[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 183 (Tuesday, November 29, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6831-S6833]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
LEGISLATIVE SESSION
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RESPECT FOR MARRIAGE ACT--Resumed
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the Senate will
resume consideration of H.R. 8404, which the clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
A bill (H.R. 8404) to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act
and ensure respect for State regulation of marriage, and for
other purposes.
Pending:
Schumer (for Baldwin) amendment No. 6487, in the nature of
a substitute.
Schumer amendment No. 6488 (to amendment No. 6487), to add
an effective date.
Schumer amendment No. 6489 (to amendment No. 6488), to add
an effective date.
Mr. LUJAN. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lujan). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Recognition of the Majority Leader
The majority leader is recognized.
H.R. 8404
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, for millions and millions of Americans,
today is a very good day, an important day, a day that has been a long
time coming: We are voting to pass the Respect for Marriage Act. Later
this afternoon, with a little more bipartisan cooperation, the Senate
will vote to pass the Respect for Marriage Act, putting it on the brink
of reaching the President's desk.
In many ways, the story of America has been a difficult but
inexorable march toward greater equality. Sometimes we have taken steps
forward. Other times, unfortunately, we have taken disturbing steps
backward. But, today, after months of hard work, after many rounds of
bipartisan talks, and after many doubts that we could even reach this
point, we are taking a momentous step forward for greater justice for
LGBTQ Americans.
Let me summarize how today will proceed. Later this afternoon, per an
agreement between both parties, the Senate will hold three rollcall
votes on amendments presented by Senators Lee, Lankford, and Rubio. A
vote on final passage for the Respect for Marriage Act will be held
after that.
Standing here today, with the passage of this legislation, it is
impossible not to think of my family. Today, I am wearing the tie I
wore at my daughter's wedding, one of the happiest moments in my life.
But I also cannot help but recall the harrowing conversation I had with
her and her wife a little more than 2 years ago.
In September of 2020, I was in the middle of a family dinner when we
received the news that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed away. I
remember that awful feeling around the dinner table, and I distinctly
remember the question my daughter and her wife asked: ``Could our right
to marry be undone?''
Millions of Americans in same-sex marriages go about their day with
this terrible question lurking in the back of their minds. It is scary.
It is a scary, but necessary, acknowledgement that, despite all the
progress we have made, the constitutional right to same-sex marriage is
not even a decade old and exists only by the virtue of a very narrow 5-
to-4 Supreme Court decision.
And we all know the Court has changed since that decision. As we have
already seen this year, what the Court has decided in the past can be
easily taken away in the future.
So today's vote is deeply personal for many of us in this Chamber. It
is personal for me, of course. It is personal
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to many of my colleagues and their staff and their families. And while
we still have a few more votes to take, today is certainly an occasion
for joy and relief.
But as important as today is, let's remember that nothing about this
process was certain. Remember--remember--it was our original plan to
act on the Respect for Marriage Act in September, shortly after the
House voted to pass this bill over the summer with a surprising 47
Republicans voting for the act. We knew this bill was popular.
We knew it was the right thing to do, but what we did not know is
whether or not we had enough support, 60 votes, to pass this bill
through the Senate. Maybe the votes would materialize if we forced a
vote on the floor, but that was highly unlikely. And for a great number
of us, for so much of America, this bill was too important to risk
failure.
So back in September, when I met with the leaders of this bill in my
office--Senators Sinema and Baldwin and Collins and Tillis and
Portman--they recommended I hold off on a vote because they believed
they could secure enough support for this bill.
Many questioned if it was the right thing to do. Many on my side of
the aisle felt: Put everyone on record right now. And sometimes, they
say, that is the way to go. But at the end of the day, my No. 1
priority is always to get legislation passed through the Senate. So I
made the decision to take the risk and to wait.
Today, we have vindication that the wait was well worth it. Pushing
Respect for Marriage over the finish line required patience and
persistence, and, today, it is paying off.
I want to thank the Senators who brought us this far--Senators Sinema
and Baldwin, as well as Collins and Tillis and Portman--for their
outstanding and relentless work. Their work has been magnificent, and I
am so thankful they stayed the course even when success may have seemed
elusive.
I also want to acknowledge my Republican colleagues who voted in
favor of advancing this legislation. Because of our work together, the
rights of tens of millions of Americans will be strengthened under
Federal law. That is an accomplishment we should all be proud of.
And, of course, I want to thank all of the advocates, volunteers, and
organizers not just for supporting this bill but for everything they
have done over the years to make the United States a fairer, more
accepting nation for LGBTQ Americans.
Finally, let me finish where I started. Two years after my daughter
and her wife questioned if their marriage could be undone, they are now
expecting a baby next spring. I want them to raise their child with all
the love and security that every child deserves, and the bill we are
passing today will ensure their rights won't be trampled upon simply
because they are in a same-sex marriage. After this bill passes, they
will be the very first people I call.
So thank you to my colleagues who spearheaded this bill. Thank you to
my colleagues who have supported this bill. Thank you to the staff and
members who worked day and night to find a path forward. And, maybe
above all, thank you to the American people, the vast majority of whom
have understood that the inexorable march toward equality is what
America is all about.
Government Funding
Mr. President, on a different subject, the omnibus, earlier this
morning, I joined with congressional leaders in a meeting with
President Biden at the White House in order to discuss the things we
must accomplish before the end of the year. We covered a lot of
different topics, but there is one I want to focus on right now--
passing an omnibus.
Leader McConnell and I have agreed to try and work together to make
sure we get a yearlong funding bill done. We hope it can be done this
year, and we know that each side is going to have to give in order to
send an omnibus to the President's desk as, of course, it needs 60
votes.
Government funding is scheduled to run out on December 16 at
midnight. If we don't take action, the results will be a pointless and
painful government shutdown. The best option, by far, is for both
parties to come to the table and work on a yearlong funding bill, not a
continuing resolution. Lurching from one short-term continuing
resolution to the next is a terrible and chaotic way to keep the
government open, and ultimately it is average Americans who get a raw
deal if the government is forced to function with one hand tied behind
its back.
And maybe worst of all, a CR is terrible news for our troops in
uniform. It will throw their families into great uncertainty and
prevent our security force from conducting crucial operations that will
keep us safe, particularly in the Indo-Pacific. So unless we want
adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party to outmaneuver us
militarily, we must pass an omnibus for the sake of our troops and the
sake of our national security.
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. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Recognition of the Minority Leader
The Republican leader is recognized.
Chinese Protests
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the world's eyes are trained this week
on the people of China who appear to be engaged in the largest and most
widespread protests against the country's repressive Communist Party
government since 1989 and the events of Tiananmen Square.
While most of the rest of the world has learned how to adapt to the
coronavirus, mitigate its worst effects, and get on with living our
lives, the people of China, where the whole crisis began, are still
trapped in a ``Groundhog Day'' of permanent pandemic measures.
Chairman Xi's so-called Zero COVID policy is managing to be both
horribly repressive and totally ineffective at the very same time--
horribly repressive and totally ineffective at the very same time. They
have had unending cycles of punishing lockdowns, repressive
quarantines, and mass testing.
Reports and social media posts are flying around the country--like
allegations that the government let people burn up in an apartment
building fire rather than break quarantine and that a 4-month-old baby
girl died because the COVID rules did not allow her to get proper
medical treatment. Of course, sadly, none of this is new or an
aberration. This is actually perfectly in line with the CCP's long and
brutal history.
As in the past, the CCP is failing their citizens and lying about it.
When the rest of the world tunes in to World Cup matches, they see
cheering crowds. But in China, the broadcasts censor views of the
stands to prevent their citizens from seeing unmasked foreigners
enjoying actually a normal life.
The people of China have put up with this dystopian state of affairs
for nearly 3 years now, and now their patience has ended. Across
China's major cities, residents are taking to the streets and speaking
out. Local, civil protests are not uncommon in China, but these
protests appear to have a different character--more widespread, more
bold and brave, more fed up.
Unsurprisingly, demonstrators have received harsh treatment from the
authorities who reportedly have beaten protesters and detained a
foreign journalist covering the events.
The state media keeps parroting propaganda, but video evidence of the
protests and the heavyhanded response is getting through the CCP's
``Great Firewall.'' Thus far, the people have not backed down.
Now, you hear some people suggesting that if a clumsy authoritarian
nation is facing such troubles at home, it must pose less of an
international threat than we thought. Ah, but this is precisely wrong.
Vladimir Putin's previous aggressions against Georgia and Ukraine, its
operations in Chechnya and Syria, and now this latest brutal war show
exactly how even clumsy and dysfunctional regimes can inflict a
terrible toll on free nations and free peoples. Iran, North Korea, and
Syria have spent decades proving the very same thing. Of course, China
isn't declining; it is continuing to expand and modernize its military
power. And Xi and
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his CCP constantly show us that their view of denying their own
people's freedom at home and disrupting other countries' freedom
through the Indo-Pacific has two goals that actually go hand in hand.
For thugs and dictators, repression at home and aggression abroad are
two sides of the same coin.
So when we see the mismanagement and dysfunction from regimes like
Putin's and Xi's, the answer is not--not--for America and our allies to
relax our vigilance, pull inward, or pay less attention to our global
interests; the answer is to increase our vigilance, redouble our
strength, and keep our friends and partners even closer.
The Biden administration's statement yesterday on the Chinese
people's protest was actually too tepid. But what we need are not just
stronger short-term words but stronger long-term actions and
strategies.
The support that America and our friends have provided to Ukraine has
not just been an act of philanthropy to an innocent people who deserve
help fighting off the invaders; it is also bringing major benefits to
the United States and our partners in the most practical terms.
In the course of fighting for their homes and families, the brave
people of Ukraine are seriously degrading the abilities of one of the
free world's greatest self-appointed adversaries to deal out violence.
Putin and other wannabe tyrants the world over are learning that the
cost-benefit calculus to bullying and bloodshed doesn't look like they
thought it would.
The importance of this deterrence goes beyond just Europe. China has
spent decades investing steadily in military technologies that increase
threats to U.S. forces and our allies in the region. The CCP has
steadily built military installations in the South China Sea, like a
bully standing on a street corner, trying to grab control over
international waters and shipping lanes. China has spent years
methodically building up the very capabilities it would need to seize
Taiwan by force if its people refuse to bend the knee, as we have
already seen them do in Hong Kong.
So clearly we need to invest in our own strength, in our own
alliances, in our own military modernization and defense industrial
base.
The United States needs a strong, well-equipped military capable of
preserving the strategic advantage and projecting power anywhere in the
world. We need allies and partners willing to invest in their own
capabilities. We need our private sector and our partners to understand
that free peoples ought to be doing more trading among ourselves but be
a lot more careful locating their capital and their employees in a
repressed country that disregards basic freedoms and steals
intellectual property on an industrial scale.
We need a sufficient military industrial base to keep ourselves safe
and remain the free world's arsenal--a win-win for our security and for
our economy. Among other things, that means rebuilding munitions
stockpiles and weapons inventories that have been allowed to atrophy
since the end of the Cold War. It means not waiting to arm and train
our partners until a bad actor has already started a war. It means not
wasting American strength and credibility, as this administration has
done by desperately chasing sweetheart deals with Iran and abandoning
Afghanistan with no strategy.
Providing for the common defense is one of our basic duties here in
Congress. The Democratic leader should have prioritized the National
Defense Authorization Act months ago. I am glad we will finally be
turning to this essential bill shortly. Strong funding and strong
authorization for our national security should never have to be a
partisan issue. I know our Democratic friends have internal
disagreements about what level of funding our Armed Forces deserve, but
Republicans can guarantee this much: Our side will keep standing strong
for American security and American strength.
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