting Rights Act after a person whom I served with in the 
House, whom I traveled with, whom I had a close friendship with--John 
Lewis. That would be a good reason for me to vote for the Voting Rights 
Act, and certainly I voted to extend the Voting Rights Act before. In 
fact, I would vote to extend the Voting Rights Act today, and I would 
even be more happy to vote for the Voting Rights Act today if it were 
the Voting Rights Act that just happened to be named for John Lewis. 
The Voting Rights Act in 1965 was 12 pages. The extensions have all 
been about the same size. This bill has another 110 pages of additional 
legislative things that don't deal with the principles of the Voting 
Rights Act at all; they deal with the Federal Government's taking over 
the election process.
  We have seen our colleagues talk about this in one bill after 
another. I think the motives are pretty transparent right now; it is 
another way to break the filibuster. But we hear that the laws that 
States are passing--and by the way, the States have been passing 
election laws for the whole country, as it relates to their States, for 
a little over 200 years now. The Constitution was pretty specific as to 
who would conduct elections in the country and who would set the rules 
and regulations in the country for those elections.

  We hear that these laws are very restrictive. Now, mostly, these laws 
are laws that the legislatures leaned forward, as they should have, in 
my opinion, in a pandemic environment. It was an election that, in at 
least 100 years, we had never conducted anything like with the pandemic 
experience we were in. So they leaned forward. They allowed things that 
had never been allowed before: more mail-in voting, voting from your 
car, voting from a parking lot, all sorts of things. Then those same 
legislatures looked back at what had happened as a result of that and 
said: Do we want to keep all of this as if we were going to have a 
pandemic every year or do we want to keep part of it? In every case 
that I have looked

[[Page S172]]

at, the changes in election law made it easier to vote in 2021 than it 
was in the last election before the pandemic.
  I would encourage all of my colleagues, who are such sudden experts 
on Utah and Iowa and other election laws, to look at the 2018 election 
laws and see how they compare. What the legislatures did was exactly 
what you would hope they would do--respond to a crisis and, when the 
crisis is over, evaluate how much of that we want to keep as part of 
our permanent system and how much of it was only in crisis.
  What do these laws do?
  In Utah, the State legislature determined it would be appropriate for 
the Lieutenant Governor, who is the chief election official of Utah, to 
get the names of deceased individuals from the Social Security 
Administration and give them to county officials, who would take their 
names off the rolls. That is listed as one of the things that make it 
harder to vote--well, harder to vote for dead people. That is fine. I, 
actually, asked this question in a hearing of someone--one of the 
election-monitoring people who said this was difficult.
  I said: Well, what about that?
  He said: The Social Security Administration is often wrong.
  Well, if anybody is going to get something straightened out pretty 
quickly, it would be a living person who no longer is getting their 
Social Security check because the Social Security Administration had 
them on a list of people who were deceased. What a foolish argument 
that was for that to be a repressive thing.
  In Georgia, the State legislature adjusted their mail-in ballot 
deadline to ensure voters who requested mail-in ballots got their 
ballots with enough time to cast them. They brought their date more in 
line with the advice of the U.S. Postal Service. The truth is that lots 
of States did this.
  States like Georgia and Florida now include specific provisions in 
State law that allow for the use of drop boxes. In fact, they have to 
have at least one in every county. There were no drop boxes in Georgia 
anywhere before the 2020 elections. Now there have to be drop boxes 
everywhere, and it has to be understood where those locations can be 
found.
  States like Iowa and Georgia implemented more early voting days than 
the so-called Freedom to Vote Act would require. In fact, these States 
had more days of early voting than many States that have Democrat-led 
legislatures, like New York and Connecticut and the President's home 
State of Delaware.
  They also forgot that many Republican States, like Arizona, Florida, 
and Georgia, have already implemented no-excuse absentee voting.
  I was an election official for 20 years, part of that as the chief 
election official in our State, the secretary of state. I am absolutely 
confident that nobody takes the security of the elections and the 
confidence in the elections and the ability to register and vote in an 
easy way more seriously than people who are directly answerable to 
their neighbors, if they are the local official, or to the people who 
vote for them, if they are the State official.
  President Obama said in 2016 that the diversity of this statewide 
system was one of the strengths of our system--the State-run system--
and one of the reasons it would make it really hard for any outside 
entity--any foreign entity, any outside group--to truly try to rig a 
national election.
  I have got more to say. I am going to submit the rest of my remarks 
for the record. I am sure there will be more time to talk about this 
next week.
  On ballot harvesting, 62 percent of people in one poll are opposed to 
ballot harvesting. Ballot harvesting is when you ask somebody to give 
you their ballot. You say: I will turn it in for you.
  Well, maybe--who would know?
  I will put it in the mail for you.
  Who would know? If it never gets to the counting place, it just got 
lost in the mail.
  One of the reasons it might have gotten lost in the mail is the 
ballot harvester knows, with almost certainty, that the way you marked 
your ballot is not the way the ballot harvester would prefer to have 
the ballots marked.
  Seventy percent of Americans support voter maintenance. That is 
eliminated in many ways by the law being proposed.
  One proposal even went so far as to tell States the kind of paper 
their ballots would be printed on. If you really want to make it easy 
to impact an election, be sure that somebody knows the exact paper that 
every entity in America prints their ballots on and gets some of that 
to use to try to divert the election and make the election less secure.
  We are going to hear a lot about this over the next couple of days. I 
certainly would welcome the opportunity to have more time, and I am 
sure I will have more time, to talk about what is in these bills, both 
the State bills and the Federal bills, as opposed to what people are 
saying is in both bills.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, the Senator from Missouri is exactly 
right. We are going to hear so much about this, and the reason is, as 
the American people hear about this so-called election bill, what they 
are realizing is, it is not something that is going to make their local 
election safer. It is something that is going to put that power in 
Washington, DC.
  Now, what we are hearing from the majority leader and the Democratic 
leadership is that they have got to get rid of the filibuster in order 
to push forward this election bill, adding States, packing courts--all 
of this laundry list of a socialist agenda that they are planning to 
execute.
  So what I want to do today for a couple of minutes is just walk us 
down memory lane as to what people have had to say, what our Democratic 
colleagues have had to say about the filibuster.
  In May of 2005, then-Senator Joe Biden came to the floor and he 
vigorously jumped into the middle of a debate over the filibuster. He 
said that things would go very wrong if his colleagues decided to blow 
up the rules to get their way. What is interesting about Senator 
Biden's position is that it had almost nothing to do with his policy 
goals.
  Here is his quote:

       Folks who want to see this change want to eliminate one of 
     the procedural mechanisms designed for the express purpose of 
     guaranteeing individual rights, and they also have a 
     consequence, and would undermine the protections of a 
     minority point of view in the heat of majority excess.

  He understood, at that point in time, the importance of preserving 
the Senate's institutional power and abiding by standards that not only 
welcome but require deliberation and compromise.
  Well, what a difference a few years and a Senate majority can make. 
Today, we are having the exact same debate, but the power my Democratic 
colleagues won in the last election has changed their minds about 
breaking the Senate to get their way. The problem is, the Senate is not 
broken. It does not need their changes.
  But the rules no longer matter to the majority leader, even though he 
said as recently as 2017:

       [L]et us go no further down this road. I hope the 
     Republican leader and I can, in the coming months, find a way 
     to build a firewall around the legislative filibuster, which 
     is the most important distinction between the Senate and the 
     House. Without the 60-vote threshold for legislation, the 
     Senate becomes a majoritarian institution like the House, 
     much more subject to the winds of short-term electoral 
     change.

  Well, my, my, my, how about that? He understood the dangers of 
legislative whiplash, even when he was in the minority. So did my 
colleague Senator Durbin, who said in 2018 that he believed that ending 
the filibuster would ``be the end of the Senate as it was originally 
devised and created, going back to our Founding Fathers.''

  Well, I am going to ask the Senators from New York and Illinois: What 
happened here? What changed their minds so drastically? They have done 
a 180.
  I would ask the same question of many of my Democratic colleagues. In 
2017, 32 Senate Democrats--yes, that is correct, 32, many of whom are 
still serving in this Chamber today--signed onto a bipartisan letter in 
support of the filibuster. Now, they, too, have changed their minds. It 
makes you wonder: What is everybody on the Democratic aisle drinking 
these days?
  This is no way to run the world's greatest deliberative body, but it 
is a great way to destroy it. Between 2017 and today, many Senate 
Democrats

[[Page S173]]

changed their minds about how to handle the filibuster.
  Over the past year, we have watched Joe Biden and the Democrats 
attack more than one institution forming the foundation of this Nation. 
The Supreme Court, the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, limits on 
the power of the Executive, and, now, the Senate rules have all proved 
to be inconvenient to their agenda and ended up on the chopping block. 
That is where they are putting them.
  My Democratic colleagues may be frustrated, but that is just too bad. 
The Senate was not designed to rubberstamp legislation that is so 
belligerently foolish it can't tempt a single Republican vote--not one. 
No.
  The Senate was designed to protect the American people and the 
institution itself from shortsighted leadership.
  My colleagues claim that all they are asking for is one teeny little 
carve-out--just one. But I would remind them that there is only so much 
carving you can do before you reduce the entire thing to dust. And 
based on their track record, we have no reason to trust that they will 
stop carving and put down the knife rather than use it to hold the 
Senate hostage the next time they can't scrounge up the votes to check 
something off their to-do list.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Madam President, since the founding of our 
Republic, the Senate has existed to encourage extended debate and 
protect the rights of the minority party.
  Over the centuries, as various political parties have risen and 
fallen from power, the Senate's rules have been respected and followed. 
One of those rules is the legislative filibuster, which protects the 
minority party's rights by requiring a 60-vote threshold to pass 
legislation in the Senate.
  Unfortunately, many of today's Democrats in Washington only care 
about one thing: radically transforming this Nation into a new 
socialist state. And they will use any means necessary to keep their 
grip on the Federal Government.
  Now we are seeing Democrat leadership in the Congress wield their 
historically narrow majority to push one partisan bill after another 
without even attempting to get Republican input or support. Instead of 
working together with their Republican colleagues, they are searching 
for ways to make it easier to jam through progressive, socialist 
policies without any compromise. Just look at the majority leader's 
most recent statements on the filibuster.
  Last week, the majority leader wrote a letter to all Democrat 
Senators explaining his plans to fundamentally and permanently alter 
the rules of the U.S. Senate and change the legislative filibuster. His 
statements could not be more hypocritical or self-serving.
  The legislative filibuster, which has been in place for decades, has 
been repeatedly defended as a vital and necessary rule to protect the 
minority party's rights, including by Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Kamala 
Harris, and even Senator Schumer.
  In 2017, Senator Schumer urged then-Majority Leader McConnell to 
``find a way to build a firewall around the legislative filibuster,'' 
which is the most important distinction between the Senate and the 
House.
  He went on to say:

       Without the 60-vote threshold for legislation, the Senate 
     becomes a majoritarian institution like the House, much more 
     subject to the winds of short-term electoral change. No 
     Senator would like to see that happen, so let's find a way to 
     further protect the 60-vote rule for legislation.

  These are the direct quotes from the Senator from New York. He called 
the filibuster the most important distinction between the Senate and 
the House, and now he is turning his back on them.
  Of course, my colleague from New York isn't the only one caught in a 
bind here by previous statements and actions. Just remember that, in 
2018, the current Senate majority whip, Senator Dick Durbin, said doing 
away with the legislative filibuster ``would be the end of the Senate 
as it was originally devised and created going back to our Founding 
Fathers.''
  He further admitted: ``We have to acknowledge our respect for the 
minority, and that is what the Senate tries to do in its composition 
and its procedure.''
  Or remember in 2017, when 32 Democrats signed a bipartisan letter 
urging Senate leadership to keep the sacred part of the Senate intact. 
Most of those same Senators who defended minority party rights are 
still in office today, but only one has expressed any opposition to 
Senator Schumer's plans to destroy the filibuster, now that he is in 
the majority.
  And just last Congress, most of the Democrat caucus used a filibuster 
to block a police reform bill from my Republican colleague Tim Scott 
and a bill that would have protected newborn babies who survived 
attempted abortions.
  So my Democrat colleagues think the filibuster is great when it works 
in their favor, but they can't stand it when it blocks their radical 
socialist agenda, an agenda we know the American people do not support.
  So why the change of mind? Why are they willing to be so blatantly 
hypocritical and so obviously flip-flop? Because they know if they pull 
this off and pass this radical, dangerous bill to federalize elections, 
it will all but secure their power into the future. That is what we are 
talking about here.
  Democrats want to push through this bill that will completely upend 
our current election system, and they are willing to abandon their 
principles and flip-flop on the filibuster if it means permanently 
maintaining power.
  Senator Schumer admitted it earlier today on MSNBC. He said the quiet 
part out loud and explained that Democrat Senators are saying things 
like ``I'll lose my election'' or ``We'll lose our majority'' if they 
don't change the filibuster to pass their election takeover bill.
  Democrats say this is about ``voting rights.'' It isn't. The right to 
vote is more readily accessible and easily exercised by eligible voters 
across the country than ever before. This is really about federalizing 
our elections and enacting policies that they think will give them an 
advantage in future elections. And all along the way, they will revel 
in their hypocrisy and self-righteously pretend that they are 
``protecting democracy.''
  But make no mistake, a change to the filibuster won't protect 
democracy. It will ruin it.
  Democrats in this Chamber can posture all they want, but the American 
people see them for what they really are: self-serving, power-hungry 
politicians.
  We all know that if the Democrats' bill was good, if it included 
policies that would actually improve our Nation's elections, it would 
pass. But there is nothing in the bill worth voting for. The Democrats' 
bill is an assault on American elections. It will fuel voter fraud, 
waste taxpayer dollars on political campaigns and attack ads, and make 
it nearly impossible to conduct fair elections that our citizens can 
trust.
  We need an end to this self-serving hypocrisy, and we need Members 
who will stand up for what is right. I am urging my Democratic 
colleagues to see past their party's own partisan, short-term 
interests, and I ask them to consider the health and future of our 
democracy. That is what the American people deserve.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CRUZ. Madam President, just this week, we saw the College 
Football National Championship game. A lot of tremendous athletes 
engaged in tremendous feats of skill and strength, but I have to say, 
there wasn't an athlete on the field who demonstrated the flexibility 
that we are seeing in the U.S. Senate right now. We are today seeing 
Democrats in the Senate, with the active encouragement of President Joe 
Biden, engaging in not one but two partisan power grabs and doing them 
both with a twist. Let me explain.
  Democrats are desperate to hold on to power. It is their No. 1 
priority. It is more important than anything else. It is more important 
than jobs and our economy to Democrats. It is more important than 
getting kids back to school. It is more important than defeating COVID. 
Nothing matters more to today's Democrats than staying in power no 
matter what.
  How do we know that? Well, the very first bill introduced in the 
House of

[[Page S174]]

Representatives, H.R. 1, is a bill many of us call the ``Corrupt 
Politicians Act.'' It is a bill designed to keep Democrats in power 
forever. That was Nancy Pelosi's No. 1 priority.
  The very first bill introduced in this Chamber, S. 1, is likewise the 
``Corrupt Politicians Act,'' a bill designed to keep Democrats in power 
forever. It is the No. 1 priority of elected Democrats.
  When that failed to get sufficient votes to pass, Democrats shifted 
to option 1B. Option 1B has the same objective--keep Democrats in power 
forever--but it is through a little twist, a sleight of hand. Now, 
Democrats want to subject every significant decision concerning voting 
to the unreviewable--in most instances--arbitrary power of an unelected 
bureaucrat in the Federal Department of Justice.
  My State of Texas has 29 million people. Those 29 million people have 
democratic rights. They have rights to elect legislatures that reflect 
their views, their policies, their values. Do you know what Senate 
Democrats say? We don't care. We don't care what those 29 million 
people want; we, the Democrats, want to stay in power.
  So let's take, for example, photo ID. I have in my wallet my driver's 
license. Most people do. Voter ID is a policy that is supported by the 
overwhelming majority of Americans. Roughly 80 percent of Americans 
support voter ID, requiring a driver's license to vote. Two-thirds of 
African-American voters support voter ID. It is overwhelmingly 
supported across the country.
  Do you know who doesn't support it? Elected Democrats. Sadly, every 
single Democrat in this Chamber has been willing to go on board with 
proposals to strike down voter ID laws. Here is what the Democrats want 
to do: They want to say that even though the voters of Texas want voter 
ID because we want elections with integrity--we want to know that if 
you come in and vote and say your name is John Doe, that you are not 
somebody else pretending to be that person--congressional Democrats 
don't care. They want to have an unelected bureaucrat with the ability 
to strike that down--and likewise with ballot harvesting.
  Ballot harvesting is one of the most corrupt practices in this 
country. It is the practice whereby paid political operatives go and 
collect the ballots of other people. So, for example, you have a young 
operative from the DNC come into a nursing home and go room to room. 
Now, some of those residents may no longer be competent to make a 
choice. They may not be aware of their surroundings. But for an 
unscrupulous operative, that doesn't stop them. That operative can sit 
there and say: Sir or ma'am, you want to vote for so-and-so, don't you? 
They can fill out the ballot for them.
  Do you know what? If there is some obstreperous senior in a nursing 
home who says, ``Gosh, I really want to vote for the other guy,'' well, 
it is very simple for the unscrupulous operative to take that ballot--
ah, this ballot is for the other guy--and magically it ends up in the 
trash, never gets mailed in. They can just mail in the ballots they 
agree with and throw away the ballots they disagree with.
  There is a reason the majority of States have made ballot harvesting 
illegal: It invites voter fraud. By the way, it wasn't long ago when 
people on both sides of the aisle recognized this.
  The most significant bipartisan effort examining voter fraud: the 
study of a bipartisan Commission called the Carter-Baker Commission. 
Baker is former Republican Secretary of State James Baker. Carter is 
former Democratic President Jimmy Carter. The Carter-Baker Commission 
concluded that voter ID was an important step to stopping voter fraud. 
The Carter-Baker Commission concluded that voter fraud was a real and 
significant problem undermining the integrity of elections. The Carter-
Baker Commission identified ballot harvesting as one of the most 
dangerous practices encouraging voter fraud.
  As I said, the Carter in Carter-Baker Commission was former 
Democratic President Jimmy Carter--hardly a rightwing Republican 
operative by any stretch of the imagination.

  It used to be, when sanity was permissible in the Democratic Party, 
that people would acknowledge the obvious. Unfortunately, we are in 
hyperpartisan times. So, today, Senate Democrats want to be able to 
have laws on voter ID, want to have laws prohibiting ballot harvesting 
struck down by one unelected bureaucrat.
  By the way, who is that bureaucrat? Currently, it is a woman named 
Kristen Clarke, head of the Civil Rights Division at the Department of 
Justice. Ms. Clarke is one of the most radical, partisan nominees ever 
to serve in the U.S. Department of Justice. She is one of the leading 
advocates in the country for abolishing the police.
  By the way, every single Democrat in this Chamber voted to confirm 
her despite the fact that she is one of the leading advocates in the 
country for abolishing the police. She has been a hardcore, leftwing, 
partisan advocate her entire life.
  Now, she is entitled to have her views. She is entitled to believe 
those views passionately. But here is what Senate Democrats want to do: 
They want to take this one person and say she can strike down the laws 
adopted by legislatures elected by 29 million Texans. That is 
extraordinary.
  Now, what could justify such a thing? Well, we saw Joe Biden give an 
incredibly demagogic, racist speech accusing half the country of being 
racist, of being Bull Connor.
  The Democrats say this is Jim Crow 2.0. You know, Madam President, 
ironically and I think inadvertently, the Democrats are telling the 
truth. They don't mean to be, but they are. What was Jim Crow 1.0? Jim 
Crow 1.0 was laws that were written almost exclusively by elected 
Democrats. If you look at the authors of Jim Crow, they were Democrats, 
as were the founders of the Ku Klux Klan. The purpose of Jim Crow laws 
was to do one thing: stop the voters from voting Democrats out of 
office because, if you look at the African Americans who were freed 
from slavery, they were electing Republicans. In many instances, they 
were electing Black Republicans. And the Democrats didn't want that. 
How dare the voters select someone not from their party. So Jim Crow 
was written to strip the right to vote from the voters who dared to 
vote against Democrats.
  Well, fast-forward to today. The ``Corrupt Politicians Act'' is Jim 
Crow 2.0. It is once again written by Democrats to strip the right to 
vote from the American people to prevent them from voting Democrats out 
of office.
  Listen, a lot of Democrats are really nervous right now. Pretty much 
everyone in Washington recognizes that in November, we are going to see 
a wave election. Pretty much everyone in Washington understands that in 
November, Republicans are going to retake the House of Representatives, 
probably by a big margin, and there is a very good possibility we will 
retake the Senate as well.
  Democrats can't defend their policies. They can't defend the rampant 
inflation that is hammering seniors and working-class people across the 
country. They can't defend the chaos at the open borders. They can't 
defend the jobs being destroyed. They can't defend the lawless and 
abusive vaccine mandates. And they certainly can't defend their 
catastrophic surrender and failure in Afghanistan.
  It has gotten so bad that when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris went down 
to the State of Georgia, Stacey Abrams, the Democratic candidate 
running for Governor in Georgia--and, I would note, Stacey Abrams still 
maintains to this day she won the last election. She insists the last 
election was stolen and she is the sitting Governor. Apparently this is 
a reelect campaign. Stacey Abrams refused to show up, to be seen with 
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Even while Biden was giving this racially 
demagogic speech, which Stacey Abrams has made a career of doing, Ms. 
Abrams did not show up for the speech. She said she had a scheduling 
conflict.
  The Presiding Officer and I have both served some time in the Senate. 
We have both seen instances where the President of the United States 
was visiting our home States. I can tell you, as a Senator, you make 
time to be there if you want to be there. It is clear that Ms. Abrams 
did not want to be there, that she looked at Joe Biden and Kamala 
Harris and sees their poll numbers plummeting, she sees their policies 
failing, and she wanted to be nowhere near that.
  So what is the Democrats' approach? If they can't win on the merits, 
if they

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can't defend their policy failures, if they can't convince the voters, 
then let's go back to the Jim Crow policies the Democrats authored to 
begin with. This is Jim Crow 2.0: Strip away the power of the voters to 
make a choice, put an unelected bureaucrat in charge of election laws, 
and throw out the decisions of 29 million Texans.
  I will tell the Presiding Officer this: Democrats don't get to claim 
they are defending democracy when they are literally taking away the 
rights of democratically elected legislatures. That is many things, but 
it ain't democracy. One unelected bureaucrat overruling 29 million 
Texans is not democracy; it is a power grab.
  But I told you this was a power grab on top of a power grab with a 
twist. The second power grab is, how are they going to try to pass the 
``Corrupt Politicians Act''? They are going to do it by nuking the 
filibuster.
  The rules of the Senate written in that book that sits on the dais in 
front of you say that to proceed to legislation takes 60 votes in this 
Senate. It takes 60 percent of the Senators. Those are the Senate 
rules. They are black and white. They are clear. If you don't like the 
Senate rules, there is a way to change that. You can amend the Senate 
rules. It takes 67 votes to amend the Senate rules.
  A number of us have proposed amending the Senate rules. I myself have 
repeatedly gone to Democrats saying I would be happy to work with 
Democrats on proposals to amend the Senate rules to allow Senators on 
both sides to offer more amendments. Democrats haven't been willing to 
do so. Instead, what Democrats intend to do--what they want to do, what 
President Biden is urging them to do--is to break the Senate rules, to 
change the Senate rules. It is called nuking the filibuster.
  If their plan is successful, Senator Schumer will stand up and seek a 
ruling from the Chair as to whether it takes 60 votes or 50 votes to 
proceed to legislation.
  The Chair will say--if the Chair is following the rules--it takes 60 
votes. And then Senator Schumer will move to reconsider the ruling of 
the Chair and overrule the ruling of the Chair and say: Even though the 
words on the page say 60 votes, from now on it is 50. It is another 
brazen power grab.
  There may be some folks at home who are a little cynical of the 
partisan time we find ourselves in, who are skeptical of claims, 
perhaps, made by both sides. But maybe you are a Democrat at home. And 
I am a Republican. I am a conservative Republican. You might be saying: 
Do you know what? If it is Cruz saying it, I am a Democrat; I don't 
believe him.
  I understand this. This is a very partisan time. There are a lot of 
disagreements. So if you are a Democrat at home and you are inclined 
not to believe what I say, I am going to suggest, perhaps, some people 
you can believe.
  I told you it was a double power grab with a twist. I want to point 
to you the words of President Joe Biden. If you are not inclined to 
believe a Republican, maybe you will believe Joe Biden. Here is what 
Joe Biden said in 2019. This is not 1964. This is not 1954--2019, a 
couple of years ago. ``Ending the filibuster is a very dangerous 
move.''
  If you are at home and don't believe Republicans, do you believe Joe 
Biden? Was he lying when he said ``Ending the filibuster is a very 
dangerous move'' or was he telling the truth? Because that is what Joe 
Biden said just a couple of years ago.
  Now, maybe you say: Well, he was on a campaign. People say things. 
You can't hold him to fault for saying that. That is not fair.
  OK, all right, so now you don't believe me, and you don't believe Joe 
Biden. But let's see if we can find someone else. How about someone who 
serves in this Chamber right now? How about someone who is the Senate 
majority leader right now? How about Senator Chuck Schumer?
  If you haven't actually watched this speech, I would encourage you to 
go pull out your phone and Google it. You can find it really easily. 
Senator Chuck Schumer, in 2005, gave a speech. I am going read to you 
verbatim what he said. He said: ``They want, because they can't get 
their way . . . to change the rules midstream.''
  What would be the effect of that? You change the rules midstream. You 
nuke the filibuster. What would be the effect of that? According to 
Chuck Schumer, the effect of that is ``to wash away 200 years of 
history.'' That is what Schumer says is the effect. ``Washing away 200 
years of history''--that sound serious.
  Anything else?
  ``They want to make this country into a banana republic, where if you 
don't get your way, you change the rules''--``wash away 200 years of 
history . . . make this country into a banana republic.''
  That is pretty serious stuff. That ought to concern us. But at least 
that is the worst it gets, right? Well, actually, no. Schumer 
continued: ``It'll be doomsday for democracy if we do.''
  There are reporters teeming the U.S. Capitol. Any reporter who wants 
to be something other than a partisan shill and mouthpiece for the 
Democrats ought to ask every single Democrat: Senator so-and-so, do you 
agree with Chuck Schumer that ending the filibuster will turn our 
Nation into a banana republic? Do you agree, Senator so-and-so, that 
ending the filibuster would be doomsday for democracy?
  And, by the way, if there are any reporters left who actually have 
journalistic ethics, you shouldn't just ask Joe Manchin and Kyrsten 
Sinema. Right now, they are the lone Democrats with the gumption to 
stand up for democracy. But you ought to ask all 50 of them, every 
single one of the Democrats: Do you agree with Chuck Schumer that 
ending the filibuster is doomsday for democracy? And if not, why? Is it 
just that your team is the one that can't get their way? Now it is your 
side that wants to change the rules midstream. Now it is your side 
that, if you don't get your way, you change the rules.
  Was Joe Biden lying in 2019? Was Senator Schumer lying in 2005? I 
don't know. You ought to ask them. A double power grab with a twist: 
Jim Crow 2.0, seizing Federal elections, striking down the laws adopted 
by democratic legislatures, putting an unelected radical leftist 
bureaucrat in charge of elections with more power--this one leftist 
bureaucrat--than all 29 million people in the State of Texas, doing so 
by breaking the Senate rules to change the rules. And the twist is with 
a dose of hypocrisy--unusual even for this place.
  Look, if a Senator serves long enough, there will be times when they 
may vote a little bit this way or a little bit that way. There are lots 
of Senators that have had tensions with prior positions. I cannot think 
of another time when a Senator has voted for something that he has 
called ``doomsday for democracy.'' That is not just a little 
hypocritical. And, by the way, all the Democrats agreed with him. They 
were all standing shoulder to shoulder.
  In 2005, when Senator Schumer said this, he was either lying or 
telling the truth. If he was lying, I guess you should ask him why he 
was lying. If he was telling the truth, I guess you should ask 48 
Democrats who don't care why they are willing to vote for doomsday for 
democracy.
  If you want to understand the dangers of this double power grab with 
a twist, look no further than the vicious, partisan, divisive, hateful 
speech President Biden gave, insulting half this country; oddly enough, 
blaming Republicans for the sins of his own party--the Democratic 
Party--who wrote Jim Crow and founded the KKK.
  All of us were sitting outside the Capitol when President Biden gave 
his inauguration speech, when he talked about unity, when he talked 
about healing. Do you want to see the vicious partisanship that ending 
the filibuster will produce? You saw it. A double power grab, with a 
twist of hypocrisy.
  If there is a Democrat in this Chamber who gives a damn about 
democracy, let me urge you: Don't vote for what your own leader has 
called ``doomsday for democracy.''
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. LEE. Madam President, the Senate is, indeed, a peculiar 
institution. Despite what some might expect, and despite how it might 
be portrayed from the outside, Senators genuinely strive to be 
collegial, even when--especially when--they hold strong political and 
policy disagreements. In fact, the Senate rules have strict 
prohibitions on insulting the character of another Member or a State. 
That is because debate is a fundamental part of the Senate. I

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mean, it is part of our culture in this institution. That is how this 
institution earned the moniker as the world's greatest deliberative 
body.
  Some in this body, unfortunately, want to change all that. They seek 
to trample over more than two centuries of precedent, procedure, and 
politeness. They are attempting to break the rules that require a two-
thirds supermajority--67 votes--to change the rules. They want to 
ignore that requirement and stiff-arm this historic institution in a 
way that would obliterate the requirement that those in the majority 
hear the voices of and work with those in the minority.
  That requirement--sometimes colloquially referred to as the 
filibuster--is one of the most powerful constraints or checks on human 
nature, not only in the Senate but in the entirety of the U.S. 
Government. If the filibuster were removed, everything from regulatory 
structures to tax rates, the size of the Supreme Court, the makeup of 
the military, the criminal code, and much, much more could change 
drastically every few years. Keeping track of the law and its 
fluctuating requirements would be impossible for the most capable of 
lawyers, let alone the average American subject to all those laws. Our 
business landscape would be obliterated under the ever-changing 
commands of the Federal Government. Americans would be worse off in 
almost every sense I can think of. In countless ways, the American 
people would be harmed by this unfortunate decision.
  Our system is designed specifically to control those whims and those 
passions, to make sure that their impact on the law doesn't cause the 
law to become this ever-changing, ever-fluctuating creature that can't 
be anticipated.
  Our Constitution was designed to protect the rights, the voices, and 
the influence of those not in the majority. Laws that significantly 
impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people should, in fact, be 
difficult to pass.
  In fact, the Senate has applied these principles into almost every 
mechanism of the institution. Most laws pass by unanimous consent or by 
simple voice vote after hearty consideration and frequent amendments 
through a process known as the hotline. That would essentially cease to 
function if the minority had no significant influence. Opportunities 
for amending these often smaller and somewhat less controversial bills 
would be foreclosed, crippling the careful consideration needed. Bills 
would have to be forced through often on party-line votes over the 
objection, suspicion, or protest of the minority.
  But beyond building consensus and maintaining the function of the 
Senate, the filibuster serves as the keel on a very large ship. It 
prevents the waves and passions of each new election from drastically 
changing the laws of the country. It is a stabilizer of sorts, one that 
prevents our Nation's course from being jerked around to oscillating 
extremes.
  I was asked recently if the Senate is broken. I responded by saying 
that the only sense in which I think the Senate is significantly 
broken, or at least undermined in the way that it is supposed to 
operate, is in its neglect of substantive debate and opportunities for 
amendments for each individual Member. The filibuster protects the 
remaining debate, amendment, and consideration available to Members of 
this body, whether those Members are of the majority party or of the 
minority party.
  So removing the filibuster, on the other hand, would irreparably 
render the Senate beyond recognition. The partisan vitriol and 
disregard for opposing Senators would eat away at this place, at our 
norms, our customs, and, ultimately, our Republic.
  Now, at least until recently, many Senate Democrats--most, in fact--
held these beliefs as well. In 2017, 27 of them, including now-Vice 
President Harris, signed a letter urging the preservation of the 
filibuster. Many of those Members still serve today, and I encourage 
them to consider their past advice.
  By the way, that was a letter I signed, along with nearly every 
Member of the Senate from the Republican Party. We signed on to that 
notwithstanding the fact that Republicans held majorities in the Senate 
and in the House and a Republican President was serving in the White 
House. We did so because even though some short-term gain could have 
been achieved by nuking the filibuster then, we all understood what I 
think we still all understand today, which is that it would inflict 
irreparable harm on the Senate, and even more than the Senate, on those 
represented here. It would irreparably harm the American people to do 
away with it.
  Senator Schumer, the leader of this destructive current effort, has 
himself in the past given grave, dire warnings about what this tactic--
making the filibuster a thing of the past--would mean. We heard many 
quotes today, and in one that sticks out in my mind in particular, he 
said that attempts like that to nuke the filibuster are ``what we call 
abuse of power.'' He also said in that same quote that even if you have 
51 percent of the vote, you still don't get your way 100 percent of the 
time. He is absolutely right. That describes the Senate, it describes 
its rules, and it describes so much about how our system of government 
works. It even describes the system of checks and balances built into 
our Constitution.
  The vertical protection of federalism says many of our laws--in fact, 
most of them--are supposed to be made at the State and local level and 
not within Washington, and the horizontal protection--that of 
federalism--says that we are going to have one branch that makes the 
laws, one that enforces them, and one that interprets them.
  In that same document, it gives both Chambers of Congress the 
authority to set our own rules. Even though the 60-vote cloture 
standard is not itself mandated by the Constitution, the authority to 
add it, to adopt it, as the Senate has, is in the Constitution, and its 
ends, more importantly, are entirely consistent with this principle of 
checks and balances, with this notion that Senator Schumer eloquently 
referred to. The mere fact that you have 51 percent of the vote doesn't 
entitle you to get your way 100 percent of the time. Now, this 
circumstance is particularly poignant given that he doesn't even have 
51 percent of the votes in this Chamber, no. This is deadlocked 50 to 
50.
  He is also right that this is what we call an abuse of power. Indeed, 
breaking the rules to grab power is an abuse. This attempt is so 
transparent that even Senator Schumer has told the media that his 
Members are concerned about losing their elections and the majority if 
they can't use this tactic to federally take over our election system. 
It is sad, it is tragic, and it is unacceptable.
  I warn them that the American people see through this ploy. They know 
what is happening, and they know why. They were promised a return to 
cordial statesmanship. They were promised unity. This attempt mocks 
both of these promises. It mocks the U.S. Senate. It mocks our system 
of checks and balances. Most tragically, it mocks the American people.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The junior Senator from Iowa.
  Ms. ERNST. Madam President, first, I would like to wish a very happy 
and healthy new year to you and to all of our staff and pages who make 
the Senate run so efficiently every single day and frequently late into 
the night. The world's most deliberative body has unpredictable hours, 
which all too often means missing important events with family because 
we are here going back and forth on the pressing issues of the day.
  This is why we have a Senate, after all--to give voice to the various 
viewpoints of Americans from each State and then try to resolve those 
differences. It isn't always easy since, unlike the House of 
Representatives, the Senate's unique rules require us to work together 
across party lines.
  I know what it is like to work with my Democratic friends. In fact, I 
was named as one of the most bipartisan Senators of either party in the 
past 25 years. That is what it takes to get things done here because 
the rules force us to reach consensus.
  The Senate was created specifically to prevent a mob rule mentality. 
James Madison, the father of the Constitution, described the Senate as 
the ``anchor'' of the Federal Government that would act as a 
``necessary fence against fickleness and passion.'' George

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Washington famously said that the Senate was established to cool 
legislation passed by the House in the same way that a saucer cools hot 
tea.
  Folks, we certainly have seen a lot of hot mess coming over from the 
House. It is very concerning that the saucer intended to cool heated 
passions is itself beginning to boil over as a result of hot air from 
within.
  Senate Democrats are threatening to blow up the Senate to 
fundamentally change the U.S. Senate and to radically transform our 
country. It cannot be understated how detrimental this action would be 
to America. It would unravel two centuries of American representative 
democracy. It would silence millions of Americans and destroy 
what comity remains within this body.

  I have to ask my colleagues, which side of history do you want to be 
on? Do you want to go down in history books as the ones who turned the 
Senate, the world's most deliberative body, into the House of 
Representatives?
  The law of our land would dramatically sway back and forth, and the 
resulting political uncertainty would all but erase what little trust 
the people have in our governing institutions and lead to even greater 
political divisions. I don't think this is a future any of us want and 
certainly not the one that was promised by President Biden when he 
pledged--when he pledged--to the American people not to divide but to 
unify our country.
  When the threat of blowing up the Senate arose during Mr. Biden's 
time in this institution, he spoke passionately against it. I don't 
often quote Joe Biden, but I would urge you all to listen to his full 
speech on the matter.
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have his speech printed 
in the Congressional Record following my remarks.
  Then-Senator Biden warned:

       History will judge us harshly, in my view, if we eliminate 
     over 200 years of precedent and procedure in this body and, I 
     might add, doing it by breaking a second rule of the Senate, 
     and that is changing the rules of the Senate by a mere 
     majority vote.

  Senator Biden concluded:

       This nuclear option is ultimately an example of the 
     arrogance of power. It is a fundamental power grab by the 
     majority party.

  Flash-forward 17 years later. Joe Biden is still in Washington, and 
he and his Democratic counterparts are the ones who are exercising that 
arrogance of power.
  Now as the President, Biden just yesterday declared:

       We have no option but to change the Senate rules, including 
     getting rid of the filibuster.

  So how and why are we at a point where nuking the Senate could even 
be a possibility? Plain and simple: The Democratic leader, who has 
participated in hundreds of filibusters over the past 5 years--
hundreds, folks; hundreds--wants to have his way regardless of the 
longstanding rules of this institution, the viewpoints of other 
Senators, or even, folks--get this--the wishes of the citizens of his 
own State.
  Just last week, the Democratic leader said the filibuster was being 
used to ``embarrass the will of majority,'' and therefore ``the Senate 
will debate and consider changes to the Senate rules on or before 
January 17.''
  Folks, it is not the Senate rules embarrassing the majority but, 
rather, their two-sided flip-flopping on the importance of the 
filibuster to this institution and to our democracy.
  Not so long ago, the Democratic leader said that eliminating the 
filibuster would turn ``the cooling saucer of democracy into the rubber 
stamp of dictatorship.'' It will be ``a doomsday for democracy.'' 
Today, he is the one with the finger on the nuclear button, all because 
he can't get his way.
  This is the kind of power grab you would expect from tyrants in 
socialist nations, who seem to be where the Democrats are taking many 
of their cues from these days. Tyranny is no way to run a democracy, 
and destroying the U.S. Senate for a power grab is certainly not the 
example we should be setting for the rest of the world.
  But the hypocrisy doesn't end there, folks. Democrats are 
manufacturing hysteria that Republican-controlled States are placing 
what they consider ``unfair restrictions'' on voting as an excuse to 
blow up the Senate and thereby clear a pathway for the rest of their 
radical liberal agenda. The irony here is that New York, home of the 
Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, and Delaware, home of President 
Biden, have some of the most restrictive absentee voting laws in the 
entire country.
  Just this past November, the Democratic leader's constituents--his 
constituents--overwhelmingly voted down a ballot initiative to allow 
absentee voting without providing an excuse and another proposal to 
permit unregistered voters from registering and then voting on election 
day. They were voted down--his constituents. So in New York, the only 
way to qualify for an absentee ballot is to be out of the country or 
sick or have a physical disability. No other reasons are permitted.
  Now the senior Senator from New York is threatening to destroy the 
Senate to override the wishes of the residents of his very own State 
who voted against the policies he is trying to impose on every other 
State. Did you catch that, folks? He is overriding the will of the 
people in his own State. Does that sound like democracy to you? It is 
not Senate Republicans blocking the Democrat leader's agenda; it is his 
own constituents.
  Folks, the reality is, this election takeover bill is just the 
beginning, used as an excuse by the majority leader to then break the 
Senate and strengthen his own grip on power.
  This party boss mentality may work in New York, but, folks, the 
Senate is not Tammany Hall. While Senate Democrats would have you 
believe Republicans are somehow limiting the rights of Americans to 
vote, they, in fact, are the ones plotting to silence millions of 
Americans.
  The same partisans on the other side of the aisle who ``boasted'' 
of--air quotes right here, folks, you see them--they ``boasted'' just 
about a year ago of resisting. Just a year ago, they were encouraging 
resisting; filibustering and blocking just about every proposal or 
nominee put forth by the prior President.
  Now they call this tool a threat to democracy. Remember, less than 2 
years ago, following the very tragic death of George Floyd, the Senator 
from New York voted to block consideration of a police reform bill put 
forward by my friend Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.
  That is just one of the many other examples of commonsense bills the 
Democrats blocked for purely partisan reasons.
  The real threat to democracy isn't the filibuster but those 
politicians who abuse the power with which they have been entrusted. 
The Democratic leader has already put a choke hold on democracy right 
here in the Senate, abusing his position to singlehandedly block other 
Senators from offering amendments to bills he chooses to bring to the 
floor.
  If the majority wants to demonstrate a commitment to democracy, why 
not start right here in the Senate? Instead of threatening to have less 
deliberation, why not commit to more? Let's bring up bills that have 
already had broad bipartisan support, and let's allow more votes on 
amendments.
  But rather than starting this new year with a resolution to take this 
approach and make the Senate a true example of democracy in action, 
where every voice is heard and respected, the Democratic leader penned 
each of us a bombastic letter written with the left's usual dramatic 
flair and theatrics, comparing the filibuster to a dead hand and 
promising to permanently alter the Senate unless we bend to his wishes.
  The senior Senator from New York should leave the theater for 
Broadway, where it belongs. And before casting a vote that could 
fundamentally change the Senate forever, I would urge my Democratic 
colleagues to take some advice about the intended behavior of the 
Senate from our Nation's greatest statesman, George Washington, and 
cool it.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                          Congressional Record


                     VOL. 151, NO. 69--MAY 23, 2005

       Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, my friends and colleagues, I have 
     not been here as long as Senator Byrd, and no one fully 
     understands the Senate as well as Senator Byrd, but I have 
     been here for over three decades. This is the single most 
     significant vote any one of

[[Page S178]]

     us will cast in my 32 years in the Senate. I suspect the 
     Senator would agree with that.
       We should make no mistake. This nuclear option is 
     ultimately an example of the arrogance of power. It is a 
     fundamental power grab by the majority party, propelled by 
     its extreme right and designed to change the reading of the 
     Constitution, particularly as it relates to individual rights 
     and property rights. It is nothing more or nothing less. Let 
     me take a few moments to explain that.
       Folks who want to see this change want to eliminate one of 
     the procedural mechanisms designed for the express purpose of 
     guaranteeing individual rights, and they also have a 
     consequence, and would undermine the protections of a 
     minority point of view in the heat of majority excess. We 
     have been through these periods before in American history 
     but never, to the best of my knowledge, has any party been so 
     bold as to fundamentally attempt to change the structure of 
     this body.
       Why else would the majority party attempt one of the most 
     fundamental changes in the 216-year history of this Senate on 
     the grounds that they are being denied ten of 218 Federal 
     judges, three of whom have stepped down? What 
     shortsightedness, and what a price history will exact on 
     those who support this radical move.
       It is important we state frankly, if for no other reason 
     than the historical record, why this is being done. The 
     extreme right of the Republican Party is attempting to hijack 
     the Federal courts by emasculating the courts' independence 
     and changing one of the unique foundations of the Senate; 
     that is, the requirement for the protection of the right of 
     individual Senators to guarantee the independence of the 
     Federal Judiciary.
       This is being done in the name of fairness? Quite frankly, 
     it is the ultimate act of unfairness to alter the unique 
     responsibility of the Senate and to do so by breaking the 
     very rules of the Senate.
       Mark my words, what is at stake here is not the politics of 
     2005, but the Federal Judiciary in the country in the year 
     2025. This is the single most significant vote, as I said 
     earlier, that I will have cast in my 32 years in the Senate. 
     The extreme Republican right has made Federal appellate Judge 
     Douglas Ginsburg's ``Constitution in Exile'' framework their 
     top priority.
       It is their purpose to reshape the Federal courts so as to 
     guarantee a reading of the Constitution consistent with Judge 
     Ginsburg's radical views of the fifth amendment's taking 
     clause, the nondelegation doctrine, the 11th amendment, and 
     the 10th amendment. I suspect some listening to me and some 
     of the press will think I am exaggerating. I respectfully 
     suggest they read Judge Ginsburg's ideas about the 
     ``Constitution in Exile.'' Read it and understand what is at 
     work here.
       If anyone doubts what I am saying, I suggest you ask 
     yourself the rhetorical question, Why, for the first time 
     since 1789, is the Republican-controlled Senate attempting to 
     change the rule of unlimited debate, eliminate it, as it 
     relates to Federal judges for the circuit court or the 
     Supreme Court?
       If you doubt what I said, please read what Judge Ginsburg 
     has written and listen to what Michael Greve of the American 
     Enterprise Institute has said:
       I think what is really needed here is a fundamental 
     intellectual assault on the entire New Deal edifice. We want 
     to withdraw judicial support for the entire modern welfare 
     state.
       Read: Social Security, workmen's comp. Read: National Labor 
     Relations Board. Read: FDA. Read: What all the byproduct of 
     that shift in constitutional philosophy that took place in 
     the 1930s meant.
       We are going to hear more about what I characterize as 
     radical view--maybe it is unfair to say radical--a 
     fundamental view and what, at the least, must be 
     characterized as a stark departure from current 
     constitutional jurisprudence. Click on to American Enterprise 
     Institute Web site www.aei.org. Read what they say. Read what 
     the purpose is. It is not about seeking a conservative court 
     or placing conservative Justices on the bench. The courts are 
     already conservative.
       Seven of the nine Supreme Court Justices appointed by 
     Republican Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush 1--seven 
     of nine. Ten of 13 Federal circuit courts of appeal dominated 
     by Republican appointees, appointed by Presidents Nixon, 
     Ford, Reagan, Bush 1, and Bush 2; 58 percent of the circuit 
     court judges appointed by Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, 
     Bush 1, or Bush 2. No, my friends and colleagues, this is not 
     about building a conservative court. We already have a 
     conservative court. This is about guaranteeing a Supreme 
     Court made up of men and women such as those who sat on the 
     Court in 1910 and 1920. Those who believe, as Justice Janice 
     Rogers Brown of California does, that the Constitution has 
     been in exile since the New Deal.
       My friends and colleagues, the nuclear option is not an 
     isolated instance. It is part of a broader plan to pack the 
     court with fundamentalist judges and to cower existing 
     conservative judges to toe the extreme party line.
       You all heard what Tom DeLay said after the Federal courts 
     refused to bend to the whip of the radical right in the 
     Schiavo case. Mr. DeLay declared: ``The time will come for 
     men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.''
       Even current conservative Supreme Court Justices are 
     looking over their shoulder, with one extremist recalling the 
     despicable slogan of Joseph Stalin--and I am not making this 
     up--in reference to a Reagan Republican appointee, Justice 
     Kennedy, when he said: ``No man, no problem''--absent his 
     presence, we have no problem.
       Let me remind you, as I said, Justice Kennedy was appointed 
     by President Reagan.
       Have they never heard of the independence of the 
     judiciary--as fundamental a part of our constitutional system 
     of checks and balances as there is today; which is literally 
     the envy of the entire world, and the fear of the extremist 
     part of the world? An independent judiciary is their greatest 
     fear.
       Why are radicals focusing on the court? Well, first of all, 
     it is their time to be in absolute political control. It is 
     like, why did Willy Sutton rob banks? He said: Because that 
     is where the money is. Why try it now--for the first time in 
     history--to eliminate extended debate? Well, because they 
     control every lever of the Federal Government. That is the 
     very reason why we have the filibuster rule. So when one 
     party, when one interest controls all levers of Government, 
     one man or one woman can stand on the floor of the Senate and 
     resist, if need be, the passions of the moment.
       But there is a second reason why they are focusing on the 
     courts. That is because they have been unable to get their 
     agenda passed through the legislative bodies. Think about it. 
     With all the talk about how they represent the majority of 
     the American people, none of their agenda has passed as it 
     relates to the fifth amendment, as it relates to zoning laws, 
     as it relates to the ability of Federal agencies, such as the 
     Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection 
     Agency, to do their jobs.
       Read what they write when they write about the 
     nondelegation doctrine. That simply means, we in the 
     Congress, as they read the Constitution, cannot delegate to 
     the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to set 
     limits on how much of a percentage of carcinogens can be 
     admitted into the air or admitted into the water. They insist 
     that we, the Senate, have to vote on every one of those 
     rules, that we, the Senate and the House, with the ability of 
     the President to veto, would have to vote on any and all 
     drugs that are approved or not approved.
       If you think I am exaggerating, look at these Web sites. 
     These are not a bunch of wackos. These are a bunch of very 
     bright, very smart, very well-educated intellectuals who see 
     these Federal restraints as a restraint upon competition, a 
     restraint upon growth, a restraint upon the powerful.
       The American people see what is going on. They are too 
     smart, and they are too practical. They might not know the 
     meaning of the nondelegation doctrine, they might not know 
     the clause of the fifth amendment relating to property, they 
     may not know the meaning of the tenth and eleventh amendments 
     as interpreted by Judge Ginsburg and others, but they know 
     that the strength of our country lies in common sense and our 
     common pragmatism, which is antithetical to the poisons of 
     the extremes on either side.
       The American people will soon learn that Justice Janice 
     Rogers Brown--one of the nominees who we are not allowing to 
     be confirmed, one of the ostensible reasons for this nuclear 
     option being employed--has decried the Supreme Court's 
     ``socialist revolution of 1937.'' Read Social Security. Read 
     what they write and listen to what they say. The very year 
     that a 5-to-4 Court upheld the constitutionality of Social 
     Security against a strong challenge--1937--Social Security 
     almost failed by one vote.
       It was challenged in the Supreme Court as being 
     confiscatory. People argued then that a Government has no 
     right to demand that everyone pay into the system, no right 
     to demand that every employer pay into the system. Some of 
     you may agree with that. It is a legitimate argument, but one 
     rejected by the Supreme Court in 1937, that Justice Brown 
     refers to as the ``socialist revolution of 1937.''
       If it had not been for some of the things they had already 
     done, nobody would believe what I am saying here. These guys 
     mean what they say. The American people are going to soon 
     learn that one of the leaders of the constitutional exile 
     school, the group that wants to reinstate the Constitution as 
     it existed in 1920, said of another filibustered judge, 
     William Pryor that ``Pryor is the key to this puzzle. There's 
     nobody like him. I think he's sensational. He gets almost all 
     of it.''
       That is the reason why I oppose him. He gets all of it. And 
     you are about to get all of it if they prevail. We will not 
     have to debate about Social Security on this floor.
       So the radical right makes its power play now when they 
     control all political centers of power, however temporary. 
     The radical push through the nuclear option and then pack the 
     courts with unimpeded judges who, by current estimations, 
     will serve an average of 25 years. The right is focused on 
     packing the courts because their agenda is so radical that 
     they are unwilling to come directly to you, the American 
     people, and tell you what they intend.
       Without the filibuster, President Bush will send over more 
     and more judges of this nature, with perhaps three or four 
     Supreme Court nominations. And there will be nothing--
     nothing--that any moderate Republican friends and I will be 
     able to do about it.
       Judges who will influence the rights of average Americans: 
     The ability to sue your HMO that denies you your rights; the 
     ability to keep strip clubs out of your neighborhood--because 
     they make zoning laws unconstitutional--without you paying to 
     keep the

[[Page S179]]

     person from building; the ability to protect the land your 
     kids play on, the water they drink, the air they breathe, and 
     the privacy of your family in your own home.
       Remember, many of my colleagues say there is no such thing 
     as a right to privacy in any iteration under the Constitution 
     of the United States of America. Fortunately, we have had a 
     majority of judges who disagreed with that over the past 70 
     years. But hang on, folks. The fight over judges, at bottom, 
     is not about abortion and not about God, it is about giving 
     greater power to the already powerful. The fight is about 
     maintaining our civil rights protections, about workplace 
     safety and worker protections, about effective oversight of 
     financial markets, and protecting against insider trading. It 
     is about Social Security. What is really at stake in this 
     debate is, point blank, the shape of our constitutional 
     system for the next generation.
       The nuclear option is a twofer. It excises, friends, our 
     courts and, at the same time, emasculates the Senate. Put 
     simply, the nuclear option would transform the Senate from 
     the so-called cooling saucer our Founding Fathers talked 
     about to cool the passions of the day to a pure majoritarian 
     body like a Parliament. We have heard a lot in recent weeks 
     about the rights of the majority and obstructionism. But the 
     Senate is not meant to be a place of pure majoritarianism.
       Is majority rule what you really want? Do my Republican 
     colleagues really want majority rule in this Senate? Let me 
     remind you, 44 of us Democrats represent 161 million people. 
     One hundred sixty-one million Americans voted for these 44 
     Democrats. Do you know how many Americans voted for the 55 of 
     you? One hundred thirty-one million. If this were about pure 
     majorities, my party represents more people in America than 
     the Republican Party does. But that is not what it is about. 
     Wyoming, the home State of the Vice President, the President 
     of this body, gets one Senator for every 246,000 citizens; 
     California, gets one Senator for 17 million Americans. More 
     Americans voted for Vice President Gore than they did 
     Governor Bush. By majoritarian logic, Vice President Gore won 
     the election.
       Republicans control the Senate, and they have decided they 
     are going to change the rule. At its core, the filibuster is 
     not about stopping a nominee or a bill, it is about 
     compromise and moderation. That is why the Founders put 
     unlimited debate in. When you have to--and I have never 
     conducted a filibuster--but if I did, the purpose would be 
     that you have to deal with me as one Senator. It does not 
     mean I get my way. It means you may have to compromise. You 
     may have to see my side of the argument. That is what it is 
     about, engendering compromise and moderation.
       Ladies and gentlemen, the nuclear option extinguishes the 
     power of Independents and moderates in this Senate. That is 
     it. They are done. Moderates are important only if you need 
     to get 60 votes to satisfy cloture. They are much less 
     important if you need only 50 votes. I understand the 
     frustration of our Republican colleagues. I have been here 32 
     years, most of the time in the majority. Whenever you are in 
     the majority, it is frustrating to see the other side block a 
     bill or a nominee you support. I have walked in your shoes, 
     and I get it.
       I get it so much that what brought me to the Senate was the 
     fight for civil rights. My State, to its great shame, was 
     segregated by law, was a slave State. I came here to fight 
     it. But even I understood, with all the passion I felt as a 
     29-year-old kid running for the Senate, the purpose--the 
     purpose--of extended debate. Getting rid of the filibuster 
     has long-term consequences. If there is one thing I have 
     learned in my years here, once you change the rules and 
     surrender the Senate's institutional power, you never get it 
     back. And we are about to break the rules to change the 
     rules.
       I do not want to hear about ``fair play'' from my friends. 
     Under our rules, you are required to get \2/3\ of the votes 
     to change the rules. Watch what happens when the majority 
     leader stands up and says to the Vice President--if we go 
     forward with this--he calls the question. One of us, I expect 
     our leader, on the Democratic side will stand up and say: 
     Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. President. Is this parliamentarily 
     appropriate? In every other case since I have been here, for 
     32 years, the Presiding Officer leans down to the 
     Parliamentarian and says: What is the rule, Mr. 
     Parliamentarian? The Parliamentarian turns and tells them.
       Hold your breath, Parliamentarian. He is not going to look 
     to you because he knows what you would say. He would say: 
     This is not parliamentarily appropriate. You cannot change 
     the Senate rules by a pure majority vote.
       So if any of you think I am exaggerating, watch on 
     television, watch when this happens, and watch the Vice 
     President ignore--he is not required to look to an unelected 
     officer, but that has been the practice for 218 years. He 
     will not look down and say: What is the ruling? He will make 
     the ruling, which is a lie, a lie about the rule.
       Isn't what is really going on here that the majority does 
     not want to hear what others have to say, even if it is the 
     truth? Senator Moynihan, my good friend who I served with for 
     years, said: You are entitled to your own opinion but not 
     your own facts.
       The nuclear option abandons America's sense of fair play. 
     It is the one thing this country stands for: Not tilting the 
     playing field on the side of those who control and own the 
     field.
       I say to my friends on the Republican side: You may own the 
     field right now, but you won't own it forever. I pray God 
     when the Democrats take back control, we don't make the kind 
     of naked power grab you are doing. But I am afraid you will 
     teach my new colleagues the wrong lessons.
       We are the only Senate in the Senate as temporary 
     custodians of the Senate. The Senate will go on. Mark my 
     words, history will judge this Republican majority harshly, 
     if it makes this catastrophic move.

  Ms. ERNST. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. BALDWIN). The Democratic whip.
  Mr. DURBIN. I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized for up to 15 
minutes and Senators Padilla and Cantwell for up to 5 minutes each 
prior to the scheduled vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.