[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 11 (Tuesday, January 18, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S251-S253]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               FILIBUSTER

  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I was asked recently what I think is the 
No. 1 issue facing America. It is a tough question, and I have had a 
lot of issues race through my mind: inflation, the debt, workforce 
issues, the crisis at our southern border, the explosion of COVID 
cases, the deadly opioid epidemic, a warming planet, Russia and China 
flexing their muscles and creating more volatility around the world. We 
have got plenty of challenges, don't we? But do you know what I landed 
on, what I think is our biggest problem? It is the increasing 
division--even polarization--of our politics and our country. It is 
what makes it so hard to address all of those other issues that I named 
that are so important to the families whom we represent.
  Last week, on the Senate floor, my Democratic colleague from Arizona, 
Senator Sinema, called it a disease of division. Well put. When we are 
together, this country can achieve great things and has over the years. 
It can provide a beacon of hope to a troubled world, but as Lincoln 
warned, ``a house divided against itself cannot stand.'' In this body, 
we should be figuring out how to come together to help America stand--
and stand strong--to address our many challenges.
  That is why I am so discouraged about what I see playing out on the 
U.S. Senate floor again this week. I have seen an attempt by Democratic 
leadership to fan the flames of distrust. I see an attempt to further 
divide an already splintered country, both by exaggerated arguments 
being made to advance controversial legislation opposed by every single 
Republican regarding the tough issue of voting and then to try to 
achieve this purely partisan objective by changing a foundation of the 
Senate to dismantle the one Senate rule--the legislative filibuster--
that works to bring us together rather than pull us apart.
  Equally troubling to me is that this seems to be a purely political 
exercise now in that the conclusion seems predetermined. Apparently, 
the Senate is being dragged through this divisive and ugly partisan 
debate, knowing that it will not achieve a legislative result but only 
a deepening and hardening of the political lines in each camp.
  Here in the Senate, most Republicans and most Democrats say they want 
to bring the country together. I think they are sincere about that. 
This message was an explicit part of President Biden's campaign for 
President. Yet there is nothing about the harsh, partisan rhetoric from 
the President's speech on this topic in Atlanta last week or from much 
of the floor debate this week and last week that does anything but push 
our country further apart.
  First is the substance of the legislative fight. Democrats have been 
highly critical of those Republicans who refuse to accept the results 
of the 2020 election, pointing out accurately that dozens of lawsuits 
failed to show adequate fraud to change the result. They have attacked 
some Republicans because they have said that the election was rigged 
and for questioning the State-by-State certification process that has 
led to deeper rifts in our Nation and a significant number of 
Republican voters questioning the legitimacy of the election. I get 
that.
  So why now are Democratic leaders and President Biden using the exact 
same language, literally saying the elections are rigged--literally 
saying that? Why are they perpetrating their own election narrative 
that does not fit the facts but serves to push both sides deeper into 
their own camps and, in particular, now leads Democrats to think that 
elections are illegitimate?
  Majority Leader Schumer claims ``Republicans are pushing voter 
suppression and election nullification laws.''
  President Biden has compared State efforts to tighten up election 
administration to Jim Crow laws. He has compared Republicans to 
notorious racists in our history. These attacks are overwrought, 
exaggerated, and deeply divisive.
  Here is what the nonpartisan and respected group called No Labels has 
said about the Democratic attacks:

       If you dig into these [state legislative] proposals you 
     find most entail tightening up procedures pertaining to 
     registration, mail-in absentee voting and Voter ID [laws] 
     that were loosened in 2020 in the name of making it safer for 
     people to vote amid the COVID pandemic. Many leading 
     Democrats and liberal commentators have taken to describing 
     these measures as Jim Crow 2.0, which is to say they are 
     somehow worse than the original Jim Crow era, which entailed 
     poll taxes and literacy tests, violent intimidation of Black 
     voters by the KKK, and even outright prohibition on Black 
     voters participating in party primaries in southern States. 
     To suggest that any voting measures being debated today in 
     America are somehow worse than this is simply irresponsible 
     demagoguery.

  That comes from No Labels, which is a nonpartisan group, Democrats 
and Republicans, trying to find that middle ground.
  Now, to be fair, this group has been critical of Republican claims of 
widespread election fraud that cannot be backed up. So what are the 
actual facts?
  First, the Constitution guarantees all citizens 18 years of age or 
older the

[[Page S252]]

right to vote in elections regardless of race or gender--period.
  The Federal Voting Rights Act reaffirms that right and makes it 
enforceable in Federal court. In 2006, Congress voted in a bipartisan 
way to reauthorize this important law for 25 years, through 2031. I 
voted for and strongly support the Voting Rights Act and have long 
supported other commonsense efforts to increase voter confidence in our 
elections.
  In fact, there is a bipartisan effort underway right now to deal with 
a real problem: to ensure that after the fact, certified elections are 
respected. This will require making overdue reforms to the Electoral 
Count Act and some other reasonable updates to Federal election 
procedures. I am happy to be working with a small group of Senate 
Democrats and Senate Republicans on those efforts. That is how the 
system should work. We are not going to agree on everything, but we can 
sit down and talk and find common ground to address problems.
  What Republicans and most Americans don't support is an unprecedented 
Federal takeover of our election system, which is what the overly broad 
party-line bills proposed this week by the Democrats will do.
  Let me be clear. Despite what Democratic leaders are saying to jam 
these bills through Congress, our democracy is not, as they say, in 
crisis because it is too hard to vote. We just had a national election 
in 2020 with the highest voter turnout in 120 years. Ninety-four 
percent of voters said it was easy for them to vote. This is according 
to the Pew Research Center--94 percent. That is good.
  Some have said drastic changes are needed at the Federal level 
because the States are now enacting voter restrictions. Some point to 
the liberal Brennan Center, which reports that 19 States have enacted 
laws which it characterizes as restricting the right to vote. As noted 
above--again, by the nonpartisan No Labels group--when you really look 
at these laws, the truth is that they largely make modest changes in 
election law administration, such as the date that voters may apply for 
mail-in ballots or ensuring voters are who they say they are through 
voter ID and other signature requirements--something, by the way, the 
vast majority of Americans support.
  Some of the laws return to State practices closer to the status quo 
before the pandemic. As an example, some laws reduced the number of 
ballot drop boxes in cases where there were no ballot drop boxes before 
COVID. And many of the States the Democrats criticize for improving 
their elections process are enacting laws similar to those that have 
long been in place in States represented by Democrats, so-called blue 
States.
  For example, under its new law, Georgia has a limit of 17 days of in-
person early voting, 17 days. New Jersey and New York have 9 days of 
in-person voting. Connecticut doesn't have any early voting. Georgia 
has also added one extra Saturday of early voting. Georgia's new 
requirement that voters provide their driver's license or State ID 
numbers when applying for mail-in ballots, which Democrats have 
criticized, is the same as laws in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Rhode 
Island enacted a voter ID law a decade ago. And with regard to 
President Biden's home State, The Atlantic has noted that ``few states 
have more limited voting options than Delaware.''
  I, frankly, have not heard Democratic leadership calling out any of 
these Democrat-majority States for pushing what they deem to be voter 
suppression.
  I don't know anyone who doesn't believe it should be easy to vote and 
hard to cheat. Every State has to find that balance, but they have to 
find it while not violating the Voting Rights Act.

  I don't agree with every policy every State has in place. I find some 
too restrictive. As an example, I support no-fault absentee voting, as 
we do in Ohio. It works well. You don't have to have a reason; you can 
vote absentee. I would like to see every mailbox, in a sense, be a 
ballot box, in essence. I find that some of the laws in some of the 
States lack adequate security, on the other hand. For example, I think 
some form of ID is smart, as do the vast majority of Americans.
  But in our Federal system, within the guardrails of the Voting Rights 
Act and consistent with the Constitution, that decision is left up to 
State legislators, closer to the people and accountable to the voters. 
That is just a fundamental philosophical difference we have here on the 
Senate floor. We see it play out on lots of issues and now on this one.
  I am very proud of the job that my State of Ohio and our bipartisan 
election officials in every county do in our elections. In the last 
election, we had a record 5.97 million Ohioans cast a vote--more voters 
than ever. It represented 74 percent of eligible voters in our State, 
the second highest percentage in the history of Ohio. Despite the 
challenges of running the highest turnout election in our State's 
history, during an unprecedented pandemic, it was widely regarded as 
the most secure and most successful Ohio election ever.
  Now is not the time to take the responsibility away from Ohio State 
and local officials. Article I, section 4 of the Constitution clearly 
assigns that authority over elections to the States. Alexander Hamilton 
acknowledged in Federalist 59 that only in extraordinary circumstances 
should the Federal Government become involved in election law, 
explaining that allowing the Federal Government to run elections would 
have been a ``premeditated engine for the destruction of State 
governments.''
  We are not in extraordinary circumstances right now. In general, it 
has become easier and easier to vote in America, and that is a good 
thing. And it has become easier to vote in America than many other 
democracies around the world, and that is good too--easy to vote, hard 
to cheat.
  Despite all the fiery speeches on the floor stating the contrary over 
the past week, according to a recent survey from Morning Consult, only 
33 percent of American adults think it is too hard for eligible voters 
to vote. A larger share--44 percent--actually think current rules 
aren't strict enough. Having heard the debate, this is what voters 
think.
  Not only are Democrats attempting a Federal takeover of our election 
system, but because they have chosen to change the constitutionally 
based election system in a purely partisan way, they don't have the 60 
votes necessary to get something passed here in the U.S. Senate. That 
is why instead of reaching out to find a bipartisan way forward, they 
are also proposing to fundamentally change the longstanding rules of 
the Senate. Specifically, they are proposing to do away with what is 
called the legislative filibuster in order to advance their Federal 
election takeover bills by a simple majority instead of the normal 60 
votes.
  This 60-vote margin, the legislative filibuster, is the one tool left 
to encourage bipartisanship not just here in the Senate but in our 
system, in the House and at the White House. Yes, it provides important 
minority rights in the Senate that protect the country from legislation 
that is too far out of the mainstream, and it helps pass good 
legislation, like Medicare or Social Security with big votes, big 
margins, that mean those programs can be sustained, and they can be 
relied upon. That is good for our country.
  Most importantly to me, the legislative filibuster is the one thing 
that encourages us to work in a bipartisan way. The successful passage 
of the bipartisan infrastructure law last year is a good example. I was 
in the middle of those negotiations. We knew we had to achieve 60 votes 
in a 50-50 Senate. What did that mean? That meant that we had to find 
common ground. We had to make concessions on both sides in order to get 
to 60 votes. As a result, we got well over 60--into the seventies--and 
a good piece of legislation was able to pass the House and be signed 
into law and is now in place, again, as sustainable, reliable 
legislation.
  Did I agree with everything in it? No, nor did anybody else. But to 
get to those 60 votes, we all had to make certain concessions.
  Although it is a Senate rule, the legislative filibuster also 
requires Members of the House of Representatives to come up with more 
bipartisan solutions because they know their legislation has to pass 
the Senate if they want it to become law. Just as I have been a 
committed, bipartisan legislator here in the Senate for the past 11 
years, the same was true in the House

[[Page S253]]

for 12 years, where I regularly used the fact that we needed 60 votes 
in the Senate to force colleagues on both sides of the aisle to come 
together and find a way to pass legislation in a bipartisan manner. 
When I was in the executive branch in two Cabinet-level jobs in the 
Bush 43 administration and as Director of the Office of Legislative 
Affairs for Bush 41, that 60-vote necessity in the Senate calmed the 
passions within the administration and forced us to find common ground 
to work in a more bipartisan manner, resulting in more effective 
results that last the test of time. I know the benefits to our country 
of requiring more than a bare Senate majority that shifts back and 
forth because I have lived it in the House, in the Senate, and in the 
White House.

  And it is not just me or other Republicans now saying that the 
legislative filibuster is good for our Federal system. Less than 5 
years ago, 32 Senate Democrats, including then-Senator and now-Vice 
President Kamala Harris, joined with me and other Republicans in 
signing an open letter insisting the legislative filibuster should not 
change. This was at a time when there was a Democrat in the White 
House, but Republicans controlled the Senate. It appears that those 32 
Democrats were happy to defend the filibuster as good for the country 
when they were in the minority but not now when the country is even 
further divided, and they have a majority. All but a couple of those 
Members have shifted their views.
  I would encourage my Democratic colleagues to reread their own 
letter, which makes such a compelling case that this is about the 
country, not about one political party or another.
  Back in 2005, Senator Schumer called abolishing the filibuster ``a 
temper tantrum by those on the hard, hard right'' who ``want . . . 
their way every single time.'' That was in 2005. Now he is majority 
leader, and he has changed his tune.
  This seems shortsighted to me, since the history of the Senate is to 
change the majority regularly. We don't know who is going to be in the 
majority in the next Senate.
  Could the Senate rules be improved to allow more debate and more 
progress on legislation? Absolutely. There is bipartisan interest in 
this, and we should turn it to something constructive. After this 
political exercise we are going through right now, we should turn to 
the issue of reforming the rules around here. Let's have each leader 
choose a few interested Members. Let's hammer out a bipartisan proposal 
that allows more amendments and makes it easier to get legislation 
passed. It is not that hard. But eliminating the one tool that forces 
us to come together makes it harder to address those many challenges we 
face. It makes it harder to pass legislation, broadly supported and 
sustainable, to actually help the people we represent. That is what we 
were elected to do. That is our job--not inflame the passions of our 
most committed and hard-line supporters but achieve results. And as I 
said at the outset, between inflation, and COVID, our southern border, 
and more, we have got plenty to do.
  I urge my Democratic colleagues to step back from the brink, to think 
twice before trying to destroy what has made the U.S. Senate such a 
unique and valuable part of the world's longest lasting and most 
successful democracy. And I urge my colleagues on both sides of the 
aisle to support sensible rules changes and recommit to use the 60-vote 
margin responsibly to generate consensus and find that elusive common 
ground that will best serve those we represent and that will keep our 
great Republic the envy of the world.
  I yield the floor.

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