[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 11 (Tuesday, January 18, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S253-S254]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               H.R. 5746

  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I have just come back from a trip to 
Ukraine with six of my colleagues, a bipartisan group organized very 
ably by Senator Portman and Senator Shaheen, to express our solidarity 
with the people of Ukraine in their fight for freedom and democracy 
against Russian aggression.
  They need us to stand with them as they stand strong for their 
country's independence against Vladimir Putin's effort to intimidate 
them, potentially to invade their country, but, assuredly, in a hybrid 
war consisting of misinformation, cyber attack, and military action 
that is designed very simply to destabilize, demoralize, and degrade 
their country's governance.
  And as we stood with them, meeting with the President, Mr. Zelensky, 
and the top leadership, I couldn't help but think of this country and 
how grateful we should be for our strength, our freedom, our democracy.
  All of us, when we return from travel abroad, I think, express our 
gratitude to be Americans, to live in a country where these freedoms 
and our independence are assured but where we, too, need to be strong 
and ever vigilant and vigorous in protecting those freedoms.
  We are the greatest Nation in the history of the world, the strongest 
and most freedom-loving on the planet. We are still an imperfect 
nation, still struggling to do better and a work in progress, but we 
are proud to confront our imperfection and move forward in a way that 
demonstrates that we can broaden access to opportunity and to the right 
of people to determine their own destiny.
  No freedom or right is more important than the right to vote. That is 
why we are here today and why I am so proud to have helped to lead the 
John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and to support the Freedom to 
Vote Act, which are designed to safeguard Americans' right to vote and 
secure the sanctity of our elections.
  And, today, just as Ukraine faces a threat to its independence and 
freedom, we too, in America, face a threat, not from Vladimir Putin 
directly, although he has sought to destabilize and degrade our 
democracy and continues to do so through cyber attacks and 
misinformation. Certainly, 2016's interference in our elections is a 
warning bell, an alarm, that we need to be stronger against foreign 
interference.
  But within, the threat is equally, if not more, alarming because what 
we are seeing across this great country in State after State are 
efforts to suppress the vote and restrict the franchise. Last year, 
more than 440 restriction bills were introduced in 49 States, and 19 of 
those States successfully enacted 34 laws that made it harder for 
people to vote. These laws make mail-in voting and early voting more 
difficult. They manipulate the boundaries of districts to reduce 
minority representation and have led to a purge of 3.1 million voters 
from the rolls in areas that were once covered by the Voting Rights Act 
preclearance requirement. We are seeing a tidal wave of voter 
suppression that continues even as we speak today on this floor.
  The vote today comes in a week where we celebrate the legacy of 
Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. For the first time in my memory, I 
was out of the country on that day. But it was ever present in my mind 
and heart, and it should animate us today, that memory and legacy which 
were so powerfully expressed on August 6, 1965, when President Lyndon 
Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law. He called it ``a triumph 
for freedom as huge as any victory that has ever been won on any 
battlefield''--a triumph for freedom.
  And it followed a mere 7 months after Dr. King launched a Southern 
Christian Leadership Conference campaign based in Selma, AL, with the 
aim of supporting voting rights legislation. It was a great day for 
America. It is one that has, rightly, received a paramount place in our 
history. It is taught to our children.
  The Voting Rights Act represents the best of America, and its 
commitment to guaranteeing that members of every racial group would 
have equal voting opportunities stands as one of the best days in this 
country. But it was no layup for the civil rights movement. It

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culminated a hard-fought campaign, and it was a hard-won victory of 
civil rights leaders like Dr. King and John Lewis, who committed 
themselves--literally, committed their bodies, their physical well-
being--to advance the rights of others in the face of violent 
opposition. They were beaten, sometimes near death.
  And, for decades, the Voting Rights Act remained a crucial bulwark. 
It was retained and defended against insidious efforts to roll back the 
clock until--until--the U.S. Supreme Court did that work for opponents. 
In 2013, in Shelby County, the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the highly 
effective preclearance regime, thereby jeopardizing the progress that 
the Voting Rights Act made over the course of half a century in 
protecting against those voter suppression efforts throughout the 
country.

  Justice Ginsburg said it best in her powerful dissent in Shelby 
County when she wrote that Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act 
preclearance requirement ``to cope with this vile infection'' of racial 
discrimination which ``resembled battling the Hydra. Whenever one form 
of voting discrimination was identified and prohibited, others sprang 
up in its place.''
  And the time to protect those voting rights is before they are 
restricted, and that is why preclearance was so important and why the 
John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act now must be enacted into law.
  We come here after a year that has seen the most destructive 
legislative session for voting rights in generations, with States and 
localities returning to the ``conniving methods,'' as Dr. King called 
them--``conniving methods'' of voter suppression that block people from 
getting to the polls and making their votes count--and undermines our 
democracy because, as the Founders sought to do, representative 
government means representing the people who are affected by these 
policies enacted by the Federal Government. And that means 
representation that enables every person to vote and to have that vote 
count.
  There are no guarantees that rights will be protected in this 
country. The fight for voting equality has faced continuous, often 
violent resistance and enormous opposition, including from within this 
Congress, and now by a rule, a filibuster that will prevent the 
majority from protecting those rights.
  The effort to change the filibuster is very simply an effort to 
convert it from a secret to a public debate mechanism--secret to 
public. We will vote tomorrow on a rules change that provides for a 
means to make majority rule count--not to abolish the filibuster but to 
make it public instead of secret.
  As my distinguished colleague Senator Warnock posed the question in 
this Chamber last month, we want it to be bipartisan but, as he said, 
``bipartisanship at whose expense?'' And as he also said, clearly in 
this country, ``some people don't want some people to vote.'' And the 
filibuster is a handy means of preventing reforms that secure the right 
to vote.
  Historic denials of individual basic liberties and political freedoms 
have long garnered bipartisan support and have required courage and 
conviction to overcome, and that is why we must change the rules 
tomorrow.
  Dr. King never quit. He never stopped fighting. As he said--I think I 
am quoting him correctly--disappointment is finite, but hope is 
infinite. And so, even if we are defeated tomorrow, we will continue 
this effort to eliminate dark money, to provide for disclosure, to stop 
State legislatures from eliminating districts in a way that knocks 
Representatives out of their seats and results in gerrymandering that 
is antidemocratic.
  For decades, Members of this Chamber have deployed the filibuster to 
delay and block legislation that would have promoted voting rights by 
ending poll taxes and literacy tests, safeguarded against workplace 
discrimination, and advanced civil rights in this country. The 
filibuster has been used to block those kinds of efforts to promote 
voting rights.
  The longest filibusters in this Chamber's history were deployed to 
stop the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and 1964, a testament to this tool's 
history as a weapon against the advancement of civil rights. And Dr. 
King himself lamented that ``tragedy [of] . . . a Senate that has a 
minority of misguided Senators who will use this filibuster to keep the 
majority of people from even voting.''
  We cannot continue to allow these kinds of procedural tactics to 
stand in the way of defending against a new era of hostility toward 
voting rights of people in this country. We must protect the right to 
vote. It should not be a partisan issue.
  In fact, voting rights are widely supported throughout American 
society. Those civil rights measures were supported by bipartisan 
majorities in those years of 1957 and 1964 and in the renewal since 
then. Photographs showing Members of both parties at bill signing 
attest powerfully to the bipartisan support this cause has enjoyed 
throughout its history.
  Since the original inception of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, 
overwhelming, bipartisan majorities of both Houses of Congress have 
reauthorized the Voting Rights Act five times.
  For nearly a century after the Civil War and before the Voting Rights 
Act, the scourge of racial discrimination in voting challenged our 
Nation's core commitment, our basic value as a country.
  From that century of sacrificing and suffering, so embodied by Dr. 
King, came the Voting Rights Act and its extraordinary commitment to 
realizing our Nation's highest ideals, the best in America. For 
decades, it worked. In one decision and its progeny, the U.S. Supreme 
Court undercut and undermined those rights, and now we face this 
tsunami of voter suppression bills crashing against America.
  We must defend America. We must secure those rights and liberties, 
just as we come to the aid of countries like Ukraine that resist attack 
on their independence. We must renew our Nation's commitment to 
protecting voting rights in this country. And tomorrow, we will do it. 
Tomorrow, we will vote. Members will be held accountable. We will be on 
record. And I hope my colleagues will do the right thing for America.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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