[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 48 (Tuesday, March 17, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1066-S1088]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SAFEGUARD AMERICAN VOTER ELIGIBILITY ACT
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair lays before the Senate the following
message from the House.
The Presiding Officer laid before the Senate the following message
from the House of Representatives:
Resolved, That the bill from the Senate (S. 1383) entitled
``An Act to establish the Veterans Advisory Committee on
Equal Access, and for other purposes.'', do pass with an
amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
[[Page S1067]]
Motion to Concur
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I move to concur in the House amendment to
S. 1383.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from South Dakota [Mr. Thune] moves to concur
in the House amendment to S. 1383.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask the reading be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Motion to Concur with Amendment No. 4420
(Purpose: In the nature of a substitute.)
Mr. THUNE. I move to concur in the House amendment with an amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from South Dakota [Mr. Thune] moves to concur
in the House amendment with an amendment numbered 4420.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask the reading be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(The amendment is printed in today's Record under ``Text of
Amendments.'')
Mr. THUNE. I ask for the yeas and nays on the motion.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays are ordered.
Amendment No. 4421 to Amendment No. 4420
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk to the
motion to concur with amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from South Dakota [Mr. Thune], for Mr.
Tuberville and Mrs. Blackburn, proposes an amendment numbered
4421 to amendment No. 4420.
Mr. THUNE. I ask the reading be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
(Purpose: To protect women and girls in athletics)
Strike title II and insert the following:
TITLE II--SAVE AMERICAN SPORTS
SEC. 201. AMENDMENT.
Section 901 of the Education Amendments of 1972 (20 U.S.C.
1681) is amended by adding at the end the following:
``(d)(1) It shall be a violation of subsection (a) for a
recipient of Federal funds who operates, sponsors, or
facilitates athletic programs or activities to permit a
person whose sex is male to participate in an athletic
program or activity that is designated for women or girls.
``(2) For purposes of this subsection, sex shall be
recognized based solely on a person's reproductive biology
and genetics at birth.''.
SEC. 202. DATE.
This title takes effect 1 day after the date of enactment
of this Act.
Motion to Refer with Amendment No. 4422
Mr. THUNE. I move to refer the House message on S. 1383 to the
Committee on Rules and Administration with instructions to report back
forthwith with amendment No. 4422.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from South Dakota [Mr. Thune] moves to refer
the House message to accompany S. 1383 to the Committee on
Rules and Administration, with instructions to report back
forthwith an amendment numbered 4422.
The amendment is as follows:
(Purpose: To improve the bill)
At the end add the following.
``This Act shall take effect 1 days after the date of
enactment.''
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on my motion.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays are ordered.
Amendment No. 4423
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I have an amendment to the instructions.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from South Dakota [Mr. Thune] proposes an
amendment numbered 4423 to the instructions of the motion to
refer.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask the reading be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
(Purpose: To improve the bill)
Strike ``1 day'' and insert ``2 days''
Mr. THUNE. I ask for the yeas and nays on my amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays are ordered.
Amendment No. 4424 to Amendment No. 4423
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I have a second-degree amendment at the
desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from South Dakota [Mr. Thune] proposes an
amendment numbered 4424 to amendment No. 4423.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask that the reading be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
(Purpose: To improve the bill)
Strike ``2 days'' and insert ``3 days''
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.
Mr. MARSHALL. Mr. President, I rise today to say I support the SAVE
America Act. And, yes, even if that means ending the only barely more
than 100-year-old filibuster, the silent filibuster, I am still in
favor of the SAVE America Act.
As we just voted to get on this bill, the Senate now begins a long
and necessary process to advance the SAVE America Act. It is a
straightforward bill that provides proof of citizenship to register to
vote in our Federal elections, along with voter ID, and validating
mail-in ballots.
The purpose of this bill is about one simple thing: making sure only
duly registered American citizens cast ballots in American elections.
It is about making sure our elections are secure. Now, this shouldn't
be controversial. Voter ID is supported by the vast majority of
Americans--Republicans, Independents, and Democrats alike. Polls show
that even around 70 percent of Democrats believe voter ID is common
sense and essential for fair elections.
It is something most of us do every day. Show an ID to board a plane,
to open a bank account, to buy alcohol, to get a hotel room, to
purchase some prescriptions. Why should voting, the most sacred act in
a Republic, be the only place where we don't ask for basic proof that
you are eligible, that you are who you say you are?
Yet here we are, instead of passing this with overwhelming bipartisan
support, maybe even by unanimous consent, we are forced into a drawn-
out battle because no one on the other side will join us.
I thought a lot about this. You know what the real question should
be? The real question that America should be asking their Senator: Why
won't just 10 Democrat Senators cross the aisle and support simple
voter ID?
We shouldn't be having to have filibustering debates or a thousand
other rabbit holes we are about to go down. I would challenge those
who, as Mark Twain once said, those who ``buy ink by the barrel,'' to
ask my colleagues across the aisle: Why won't you support voter ID?
Now, my colleagues across the aisle, they are clever. They won't
answer that question. They won't answer the simple question: Do you
support voter ID? They won't commit to that one issue.
Instead, they are going to pivot, and they will tell you what other
part of the bill they don't like. They will want to dive into
Parliamentarian procedures and Senate lore and traditions, but they
won't answer that one simple question: Do you support voter ID, just
like 70 percent of your Democrat supporters do?
And if we can start there, if we start there that we both agree that
we need voter ID, agreeing on that one issue, then maybe we could piece
together a compromise on the rest of the bill. But when you reject even
something as simple as voter ID, we should continue to ask them: Why
won't you stand with the American people who want secure elections? Why
won't you stand up and listen to the over 60 percent of Americans who
are concerned about the integrity of our elections?
Now, we all know that noncitizens aren't supposed to vote. It is
already illegal. But without proof of citizenship
[[Page S1068]]
at registration, we have no real safeguard. I could even hear President
Reagan now, if he were here, talking to the American people: Trust but
verify.
And that is what we want to do. That is what the SAVE America Act is
all about. It fixes all these challenges. It requires documents like a
passport, a birth certificate with ID, documents millions of Americans
already have or can easily obtain. It protects our elections without
disenfranchising a single eligible citizen.
Now, oh, by the way, to my colleagues across the aisle, if you have a
concern or a better way to make our elections more secure and more fair
let's move forward, and if that encourages and empowers every legal
citizen the opportunity to vote, then I am with you. Let's work
together to make our elections safe and secure.
This isn't, to me at least, about politics; it is about principles.
It is about fighting for the American people who deserve elections they
can trust. It is about making sure that my vote counts and isn't
canceled by an illegal vote.
Our Republic depends on it. When the people lose faith that their
vote counts and only citizens decide our future, we risk everything our
Founders built.
I will wrap up by saying: I urge my colleagues across the aisle,
listen to your constituents, listen to the 70 percent of Democrats who
support voter ID. Come across the aisle. Let us pass the SAVE America
Act quickly and get back to the people's business.
The American people are watching. They want secure elections. They
want us to protect this Republic. Let's show them we can still work
together on something so basic and so important.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Department of Homeland Security
Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, I am going to have some comments on
the SAVE America Act, and I think it is appropriate that we move
forward on that legislation.
First, I want to talk a little bit about what has happened with the
Department of Homeland Security. We are 32 days into a shutdown at the
Department of Homeland Security. That is an unpleasant thought for a
lot of our citizens in this country. Think about our TSA workers and
our Secret Service agents who are out there working without a paycheck.
FEMA, the emergency management response, FEMA has been suspended as
communities in Tennessee, I know Michigan, the East Coast, places where
we have had these storms, they are needing FEMA and the help that is
there. But nope, because of the Democrats, the DHS is not funded.
Now, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, CISA, is
facing staff shortages, increasing risk of cyber attacks from foreign
adversaries like Iran, or the rest of the ``axis of evil,'' Russia,
China, North Korea, and Iran. In that Agency, people are not showing up
for work.
The Coast Guard, core operations of the U.S. Coast Guard, have been
disrupted, maritime search and rescue, port security, patrols that stop
drug traffickers, that has been disrupted. Why? Because our colleagues
are refusing to fund the Department of Homeland Security. They have
voted repeatedly to keep DHS shut down.
Now, I think it is irresponsible at any time to block these programs
and this Department, but especially now. It is so reckless because of
the elevated terror threats that we are seeing, especially from Iran,
which, by the way, Iran is the world's largest state sponsor of
terrorism.
Now, you can look at what has happened since Operation Epic Fury
started. You had the shooting at a bar in Austin, TX. The attacker wore
an undershirt displaying an Iranian flag. The FBI is looking at that as
terrorism. On Thursday, a man from Lebanon plowed a truck strapped with
explosives through a synagogue in Michigan.
Same day, you had an immigrant from Sierra Leone who opened fire on
an ROTC class at Old Dominion University, killing one person, injuring
two others, and we had some students who were able to apprehend this
individual.
And the suspect was previously convicted of providing materiel
support to ISIS, but he was released early in 2024 under the Biden
administration.
Now, last Monday, the Justice Department charged two men for
allegedly igniting homemade bombs outside the mayor's residence in New
York City, and that was an ISIS-inspired attack.
Late last month, a Federal trial started against a Pakistani national
who was allegedly recruited by Iran to kill a United States politician
ahead of the 2024 election. President Trump was a potential target.
Now, it is important to note these are not isolated incidences; they
are part of what we are seeing as a very unfortunate trend.
Over the course of his administration, Joe Biden and his
administration allowed at least 18,000 known or suspected terrorists to
enter our country. They had that open border. They liked that open
border. They were working overtime trying to make illegal legal. And
along the way, they let in 18,000--18,000--known or suspected
terrorists. This does not include the more than 2 million ``got-aways''
that also came across that border without being apprehended.
I know that Homeland Security Investigations is working overtime to
find these individuals to apprehend, detain, prosecute, and deport
them, to get them out of this country, but there again, Homeland
Security Investigations has a limited capacity to work on these threats
because the Democrats have chosen yet again to shut down the Department
of Homeland Security.
Now, one would think that addressing this issue would be important to
them, but we think that they continue to say they want more
restrictions on ICE.
What this is really about, Mr. President, is our friends across the
aisle have promised their base--promised them: Look, we are going to
defund Federal law enforcement. You leave it to us; we are going to
abolish ICE. You leave it to us; we have got a plan.
Their plan, it turns out, is to use not only the American people but
TSA agents, FEMA personnel, Homeland Security investigators, the Secret
Service, and the Coast Guard as pawns in their political game--pure
pawns.
The President has tried to work with them. They had agreed to a
funding bill, and then they changed their mind.
The thing that is so interesting about this is they keep talking
about ``Defund ICE. We need to defund ICE.'' ICE is funded through
2029. We did that in the Working Families Tax Cut.
What we have to look at is what the Democrats are doing is saying
they would rather abolish ICE, open up our borders, and defund Federal
law enforcement than actually provide for the security of our
homeland--give paychecks that are earned, give these paychecks to the
TSA, to FEMA, the Coast Guard, and CISA.
So I would encourage our colleagues to think about this and think
about the danger and the risk they are causing to our homeland, the
stress they are placing on TSA agents as they are trying to screen
luggage to make certain that the flying public is safe, the
inconvenience and the harm that are being caused to communities that
really need FEMA to step in right now. They need to think about the
work that is being done in communities all across this country by
Homeland Security Investigations to apprehend drug traffickers, child
predators, and to keep our communities safe.
S. 1383
The other thing that--and my colleague from Kansas had mentioned the
SAVE America Act, and I am delighted we are finally on this bill. This
is another area where we are watching the Democrats come full display
of their loyalty to illegal aliens that are in this country. I mean,
they are on it. Give them a choice between protecting the rule of law
and protecting U.S. citizens, and they are going to choose somebody
illegally in the country every single time. That is really a
disappointment to me because the SAVE America Act is something that 83
percent of the voters in this country support--83 percent. These are
not my numbers; these are numbers from public polls. Anyone can go and
look these up.
It is common sense that you are going to show a photo ID many times a
day to prove that you are who you are, and it is common sense that
everyone should show a photo ID when they go to the ballot box to cast
that vote. Indeed, they should be a citizen and prove they are a
citizen if they are going to register to vote, thereby protecting ``one
person, one vote,'' protecting the integrity of our election system.
This is a way that we help ensure that we preserve the system.
You know, in Tennessee where I reside--my State, my wonderful State
is ranked No. 1 when it comes to election
[[Page S1069]]
integrity. We make certain that our voter rolls are cleaned up. We make
certain that voter ID is enforced. We have accurate registration lists
and verification of citizenship--all common sense.
If you are going to cast a ballot in our elections, be a citizen.
Let's prove that you are the person showing up to cast that vote. And
be respectful of the situation.
You know, Mr. President, we have said: Let's make it easier to vote
and harder to cheat so that we protect the integrity of the system, so
that we eliminate fraud, and so we preserve confidence in our election
results.
Well, it is just nonsensical that our colleagues across the aisle
oppose this. Can you imagine that? Eighty-three percent of the American
people say: You are right. Let's show an ID. Let's be a citizen if we
are going to vote.
But, no, our Democrat colleagues oppose it. They want to make it
easier for noncitizens to cast ballots.
In fact, 14 States in this country--and by the way, these are
overwhelmingly blue States--14 States do not require any documentation
whatsoever to go cast your vote. Can you imagine that? You just walk
up, claim to be somebody, and you vote.
You look at States like California and New York, which are home to
more than 3\1/2\ million illegal aliens combined, and that is what you
are seeing--making it easier to cheat, making it easier for noncitizens
to vote.
You know, I think that you look at these issues, and you realize that
our friends across the aisle, Mr. President--they might have been
picking the wrong fight. People want DHS funded. They want the SAVE
America Act passed. They want the integrity of our elections to be
protected. And I think it is imperative that we come together on this
floor and that we pass the SAVE America Act and make certain that we
know who is voting and that they are a citizen.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, later this year, American citizens across
the country will exercise one of their most valuable and sacred rights:
the right to vote--a right that has been hard-earned and fought for
from the founding generation of our Republic to today.
How was the right to self-government, the right to vote secured? It
was secured by American colonists who rejected the royal edict and
hurled tea into Boston Harbor, declaring ``no taxation without
representation.'' It was secured by ordinary men who seized their
muskets and fired the shot heard around world at Lexington and Concord.
It was secured by Continental troops who marched to the fields of
Saratoga and the coastline of Yorktown, repeating those immortal worlds
of Patrick Henry: ``Give me liberty or give me death.''
For nearly 250 years, Americans have cast their votes for leaders at
every level--from local officials, to State representatives, to the
President of the United States. Every Member of this body is here today
because we were elected fairly and honestly and given a mandate by our
constituents to serve them here in Washington and to protect the
liberties and freedoms our Founders fought to preserve.
The power of the ballot box determines the course of our Nation, the
history we are writing, and the freedoms we continue to defend. And
while no single ballot in isolation may seem decisive, together, the
votes of the American people shape the course of our Nation and the
course of history.
But it is worth remembering that our voting system did not begin as
it exists today. When this Nation was founded, the right to vote was
limited, and over time, through debate, sacrifice, a bloody Civil War,
and constitutional amendment, the right to vote was quite properly
expanded. The 15th Amendment prohibited denying the vote based on race.
The 19th Amendment guaranteed women the right to vote. The 26th
Amendment lowered the voting age to 18. At every stage of our
constitutional amendment process, the goal was the same: to ensure that
the right to vote belonged to American citizens and that it was
exercised with integrity.
While our system has evolved, one principle has remained constant:
Elections reflect the will of the American people. For a right so
sacred, for a privilege so hard fought, it is shocking, it is tragic
how neglected and vulnerable the protection of our elections has
become.
That is why I am here today on this very floor urging the Members of
this body to pass the SAVE America Act. It says that when you register
to vote in a Federal election, you must provide proof that you are a
citizen of the United States and you must provide photo ID to vote. In
simple terms, that is it.
This is not some radical, politicized, or weaponized piece of
legislation designed to restrict Americans from voting; it is a
commonsense measure that protects the integrity of our elections by
ensuring that American citizens and only American citizens are voting
in them.
Legitimacy in a democracy rests on two pillars: first, the mechanical
integrity of the system to produce a valid result, and second, the
public's confidence in that system. If either one fails, the system
falters. If both fail, the system collapses. A system that cannot be
trusted is a system that cannot govern.
If you look around the world, between two-thirds and three-quarters
of countries require some form of identification to vote. Why? Because
it safeguards the integrity of their elections and reinforces public
trust in their system.
So it begs the question: Why hasn't the United States fully embraced
this standard?
Well, for the last several months, we have heard claim after claim
about how this legislation would somehow inhibit people from voting,
that requiring identification is discriminatory, and that the American
people do not support voter ID.
Our Democrat colleagues are fond of bellowing into the TV cameras
that photo ID to vote is Jim Crow--they tell us with mock earnestness.
Now, I will admit our Democrat colleagues should be experts in Jim Crow
because it was Democrat politicians who passed the Jim Crow laws. It
was Democrat politicians who founded the Ku Klux Klan. It was Democrat
politicians, decade after decade, who enforced discrimination,
separate-but-equal poll taxes, and a host of other laws designed to
prevent African Americans from voting.
But do you know who has rejected their disingenuous claim that a
photo ID to vote is Jim Crow? The Supreme Court of the United States--
the Supreme Court of the United States.
The State of Indiana passed a photo ID law requiring that you show a
photo ID to vote, and a group of leftwing plaintiffs filed litigation
challenging that. The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
At the time, I was the solicitor general of the State of Texas. I led
a coalition of States before the Supreme Court defending photo ID to
vote, and the leftwing plaintiffs made the same argument that our
Democrat colleagues make today--that requiring a photo ID to vote would
somehow disenfranchise minorities.
The Supreme Court, by a vote of 6 to 3, rejected their argument. The
author of the majority opinion was John Paul Stevens. John Paul Stevens
was one of the great liberals on the Court. He was not a conservative.
He was not of the rightwing. He was the leading liberal for years on
the U.S. Supreme Court. He rejected that claim, and he pointed out that
when someone votes illegally, they are stealing the votes of legal
voters; they are stealing the votes of American citizens. The Supreme
Court explained that when photo ID laws have been implemented, minority
participation in the election goes up, not down, and the Supreme Court
explained that requiring photo ID enhances the integrity of an election
and the integrity of democracy.
Now, our Democrat colleagues don't want to acknowledge any of those
facts, and I guess it is understandable because the American people
have heard their specious arguments, and they have rejected them.
Eighty-one percent of Americans support requiring a photo ID to vote.
But my Democrat colleagues might say: What about African Americans?
Well, about three-quarters of African Americans in the United States
support requiring a photo ID to vote.
How about Hispanics? More than 80 percent of Hispanics in America
support requiring a photo ID to vote.
How about Democrats? Here is an astonishing statistic: If you get out
of elective office and you ask a Democrat
[[Page S1070]]
on the street, 70 percent of Democrats in America support requiring a
photo ID to vote.
The one group that doesn't is elected Democrats in the U.S. Senate
and the U.S. House.
By the way, the premise of their argument that minorities, if you
require a photo ID to vote, are not going to be able to vote is,
frankly, insulting.
I am proud to be an Hispanic American. I have been Hispanic all my
life. Do you know what I have in my wallet? I have a driver's license.
I look at my colleagues across the way, and I feel confident they have
driver's licenses in their wallets as well.
Hispanics are not morons. African Americans are not morons. When you
claim minorities can't figure out how to get a driver's license--well,
gosh, what do you need a photo ID to do right now in America? You need
a photo ID to purchase alcohol or to purchase tobacco. You need a photo
ID to gamble or to purchase lottery tickets. You need a photo ID to go
into a bar. You need a photo ID to get on a plane. You need a photo ID
to rent a car. You need a photo ID just to drive a car--not even to
rent a car but to drive a car. You need a photo ID to apply for
government benefits. You need a photo ID to enroll in college. You need
a photo ID to open a bank account. You need a photo ID to check into a
hotel. And--I have to admit this is my personal favorite--you need a
photo ID--actually two photo IDs--to shovel snow in New York City.
These are routine, everyday activities.
The Gallery is full. I feel confident everyone in the Gallery who is
not a child has a driver's license. By the way, you wouldn't be
admitted to the Gallery if you didn't. And I feel confident every
Member of this Chamber has done just about anything I listed--well,
except shoveling snow. I am not convinced many of my colleagues have
shoveled snow, although they do shovel other things.
The question is not whether Americans are bright enough to obtain a
photo ID. We know they can, and we know they do. The real question is,
Why would we not require the same level of verification for something
as consequential and vital as voting? Are our Democrat colleagues
saying voting doesn't matter or is it something else?
Voting is not just another everyday activity; it rolls around every
year or few years, and it is the vehicle that protects the principles
of our Republic. It is safeguarding what matters.
This legislation is necessary because there are individuals and
systems that can undermine confidence in our elections if proper
safeguards are not in place. One of the most apparent ways that we have
seen is through the masses of illegal immigrants that our Democrat
colleagues let in through open borders for over 4 years.
During the Biden administration, more than 12 million illegal
immigrants flooded into this country--the vast majority through my home
State of Texas. Now, understand that was not an accident. That was not
something the Democrats could not stop. That was their desired outcome.
How do we know that? Because the instant President Trump was sworn into
office for his second term, illegal border crossings plummeted 99
percent overnight.
The Democrats said: No, Joe Biden can't secure the border. He needs
new legislation.
We now know that was a lie. It was objectively false, and they knew
it was false.
Well, if they could have secured the border for 4 years, they chose
not to. They chose to let murderers into this country. They chose to
let rapists into this country. They chose to let child molesters into
this country. They chose to let gang bangers into this country. They
chose to let terrorists into this country. We have had four radical
Islamic terror attacks in the last 2 weeks.
Why would the Democrats choose to allow more than 12 million illegal
aliens to invade this country? I am going to suggest the obvious
reason: because the Democrats look at those illegal aliens and they
want them to cast a vote for Democrats in Federal elections.
Why are the Democrats lined up and saying: No. No. No. Under no
circumstances should we test to see if you are an American citizen.
Under no circumstances should we require photo IDs.
There was one activist a few years ago who filmed himself going into
a DC polling place.
The DC polling place said: Sir, what is your name?
He said: My name is Eric Holder.
Now, this activist was not the Attorney General of the United States
at the time, but yet DC handed him a ballot and said: Mr. Holder,
please cast your vote.
The Democrats are lined up in this Chamber because they want our
elections to be insecure; they want voter fraud to be rampant and to be
easy.
Ask yourself: Do the American people have a difficult time buying a
beer? Do they have a difficult time getting into an R-rated movie? Do
they have a difficult time getting on an airplane? Well, yes, because
the Democrats have refused to fund the TSA, so there are long lines
right now. But the lack of a photo ID is not an impediment that stops
people from flying.
This debate is about something very simple: Do our elections matter?
Does our democracy matter?
And, boy, I have got to say that that is a phrase the Democrats
love--that they are defending democracy. It is interesting that their
voices usually drop an octave when they say that. They clutch their
pearls--and that is just the men. ``Defending democracy'' is what they
say.
Ask yourself: Why are they not concerned at all about the 12 million
illegals whom they let into this country voting illegally? I will
submit that Occam's razor provides that the simplest solution is
usually the right one. The simplest solution is very clear: The
Democrats in this body want illegals to vote. They want power enough
that they are more than happy to undermine democracy to try to seize
power. I get that from their personal self-interest, but it is not in
the interest of the men and women they represent; it is not in the
interest of the people of America.
This bill is rightly called the SAVE America Act. If we were voting
on the merits of what was good for America, what was good for
democracy, and what was good for American citizens, the vote would be
100 to nothing.
Although I would note that on the other side of this building, at the
State of the Union Address that the Presiding Officer was at and that I
was at, we saw why our Democrat colleagues are so adamantly opposed to
this bill. President Trump turned to the Democrats on the right side of
the floor of the House, and he gave them an opportunity to demonstrate
with absolute clarity.
He said: If you agree our first priority should be to fight for
American citizens and not for illegal aliens, please stand.
Every single Democrat in Congress remained seated.
I would note, as we are on the floor today, of the 47 Democrats in
this body, only 1 is here on the floor, but a whole lot more were on
the floor during the State of the Union, and every one of them chose to
remain seated because they could not support the statement that we need
to support American citizens and not illegal aliens. That is why they
oppose the SAVE America Act. It is because they want to be handed power
over this country by the illegal aliens they let into this country.
That is why we need to save America, and it is why I urge every
Member of this body to pass the SAVE America Act.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about
something that unifies our country.
Here in the Senate, often, we talk about things we disagree on. We
are going to talk today about something Americans agree on. The
American people overwhelmingly want election security. They want our
border to be secure. They want our elections to be secure. They want to
feel that their government is acting with integrity and fairness and to
have a representative government that protects its people.
I rise in support of the SAVE America Act. For many of us, this isn't
a new fight. My good friend Senator Lee and I have been working to pass
the SAVE America Act for years because
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we know this isn't just about election security; it is about protecting
the future of our Nation for all American families.
The SAVE America Act is very simple. First, you need an ID to vote.
Second, you need proof of citizenship to register in our elections.
These aren't controversial ideas. In fact, a vast majority of
Americans, no matter their party affiliation, their race, their
gender--you name it--support these ideas. Why wouldn't they? Americans
want to know that our elections are both free and fair and that our
democracy is safe. They believe in our country and that citizens can
make good decisions. They want to know that their votes count and are
not diluted by someone who is not a U.S. citizen.
Americans deserve that because this question cuts to the very core of
who we are as a country. To survive, a republic needs its citizens to
know and trust that their vote is secure, that their vote matters, and
that they can trust the outcome. People have died for the sacred right
to vote, and that sacred right should not be diluted by non-U.S.
citizens.
And if Americans can't trust their elections or who is legally
allowed to vote in them, then they can't trust that their elected
officials actually represent them.
Yet, somehow, congressional Democrats, funded by George Soros and
forever cowering to the radical left, are ignoring--they are ignoring--
the will of the American people. The minority leader tried to say this
bill was a ``dagger at the heart of our democracy,'' even though the
mayor of the largest city in the State he represents requires not one
but two forms of ID just to shovel snow. I would say not passing this
bill and allowing illegals to vote and the integrity of the election to
be undermined is the real dagger.
That is why the SAVE America Act is crucial. The fact is, so much of
what Democrats are saying about this bill simply--it is not true.
Democrats are lying to all of us, and they know it. It is the same
tired playbook they have tried time and time again.
So let's unpack their arguments. You are going to hear them say this
is ``Jim Crow 2.0.'' Yep, that is right. We have once again reached the
point where Democrats claim the thing that they don't like is racist.
It is wrong, it is insulting, and the Democrats know it. Everyone
knows it, but they hope the American public won't notice. And here is
why this is so wrong: What Democrats are really saying is that the 83
percent of Americans who support voter ID laws are all racist.
And let's remember, it was the Democrats who passed Jim Crow law, not
Republicans.
Everyone who is paying attention can see what they are doing.
Democrats are openly calling most of America racist, and the mainstream
media acts like that is normal.
But the Democrat attacks on hard-working Americans aren't done. After
they call us all racist, they double down and say: The SAVE America Act
is an attack on married women.
There has been a lot of talk recently about what is fair to women in
America. The Democrats have said that the SAVE America Act is bad for
married women. Liberals have also claimed that biological women need to
shut up and accept that biological men can compete against them,
shatter their dreams--sometimes their bodies--and steal their
championships. Democrats somehow say that is fair, but it is sure not
fair to biological women.
And the most deranged members of the radical left have now convinced
Democrats in Congress it is OK to tell little girls that God made them
wrong and allow the mutilation of their bodies before these children
can truly comprehend or consent to the consequences of hormone therapy
or gender reassignment surgery.
Now, I am not a woman. I can confidently say that because, unlike the
Democrats, I know what a woman is. And I am married to an amazing
woman. We have raised two incredible, smart, and strong women who now
have families of their own. They are independent and can make decisions
for themselves. They don't need anyone to tell them how to run their
lives. And I am lucky enough to have one little girl in my life who
calls me grandpa. Even at 5, she is very comfortable telling me what to
do.
While I am not a woman, I do have pieces of advice for the Democrats:
One, stop telling Americans that women can't figure out how to register
to vote because you want to keep illegals voting. Women are smarter
than Democrats think they are, much smarter. And, two, stop destroying
women's sports by telling Americans that women can physically compete
with biological males.
Stop telling Americans that just because a little girl wears shorts
instead of dresses and wants to hang out with the boys instead of the
girls that it is OK to permanently disfigure her. It is disgusting, and
every Democrat here knows it, but they are too cowardly to tell the
truth to the radical lunatics running their party.
Thankfully, when we pass the SAVE America Act, we will end these
dangerous attacks on women by Democrats for good.
Look around and acknowledge what the Democrats are doing. They are
saying to women: Don't support the SAVE America Act. You will never
figure out how to register to vote again.
Do you realize how insulting that is? Do you think I would ever look
at my wife or my daughters and granddaughter and think they aren't
smart enough or, in the case of my granddaughter, won't be smart enough
to do what they need to do?
Now, I am not going to stand here and let Democrats in Washington
claim that these amazing, strong, smart women cannot figure out how to
register to vote. This is nothing but a made-up talking point from
Democrats because they want to allow illegals to vote. It is real
simple.
I am tired of hearing Democrats use every excuse in the book to allow
illegals to vote in our election.
Now, we all know the Democrats can't win on their radical ideas, so
they have to try to weaponize our elections. That is wrong.
Americans who are perfectly capable of showing their ID to board an
airplane, visit a doctor's office, and prove their citizenship deserve
secure elections.
We are only here today because Democrats have created a system in
this country that has totally failed the American people, and Americans
want secure elections. We must make sure Americans can have the faith
that their vote counts and that the election results reflect the will
of the people. We must put simple standards in place that a majority of
Americans approve of and that will help Americans trust that our
elections are free and fair.
And why wouldn't Democrats want to make certain that elections in the
United States of America are free and fair? We want that for every
other country in the world. Why wouldn't we want it here?
The fact is, over the last decades, Democrats' priorities are totally
out of whack with what Americans want. Under the Biden administration,
Democrats purposefully opened our borders, and our country was flooded
by illegal aliens, the same illegal aliens that Democrats are now
putting above Americans as they do everything in their power to destroy
this bill.
Then when Democrats saw how enraged the American people were about
their wide-open borders and all of the crime they were allowing into
this country, the left claimed we needed new laws to fix it. As we all
know, in the case of our border security, that was a complete lie.
But for election security, we do need new laws because the ones we
have aren't strong enough. And President Trump, on his own, can't
secure elections.
President Trump secured our border, and now, Congress must secure our
elections.
The facts are simple: Illegal aliens should not vote in American
elections. We know it is happening, and we must do everything we can to
stop it.
Democrats still say it is racism, but they say everything is racism
when they don't like it. Is it racist that before I board a plane, I
have to show my ID? Is it racist that in order to buy certain
medicines, apply for a job or a bank account, check into a hotel, rent
a car, purchase a lottery ticket, order a drink at a bar, or get into
the DNC convention--or shovel snow for goodness' sake--that we, as
Americans, have to show ID? Absolutely not, and anyone telling you
otherwise is lying.
[[Page S1072]]
Now here is my simple question for Democrats: Why should voting in
our elections, something that dictates the direction of our country and
is essential to building trust in government, have a lower ID standard
than buying a six-pack of beer or a lottery ticket? The answer is
simple: It shouldn't.
When the minority leader isn't calling minorities and women too
stupid to show ID and register to vote, he has claimed that we can't
pass this bill because President Trump is trying to rig the elections.
He is lying, and he is telling on himself. The minority leader and
the Democrats think that stopping illegal aliens from voting in
American elections is rigging the system. Now that is a remarkable
thing for them to admit, but when they tell you who they are, we have
to listen.
What is clear to me is Democrats don't think they can win. They don't
think they can win unless we allow people who are not legally allowed
to vote to cast a ballot.
Clearly, the minority leader is more concerned about what passing the
SAVE America Act would mean for his future as majority leader than he
is about election security, faith in our democracy, or delivering for
the American people.
Democrats, George Soros, and the radical left will try to convince
you that their opposition to this bill is about fairness and integrity;
it is about protecting American democracy. Don't listen to them.
It is not fair for illegals to vote in American elections. I don't
get to vote in the French elections or the British elections or the
Canadian elections.
It is not fair to let men compete in women's sports. It is not fair
to allow the mutilation of children with gender reassignment surgery
for minors.
The fact is that fairness, integrity, and our future are on the line.
It is this bill that will protect them, and it is what Senator Lee and
I and so many others are fighting for today as we once again call on
this body to pass the SAVE America Act. I urge my colleagues to support
it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
Mr. DAINES. Mr. President, there are some issues we consider so
logical and so obviously rooted in common sense that I have got to
believe the American people are sitting at home and wondering why
Congress is even having this debate. And such is the case with the bill
the U.S. Senate is considering this week, the SAVE America Act.
Let me be clear. The bill before us today requires proof of
citizenship when registering to vote, and it requires photo ID in order
to vote in a Federal election.
If you come to my office here in Washington, DC, you will see fairly
quickly I am an avid outdoorsman. There are a lot of hunting and
fishing pictures on the walls that say a lot about the great State of
Montana.
As many know, Montana has some of the very best outdoor recreation in
the country, even the world: hunting, fishing, backpacking, you name
it.
I remember growing up in Montana. My grandpa and my dad had a fly rod
in my hand when I was still a little boy before fly fishing was cool
even, back in the early seventies. And I remember fly fishing before
Brad Pitt discovered it with Robert Redford and made the movie ``A
River Runs Through It.'' If you want to fish in Montana, if you want to
fly fish, if you want to get a tag to hunt, you want to shoot a mule
deer or an elk or a white tail, you know what you need to get a tag? to
get a fishing license? You have got to produce a valid ID. To go
fishing, you need a license. And to get a license, you need a valid ID.
Now, nobody has a problem with this when it comes to America's great
outdoors. So why does the left protest so hard against ID requirements
to vote?
It is an explicit law that only American citizens can vote, and all
Americans have an ID or the ability to easily obtain one.
The right to vote and participate in democracy is a core principle of
this great country. It is what gives us our freedom. It is what gives
us a voice. But when election integrity is compromised, our
institutions suffer, and the people don't trust the outcome of
elections or their government anymore.
And that is why 95 percent of Republicans and 71 percent of Democrats
support having voter ID. It is truly that bipartisan. I am not sure
there is a more bipartisan issue right now facing us in Washington.
People want to restore trust in their elections and their government.
So why is this so hard?
I will tell you why it is so hard. Our friends on the other side of
the aisle are captive to their radical base. I grew up as the grandson
of a Democrat in Montana. My dad was a Democrat growing up. But this is
a different kind of Democrat today. The radical base is steering the
party that we debate with across the aisle here in Washington.
Remember under Joe Biden's border catastrophe, at least 10 million--
and that is a conservative number--10 million illegal aliens poured
into the country unchecked. And in many States, these illegal aliens
are eligible for driver's licenses, which makes it easier to illegally
register to vote.
And that is why you need to have proof of citizenship. That is why
the SAVE America Act is so important. Requiring a photo ID is basic. It
is common sense. It is not controversial. It is time to get this done.
I am very grateful to my colleague Senator Mike Lee of Utah and my
colleague Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri who have been fighting so
hard to get this bill across the finish line.
I urge the rest of our colleagues to get on board, support the SAVE
America Act, stand up for election integrity, and vote for the SAVE
America Act.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Curtis). The Senator from Missouri.
Mr. SCHMITT. Mr. President, there are moments when the Senate is
asked whether it will merely manage decline or whether it will still
govern. This is one of those moments.
What is before us today is a test, a test of whether the Senate still
understands what it is for, a test of whether article I of the
Constitution still means what it says, that Congress possesses the
power to write the rules of the road, a test of whether this body still
exists to defend the American people, strengthen the Republic, and use
constitutional authority for the common good.
That is why I rise in support of my substitute amendment to the SAVE
America Act, and it comes before us at a fitting hour in our Nation's
life. America is approaching her 250th birthday. We were taught in
schools to think of the American founding as though it were
unimaginably far away, sealed off behind glass, but 250 years is
smaller than it seems.
President John Tyler was born during the First Congress in 1790. He
was born in the very infancy of this Republic. President Tyler's last
living grandson died only last year. That is how near the founding it
still is and how recent this great experiment in self-government
remains. And if the founding is that near, then our duty is that much
clearer.
We are not the curators of a dead tradition. We are the stewards of a
living Republic. Our Republic was founded on a daring claim: that free
people could govern itself--not that a free people could drift forever;
not that a free people could live off inherited greatness while its
leaders refuse every hard question; not that a free people could
dissolve every boundary, mock every limit, and still expect to remain
free. No. The American founding rested on a harder truth: Liberty is
fragile, and so it requires structure. Man has fallen, and so self-
government requires virtue. A republic requires citizens, truth, and
the courage to defend both. That is why this bill matters.
Some will say that this bill and all of its titles don't belong
together; that five-pronged, three-titled amendment is just a package
or a wish list or a collection of unrelated priorities. But that only
proves they do not understand what time it is, and they don't
understand what our Republic is.
The five prongs and three titles of this amendment are united by one
central question: Will American law still defend the basic conditions
of self-government?
Title I, Save American Voter, says the franchise belongs to its
citizens and voting should be secure.
Title II, Save American Sports, says that women's sports exist for
women and girls, acknowledging biological reality over a legal fiction
imposed by elite ideology.
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Title III, Save American Children, says that children should be
protected from irreversible harm, not handed over to the appetites,
fashions, and confusions of the age.
Citizenship, reality, responsibility--those are the basic truths a
nation must defend if it intends to remain a nation.
Let me begin with title I. A republic has the right to distinguish
citizens from noncitizens. That should not be controversial. That
should not even be difficult. The vote is not a global entitlement. The
vote is not a participation trophy for anyone who happens to cross our
borders. It is one of the central privileges and duties of political
membership. If citizenship means anything, it must mean something here
first. That is why requiring proof of citizenship to vote in Federal
elections is foundational. It is a minimum requirement. It is so common
sense in a self-governing nation because a people who cannot say who
belongs to the polity cannot remain a polity at all.
The same is true for voter identification. We are told endlessly that
asking a voter to identify himself before casting a ballot is somehow
oppressive, somehow unreasonable, somehow outside the bounds of
democratic decency. The American people know better. That is why over
80 percent of American voters support voter ID.
Identity verification is ordinary in every serious sphere of life. We
require it for small things, for lesser things, for trivial things.
There is nothing wrong with requiring lawful voters to identify
themselves before participating in the elections of those who will
govern the United States of America. Honest elections require lawful
voters, lawful ballots, and lawful verification.
And then there is the question of mail voting. For too long, this
country has been told to accept a system of mass mail-in voting as
though it were the settled inheritance of the American Republic. It is
not. In its current form, mass mail-in voting is a modern phenomenon,
and in many places it is a direct holdover from the COVID era. COVID is
over. The emergency has passed. The extraordinary accommodations of
that period should not become the permanent architecture of American
elections.
For most of our history, the presumption was simple: If you could
vote in person, you voted in person. You appeared before lawful
election officials. Your identity could be verified. Your ballot could
be secured. The chain of custody could be protected. The people could
trust what they were seeing. That is not cruelty. That is not
oppression. That is what republican government looks like.
Now, of course, there are those who are unable to vote in person, and
they should be helped. Military voters should be helped. Individuals
with disabilities should be helped. Those who are sick should be
helped. Caregivers with real burdens should be helped. Those with
genuine, qualifying hardships should be helped. But accommodation
should remain the exception, not the organizing principle of the whole
system because voting is not a consumer transaction.
The highest values in election administrations should be on
legitimacy, public confidence, and trust. Not so long ago, even
Democrats shared these values. The Carter-Baker Commission, formed by
former Democrat President Jimmy Carter and former Republican Secretary
of State James Baker III, made many of the recommendations that my
amendment promotes: voter ID, proof of citizenship, and limiting mail-
in balloting. Democrat Senators may not support these provisions, but
their voters do. Seventy-one percent of self-identified Democrats
support voter ID.
A free people should want its elections to be visible, accountable,
and resistant to bad actors. That is what title I is trying to
restore--not the denial of lawful voting but the integrity of lawful
voting; not confusion but confidence; not looseness but legitimacy.
I know this issue because I have experienced these fights myself.
When I served as Missouri's attorney general, I fought in court and
defended our State's election integrity laws against a coordinated
assault from the left in 2020. The left's dark money-funded election
superlawyers did not merely challenge one rule here or there; they
challenged the very idea that we can get serious rules to protect the
ballot, deter fraud, preserve order, and sustain public confidence in
the vote. They came for the safeguards that made elections credible.
They came for the principle that absentee and mail voting must be
governed by rules. They came for the simple proposition that the people
are entitled not only to cast a ballot but to trust the system by which
ballots are cast, handled, counted, and certified.
And Missouri won. We defended the truth that election law is the
framework by which free people govern itself. Election law isn't the
arcane inconvenience to be brushed aside whenever the left sees a
tactical advantage. We defended the proposition that deadlines matter
because finality matters. We defended ballot security because
legitimacy matters. We defended verification requirements because
public trust matters. We defended the authority of the people acting
through their laws to insist that elections be honest, orderly, and
worthy of confidence. And Missouri won.
That fight has taught me something I have never forgotten: The fight
over election integrity is about more than mechanics or procedure;
rather, it is about whether we still have the moral confidence to
defend the elementary conditions of self-government--because once every
safeguard is treated as suspect, once every verification measure is
denounced as oppression, once every effort to secure the ballot is
caricatured as hostility to democracy, what is really under attack is
the public's faith that elections are fair, lawful, and real.
So when I speak today about voter ID, proof of citizenship, and
limits on mass mail voting, I do so from experience. I have fought
these battles before. I have seen the pressure campaign to dissolve the
rules that protect the vote. I have seen how quickly common sense is
denounced when it stands in the way of ideological ambition. I have
seen when the public officials are willing to stand firm and that, when
you do that, you can win.
That is what title I and Saving American Voters is all about. It is
not extreme. It is not novel. It is the restoration of an old and
necessary principle that, in a republic, the vote must be lawful,
secure, and worthy of confidence of the American people.
Now, let me turn to title II. If the law cannot defend women from men
acting as women, it cannot defend reality. Women's sports exist because
men and women are not the same. That is biological reality. It is moral
reality. It is the plain reality on which fair competition depends. And
when the law refuses to recognize that reality, the category of women's
sports becomes fraudulent.
Girls are told to surrender fairness. They are told to surrender
privacy. They are told to surrender safety. They are told to surrender
recognition. And they are told to do all of this so the ruling class
can flatter itself for its own moral sophistication. The State has no
right to impose that sacrifice.
I have two daughters. They both love sports. But this is more than
just about sports; it is about whether the law is still going to
reflect reality or whether it will be conscripted into enforcing a
falsehood. It is about whether a civilization still possesses enough
moral competence to say: What is the truth? And that is not cruelty. It
is about whether we still believe that girls deserve a realm of fair
competition that is actually their own. A serious republic does not ask
girls to bear the cost of elite confusion. A serious republic tells the
truth about the world and builds laws on that truth. That is what title
II does.
Now, let me turn to title III. A decent nation protects children.
Children are not ideological property. Children are not experimental
material. Children are not raw material for the ambitions of activists,
for the cowardice of institutions, or for the self-indulgence of adults
who have forgotten the law exists first to defend those who need
protection.
There are lines that a humane society does not cross. Irreversible
medical interventions on minors for ideological ends are one of those
lines. A child in distress needs guidance, protection, patience, love,
stability, truth. A child in distress does not need a civilization so
morally exhausted that it answers confusion with scalpels,
sterilization, and
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permanent medicalization. The burden of uncertainty should favor
preserving the child, not fundamentally remaking the child.
Too often, our ruling class has preferred euphemism to honesty here.
We are told this is compassion. We are told this is care. We are told
that the enlightened position is to ratify distress with irreducible
harm.
It is not compassion to mutilate what cannot be restored. It is not
compassion to medicalize what may pass. It is not compassion to turn
children into lifelong patients before they are old enough to
understand what is being taken from them, permanently. That is not
mercy; it is cruelty masked in liberation.
A republic worthy of the name protects children from adult passions,
from ideological capture, and from the fashionable madness of the age.
That is what title II is trying to do.
And that is why these three titles belong together--because this
amendment is more than a list of 80-20 issues that the American people
are demanding. The SAVE America Act is the defense of the elementary
truths on which republican life--small ``r''--still depends: America
belongs to its citizens. Men and women are real. Children should be
protected from permanent harm. If a nation will not defend these
truths, it will not defend truth for very long. If a nation will not
defend these boundaries, it will not keep any boundary for long.
And that brings me to this Chamber itself. Americans still love ``Mr.
Smith Goes to Washington'' for a reason. They love it because they
still want to believe something about this institution. They want to
believe that the Senate, a uniquely American invention, can be used for
the common good. They still want to believe that conviction can defeat
cynicism. They want to believe that a man can come here and fight for
his country rather than merely manage its decline.
Well, here is our chance to prove that hope is not foolish. The
Senate is not a museum. It is not a Visiting Angels retirement village
for proceduralism. It is not here merely to confirm nominees, pass
omnibuses, and fund the legislative achievements of long dead men while
the living Nation loses confidence in its own government.
The U.S. Senate is here to legislate in defense of the American
people. The Senate is here to draw lines. The Senate is here to make
judgments. The Senate is here to govern.
So the question for this Chamber is really simple: Are we here to
govern or merely preside? Are we here to act for the people or simply
explain why action is impossible? Are we here to use power rightly or
merely to congratulate ourselves for the restraint while the country
pays the price?
Because the stakes here are plain. We see distrust in elections. We
see the collapse of moral clarity. We are seeing girls told to accept
injustices as progress. We are seeing children offered up to the altar
of extreme ideology. We are seeing a governing class that refuses to
draw any line into the line that has already been erased.
And republics don't usually fall in one dramatic stroke. They weaken
when truth is no longer defended. They weaken when citizenship is
diluted. They weaken when institutions lose the will to govern. They
weaken when elites ask ordinary people to live under conditions they
themselves know are disordered. They weaken when men without chests
hold positions requiring virtue and enterprise.
That is what this debate is really about. It is about whether the
country still defends first principles. It is about whether the Senate
understands what time it is. It is about whether constitutional power
can still be used for the common good.
And as America approaches her 250th birthday, that question becomes
even more urgent. A republic approaching its quarter millennium should
not be content merely to remember greatness. It should show that it
still knows how to govern itself. It should show that it still has the
strength to defend citizenship. It should show that it still has the
courage to defend women. It should show that it still has the decency
to defend children.
Article I is supposed to be the branch of action. This body exists to
do more than simply fund legislative achievements of long-dead men. The
legislative power exists to make judgments, draw lines, and defend our
country. The Senate should prove that it still understands that duty.
So pass this bill to restore integrity to Federal elections. Pass
this bill to defend women and girls. Pass this bill to protect kids.
Pass this bill to show the American people that we can still act in the
defense of the American people. Pass this bill because these are
commonsense reforms. Pass this bill because Americans are tired of
being told that their most basic moral instincts are somehow beyond the
pale. Pass this bill because a nation serious about the future doesn't
apologize for governing itself. Pass this bill because America 250
should be more than some commemoration. It should be a renewal.
The age of excuses should end. The era of drift should end. The
Senate should act, and the SAVE America Act should pass.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
Order of Business
Mr. SCHMITT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the next 60
minutes be under control of the Democratic leader or his designee,
followed by the next 60 minutes by the Republican leader or his
designee, and, finally, the next 60 minutes be the Democratic leader or
his designee, and following that, the majority leader or his designee
be recognized.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Washington.
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, you know, when it comes to broken
promises, it seems like Trump and Republicans have raised every price
that they ever said they would lower--costs on groceries with Trump's
sweeping tariffs, the largest tax increase on working families in
American history.
They sent energy costs higher by canceling clean energy projects.
They sent gas prices skyrocketing by starting a new war in the Middle
East.
And they let healthcare premiums skyrocket for patients--doubling,
tripling, and more through sheer indifference.
And now, desperate to avoid the wave of angry voters to whom
Republicans had promised to lower prices and no new wars, Republicans
are even going to raise the cost of voting, because their ``Save Trump
Act'' would nickel and dime Americans who are just trying to vote but
have to slog through one new Republican roadblock after another.
Under the Republicans' bill, one of our citizens' most basic freedoms
now comes with a price, and it comes with a lot of brandnew hurdles
that serve no purpose but to trip people up. Some folks will have to
shell out for a copy of their birth certificate. Some will have to get
a passport. That is 165 bucks, by the way.
Some folks will have to travel hours away to register in person,
costing time and travel fare or maybe gas costs, which Trump is now
sending through the roof.
And that is not the half of it.
Just consider all the people who will face new challenges just to
vote for no good reason. If you are a student who just moved to start
college, Republicans will make it harder for you to vote because, if
this bill passes, you will need to show a photo ID and proof of
citizenship in every single State. But a student ID won't count.
Many Tribal IDs also won't be enough under the new Republican
restrictions.
If you are a married woman who changed her last name, like me and the
overwhelming majority of moms across the country, Republicans will make
it harder for you to vote because you would now have to bring an ID,
proof of citizenship, and some additional paperwork showing your name
change. That could affect 70 million people.
If you are a senior who just moved into a new nursing home and has
mobility issues, Republicans will make it harder for you to vote
because you can no longer just register online or by mail. You now have
to show up in person to show your papers.
Voting will also be harder for rural families far from any place
where they could show their papers and register in person.
In Washington State, we have a lot of families who might have to take
a
[[Page S1075]]
ferry just to register to vote. Or heaven forbid you are someone living
abroad, maybe working for an American company or working at a nonprofit
or even serving our Nation as a diplomat. You might just have to buy a
flight all the way back home so you can register.
And the inconvenience doesn't stop at registration because
Republicans will make voting by mail harder for everyone as well. They
are going to require you to photocopy your ID when you apply for that
mail-in ballot, and then they are going to require another photocopy
when you send in your mail-in ballot--at least as long as Trump doesn't
get his wish to scrap mail-in voting altogether.
And if you are someone who doesn't know where your birth certificate
is or doesn't have easy access to it, or if you are one of half of
Americans who doesn't have a passport--that is 146 million people--you
are going to have to pay fees and fill out a lot of paperwork.
And what is the Republican plan for when the State Department gets
flooded with a recordbreaking number of passport applications, by the
way, because there is no money for surge capacity in this bill?
What are Americans supposed to do when their paperwork gets delayed
for weeks on end or, heaven forbid, the President just slow-walks it?
And, by the way, under the ``Save Trump Act,'' there is a perfectly
awful chance that you do everything right and still get robbed of your
vote by Republicans because this bill pushes States to rely on a DHS-
verification tool that just frankly is a dumpster fire.
States that have tried this got results with huge errors where DHS
was wrongly saying many citizens were not citizens. The Trump
administration tool has already wrongly advised States to purge lawful
voters from their voter rolls.
But the biggest problem with this bill goes to its roots because the
biggest problem is that Republicans' own premise is built on a lie.
Trump has been lying for years now about our elections--lying about
winning in 2020, lying about winning in States like California, lying
about crazy conspiracies that have been debunked, time and time again.
He has been debunked by Republican elections commissioners. He has
been debunked by thorough news investigations and carefully conducted
audits. He has been debunked by million-dollar legal cases where other
liars were sued for defamation.
That has not stopped Trump.
Instead of calling out the lies like so many of them once actually
did, first, Republicans just started ignoring this, and then they
started normalizing them. And now, many of them are repeating these
lies and conspiracies.
Our elections are free, and they are fair. That is beyond question.
Anyone who values our democracy should be shouting that from the
rooftops. But instead of defending our democracy, instead of defending
our elections from misinformation and conspiracies and a President who
has stated, quite directly, that he wants to take control over the
elections, Republicans are joining Trump in the same sort of ruse he
pulled to rile people up on January 6.
The biggest fraud here is this: Republicans who know their agenda is
unpopular; Republicans who know that when entrusted by the voters to
fulfill their promises, all they have done is break them, raising
prices, starting new wars; Republicans who know they will not keep
their majorities in a free and fair election. So they are pushing for
this bill instead.
This is not how elections work. This is not how America works. In
this country, we fight for change with our voices and our votes. And if
Republicans think for a second Democrats will let them take away
people's votes, they better buckle up because you can bet we will use
our voices to block this bill for as long as it takes.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues in
standing up to protect Americans' constitutional right to vote and to
fight back against this administration's most recent attack on access
to the ballot box.
Instead of making the case to Americans about policies and what you
want to do and why you think it is important to have say--the tariffs
that in my State are wreaking havoc for our farmers with more yet to
come--this legislation would actually be an end-around of the voting
process.
This legislation would make it hard for a whole bunch of American
citizens to vote, which appears to be the endgame, given what the
President has said about it. By his own admission, he said that passing
this bill ``will guarantee the midterms.''
That is not my quote. It is an exact quote by the President of the
United States.
The SAVE America Act will kick American citizens off State voter
rolls. And how is this happening?
Well, this is a complete invasion of the privacy of voters. It makes
secretaries of state give the voter rolls--the voter information, the
voter data--to the Department of Homeland Security, as in the same
Agency that brought us ICE, and then run that information through some
kind of DOGE-like system that is somehow going to spit back out to the
States which voters they should kick off the voter rolls.
Then the bill also creates the bureaucratic hurdles that make it
complicated and costly for American citizens to register to vote or
change their registration, particularly for the 69 million women who
have chosen to change their name when they got married. Why should they
be penalized?
And millions of American citizens don't have the specific document
required by this bill to prove citizenship because this bill won't
allow for driver's licenses anymore. You have got to produce other
documents like a passport or a birth certificate.
More than half of Americans don't have passports, and they cost at
least $165 to get. Birth certificates can cost $30. In my State they
are $24. And they can take tons of in-person time to obtain.
For anyone that has ever had that experience, maybe for some other
purpose that you have to get your birth certificate, it is not always
as easy as people think.
And this bill also requires people to register to vote in person at
their election offices, effectively ending proven and popular methods
of registration used by millions of Americans in Democratic- and
Republican-led States all across the country, like online and mail-in
registration.
This would be a significant barrier for registration for millions of
voters, especially for people in rural areas who have to drive hours to
get that registration completed now. Rural Americans in many places
would be forced to travel an average of about 4 hours round trip, and
some voters in Alaska and Hawaii would be forced to take a flight just
to register in person.
This bill creates chaos. Maybe that is not the motivation of some of
my colleagues, but I do believe it is the motivation of the President,
who basically said:
It will guarantee the midterms.
It is designed to make it harder for American citizens--certain
American citizens--to vote. It is designed to undermine mail-in voting
and lay the groundwork for this obsession that the President seems to
have with banning mail-in voting, while in some States, it is actually
the prevailing way that people vote, including a number of red States,
as the Presiding Officer is aware.
Because the administration can read the polls, they see that there is
major concern in America with high costs. So instead of maybe passing a
different bill, which we could call the Save Americans Money Act, which
would be doing something about these gas prices when we know it has
happened--now gas prices are up $30 or $40 a barrel, $30 to $40 a
barrel, and every $10 in increase for a barrel of oil is a $450-a-year
increase for the average American family. For the second time ever, the
average price of diesel has reached $5 per gallon. Look at what is
happening with groceries. Electricity prices were up an average of $110
last year on Americans' bills. Healthcare costs continue to skyrocket.
There are things we can do. We have a bipartisan housing bill we just
passed in the Senate that needs to get passed in the House. We have
some permitting bills. I was long a supporter of Senator Manchin's
proposal on permitting. We
[[Page S1076]]
could get that done. We should be adding energy to the grid. This idea
that somehow we are going to think that North Dakota wind is bad in a
pretty red State and then ban grants that would have brought that wind,
which was good for North Dakota and Minnesota, to Minnesota with a
power company in northern Minnesota--that is one of the grants that had
gotten singled out and I think has just recently gotten released.
All that stuff are things that we could do to help Americans with
their costs. So we should be working on the Save Americans Money Act
instead of this.
So I urge my Republican colleagues to change course and stand with us
and stand up for the fundamental right to vote. That always used to be
bipartisan.
The idea that you are going to make all these people reregister or
register with an expensive passport or birth certificate, that they can
no longer use their driver's license, that their private voter data is
sent to Homeland Security to go through some Elon Musk-designed
computer system, is not what people want in this country right now.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
Mr. KIM. Mr. President, the average price of a gallon of gas in New
Jersey right now is $3.68. A month ago, it was $2.94. In that month, we
have started a war with Iran--a war that this administration doesn't
have a plan to end; a war that has cost 13 American lives and has
injured hundreds of others. That is putting America's reliability as a
partner further in doubt and driving up costs across the board at a
time when costs are already too high for most Americans.
Now, what are we doing about this crisis and trying to address it?
What are we doing to drive down the costs that the American people are
demanding that we take on? What are we doing to make it easier for
Americans to pay their bills and to be able to provide for their
families?
We are here on the Senate floor today debating a bill that Donald
Trump wants because he is afraid. He knows that he is at the weakest
point of his Presidency. His approval numbers are way down. And in a
little more than 230 days, voters will go to the ballot box for the
midterm elections.
So instead of working to lower costs, instead of ending this war and
getting gas prices down, instead of focusing on working families,
Donald Trump has Senate Republicans here to peddle a bill because, in
his words, ``It will guarantee the midterms''--a bill, by the way,
that, again to quote Donald Trump, ``supersedes everything else''; a
bill that Trump says he would ``close government'' to ensure it passes.
So clearly we see something that is not what the American people want
to see get done, not of benefit to the American people at a time when
they are demanding that we take on the high cost of living, but instead
something that is good for Donald Trump.
So while you are cutting back on driving because gas prices are
skyrocketing and you are seeing prices at the grocery store go up
because it is a lot more to transport food and you are rethinking that
vacation because the CEO of Delta just said airline tickets are about
to go up too, Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are focused on
passing a bill that drives up your costs.
The SAVE America Act is an awful bill, and I will talk a little bit
about this bill in a moment. But what this bill represents at its core
is Donald Trump's extreme agenda when it comes to elections. It is an
election that is built to, in Trump's own words yet again, ``guarantee
the midterms.'' He said that Democrats won't be able to win for 50
years if this goes through.
He is saying the quiet part out loud about why he is doing this, and
that is because his agenda has three core tenets: No. 1, let the
billionaires buy the elections; No. 2, let politicians pick their
voters; and No. 3, price people out of voting.
Let's start with the insane amount of big money in our politics
today. According to a report last year by the Brennan Center, the
amount of dark money spent in Federal races in 2024 was nearly $2
billion. That is hard to imagine, just unfathomable amounts of money
being poured into our elections right now. It is nearly double what it
was just 4 years prior in 2020.
That dark money represents a real threat to the integrity of our
elections. A report published last month by the Campaign Legal Center
highlights the way that the superrich can use our weakened campaign
finance laws to basically bribe public officials. The report exposed
the story of a man named Velutini, a Venezuela billionaire who was
charged with criminal bribery and was later pardoned by Donald Trump
after his daughter gave $3.5 million to a Trump-supporting super PAC.
These kinds of straw donor actions can take place when we have a
campaign finance system that has been built for corruption. That is
exactly what we are seeing--a system working exactly how it is supposed
to, which is marginalizing the American people and average working
families and lifting up the power of billionaires and corporations. It
is a system that has been built so billionaires can buy the candidates
they want, and if they get into trouble, they can buy themselves a get-
out-of-jail-free card literally.
If my colleagues are concerned about election integrity, getting $2
billion of dark, corrupt money out of our system would be a good place
to start, and I think you would find bipartisan support to be able to
take that on.
The next place is getting rid of a system that Donald Trump has
supercharged where politicians get to pick their voters, not the other
way around like the Constitution says it should be.
Gerrymandering has never been weaponized like what we are seeing
right now under the direction of Donald Trump. He is so afraid of
losing the House of Representatives that he has threatened Members of
his own party who didn't want to go along with his plans. Just a few
months ago, he targeted Republicans in Indiana, saying that ``anyone
that votes against redistricting . . . will be met with a MAGA
primary.''
So we have a system, championed by Donald Trump, that lets
billionaires buy the elections and politicians pick their voters. So
where does that leave you? Where does that leave the American people?
Well, if this bill passes, it will make it harder for people to be able
to vote. It will make it such that they have to pay for a
constitutional right of voting, which is so sacred to our democracy.
Voting shouldn't cost people extra money; it shouldn't require you to
be able to have a poll tax. For millions of Americans, they will need
to potentially scramble to get a new form of ID.
Maybe my colleagues will say: Oh, just go get a passport.
Well, look, a new passport costs $165, and to expedite it in order to
vote costs much more than that. And we need to be able to deliver that
quickly, so that is an added $22 on top of that. That is nearly $250
for your right to vote. That is nearly $250 when this administration
has hurt our ability to get healthcare, be able to fill our tanks with
gas, be able to get groceries. They made it more expensive across the
board, and they have given massive giveaways to those at the very top.
This bill will make it harder for married women to vote if their
current legal name doesn't match the name on their birth certificate.
How does that make sense? It will make it harder for seniors and young
people to vote by throwing up new restrictions on mail-in voting,
requiring seniors and others to have to go and register in person when
they haven't had to do that before.
Why is it that we are trying to make it so hard for Americans to be
able to vote? But then you realize that is the point. That is actually
the point of this all. Trump wants to make it harder for you to vote
and make it easier for him to have his bidding. Why else did we see
this happening right on the tail of so much of what he was doing in
pushing gerrymandering so blatantly against our Constitution and our
laws? Trump wants to make it more expensive for Americans to vote
because that makes it easier for him and his supporters and his donors
to be able to buy their way to power. He wants congressional
Republicans to cease doing anything else and pass this bill so he can
``guarantee the midterms.''
Well, that is not what the American people want. They want a choice.
It is their choice. They are supposed to be in the driver's seat of
their democracy. The American people want our elections to be secure.
[[Page S1077]]
I want our elections to be secure. I want to make sure that voters
can have full faith in our electoral process.
I have been fighting for years to get dark money out of our politics,
to reverse Citizens United, which I believe is going to go in the
history books as one of the most dangerous moments of our democracy.
That has unleashed a torrent of dark money and problems and this
nightmare we are seeing ourselves in.
I have been fighting to end the practice of letting politicians pick
their voters since my first day here on the House side. I even stood up
to my own party in New Jersey by suing to fix a broken ballot that let
power players pick candidates, not voters.
This is not about partisanship; this is about delivering for the
American people and preserving their ability to be able to drive our
democracy.
We have real work that we can do to make our elections safer, get rid
of this dark money, and make sure the voters get to pick their
politicians. But that is not the bill that we have before us, and that
is not the bill that Donald Trump is pressuring my colleagues here to
push through. Instead, this bill is a distraction from Donald Trump's
failures and is a desperate attempt to compensate for the power he sees
slipping away right between his fingers.
We can't let him do this. We can't let him distract us from the real
problems our constituents are facing today of $3.68 a gallon in New
Jersey for our gas. Let's put an end to this distraction. Let's stop
doing Donald Trump's bidding to hold onto power and do what we are
supposed to do--to focus on what the American people want--which is,
right now, so clearly about lowering the prices that they see
skyrocketing every single day. That is what we are here for, and that
is what they want us to do.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, let me, first of all, thank my colleague
and friend the Senator from New Jersey who, I think, has brought us a
fresh voice, has incredible energy, and is somebody who has a history
of working extraordinarily well on national security issues.
I agree with virtually everything he just said in that this is a bit
of a distraction. I think part of the reason it is a distraction is
that, at the end of the day, this President has frankly refused to
acknowledge that the American people's will in 2020 was not to rehire
him. He cannot accept the legitimate outcome of the 2020 election.
Despite officials from his own administration calling the 2020 election
the most secure in American history, the President continues to promote
unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud, and that is after investigations
from multiple courts and the States' attorneys general and election
officials from both parties strongly declaring that there was no
evidence to support allegations of substantial fraud. Simply put, the
2020 election was certified, litigated, and affirmed.
Tomorrow, we are going to hear from some of the intelligence
officials as our committee takes on the worldwide threat assessment
where, unfortunately, senior intelligence officials seem to be still
focusing on relitigating the 2020 election rather than making us safe
for 2026 and 2028 because the truth is, after all of these years, the
President and his allies haven't been able to find any evidence of
legitimate voter fraud in past elections. As a matter of fact, there
have been studies ad nauseam that show millions and hundreds of
millions of votes and that the number of people who were undocumented
and voted by mistake were in the single digits.
Now, they are looking forward to the effort that is on the floor
right now toward suppressing and wrongfully influencing future
elections through this so-called SAVE America Act.
Again, I know the Presiding Officer and my friend from Wisconsin and
others are going to say I am going to go over the top, so let me just
use the President's own words. The Presiding Officer comes from Utah,
which has a proud history of States' rights and local control, but in
the President's own words, he wants Republicans to ``take over''
election administration, going so far as to say Republicans ought to
nationalize the voting. If there were ever an ``Alice in Wonderland up
is down and down is up,'' that is what is happening.
Again, I don't know if this comment led to her firing, but before he
fired her, the President's DHS Secretary Kristi Noem pushed for the
passage of the SAVE America Act while stating that her goal was to have
the right people voting so we can elect the right leaders. I mean, this
sounds like it comes out of some dystopian novel or 1930s advocacy. I
just don't get it. We all know that the strength of our democracy
depends on voter participation and access to the ballot box. I have
been doing this, I guess, long enough that I remember when things like
``motor voter'' and ``let's make it easier to register'' were all
bipartisan.
Unfortunately, contrary to the name the SAVE America Act, this
legislation undermines the very foundations that it claims to protect.
This bill would impose sweeping requirements that would make it
extremely difficult for eligible voters to participate in our
democracy. New voters, married women, and servicemembers would face
additional hurdles when registering to vote. That is because, under the
SAVE America Act, Americans who have voted for years and have had no
question about their citizenship would have to go back and provide
documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in Federal
elections.
Let me say, at the front end, that I support voter ID. We have voter
ID in Virginia. I don't think you should be able to vote without
showing a legitimate ID, but under this bill, that so-called
reasonable policy would put in place requirements that are so stringent
that it would mean if you don't have access to the right documentation,
like a passport, you wouldn't be able to vote for the President of the
United States.
The truth is, according to the U.S. State Department, only half of
all Americans possess a passport. That means, if this bill passes, half
of all American citizens would not be able to provide one of the
primary acceptable forms of documentation that would be required to
vote under the SAVE Act.
Additionally, under this bill, States would be barred from accepting
online and mail-in voter registrations unless the applicant also
presented proof of citizenship in person. So this is somebody who made
the choice to change their name who is now 85 years old and who has to
go back and find a birth certificate or get a passport and has to show
up in person to kind of get registered again, even though she has been
voting for the last 50 years with no question about her citizenship.
This effectively, frankly, guts the online and mail-in voter
registration processes that are available across many States, which
creates, I think, an unnecessary burden for all voters, particularly
rural voters, senior citizens, and individuals with disabilities
disproportionately.
I see my friend from California here. It has been States in the West,
whether it is Oregon or California or Utah, that have used these tools
to get more people involved. In fact, these efforts don't make our
elections more secure. All this does is disenfranchise millions of
eligible voters.
My view is that the goal of the SAVE Act is more about cutting out
voters and suppressing the vote than it is about saving anything going
forward. We are having this debate, and we are going to probably go
through lots of procedural antics that most folks won't understand. I
just wish that my Republican colleagues would come back to what I think
we should be spending all of our time on. If we are going to spend all
night, let's focus on funding the TSA, FEMA, CISA, and the Coast Guard.
Frankly, I believe we need to fund all of the folks at the Customs
and Border Patrol who aren't assigned to interior immigration
enforcement. So, last week, Senator Murray and Senate Democrats
attempted to say: Hey, we have got to debate about ICE, and we have got
to debate about some of the CBP people who are doing domestic
enforcement. If we can't come to an agreement there, let's fight over
that, but let's not make sure that we hold all of these other folks
hostage.
Unfortunately, my Republican colleagues blocked five separate bills
that were offered by Senate Democrats that would have fully funded all
of the components of DHS. I think about our
[[Page S1078]]
hard-working TSA officers who, thank goodness, got a paycheck on March
12--a partial paycheck--but now, they are going unpaid.
The amazing thing is that this is kind of a crisis that doesn't need
to be a crisis. The fact is, last July, my Republican colleagues voted
to give the Department of Homeland Security a slush fund worth nearly
$170 billion. Of that funding, $75 billion was a blank check to ICE,
providing the Agency with a budget larger than of most global
militaries. I actually think the ICE budget is now bigger than the
French military's, and I know it is bigger than the FBI's budget. You
know, the truth is that $75 billion could actually fund ICE for the
next 7 years without any additional appropriations.
I am here today because I and my Democratic colleagues are fighting
to ensure that all the funding that is used for immigration enforcement
will no longer be used in inappropriate ways. I think even most of my
Republican colleagues have acknowledged that what happened in
Minneapolis kind of went off the rails in that we were seeing ICE
agents literally abuse and brutalize Americans and disrespect basic
human dignity.
The unfortunate thing is, under this administration, ICE has been
turned frankly into kind of a secret police that I believe has waged
enormous violence against Americans. I know in my State, that of the
daily quota of people they have to pick up, 80 to 85 percent have never
violated any other law other than coming into the country and most of
them are going through an amnesty process that was set up. You know, we
have seen the images of ICE ripping apart families and arresting moms
as they drop off kids to daycare. As a matter of fact, I know that I
tried to do some oversight, which is part of my job, and it took a lot
of hoops to get through to even do that oversight.
I believe, because of these actions, all of our citizens are less
safe. So we have got to make meaningful reforms to ICE which I don't
think are outrageous, like requiring body cameras, making sure that
immigration enforcement officers show their faces and identify
themselves, and making sure there is proper training and upholding
traditional use-of-force standards. These are the same requirements
that my local law enforcement has to deal with every day and has had to
for years. These aren't new. These are commonsense, basic
accountability measures that, as I said, our State and local police
abide by because that is how you keep communities safe.
Unfortunately, so far, the White House doesn't seem to see it that
way. They continue to drag their feet on negotiations at the expense,
frankly, of the TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard, and Customs and Border
Patrol--not the folks doing interior enforcement--who are not getting
paid. That doesn't make any sense.
As a matter of fact, we have even seen tools where, in the last
shutdown, the administration didn't decide to cut off Global Entry or
TSA PreCheck because those are actually funded by separate fees, but
suddenly, they decided to amp up the political pressure and close off
those programs. Now, thank goodness, because of pressure from the
public, the Trump administration has reversed course and restarted the
Global Entry program, but it should have never been suspended in the
first place. We have got to get these folks paid. Take yes for an
answer. Take yes for an answer.
As I pointed out earlier, with $75 billion for ICE, it is not going
to stop. We have got to get the reforms in place. So let's keep the
negotiations going. We ought to get them done. I am going to make sure
that the TSA agents at Dulles, at National, and at airports across my
Commonwealth get their paychecks.
As a State on the ocean, I want to make sure that the Coast Guard
gets their paychecks. We have been hit hard by Hurricane Helene, and I
want to make sure FEMA gets funded. And CISA--the Cybersecurity Agency,
which is one of the things that guards against foreign malign
influence--has been decimated by this administration. As we go into an
election season where I extraordinarily fear foreign interference,
close to 50 percent of the personnel have been cut or eliminated.
So we can do better. We must do better.
We can debate the SAVE Act, which I think is, again, about voter
disenfranchisement, not voter safety or integrity, but I do think,
while we debate this, why not go ahead and take yes for an answer and
fund all of the other components of DHS so those folks who help protect
us day in and day out get their paychecks?
Let's reopen these critical Agencies. Let's acknowledge that ICE has
a $75 billion slush fund that we could complain about as Democrats--
Democrats do--but it is the law of the land. They have the resources.
In the meantime, why hold up the pay of these Americans who are doing
so many things to keep us safe? I think those folks deserve better. I
think we all deserve better.
I guess I am a little old-fashioned. I actually think, back to the
subject at hand, you know, our elections are better if more people
participate. I am welcome to having more folks participate--citizens
participate. Citizens participate. Unfortunately, this SAVE Act cuts
back on a whole lot of Americans that will be disenfranchised simply
because, oh my gosh, they did the radical thing of changing their name
when they got married; or, oh my gosh, they were willing to join our
military; or, oh my gosh, they are aged and they don't want to spend
150 bucks to get a passport.
Our country deserves better.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mr. PADILLA. Mr. President, I, too, rise in opposition to S. 1383,
the so-called SAVE America Act. I think a better name--more, actually,
representative of the contents of the bill--would be the ``Save
Republicans From the Consequences of Their Actions Act.'' I have some
other choice names for it, too, but not exactly appropriate for the
Senate floor, so we will stick to the SAVE Act just to be short.
Last year, President Trump and Republicans in Congress promised the
American people that they would lower costs--costs across the board but
specifically healthcare costs. If you recall, just a few months ago,
they promised to do something about the 15 million people that were
being kicked off their health insurance when they failed to extend the
Affordable Care Act tax credits. They failed on that promise.
The administration's war on clean energy has driven electricity
prices up 13 percent since Trump took office. So much for ``all of the
above'' energy strategies. So much for energy dominance. The price of
oil is up 40 percent and gasoline is up 25 percent and rising in these
few short weeks since Donald Trump initiated an unauthorized war on
Iran. That is the largest single-month increase in gas prices since
Hurricane Katrina, just for context.
I don't need to tell you all that many people are struggling with the
rising cost of rents or their mortgages while the Speaker of the House
reportedly told House Republicans that the President thinks ``No one
gives a [bleep] about housing.''
Well, President Trump, listen to this: 76 percent of renters and
nonhomeowners, asked in a recent poll by the National Association of
REALTORS, say that they don't think they will ever be able to afford to
buy a house.
This Senate, at least, passed the bipartisan ROAD to Housing Act last
week. If our colleagues in the House got their act together, that bill
has the potential to do a whole lot of good.
In addition to healthcare and housing, Congress urgently needs to act
and deliver long overdue disaster assistance for California and a
number of other States and regions affected by disaster this last year.
So there are a lot of truly pressing issues for us to be focusing on
and taking action on right now, but are we addressing any of those on
this to-do list this week? No. Not even close.
Instead of focusing on the affordability crisis or trying to save us
from endless wars, Senate Republicans are once again doing Donald
Trump's bidding. This time, they are making his conspiracy-fueled
election takeover bill their top priority.
Since we have launched into this debate over the bill, we have
already heard all sorts of debunked lies and misinformation and
misrepresentations repeated over and over again by our Republican
colleagues.
Let me make a few things very clear. First of all, no, this is not a
simple
[[Page S1079]]
voter ID bill. The latest version of the SAVE Act is a Trojan horse,
actually. It is a voter suppression bill filled with poison pills and
designed to change the rules of the election as we are in the middle of
primary election season already and the November election is on the
horizon. And for what? For partisan political gain?
The President himself has said that if this bill passes, Republicans
will ``never lose a race. For 50 years, we won't lose a race.''
The lead sponsor of this bill in the Senate has stated:
Republicans will lose power--likely for a long time--if we
don't get the SAVE America Act passed.
Colleagues, it doesn't get any more obvious than that.
Here is how it works. The voter ID rhetoric is actually a bait-and-
switch. The SAVE Act does not allow Americans to use their driver's
licenses or other common forms of ID to register to vote. That is
right. The SAVE Act does not allow Americans to use their driver's
licenses or common IDs to register to vote. The SAVE Act would require
a passport in order to vote--something that half of Americans don't
have, not to mention the $165 it costs and a 4- to 6-week wait time to
get one.
If you are one of the 148 million Americans who do not have a
passport but you are otherwise eligible to vote, you will need to,
what, maybe dig through the attic or call your parents to try to find
your original birth certificate--that is if you still even have it.
According to 1 survey, there are an estimated 21 million people who
lack access to these documents. That is a big chunk of the electorate.
If you are one of the 69 million married women who chose to change
your name when you got married, tough luck. Your name doesn't match
your birth certificate anymore, even if you can find the birth
certificate, so now you have to jump through additional hoops and bring
your birth certificate and your marriage license to the election
office. That is your recourse.
Just to make this even more of a burden, the SAVE Act mandates that
you bring these documents--and let me quote from the bill--``in person
to the office of the appropriate election official'' and sign an
affidavit. That is what the text of the bill says. As a result,
millions of women are going to face additional barriers to the ballot
than their spouses have to face. When does anybody have time for that?
Some evening after work? Maybe on a weekend? That is assuming elections
offices are open in the evenings and on the weekends. So more than
likely, someone is going to have to take time off from work to register
to vote or renew their registration.
What does the SAVE Act mean in practice if, Heaven forbid, this
passed and was signed into law? Bottom line: It is the complete
elimination of voter registration as we have known it for decades. The
voter registration drives we see in communities and on college
campuses--gone. Online voter registration or mailing in a voter
registration card--which you sign under penalty of perjury, by the
way--gone. Motor voter--remember that element of the 1993 National
Voter Registration Act that was passed with overwhelming bipartisan
support of Congress creating an opportunity to register to vote when
you are doing your business at the department of motor vehicles? That,
too, gone or thrown into chaos.
It seems like the goal is actually very, very clear: Let's eliminate
opportunities for people to register to vote and have their voices
heard in the elections.
All of that was in the original SAVE Act, which, thankfully, this
Senate had the good sense to not even take up, but this new version of
the bill that is now before the Senate--we know it was rushed through
the House of Representatives and now seems to be rushed through the
Senate without a single hearing, and this version is even worse. How
can it get worse? Folks, you are going to love hearing this. This bill
mandates that all 50 States share their confidential voter roll
information with Trump's Department of Homeland Security. That is
right. Let me say that again. Every State would be required to hand
over confidential voter data to Trump's Department of Homeland
Security, which, by the way, does not run elections. If they have any
role in elections, it is to assist State and local governments with
cyber security, but they are backtracking on that responsibility.
By the way, this is the same Department of Homeland Security which
has been found in violation of 200 court orders since December alone
just in Minnesota alone. This is who the SAVE Act would entrust to take
over voter list maintenance for every State in the Nation? For what
purpose? So that political appointees of this administration can go
through the lists--again, every voter in every State--and order people
that were on the voter rolls to be purged from those lists.
This isn't a hypothetical, folks. The fact is they are already test-
driving this power with States that are choosing to cooperate. At least
12 States have provided the full statewide voter registration lists,
including driver's license information and Social Security information.
They either did it voluntarily or they succumbed to the political
pressure by Donald Trump. The results of this demonstration should
alarm all of us.
ProPublica, the Texas Tribune, and other sources have found that,
rather than identifying noncitizens on the rolls, DHS is sending back
to the States false positives, directing people to be removed from the
voter lists who are actually U.S. citizens and eligible to vote. That
is right. This lawless and incompetent DHS is already trying to purge
thousands of eligible Americans from the voter lists. If this bill were
to pass, it would supercharge those efforts with actual congressional
authorization.
Is that what your goal is? Is that what you intend to do? Not on my
watch. Not on my watch.
But there are even more troubling provisions in this voter
suppression bill. If you listen to Donald Trump or, better yet, just
check the White House website, it says, and once again I quote, ``No
Mail-in ballots,'' with only a few, very narrow exceptions.
So this bill would also ban no-excuse absentee voting, which is
widely used in 28 States across the country. And according to reports,
President Trump himself has voted by mail. Over 48 million people voted
by mail in 2024. That is about one in three voters across the country--
or ballots cast across the country.
And let me be clear about something: This is not a blue State versus
red State dynamic. The list of States that have used vote-by-mail
include Alaska, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Montana, Nebraska,
North Carolina, North and South Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania,
Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
But, sadly, too many Republicans simply cannot admit that ``Emperor''
Trump has no clothes when it comes to elections.
Why are we doing this? I have to suspect that there are two primary
reasons for this voter suppression effort. First, because President
Trump and the agenda that this Republican majority has supported has
been so bad--not just so unpopular but so harmful to American
families--that they are trying to limit who can have a voice in the
midterm elections.
The second, clearly, is Donald Trump's obsession with the Big Lie and
his refusal to accept the fact that he lost the 2020 Presidential
election. Now, we all know that, after losing the 2020 election, Donald
Trump encouraged a mob of his supporters to storm this building--the
U.S. Capitol--including this very Chamber, on January 6. Why? Because
every single court case, every investigation and recount, confirmed the
same exact thing: Donald Trump lost that election. But he felt like he
needed to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
Thank God for all the officers, for the more than 15 Federal, State,
and local law enforcement agencies, as well as the National Guard, who
protected the Capitol that day. And I am grateful--I hope we are
grateful on a bipartisan basis--that we have a plaque commemorating
their heroism finally hanging in the Capitol.
But here we are, 6 years later, and Trump is as obsessed as ever with
vengeance: pursuing vindictive prosecutions of his perceived enemies,
seizing ballots in Georgia because I guess he is still trying to find
those 11,870 votes, sending subpoenas for the 2020 Cyber Ninjas audit--
yes, the one that
[[Page S1080]]
found that Joe Biden won Arizona by even more votes than originally
thought.
So, make no mistake, the SAVE Act isn't about protecting our
elections; it is about attacking them.
As the Presiding Officer can tell, I am strongly opposed to this
anti-voter bill, and I will do everything in my power to defeat it.
And, no, I am not alone. Senate Democrats will fight this voter
suppression bill--tooth and nail, day after day, night after night--for
as long as it takes to protect our democracy.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, 250 years ago--actually, 250 years ago
this summer--we wrote a letter to good King George III, and in that
letter we now call the Declaration of Independence, we complained about
foreign intervention into the activities of Americans, the colonists.
We wanted the right to be able to actually control our own destiny. We
wanted the ability to be able to speak for our own future, decide for
our own families, without having foreign interference coming across an
ocean to be able to affect us. We determined that we wanted to run our
own Nation.
Now, 250 years later, we still want to run our own Nation. We want to
make our own decisions without foreign interference, without anyone
stepping in and telling us, as Americans, whom we are going to be and
what we are going to do. We disagree with each other enough; we don't
need individuals from the outside coming in and expressing their
opinion. We handle this as Americans, and the way that we do that is
with elections.
Elections have been routinely done through the history of our country
since our Constitution was ratified in 1789. It has been a
distinguishing mark of the United States. We are the oldest functioning
constitutional democracy in the world. And in our Republic, we choose
representatives. Those representatives speak on our behalf. And if we
decide we don't like them for whatever reason, we choose different
representatives. But we, as Americans, choose our own path through our
own elected officials. That is what we do, and we do it on a regular,
consistent basis.
Now, in the earliest days, it was literally a wooden box and slips of
paper. We have improved that over the years. Step by step, decade after
decade, we have done elections a little bit differently.
Now, they are done differently all over the country on it, but we
have some basic foundational rules that are also guidance. We choose
our own leaders, but we do it the right way.
It wasn't always that way. But as we have improved, we make our
elections more transparent, better, with faster responses, giving more
trust.
Many folks in my generation will never forget the photograph of
staring at a hanging chad from the Bush election, with a person in an
election board closely staring through a magnifying glass to try to
figure out if there was a dimple on a piece of paper.
There is no election system in the country that does chads anymore
because we all determined that is a terrible idea. It is just a bad way
to be able to prove the intent of a vote. And the whole younger
generation has no idea what a hanging chad would even be because we no
longer do that anymore.
We protect the right of all individuals to vote--every American
citizen--because in the middle of the 1960s, we as a Nation passed the
Voting Rights Act, determining that every person in America has the
right to be able to vote and that would be protected, that if there
would be any jurisdiction in the country that would violate that, a
Federal court could literally step in and just say: No, every single
citizen of the country would have a protected right to vote.
In fact, if you want me to read it to you, the Voting Rights Act
actually begins with this simple statement:
All citizens of the United States who are otherwise
qualified by law to vote at any election by the people, in
any State, Territory, district, county, city, parish,
township, school district, municipality, or other territorial
subdivision, shall be entitled and allowed to vote.
But the simple statement that the Voting Rights Act begins with--
``All citizens''--what is interesting is the Voting Rights Act
protected the ability of a court to step in and say, if some citizen is
not being allowed to vote, the courts can step in and mandate that that
actually occur. But it did not set up a way to say: Are you a citizen
at all?
It was just assumed that only citizens would actually be the ones to
vote. It is the baseline of the civil rights in that time period and in
the Voting Rights Act--that our elections would be protected only for
citizens. But this is a ``trust'' bill in that way, and there is no
``verify.''
What we as Republicans have brought--we have brought out of the House
and brought to the floor of the Senate--is not a ``trust'' bill. It is
a ``trust and verify'' bill. It takes the next step from the Voting
Rights Act of 1965, which mandated that it would only be citizens that
would vote.
In fact, there was a penalty actually established that if you are a
noncitizen, you get up to 5 years in prison if you vote in a Federal
election. That is a big deal.
The challenge is, we have no way to be able to track it. That doesn't
actually occur anymore. So we want to just be able to bring a most
basic thing that all Americans can agree on--we would hope--that only
citizens of the United States would be able to vote, and that before
you register to vote, we would have some way to be able to show you
actually are a citizen. That is, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 said
that all of those American citizens have a protected right to be able
to vote, and they can choose to--hopefully, they do--or not. That is up
to them as an American.
So let me walk through this.
The first thing I wanted to be able to say is thank you to the State
election board folks and all the State election officials and the poll
workers that work for every election all across the country. We lose
track of this at times.
It takes almost three-quarters of a million people just to run a
Federal election--three-quarters of a million. Those are poll workers.
Those are poll watchers. Those are State election officials. Those are
folks that work behind the scenes in every county and parish, in cities
and municipalities all across the country--three-quarters of a million
people just to be able to pull together an election.
Those folks are incredibly important to be able to protect the most
basic rights of individuals to be able to vote and to protect the basic
right of one person, one vote.
Let me share this with this body. Here is how we do it in Oklahoma.
In Oklahoma, we have one of the highest rated, secure election systems
in the country--in the country. And we encourage people to come out and
to vote and to participate in the entire process.
Some of the things that we choose to do is, in all of our polling
locations and every time ballots are actually presented, there is
always a Republican and a Democrat poll worker that is always there in
every area--always--so both parties are always represented in that and
so everyone can look at each other and constantly be able to check the
system.
We are still old school. We do a piece of paper and a marker, and you
mark your ballot. And it runs through an optical scanner, and it
registers that ballot was actually fully handled. So at the end of the
night, if there is any challenge at all to that ballot, we can go back
to the paper ballots and actually count them by hand and be able to
verify all of them, because we want to make sure, every single
election, we can verify every single vote, every single time.
In fact, at the end of the night, when machines are finished, we
literally print out on a piece of paper and post on the window of the
election board location, wherever this was that the election was being
held--we actually publicly post, at the instant the election was done
that night, at 7 p.m., so that it is public information immediately how
many votes were taken in this area. So if, at some point, it shows up
later that it was a different number, everyone could see it.
We have full verification through the entire process.
In Oklahoma, we have voter ID at every single location, at every
single vote. How do we do it? If you vote in
[[Page S1081]]
person and you show up to vote on election day, you pull out an ID, and
you show an ID--every single person.
If you vote early, absentee--we have that all over our State in
county election boards everywhere--as you walk up, you have to pull out
an ID and to be able to show that ID to vote.
And if you are going to mail in your ballot, we welcome that, but you
have got to show ID when you actually do it. That means actually going
into a location where you can get a notary that, before you put your
ballot in the mail, it shows your envelope, you show the ID, it shows
on the envelope who the person is on it, and you actually have a notary
to do that.
We have voter ID at every single stage. We don't allow ballot
harvesting at all. We are a very, very secure system, and we are proud
of that. We want every single person to be able to vote, but we want to
make sure it is one person, one vote.
We occasionally still do have some folks who try to vote twice in
Oklahoma. I am sure that happens in other States, as well, where they
will do a request for a mail-in ballot, they will mail it in with a
notary and verify that it is them, and then, on election day, they will
show up and vote again.
During the last Presidential election, we had a little over 1.5
million people that showed up to vote on that. We found 2 people that
double-voted in multiple counties and 27 people that actually double-
voted in the same county--29 folks total that double-voted in over 1.5
million people.
By the way, we didn't ignore those 29. They were all referred for
prosecution because according to Federal law--Federal law, now--
according to Federal law, it is up to 5 years in prison if you vote
twice.
So we refer folks for prosecution to say we don't allow that. We are
careful in how we do the balloting and the voting on this. But we have
a voter ID, and we walk through the process to make sure that every
person actually has that opportunity to be able to vote.
Interestingly enough, in Oklahoma, we asked a question several years
ago: How many folks showed up for jury duty and, when they showed up
for jury duty, were excused from the jury duty because they went before
the judge and said: I am not a citizen of United States?
This happens all the time, actually, where someone comes in and says:
I am not a citizen of the United States, and so I need to be excused.
They are not eligible for a jury if they are not a citizen of the
United States. We had about 40 people in Oklahoma that made that claim
and said: I am not a citizen of the United States.
But when we checked voter rolls, they were registered to vote--40.
They were excused from jury duty but were also registered to vote.
So in Oklahoma law, do you know what we do? Anytime, in any county,
if someone says, I am not a citizen of the United States in the jury
duty, that now gets turned into a list. And if they are registered to
vote, their registration gets purged because we are serious about only
Oklahoma U.S. citizens voting in Oklahoma.
Do you know why? Because 250 years ago, we fought a war against good
King George to say: We make our own decisions, not someone else outside
our country. We make our own.
So we make sure that we purge our own voter rolls. In fact, that is
State law, to be able to do that.
Listen, we have a very simple, straightforward proposition. It is
called the SAVE America Act. The two most basic features of the SAVE
America Act should not be controversial. They are simple and
straightforward.
We have to verify you are an American citizen. It is already Federal
law--already right now--that you have to be an American citizen. We
just don't verify it. So this is the ``trust and verify'' portion of
the bill. We trust you that you are an American citizen. How about we
just check?
So you have to show that you are an American citizen to be able to
register to vote.
The second part of it is you have to have ID to be able to vote.
Again, we have done this in Oklahoma for years. This can be done and
should be done, and it just shouldn't be that controversial.
I have to share, though, just as who I am as a person. Mr. President,
as a personal note of privilege on this, I had to smile when I saw the
title of our bill, when it started working its way through the very
calm House of Representatives and was sent over to us: The SAVE America
Act.
There are a lot of things that can save America, and this bill is
incredibly important. It is vital that we get it done. But just as a
personal privilege, can I just say: I personally believe what saves
America is that more people had a personal relationship with Jesus
Christ. I think that would be the greatest thing ever to be able to
save the nature of our country.
Our country has become incredibly divided and angry. People are mad
and screaming at each other and don't even know why anymore.
Two thousand years ago, a young lawyer walked up to Jesus, and said:
Rabbi, of all the teachings, of all the commandments that are out
there, what is the heaviest? What is the greatest commandment?
And he said: The biggest one is to love God with all your heart,
soul, mind, and spirit.
And then he said: You didn't ask me for two, but let me give you the
second one. The second one is just like the first one--he said--to love
your neighbor as yourself.
If we are going to save America, protecting our voting integrity is
incredibly important, and let's get that done. But if we are really
going to save America--not just a bill--I think we need to get back to
the most basic truth, to restart again and ask ourselves, as
individuals that make up a nation, if we are going to love God with all
our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love our neighbor as ourself.
And as the old joke says, when the person says, ``Who is my
neighbor?'' the response is, ``probably the person you wish I wouldn't
say.'' That is the person who is your neighbor.
Jesus was headed toward his execution. He knew it, but the people
around him didn't. And he was heading through Jericho, and as he
approached Jericho, there was a tax collector there. His name was
Zacchaeus. He was up in a tree because he was a little guy and because
he wanted to see Jesus come by.
Now, he was a wretched guy who had stolen from everybody in town, and
everybody knew it. When Jesus saw this wretched guy, he looked at him
and he said: Why don't you come down? I want to spend some more time
with you.
And the one person in town that everybody thought Jesus would ignore,
Jesus actually pointed him out and said: I want to spend more time with
you.
At the end of the conversation, everybody looked at him and said: Why
did you spend time with that broken, depraved person?
Jesus responded: Because I came to seek and to save what was lost.
That is why.
Just a personal privilege, if we are going to talk about saving
America, maybe we should start with our own souls.
But in the meantime, as we contemplate that as individuals, why don't
we just do the most basic thing? Why don't we verify that only American
citizens are voting--because we all know it is happening, and I just
told you stories from my own State.
Why don't we just verify, as we go through the polls, to increase the
trust of all Americans for our election process? I am looking forward
to the debate on the floor this week and for folks to have the
opportunity to be able to talk this through. This is something
important that we need to be able to finish, and it is something
strongly the American people are supportive of.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
Honoring Captain Curtis Angst, Captain Seth Koval, and Master Sergeant
Tyler Simmons
Mr. HUSTED. Mr. President, I come today to request a pause in the
political discourse of this Chamber for a moment of reflection.
As those both in this Chamber and across the Nation know, last
Thursday, March 12, 2026, an American KC-135 refueling aircraft went
down in western Iraq.
The crash claimed the lives of the aircraft's six crew members. I
would like to take a moment of the Senate's time this evening to honor
three of
[[Page S1082]]
Ohio's favorite sons, the airmen who were serving in the Ohio National
Guard with the 121st Air Refueling Wing at Rickenbacker Air National
Guard Base in Columbus.
And listening to my colleague Senator Lankford, I will say this,
quote a passage from John 15:13:
Greater love has no one than this to lay down one's life
for his friends.
Let me first speak of one of Ohio's favorite sons, Capt. Curtis J.
Angst. He was 30 years old from Wilmington, OH. He was a KC-135 pilot
with 10 years of military service.
He graduated from Wilmington High School in 2014 and enlisted in
Ohio's Air National Guard a year later. He earned a degree in aerospace
engineering in 2020 from the University of Cincinnati. His family
states that his commitment to his country was matched only by his
devotion to his wife Mary and his passion for music, traveling, and the
outdoors.
His family stated:
Those who knew Curtis remember his steady kindness and the
joy he carried with him everywhere he went.
His constant smile and instantly recognizable laugh made
people feel welcome, valued, and part of something bigger.
Another family member described Captain Angst's life as one defined
by service, generosity, and a genuine love for people.
The Air Force says he logged 880 flight hours, 67 of which were in
combat. He was promoted to captain just last November. He earned
multiple honors, including the Air and Space Achievement Medal and the
Meritorious Unit Award.
He will be missed by his wife Mary, his parents, and many more
friends and family.
MSgt Tyler Simmons. You see them all pictured here. There is Curtis.
Here is Tyler. MSgt Tyler Simmons was 28 years old from Columbus, OH.
He was a 2015 graduate of Eastmoor Academy on Columbus's East Side,
where he was his high school's quarterback.
He loved football and was a loyal fan of Texas Christian University,
TCU. His service began in April 2018. His father said that Master
Sergeant Simmons loved airplanes and always had plans for joining the
Air Force.
His unit commander reports that Master Sergeant Simmons has been
posthumously promoted from tech sergeant to master sergeant. He was a
musician and played both the viola and violin in his high school.
Amazing talent.
His family says he loved to roller skate. Tyler loved his family but
was particularly fond of his grandmother Bernice, who, at 85 years old,
is described as his confidante and workout buddy.
Tyler's smile could light up any room. His strong presence would fill
it, his family says. His mother said he loved serving in the military
and that he was born for it.
We mourn today alongside Master Sergeant Simmons' entire family. You
see him pictured there. You can see his smile. You can tell what they
mean when they talk about his smile.
The third individual I would like to honor is Capt. Seth Koval. He
was 38 years old from Mooresville, IN, and he was an aircraft commander
with 19 years of service to our country. He graduated with a bachelor's
degree in aviation operations from Purdue University in 2011. He was a
KC-135R Stratotanker instructor pilot. You see Captain Koval there.
Captain Koval first enlisted in 2006 as a machinist with Indiana's
National Guard 122nd Fighter Wing and transferred to the Ohio National
Guard, which we welcomed and loved to have him, in 2017. He flew a
total of 2,076 hours, 443 of those in combat.
His wife said he grew up dreaming of being a pilot, a dream that his
hard work made come true. He was a man of devout faith in Jesus. He was
a man of devout faith in Jesus as his Lord and Savior. He was described
as loving, generous, selfless, kindhearted, smart, devoted and a fixer
of all things and a real outdoorsman.
His loss is one mourned by many but most of all by his wife Heather,
his son, and countless other close family members and friends of Capt.
Seth Koval.
You see our three heroes right there. These servicemembers, alongside
their three other brothers and sisters in arms, gave the last full
measure of devotion to their country last week.
I thank my colleagues for hearing their stories this evening, for
honoring their service, for celebrating their lives, and for mourning
their loss alongside a grateful nation.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate observe a
moment of silence in remembrance of Capt. Curtis Angst, MSgt Tyler
Simmons, and Capt. Seth Koval.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(Moment of Silence.)
Mr. HUSTED. Mr. President, may God bless these servicemembers and
their families.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Ohio.
Mr. MORENO. Mr. President, I would like to echo my colleague's
sentiment. I think he said it beautifully and perfectly. I think he
honored these three brave soldiers really well.
I would like to, of course, join him in recognizing Capt. Seth Koval,
Capt. Curtis Angst, and MSgt Tyler Simmons, who made the ultimate
sacrifice for the United States of America and gave their lives for our
country.
You see them pictured here. I am a dad of kids that age, and I can't
imagine what their mom and dad, their siblings, and family members must
be going through. It is far too easy for us to take the blessings of
freedom and liberty for granted here in America. We are lucky to live
in a stable democracy.
And while our public discourse can sometimes be heated, I look at my
colleague from Vermont, and sometimes at the end of the day we leave
and we are frustrated and aggravated about why we can't get this or
that, I think it is important for us to acknowledge that at the end of
the day, we can still break bread together. At the end of the day, we
acknowledge, at least we must acknowledge that what unites us is much,
much greater than what divides us.
The honest truth is that we live in the luckiest--we are absolutely
the luckiest people on earth to live here in the United States of
America. We enjoy the blessings of liberty every day, but on days like
today, it is important for us to remember why we can live with these
liberties, and it is because of the selfless sacrifice of young men and
young women, but in this case, three young men, that gave their lives
for that.
They signed up, as my colleague from Ohio said, without hesitation.
They served honorably, and with incredible sacrifice they gave the
ultimate to this Nation. These three Ohioans were the most courageous
and selfless individuals of our great Nation.
They were in the National Guard, not for fame, not for fortune,
because they always felt ready to be called on to protect and defend
our great Nation. As distinguished members of Ohio's National Guard,
they answered that call that their unit was activated. They didn't
hesitate. They didn't doubt. They didn't worry. They were ready to go
and serve, not for themselves, for all of us, every single one of us.
It is their sacrifice that allows us to debate the issues of this
democracy every single day.
So when the Senate concludes its business today and each of us goes
our own merry way and we sleep in safety and peace, let us not forget
that there is a soldier in some distant corner of the world standing
watch on our behalf, looking out for us.
And if their families are anything like my family or like my wife,
there is a mom waiting by the phone, hoping and praying that they never
get the call that these three soldiers' families got.
As we think of those young airmen, Captain Koval, Captain Angst,
Master Sergeant Simmons, who put their lives in harm's way for this
country. Let us remember these words from the Air Force chaplain's
``Book of Prayers'':
Our Heavenly Father, in this hour of stunned grief, our
first reaction is silence. But in our silence, as many airmen
before us have done, we turn to you and ask for your presence
and reassurance and guidance.
My colleague Senator Husted and I have put together a resolution
honoring the families. We will file that tomorrow in the U.S. Senate.
We will also fly to the Dover Air Force Base to pay our respects to the
airmen in person.
I think what all of us have to do in a moment like this is to
understand that, with the issues that we debate
[[Page S1083]]
here every single day in this Hall--that will live well beyond any of
our lifetimes and that existed well before any of us walked the Earth--
we will have the humility to understand the weight of our decision
making; that, while, yes--sadly, by the way--politics always plays a
role in a political environment, we will take note of how everything we
do affects many, many American families.
I would ask at this moment in which we are debating a lot of issues,
that we just take one step back and realize, with deep humility, the
responsibility we should all feel for these families. When we see these
young men, we should realize that the decisions made here in
Washington, DC, carry enormous weight and not to be flippant about it
and don't think about what it means for a social media post.
These are really important decisions we make here. Thank God we have
soldiers like these three young men who were willing to answer the call
of this country. As we get into heated debates between Republicans and
Democrats and we start posturing and wondering what this group or that
group is going to think, let's just take a little moment and realize
that, if not for the sacrifice of men like these, we would not even be
able to do any of it.
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to honor these three men.
Hopefully, what this will add during this week that is obviously going
to be contentious will be a moment of self-reflection and humility for
this Chamber which, I think, is so desperately, desperately needed.
To the moms and dads of these three young soldiers, I can't even
process what you are going through. I can't even imagine the emotions
that you are feeling. Just know that America is grateful beyond words
for the sacrifices that your heroic sons made.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I would like to begin by referencing the
remarks of my colleague from Ohio and expressing my gratitude for the
service and sacrifice of the airmen lost in action over Iraq recently.
As many know, Dover Air Force Base, in Dover, DE, is where the
remains of every American who falls in service to our Nation overseas
first returns to our soil. My State and the men and women of the Dover
community and of the Dover Air Force Base have long considered it a
sacred obligation, a blessing, and an opportunity to welcome the
families who are grieving in order to help prepare their sons and
daughters for ultimate burial in their home States. We have welcomed
many Senators from across the country to what is known as a dignified
transfer, which they carry out with great solemnity.
So let me join my colleagues from Ohio in expressing deep gratitude
to the families of those who have fallen in action in the air over Iraq
and for their service and sacrifice and for the support to the United
States military that all of us should be offering at this time of great
solemnity.
S. 1383
With that, Mr. President, I am going to turn to the issue of the day
in front of this Chamber.
What is the issue of the day? It is a bill known as the SAVE Act. It
is a bill that is principally focused on voter disenfranchisement and
voter suppression.
Americans today face a whole series of crises: the cost of living and
the war in Iran. Our war of choice in Iran is now in its third week,
and the cost to American families continues to rise. Prices--costs at
home for consumers--are rising as well. I just checked a few minutes
ago. A month ago, in my home State of Delaware, a gallon of gas was
$2.87. Today, it is $3.68. That is a 30-percent jump in just a month,
the fastest increase in gas prices since the 1973 oil embargo.
Nationally, there is a similar rise of $2.95 to $3.84.
The larger point is that most Americans know they are paying a lot
more at the pump. They are paying more at the pump, and it is going to
end up having all sorts of secondary consequences for costs because
what passes through the Strait of Hormuz isn't just oil--it is oil, it
is natural gas, it is petrochemicals, it is fertilizers, it is helium.
It is a whole series of things that are essential to our modern
economy.
We are on the verge of planting season--it will soon be spring--and
American farmers are seeing their fertilizer prices jump as well. You
might not have ever thought of it, but helium is absolutely critical to
a whole series of advanced industrial products, both medical and
semiconductor, and it is a byproduct of natural gas production. Most of
the world's helium also passes through the Strait of Hormuz. As I am
sure you have heard many times today on the news and on the floor, Iran
has blocked the Strait of Hormuz not for Iranian ships and not for
allied ships that are going to China or to other countries but for the
United States and our allies.
We have watched in the last few years as our adversaries have come
closer and closer together--Iran, China, North Korea, and Russia. These
four countries have deep and rapidly deepening partnerships in military
security, in cyber offense, and in the support for terrorism throughout
the world, and we chose--President Trump chose--to take us to war
against Iran.
The recent polling of Americans shows that, by an 18-percentage-point
margin, the Americans polled actually think President Trump is focused
on the wrong thing, that instead of focusing on the cost of living,
instead of focusing on growing our economy, instead of focusing on
making American manufacturing and innovation strong again, he is
focusing on the war in Iran, and that, here in the Senate of the United
States, we are focused on a bill that will take away the chance to vote
for millions of Americans.
In 2024, 48 million Americans voted by mail. Vote by mail has been
the law for decades in several of our Western States. It is secure. It
has been shown to be resistant to fraud, and it is a longstanding
tradition in majority Democrat States. If the SAVE Act were to become
law, vote by mail would end. Seventy million American women would be
disenfranchised by this law, including my wife and my mother, because
their birth certificates and their current names on their passports and
their driver's licenses are not the same. Like millions and millions of
American women, they changed their names upon getting married. This law
would require them to go through an expensive and complex process to
restore their right to vote.
Last, the mandated sharing of every State's voter rolls with the
Department of Homeland Security and for them to run them through some
DOGE algorithm and throw off the voter rolls of millions and millions
of Americans is a solution in search of a problem. The Heritage
Foundation looked at the last 20 years of voting and found virtually no
examples of those who are not here legally voting in American
elections.
That handful of examples is what is being demanded that we pass
today, that we focus today on a bill that we know would disenfranchise
tens of millions of Americans. I think it is a profound misdirection of
the time and energy of this body. When the No. 1 issue that I am
hearing about from Delawareans is why are we at war in Iran, I don't
really have an answer. In classified briefings I have attended recently
with my colleagues on the Foreign Relations Committee, the Defense
Appropriations Subcommittee, and the full Senate, I haven't gotten a
better answer in those classified briefings than we have gotten in
public.
The military is focused on a few fairly clearly defined objectives,
but the President and his so-called Secretary of War keep throwing out
other goals, other objectives: regime change, ending any possibility in
the future of any nuclear enrichment by Iran, and stopping Iran's
ability to project power influence in the region.
Our core challenge is that President Trump has offered a maximum
goal: Overthrow the regime of a large and populous country that has,
yes, a brutal and murderous regime that has suppressed its own people
and spread terrorism throughout the region but that is very powerfully
ensconced. They are bombing them day after day after day.
Unfortunately, what the Iranians are showing is that, when we have
pushed them to the wall and said that we intend to overthrow your
regime, they are unleashing everything they have got.
I think President Trump learned the wrong lesson from killing Qasem
[[Page S1084]]
Soleimani, who was the general in charge of the IRGC in his first
term--General Soleimani, an evil man, whose passing I would not grieve
for a moment and who had the blood of Americans on his hands. When
previous Presidents considered taking him out, they were cautioned that
Iran would strike back. It would use its cyber capabilities and its
global terrorism network. It would close the Strait of Hormuz. It would
go after Americans.
Trump took that bold action, and Iran did not respond in those ways.
We waited, but despite threats to carry out terrorist attacks against
Americans, we did not see Iran respond with full force.
Then, last summer, President Trump ordered Operation Midnight
Hammer--something that had been funded, practiced, and developed over
many Presidencies, over decades. Massive bombs were dropped on Iran's
nuclear enrichment facilities--at Natanz, at Isfahan, at Fordow--that
were designed underground to have the capability to resist any but the
most massive attack. Again, when weighing the possibility of using
military force to deny Iran the possibility of having a nuclear bomb,
previous Presidents were cautioned that Iran would use everything they
had. They would close the Strait of Hormuz. They would carry out cyber
attacks. They would carry out terrorist attacks in the United States,
and they largely didn't.
What is the difference?
In those two previous attacks, President Trump and the Secretary of
War never said that our goal was regime change. This time, they did.
So, when the leaders of this administration--when this President--
says they are surprised that Iran is attacking all of our partners and
allies in the gulf, surprised that Iran is launching drones at American
Embassies, surprised that Iran is using its naval mines, its light,
fast, cheap, effective drones to close the Strait of Hormuz, how could
they possibly be surprised?
This has been prepared for by folks in the Pentagon for many, many
years. In every intelligence briefing I have had on Iran over my 15
years here, they have said that they have three tools: their ballistic
missiles and drones, their capability as an aggressive cyber force, and
a global network of dispersed terrorists who are capable of inflicting
pain on civilian populations. When we came short of an all-out assault
on the regime, they deescalated. We negotiated, and we were able to
step back from the brink of full-on regional war.
But, in this war, our President did not seek the approval of this
Chamber. He did not fully brief the American people. He posted a
midnight Truth Social video that had been recorded in his West Palm
Beach resort. He did not address the American people. He did not
address the American Congress. Instead, he launched into a war with our
ally Israel that he said was about regime change. What he has succeeded
in doing is killing an aging, cancer-ridden ayatollah and replacing him
with a 30-year-younger, more conservative, likely to be more aggressive
and repressive ayatollah.
They are showing us the lessons of Vietnam, of Iraq, and of our own
Revolution. Two hundred fifty years ago, a small, hardy band of
American patriots took on the world's greatest military power. Over the
course of that long war, the Americans showed we didn't have to win any
battle. In fact, we lost almost every major battle, but we kept melding
back into the woods, reappearing, and imposing costs on the British and
their Hessian mercenaries. All we had to do was not lose, and we
survived.
In our war in South Vietnam, in a war in the region against North
Vietnamese forces, we dropped huge amounts of munitions from the air.
We enjoyed massive air superiority and technical superiority, and all
the North Vietnamese had to do was not lose, meld into the jungle,
avoid ever engaging with us in a major conflagration where we could
win. And in the end, exhausted, we left.
I could give a summary of what happened in Iraq, but it is largely
the same. We have been tempted to believe that our massive
technological superiority, our ability to deliver weapons and armaments
with great precision at huge volume will inevitably win the war in
Iran, when, in fact, with their back against the wall, this hateful,
murderous regime of the mullahs and ayatollahs in Tehran is perfectly
capable of suppressing their own people and of using their thousands of
drones to keep plinking away at Dubai, Qatar, Oman, and Saudi Arabia,
at our Embassies, hurting our families, and taking the lives of our
soldiers.
Folks, in my view, the costs are just too high. We have lost 13 brave
American soldiers so far. We have had chaos and dislocation at our
Embassies and consulates that were not adequately prepared to be
evacuated.
We have seen the cost of gas, fertilizer, and natural gas and oil
skyrocket, all of which could have been dealt with more responsibly
through better planning.
Last, when you are going into a fight, you want as many allies as
possible by your side. President George W. Bush made the case to the
United Nations, to the Congress, and to our allies and assembled a
coalition.
Today, when President Trump acts surprised that Iran is closing the
Strait of Hormuz, he is desperately, at the last minute, calling up and
haranguing leaders of our long-trusted and closest allies. And,
surprise, because they weren't involved in the runup to this war, many
have demurred.
Then Trump commits again what I think is a horrible offense against
our NATO allies. He said yesterday: NATO has never stood by us. I knew
all along we couldn't count on NATO.
Well, it was earlier this year that I led a bipartisan delegation to
Denmark at exactly the time that our President was threatening to
extract Greenland from Denmark either by force or by the use of tariffs
against our closest NATO partners. And during that fight, President
Trump said: We never asked NATO for a thing, and they never did a thing
for us. And Senator Tillis and I and our delegation went and laid a
memorial wreath at the site where Danes remember the 52 Danish soldiers
who died serving alongside Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq.
It is not true that NATO has never come to our defense and NATO has
done nothing for us. In fact, only once has the NATO Mutual Defense
Treaty been invoked, after 9/11, by our NATO allies at our request for
our defense.
And nearly a third of the combat casualties of the very long and
violent war in Afghanistan were NATO troops.
So, Mr. President, rather than distracting the American people with
this flawed bill designed to accomplish voter suppression, I think you
might want to go back to the history books because it is recent
history, and we all lived through it.
We have been blessed by the strongest alliance in human history, and
our NATO allies last year stepped up and offered tens of billions more
for their defense and ours. They have stood by us.
And had you done your job and planned for this war appropriately and
consulted with Congress and the American people and engaged our allies,
you would be in a very different place than you are today, a place
today where our costs are rising and our creditability is sinking--not
a great place for the American people.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, I would like to speak about the SAVE Act.
The SAVE Act, the SAVE America Act, is part of President Trump's and
the Republicans' agenda to disenfranchise voters.
You know, I heard my colleague from Oklahoma talk about the Voting
Rights Act, and that was really an effort on the part of this Congress
to respect and ensure that people who are being denied the vote had the
right to vote, and it did take Federal action to make that citizens'
right a reality.
The SAVE Act is really an effort to interfere with the right of
people to vote, and it is based on an assertion that is flatout false
about widespread voter fraud. And, of course, that goes back to January
6, after the election defeat in 2020, when President Trump then said
that that election was rigged and that it was false; the outcome was
not correct.
There was litigation. Sixty-three courts ruled that the President had
lost to President Biden.
The President is now relying on conspiracy theorists like Kurt Olsen,
one of the lawyers that pushed Trump's ``Stop the Steal'' efforts in
court to
[[Page S1085]]
now lead the effort, seizing election materials related to the 2020
elections.
And those claims have been debunked, even by many Republican elected
officials. A lot of our local Republican elected officials care deeply
about protecting the right of citizens to vote.
Last month, President Trump said that the Republicans should ``take
over'' the election administration in 15 States. Any attempt by a
President, including this President, to take over elections is flatout
unconstitutional, as article I, section 4, of the elections clause of
the U.S. Constitution gives States the duty to administer elections and
Congress the ability to legislate laws around election administration.
The executive branch itself has literally no role in direct election
administration.
And this system works. It has worked well for 250 years because the
States are best positioned to identify and create policies that meet
the needs and accommodations of their own communities.
There is public reporting that officials in President Trump's White
House have been coordinating with far-right activists and operatives
like Jerome Corsi to declare a baseless national emergency. We have
heard that term used quite a bit in this administration. But to declare
a ``national emergency'' surrounding the 2026 election--that term has
been used. It has been invoked to justify the imposition of tariffs
unilaterally by the President with respect to the IEEPA tariffs. The
Supreme Court held that that position was unconstitutional. We haven't
had the Court weigh in on a ``national emergency'' that may be declared
around voting, but it is worth very much taking seriously.
The Trump administration has defunded election security
infrastructure while at the same time making false claims that our
elections are insecure.
The administration has gutted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure
Security Act, known as CISA, which Congress created in 2018 to oversee
programs responsible for securing our elections, like the cyber threat
intelligence.
The administration is also trying to seize voters' personal data in
violation of Federal privacy laws, despite research proving that
noncitizen voting is very, very rare.
This is a concerted effort on the part of the President whose ire
over losing the 2020 election resulted in January 6 and has also been a
sustained campaign on the part of the President to insist that that
election was bogus.
The SAVE America Act, in any form, as it is drafted, would block
millions of U.S. citizens from voting. And we can have reasonable ID
requirements like allowing U.S. citizens to register with a driver's
license or a military ID. Several States have them.
Vermont does not have that, except at the initial point of
registering, and we have such good, high-level participation by voters
and basically zero election fraud.
But voter registration should permit all eligible citizens, and only
eligible citizens, to register and vote in Federal elections. That is
already Federal law. That is not what this SAVE America legislation
does.
Your driver's license wouldn't work. That wouldn't be a valid ID.
Your REAL ID wouldn't work. It gets us on a plane, gets us through
security, but it wouldn't work to get you in to vote.
Your military ID--you know, we just had a tribute to our soldiers.
But our soldiers with that ID would not be allowed to use that to be
able to register to vote.
If your passport has your maiden name on it, as millions of American
women's passports do, that won't work because it doesn't correspond to
their married name.
The list of acceptable identification under the SAVE Act to register
to vote, such as passports or birth certificates, is stricter than many
of the 36 States which do require some identification to vote. And
therein lies the problem because the more onerous you make this, the
more difficult it is--a person who doesn't have a passport, doesn't
have a driver's license, has to do something just for the purpose of
voting--the fewer people who are going to be able to do that.
So here are some facts that we should not ignore. About 146 million
Americans don't have a passport. In 2024, 153 million Americans voted.
And, by the way, passports are pretty expensive. A new passport is at
least $165 for the passport application and the facility acceptance fee
or even more if you want it expedited.
And approximately 69 million women have a birth certificate with
their maiden name and not the name matching their identification,
meaning their birth certificates would be insufficient identification
for voter registration under this bill. How can we do that to millions
of American women?
Eleven percent of registered voters don't have access to their birth
certificate; 52 percent of registered voters do not have an unexpired
passport with their current legal name; and 9 percent of all eligible
voters do not have or do not have easy access to documentary proof of
citizenship.
These details really matter. You know, it is not just the top-line
name ``voter ID.'' It is what is in this legislation that limits what
can be a legitimate voter ID for the purposes of voting.
And even if voters were to provide documentary proof of citizenship,
verifying the authenticity of those documents is an inherently complex
task, one that election officials in motor vehicle departments often
don't have the resources or the training to perform.
The SAVE America Act would disenfranchise Americans of all ages and
races. But younger voters, rural voters, poorer voters would suffer
disproportionately. Rural voters--and by the way, 60 percent of whom
identify as Republican--would face some of the largest hurdles to
showing up in person at their election office to register to vote. Many
rural voters rely heavily on remote voter registration methods that
would be effectively blocked by the SAVE America Act, such as
registering to vote online or mailing in an application, and also these
voters rely greatly on mail-in voting.
This has been an incredible convenience for voters, and reliable.
This would become much more difficult under this legislation, with the
need to scan and print out copies of their voter ID.
By the way, when it comes to seniors, nearly half of all seniors
don't have a passport.
The SAVE America Act would make it harder for Americans to register
and vote in 2026. If the SAVE America Act were signed into law, it
would go into effect immediately--overnight--changing the requirements
for voter registration for all Americans from the day before the act
was signed to the day after. This would effectively block voter
registration methods nearly all Americans use and add new restrictions
on voting at the polls and by mail in virtually every State. It would
be a mess.
The bill not only requires proof of citizenship but also proof of
residence in order to register. This could block even more voters from
voting. Roughly 9 percent of the U.S. population has moved to a new
home within their own State in the past year, but many will not update
their driver's license until they expire--more people who aren't going
to be able to vote who are entitled to vote. Right now, we have
protections 90 days out from an election that prevent voters from being
removed from the rolls. This bill would end those protections.
The SAVE America Act would eliminate mail registration, and it would
disrupt online registration. In 2022, more than 7 million Americans
registered to vote by mail and almost 11 million Americans registered
to vote online without any problem to election integrity. These bills
would also require online registration systems to be overhauled to fit
the bill's requirements. The bill would also prohibit universal mail
voting, requiring all mail voters to submit an application in order to
receive a mail ballot--a lot of bureaucracy here being created. This
would end the longstanding principal method of voting in eight States
and in Washington, DC--and, by the way, in my State of Vermont.
The bill would require voters registering to vote by mail to submit
documentary proof of citizenship, which States do not currently
require. And, by the way, that is without incident.
Mail-in voting supports rural communities that local election
administrators can't reach well. This is why
[[Page S1086]]
several of my Republican colleagues' States--Nebraska, Idaho, North
Dakota--make mail-in voting possible for certain voters. Arkansas and
Louisiana allow digital IDs as valid voter identification.
The Trump administration has been on a furious effort to silence
citizens and deny them our most fundamental constitutional right: the
right to vote. The ``show your papers'' requirement is an attack on the
freedom to vote.
Congress should stand firm to protect the right of all of our
citizens to vote and reject the SAVE America Act.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am honored to follow my very
eloquent colleague from Vermont in the common cause that brings us to
the floor tonight, which is to say no--no--to a bill that so
fundamentally and far-reachingly would undermine--in fact, destroy--our
democracy. It may sound like an exaggeration, but it is the truth.
Republicans want you to believe that this bill is about making sure
that citizens vote. Actually, it is about making sure that citizens
cannot vote. Trump and the Republicans can't win on their policy
decisions, so they must win by taking away the vote this November and
for elections to come.
Make no mistake, this bill will take away votes from millions of
Americans. Literally, it will roll back the clock on the civil rights
era, on decades earlier during Reconstruction, on the Civil War itself.
It will move America back in time and jeopardize our very democracy.
The simple fact is 21 million Americans do not have the requisite
documentation this bill requires to register to vote. Passports are
expensive. A passport book costs more than $100. And birth certificates
are not readily accessible to many, many people. I have to admit, I
don't know where my birth certificate is. There are many people who may
not have their birth certificate at all and will have to try to track
it down and then spend the money that is necessary to obtain it.
Then, for 69 million married women who have changed their name but
whose documentation reflects at birth their maiden name, they will be
required to provide documentary proof of citizenship plus additional
documentation like a marriage certificate or they will have to sign an
affidavit.
The SAVE America Act is not about saving America. If it were, it
would not make it harder for service men and women, our veterans, and
our military families to vote. Think of it for a moment. It fails to
recognize military IDs as valid proof of citizenship.
I want to emphasize this point for a moment because I think it so
epitomizes what is evil about this legislation. A military ID can grant
servicemembers access to military bases; highly secure, sometimes
classified and in some cases restricted facilities; but under this
Republican proposal, it just isn't enough to allow those servicemembers
access to the ballot box, the foundation of democracy. They go to
bases. They go to restricted areas. They can go to other kinds of
military facilities. But they cannot go to vote.
It imposes burdens on servicemembers abroad, including children of
servicemembers. It excludes them--military voters born abroad--and it
imposes burdens on servicemembers and military families stationed
overseas, requiring in-person proof of citizenship at a government
office in the United States when registering or updating voter
registration. So in order to vote, they have to know about the law, and
then they have to make a trip to a government office, probably while
they are on leave with limited amounts of time. They want to be with
their family, and they have to spend additional time going to a
government office to register to vote. These are men and women
defending our right to vote, and this bill restricts their right to
vote.
The bill would also impose unacceptable barriers to voting for
disabled veterans and veterans living in rural communities. It would
require veterans to travel long distances simply to register or update
their registration. Yet, for veterans with service-connected
disabilities, mobility challenges, or limited transportation options,
this requirement will create unacceptable obstacles for them to
exercise their right to vote--veterans, again, who served and
sacrificed for our country, who defend our rights and liberties,
including the right to vote, themselves effectively being denied that
right.
It is wrong. It is wrong morally. It is probably wrong
constitutionally. Our servicemembers, military spouses and children,
and veterans sacrifice so much for this country. It seems unfathomable
and unforgivable to make it harder for the military community to vote
because of one President's vanity and vengeance and political games--
and the effort to win election.
Senate Republicans make a lot of promises when it comes to our
veterans and our military. They have the best rhetoric going. I want to
remind them that promises are meaningless unless they are kept; words
are ineffectual unless there is action to support them.
While we sit here debating a bill that will make it harder for
members of the military and veterans to vote, I want to remind this
body that Senate Republicans continue to block the Major Richard Star
Act--a bipartisan bill to deliver combat-injured veterans their full
military pension. That is right. Republicans have blocked it twice just
this year.
Let's keep in mind what this legislation does and why it is supported
by the vast majority of Members of Congress and the people of the
United States. It says, in effect, you cannot deduct from a combat-
injured retiree's pay the amount that goes to that person for
disability compensation. Republicans say the cost is too high. They say
it is double-dipping. Our veterans have earned both retirement pay and
disability compensation. They have earned it. It is not something given
to them out of charity.
They have not only blocked the passage of that bill, but they have
also blocked my efforts even to allow floor consideration of it. I
asked for unanimous consent twice just to give us a vote. Let that sink
in. They will not even allow a vote. It wouldn't take more than 30
minutes. Let's see if we have the votes. Let's see who is going to be
accountable.
We made a promise to these veterans that they would receive both
retirement and disability benefits. Our legislation would deliver on
that promise.
Republicans in leadership can't find the courage to give this
legislation a vote despite 77 Members sponsoring it--both sides of the
aisle, across the ideological spectrum. Yet they have found floor time
to try to pass this mockery of a bill, to pass the SAVE America Act--a
bill that will make it harder for our military and our veterans to
vote.
This isn't the message we should be sending to Americans, especially
amid action that is putting more troops in harm's way. What a time.
American troops deployed in kinetic action, in harm's way, and the SAVE
America Act has a single, simple goal: turning away American voters at
the ballot box, including our military and our veterans.
We have seen this discouragement of voting time and again: sending
Tulsi Gabbard to Fulton, GA, continuing the false narrative that
somehow there was fraud in the Georgia vote; continuing the distorted
message that there is voting fraud rampant in the Nation. The
statistics and the facts prove this contention is absolutely wrong. It
is false, fallacious, mistaken.
The intimidation of poll workers, the demand for voting information,
private information not available to the public--all of it unjustified,
probably illegal. This administration continues to pursue it because
the goal is to suppress the vote.
Let's be clear. Voter suppression is the objective. This bill is the
cornerstone of that vast voter suppression effort. I will give him
credit for his consistency. It has been constant, the effort that
President Trump is demanding of Republicans in Congress to pass the
SAVE America Act--a bill that would constitute the most significant
restriction on the right to vote in generations--because Republicans
cannot win this November without it, and they have said the quiet part
out loud. In fact, President Trump has shouted the quiet part out loud.
We don't have to read between the lines. He has made it absolutely
clear that voter suppression is the end, the strategy, and the goal.
Over 20 million Americans--1 in 10 voting-age Americans--simply don't
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have access to the documentation that this bill would require to vote.
Voting identification in some form ought to be required, no question.
This is not a voter identification bill; it is a voter purge bill. It
would take that private information from voter rolls and in effect
eliminate those names from the rolls based on other information
available to the administration.
If President Trump were really serious about stopping voter fraud,
especially cyber interference and possible foreign influence, he would
not have dismantled the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency,
he would not have decimated the Agency that is responsible for stopping
voter fraud, he would not have dismantled the counterterrorism units of
the FBI and the Department of Justice. He would make them more robust,
devote more resources to them, because that is the way to stop voter
fraud, is to have investigators and experts go after it, pursue it,
prosecute it. But the goal here is not to go after noncitizen voting
because that problem is negligible. It is miniscule. The objective is
to stop legitimate voters from going to the polls.
Mr. President, 250 years ago, America broke from the chains of
monarchy. They chose democracy, a government that is supposed to be by
and for the people. But as we approach this Nation's birthday, we are
challenged as never before to defend democracy by advocating the right
of every American to vote in free and fair elections and defending that
right--not enough to talk about it but to defend it.
Thankfully, we still do have our democracy. It is under threat as
never before. We are seeing the tentacles of totalitarianism begin to
strangle the free press through the FCC's vicious attacks, through the
effort to stifle legitimate dissent within our government and among our
people. But we know there are people willing to stand up and speak out.
We have seen it in the indivisible rallies across the country. We have
seen it in voter registration. We have seen it in the anger that we are
all hearing and the angst and anxiety about the future of our great
Nation in peril at the moment.
We will have it as long as we recognize that democracy is not a
spectator sport. It is not something that is guaranteed unless we
defend it. We will have it only so long as we keep it, as Benjamin
Franklin warned. And we will have a republic, as he told the person who
asked him after the Constitutional Convention, only as long as we can
keep it. It is up to us. Our time is now.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, my colleagues across the aisle are
presenting what they call the SAVE Act and are saying it is about
stopping noncitizens from voting, but that is not true. This bill is
entirely about stopping citizens from voting, taking away the ballot
box from millions and millions of Americans.
So let's call this bill what it really is: the ``Stop Citizens From
Voting ACT'' or ``Stop Act.'' It is about rigging the next election,
and we know so because Donald Trump said it himself. He said: You pass
this act, and ``It will guarantee the midterms'' and ``every election
for a long time.''
Why did he have such confidence that it would guarantee the November
election for his party? The answer is because this bill is about
stopping groups from voting who tend to vote for Democrats. This is,
again, about rigging the next election.
There are repeated investigations by law enforcement, by news
organizations, by universities that have found that you are more likely
to get struck by lighting than for a noncitizen to vote. It is not just
rare for a noncitizen to vote, it is super rare.
In Oregon, a review of vote-by-mail by the State over 19--actually 20
years, 2000 through 2019, found less than 1 in a million cases of voter
fraud.
In Utah--my colleague who is presiding tonight is from Utah. Utah
completed a citizenship review of its voter registration list of more
than 2 million voters. They identified one noncitizen--one--and zero
instances of noncitizen voting. One registered out of 2 million; zero
voting.
Even Speaker Johnson admitted about noncitizen voting that ``it's not
been something . . . provable.'' Well, actually, what he really should
have said: It is not provable because it is rarer than rare.
That is why we know this bill is not about noncitizens voting; it is
about stopping citizens from voting.
Let's just take a look at the impact, starting with the impact on
married women.
The Republican plan: Stop married women from voting. A slightly
softer version of that is, make it very difficult for them to vote,
because this is what the bill does. It says that each State has to
submit its voter registration database to the Trump administration. The
Trump administration will go through and identify anyone it suspects
might not be a citizen. And it has clarified that that means if your
last name is different than the name on your birth certificate, you are
suspect.
Well, where we are--69 million married women in America changed their
names when they got married. That means 69 million American women get
pinged by the Trump administration saying: We are not sure you can
vote, and you are going to have to start from scratch and reregister.
Reregistering is very difficult. You have to have a passport or you
have to have a combination of a birth certificate and another form of
approved ID in combination--either a passport by itself or two forms of
ID, one of which is your birth certificate, and that other piece has to
be very specific, meeting the terms of the bill.
In Oregon, our estimate is that 700,000 married women would have to
reregister to vote, including my wife. My wife's name is Mary
Sorteberg. That was the name on her birth certificate, except on her
birth certificate, her middle name is different because when we got
married, she changed her middle name to honor her grandmother Rose. She
would have a hard time voting. Millions of American women would have a
hard time voting.
It is also about stopping Tribal citizens from voting. The ``Stop
Act'' makes it impossible to use your Tribal ID to register to vote,
and it makes it impossible to use your Tribal ID by itself to actually
vote. You can't use it for registration, and you can't use it by itself
to actually vote.
Tribal citizens are less likely to have a passport in the first
place, and we know that many do not have a birth certificate. All
across America, there are people who have been born at home who do not
have birth certificates--more common in some Tribal communities.
Tribal communities are remote. Often, they have to travel a long way
to get to a place where you can register to vote because you have to
register to vote in person.
So all of these things are designed to make it harder for Tribal
members to vote, and that is wrong.
This bill is also about the less affluent being able to vote. It
makes it hard for them. Stop the less affluent from voting or at least
make it much more difficult for them.
You know that a passport takes 6 months to get and costs about $165.
That is a big toll. A couple, if they were trying to get that passport
so they could vote, might not get it in time for the election, and they
would have to pay $330. Wow. That is a poll tax on the less affluent to
be able to vote.
If they can locate the county registrar and their specific county in
America and if they were born in a hospital and if there was a birth
certificate, they might also be able to acquire their birth
certificate. That also costs money.
We know that the less affluent are much less likely to have a
passport in the first place, and therefore it is much more expensive
for them to undertake the qualifications of this bill. In fact, only
one in five Americans who earn less than $50,000 has a passport. And we
know that poorer States are less likely to have passports, including
many States in the South--Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Louisiana.
So we are facing an attack on each of these groups, but those are not
the only groups. Let's talk about students.
The ``Stop Act'' is designed to make it hard for students to vote.
First of all, it says you can't have a voter drive. Why? Because you
can't register people at their dorm room with ordinary documents the
way it has always been done everywhere. No. They have
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to go in person to an election center, and who knows where that
election center is.
And they are going to have to miss class or go to do it, and they are
like, well, why can't I upload these documents online to be examined?
Well, because they are trying to make it hard for you to vote. Why?
Because students tend to vote on the blue side of the aisle.
And if you need your birth certificate to register, now, if you are
going to school in a different State from where you are registered to
vote or where you would register to vote, you would have to travel
home.
Well, many students don't travel home during holidays because it is
expensive, and students often don't have money.
Oh, they are rich; they are fine. I am sure they will take a private
jet to go get their voter registration.
But ordinary students, they are struggling to pay that tuition. That
is a big imposition to say you have to travel to another State in order
to be able to register to vote.
So here we are with yet another attack beyond these groups, and that
is an attack on vote-by-mail. Under the amendment that has been filed
by the Republicans this evening, it bans vote-by-mail.
Now, let's think about how hard it is to hold an election in a State
like Oregon or a State like Utah that votes by mail. Oregon hasn't had
a vote at a polling booth in 28 years.
So here we are. This law goes into effect immediately. Our primary
election in Oregon is on May 20. How are you supposed to get all those
polling places in place, all that whole new system, in just a few
weeks' time? Extremely difficult.
And then you submit your voter database to Team Trump. They purge it
with a very big bias to make it hard for demographic groups that
associate more with Democrats to vote. They ping them and say: You are
no longer registered. You have to reregister.
And maybe they get that ping. I don't know. The election in Oregon is
on May 19. Maybe they get that notice on May 10. You have 9 days to get
a passport. It is not going to happen.
You have got 9 days to reach out to your county somewhere around the
country, where you were born, and get a birth certificate. It is not
going to happen.
Millions of people are instantly disenfranchised in an impossible-to-
set-up system in a few weeks' time.
Those groups that I talked about--students, Tribal members, the less
affluent, women--this bill is targeted at them with extraordinary
precision because this bill is about rigging the November election.
And that is exactly what Trump said: You give me this bill; my party
will win November and every other election for a long time to come.
So, colleagues, this is wrong. Every one of my fellow Senators on
both sides of the aisle knows what this is. This is an attack on a
partisan basis to rig the November election. Every person here who took
an oath to the Constitution to defend the right to vote knows that this
is about rigging the election by stopping people from voting. It is
really a violation of your oath of office.
So let's not let this happen--this egregious assault by an
authoritarian President. We have already seen this authoritarian
President take away powers from this body--the House and the Senate,
Congress--that belong under the Constitution to Congress.
Our Founders said the power of taxation, including tariffs, belongs
to Congress. This President took it anyway and said: I don't care that
I am violating the Constitution. Challenge me in court.
It took a year for the courts to act.
He proceeded to say: I am going to cancel programs that are both
funded and authorized by Congress--which is a violation of law and the
Constitution.
It is the power of the purse, and he said: I don't care. Challenge me
in court.
He proceeded to launch a war without authorization, even though the
Constitution requires this body to authorize a war.
So here we are, three major powers--power of the purse, power of
taxation, power of war--all stolen by the President and not confronted
by the House or Senate leadership.
And now we have House and Senate leadership conspiring with the
President to strip the vote from millions of Americans, an
extraordinarily unconstitutional act. But this time, it is not the
President acting alone. He is acting with the support, the cooperation,
the partnership of the majority party.
There is probably nothing more sacred in a democratic republic than
the ballot box. It is the beating heart of what it means to be a
democratic republic. This bill takes a knife and stabs it through that
beating heart.
Let's not let this happen.
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