[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 50 (Thursday, March 19, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1411-S1418]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            SAVE AMERICA ACT

  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, we have begun what will be our third day of 
debating the SAVE America Act, just over 48 hours ago. We voted to 
proceed to this bill, and we have been debating it for a couple of 
days, now entering our third 24-hour period of debates.
  I want to make a few observations to some of the arguments that I 
have made and respond to some of them; in particular, respond to some 
of the arguments that I have heard made just in the last couple of 
hours.
  We have heard a number of arguments. Nearly all of them that come 
from the other side of the aisle deal with something that is either 
easily addressed in ways that would not require any change to the 
legislation before us, or, more commonly--in fact, almost entirely--
what we are hearing are arguments that overlook or even blatantly 
mischaracterize key features of the legislation.
  The distinguished Senator from Colorado who spoke just a little while 
ago, made a number of accusations against the legislation. Now, they 
are not materially different from some of the other arguments that have 
been made this evening, but they were a little bit more strident coming 
from the Senator from Colorado than they have been from some others.
  He repeatedly referred to this legislation, in ways described it 
using adjectives like ``shameful,'' a lot of characterizations of the 
legislation as being somehow evil or malign. But as important as 
anything, he continued to repeat characterizations of the bill that are 
just lies. And I wish I didn't have to use that term. It is a very 
blunt term, but these are lies. It is as though he is staring straight 
into the noonday Sun and, while looking at the Sun with a cloudless 
sky, saying: It is midnight. There is no Sun visible.
  A lot of this--not all of it, but a lot of it--traces back, in one 
way or another, to this refrain about how this law is alternatively 
either Jim Crow 2.0; that it disenfranchises women; that it 
disenfranchises racial minorities, persons of color; that it 
disenfranchises 20, 21 million people; that it disenfranchises anyone 
who lacks any documentation, anyone who, after getting married, goes 
through a name change if the marriage certificate can't be found along 
with the other documents.
  Arguments that you would have to get a passport in order to vote, 
having to shell out a couple hundred dollars, which is about what a 
passport costs. I think it is $185 without any expedited fees, more 
than that otherwise.
  On that basis, these arguments often culminated in the point that 
this is somehow a poll tax because if you have to spend a couple 
hundred bucks getting a passport or otherwise procuring documents, 
without which you couldn't register to vote, according to them, then 
you are disenfranchised; therefore, this is a poll tax. Poll taxes were 
outlawed by constitutional amendment over 60 years ago, and therefore 
this is bad.
  There are a lot of other arguments, but let's just stop right there 
and let me address--I think I can address nearly all, if not all, of 
those arguments by referring to one section of the bill that I have oft 
repeated, oft cited, oft quoted. And yet no matter how many times I 
cite it, paraphrase it, quote it, or refer my colleagues across the 
aisle to its provisions, they seem to ignore it.
  Many of the same people have continued to repeat this lie, even after 
they have been in the room here in the Senate Chamber when I have made 
the argument, and here is the argument that overcomes most, if not all, 
of the immediately aforementioned arguments.
  This legislation doesn't require you to have any of the documents 
that they reference. Ideally, you should have them. And, in fact, most 
Americans do have them, and most Americans are required to use them, 
from time to time, in other contexts.
  Perhaps the most common of those contexts is in the employment 
context. When you start a new job--whenever any American citizen starts 
a new job with a new employer in the United States--you have to fill 
out a form called the I-9. The I-9 requires you to establish your U.S. 
citizenship.
  Now, if you are not a U.S. citizen, then you don't have to produce 
that because you have to produce something else. You have got to 
produce a visa and establish the link between the visa that you have, 
your authorization to work, and your authorization to work in that 
particular job. So that is par for the course if you are not a U.S. 
citizen because you have got to establish a very specific type of work 
permit or an authorization based on your visa. But if you are an 
American citizen, you still have to pony up with documents every time 
you begin new employment as a new employee with a new employer in the 
United States.
  You have to prove you are a citizen, and you have to do it in fairly 
precise ways. It prescribes a couple of methods that you can use to 
establish your U.S. citizenship.
  Method one, which is the simpler one: You show up with a U.S. 
passport that establishes your citizenship, and that one document can 
satisfy the entire obligation--if you have one.
  A lot of Americans have them, but a lot of them don't. Not everyone 
travels outside the United States. If you don't travel outside the 
United States, you are not necessarily going to need a passport. Why go 
through the expense and hassle of getting one if you don't travel? That 
is why a lot of people don't have them. And that is one of the reasons 
why I find it so reckless when people are making the claim that you 
would have to have one, or even the indirect suggestion that anyone 
without a passport who is not willing to shell out a couple hundred 
bucks to get a passport and go through the hassle and the waiting 
period to get one might be disenfranchised, because that is not the 
only means by which you can establish your U.S. citizenship--not under 
the SAVE America Act, certainly, and also not under the I-9.
  But under the I-9, you can also prove your citizenship by coming up 
with an original copy of your birth certificate--the original certified 
copy of your U.S. birth certificate--and then a government-issued photo 
ID. And in some contexts, the original Social Security card can also be 
acceptable along with the original certified copy of your birth 
certificate. And that is about it. So anybody who has ever had a job in 
this country who is a U.S. citizen has had to do that.
  Like most Americans, I have had a number of jobs in my career, and so 
I have had to fill out the I-9 many times. I don't always have those 
documents right with me. I can usually track them down. I am pretty 
sure my wife knows where they are. They are not things that we utilize 
every day, but I know that, from time to time, I will need access to 
them. And I have needed access to them every time I have applied for a 
new job.
  There have been other times when I have needed them, including when I 
have applied for a passport. I have needed them most recently when I 
renewed my driver's license in Utah. And Utah is moving toward a system 
of having a driver's license that can establish citizenship. The last 
time I renewed, they asked me to bring in those documents. I 
established my citizenship with that.
  If you don't have those, you can't start a new job. So most 
Americans, if they don't have those documents at the moment they start 
a new job, they have to find them.
  We wanted the SAVE America Act to provide other methods of 
documenting one's citizenship, recognizing that not everybody has those 
documents. A lot of people are not going to have a U.S. passport; and 
those who don't have a U.S. passport might also not have the 
combination of other documents, including the birth certificate with 
the State-certified seal on it--not just a photocopy--along with a 
government-issued photo ID and/or a Social Security card.
  And so we added a bunch of other things to it. There is a subset of 
the REAL ID driver's license. Not all REAL ID driver's licenses prove 
citizenship. Some of them do. It is typically evident on the face of a 
REAL ID driver's license whether or not that particular driver's 
license establishes citizenship. That would suffice under this 
legislation.
  It would also suffice--in some circumstances, certain forms of Tribal 
ID could be used, insofar as they establish citizenship.

[[Page S1412]]

  But we wanted to go even further than that, recognizing that some 
people might not have any of these forms. And we didn't want to add to 
the expense, to the burden, to the hassle, to the delay, to the 
deterrent effect from voting that it might have if you had to procure 
or find documents that you had either lost or you never had to begin 
with; or your house burned down or dog ate them or your crazy Aunt 
Madge took them and took them to the dump and lit them on fire or 
whatever she did with them; or you just don't believe in documents or 
you don't care about them or you never had them to begin with. Whatever 
your reason, if you are a U.S. citizen, you need to be able to register 
to vote, and that ought not be that hard. So we created an alternative 
mechanism.
  Now, mysteriously--magically--my friends across the aisle, my 
Democratic colleagues in the Senate, refuse defiantly to acknowledge 
that this provision even exists. They refuse, and they continue. They 
persist undaunted, undeterred by the fact that they are making false 
arguments--fake arguments--without a scintilla of truth to them, to the 
effect that this is a poll tax, to the effect that they are going to 
have to shell out 200 bucks to vote, to the effect that this is going 
to deter people, dissuade them from voting. It is going to create a 
chilling effect--dogs and cats living together in the streets, stuff 
right out of the Book of Revelation, end-of-the-world stuff.
  This is nonsense. It is beneath the dignity of the U.S. Senate for 
them to continue this lie. Every time they make this lie, every time 
they engage in that fraudulent, argumentative activity, I would point 
out that there is a very simple provision that takes care of all of 
this--that reveals it, exposes it as a lie--and it can be found in the 
text beginning at page 12, line 22 of the legislation that we have been 
considering over the last 48 hours.
  It makes very clear: Even if you do not have a single shred of 
documentation as to your citizenship--you can't find it, it burned 
down, whatever it is--all you have to do is swear an affidavit.
  Now, the context of the affidavit--the contents of the affidavit--
might depend, might vary a little bit, depending on whether you are a 
natural-born or naturalized citizen. Let me explain what those terms 
mean, in case anyone wonders.

  A natural-born citizen is a citizen who is a citizen immediately upon 
his or her birth by virtue of the circumstances surrounding that 
person's birth, typically meaning that if you are born in the United 
States--or if you are not born in the United States but you are born to 
U.S. citizen parents abroad, such that you are entitled to U.S. 
citizenship under U.S. law as of the moment of your birth by virtue of 
the circumstances surrounding your birth--you are a citizen.
  So if you are a natural-born citizen, you can write out the affidavit 
that way: My name is such-and-such. I was born in this or that 
location, on or about my birthday--and whatever other facts might be 
relevant to that that could guide the State election officials in 
verifying--enabling them to confirm or refute, as the case may be, the 
legitimacy or the falsity of the matter as to which they are attesting 
in the sworn affidavit made under penalty of perjury.
  At this moment, once somebody fills this out under the SAVE America 
Act, the burden shifts. The burden no longer belongs to the registering 
voter. That burden is lifted off the shoulders of the registering voter 
and placed onto the State.
  States, you see, have access to all kinds of documents. Original 
documents, in many cases, and large databases of documents in other 
cases. The State is in a very good position to track down the details 
of the affidavit and easily confirm or refute what the person says.
  They can go in then and say: Oh, yes, it looks like this person by 
this name was born on this date to the parents by these names; and, 
yes, they are a citizen.
  Alternatively, if they are not natural-born citizens, meaning they 
weren't citizens automatically as of the moment of their birth by 
virtue of the circumstances surrounding their birth, but they later 
became citizens--we call those naturalized citizens. An affidavit for a 
naturalized citizen would be a little bit different: I was born in 
Yemen or Greece or Hungary or wherever it was. You probably want to 
name the city, the birth date, the names of your parents, their 
nationalities, and at some point, you would want to mention the date: I 
became a U.S. citizen on or about such and such a date. I took the oath 
of citizenship on or about such and such a date, was sworn in by this 
or that judge, or whoever it was who did it--the basic facts 
surrounding how and when and under what circumstances you became a 
citizen.
  And, there again, the burden shifts to the State. If you are not 
lying, the State will quickly figure that out. And if you are lying, 
the State will quickly figure that out too.
  Now, most people who go to the trouble of swearing out an affidavit 
and providing those details--again, the affidavit wouldn't take more 
than a few minutes to write out. You could write it out by pen or by 
pencil. I suppose if you can't write, you can dictate it to somebody 
else and you can make your mark attesting to it, making it your 
statement.
  I suppose, because the States will have some flexibility in deciding 
exactly how each procedure will work within that State--maybe some 
States will allow them to do it through smoke signals, sky writing, 
sign language, whatever form of communication might be in order in the 
moment.
  But the point is, they can make a sworn statement shifting the burden 
to the State. Not a single document beyond that attestation is required 
from that moment--not from the would-be voter. It shifts to the State. 
And unless you are lying, you will be registered to vote after that.
  Not a single dollar, not a single dime, not a single nickel or a 
single penny or a fraction of a penny has to be expended by the 
registering voter in that moment.
  And so this is just a lie, but it is a damnable lie because it is a 
lie that has been repeated over and over and over again in this Chamber 
so many times, and it has been repeated by people, some of whom have 
been in the Chamber when I have made this point, where I have cited 
chapter and verse within the legislation that we are now considering, 
explaining the extent to which the arguments they are making are false.
  And yet, sure enough, the next Democrat that gets up to speak, speaks 
the same lie over and over and over again, as if by repeating the same 
lie often enough it somehow becomes true. That is not how the world 
works. It is certainly not how the world's greatest deliberative 
legislative body works. You don't make something that is false true by 
repeating it over and over and over again.
  This one isn't even a matter of interpretation. There is no ambiguity 
on this one. There is no absolute requirement for anyone to produce any 
document. There are a number of documents listed which, if you produce 
them, will conclusively establish your citizenship. But even if you 
don't have them, there are other ways of doing it that won't cost you a 
dime, that won't require you to have even a single slip of paper with 
them. So there is that argument.
  On the one hand, I could say I am tired of refuting it, but that is 
not quite it. I don't mind refuting it. I actually kind of enjoy it 
because the more they make this argument, the more they beclown 
themselves, the more they diminish their own arguments.
  If they have legitimate arguments against this bill, bring them 
forward. I want to hear them. Those are not hollow words. I want to 
hear whatever legitimate arguments they have got so that we can fix 
them because we, as Americans, can do hard things, and if there are 
features of this bill that are unfair that could be changed, I want to 
change them.
  Do you know why? Well, it is because I believe we need to make it 
easy to vote and hard to cheat. We can achieve both.
  If we focus obsessively only on the former--on making it easy to 
vote--we will inevitably fail in our task as to the latter 
point. Hyperfocusing on making it easy to vote while neglecting the 
all-important task of making it hard to cheat will make it so easy to 
vote that people who are not supposed to vote will end up voting.

[[Page S1413]]

  This is where a number of my colleagues mischaracterized the words of 
the President of the United States, maligning his words, taking them 
out of context, and attributing to him some sinister motive. He uttered 
words to the effect that we have to make sure that the right people are 
voting. Now, he is not saying that only Republicans can vote or only 
people who voted for Trump can vote. It is paranoid fantasy to suggest 
that. In context, it is clear that what he is saying is ``the right 
people to vote'' mean the people who are actually eligible to vote, the 
people who are not prohibited from voting in U.S. elections by a U.S. 
law under penalty of felony prosecution. That is what he is talking 
about there.
  And yet in their delusional desire to malign and mischaracterize not 
only the President of the United States but this legislation, which he 
supports, they are attributing to him things that he did not say.
  There is another bad argument. I don't know whether this one falls 
into the same category as that series of lies that I just refuted. I 
don't know that I would call this next one a lie, but it is a really, 
really bad argument. It is demonstrably a failing argument.
  They make the point that this somehow intrudes upon the sovereign 
authority of the States--although, for most of them, that is not how 
they are putting it. They are saying this is an infringement on States' 
rights. I really don't like that expression. It is a misnomer, to begin 
with. It harkens back to a really unfortunate era in U.S. history. It 
includes the Jim Crow era, another gross mischaracterization, another 
horrible argument that my Democratic colleagues have been making about 
this bill.
  Why they would ever want to conjure memories of the Jim Crow era is 
beyond me, especially given that they were the party of Jim Crow. It 
was the Democratic Party that subjected so many millions of Americans, 
over so many decades, to a truly evil and oppressive, hateful regime 
that excluded them from public life, that excluded them from the 
benefits of American citizenship over many, many decades. That was 
their party.
  I don't bring that up to accuse Democrat Members of this body of 
engaging in that. It was different generations, not alive today. None 
of my colleagues here were part of that legacy, part of that particular 
Democratic Party, but I don't know why they would want to drag their 
own party through the mud based on its racist past, based on its 
longstanding Ku Klux Klan-affiliated, Ku Klux Klan-enabled reign of 
terror against African Americans. And yet they do so anyway, and they 
do so in a way that is patently untrue and unfair, calling this Jim 
Crow.
  There is nothing about this that is Jim Crow. There is nothing about 
this that is racist, that is racially charged; nothing about this that 
is sexist. There is not even a good argument as to a supposed disparate 
impact that this could have. It is just patently false.
  Anyway, back to their argument about States' rights. One of many 
reasons I hate that expression is that it conjures images of George 
Wallace. It conjures images of those who distorted the Constitution to 
engage in all kinds of horrible things, including Jim Crow policies, 
over many decades.
  More fundamentally, it is a misnomer. States don't have rights. 
States aren't people. People have rights; States have authority. 
Authority is used. Rights are possessed by people to render them 
protected from abusive State authority. So in that respect a right, 
which is held by a person, is kind of the polar opposite; it is the 
inverse. A right is to State authority what anti-matter is to matter.
  If you want to call them rights, let's just call it federalism or 
State sovereign authority or the exclusive province of the States or 
whatever you want to call it.
  So, now that we have that matter of nomenclature resolved, let's move 
on to the substance of what they are saying. They are saying, in 
effect, that the authority of the States over elections--over all 
elections--is exclusive; it is sacred; it is not to be intruded upon 
ever by Federal authority and that, if we do that, we are thwarting the 
Constitution, ignoring and trampling the 10th Amendment, the principles 
of federalism that even preceded the 10th Amendment, that were implicit 
in the text of the original Constitution and made with greater clarity 
when the 10th Amendment was added, along with the other Bill of Rights, 
initial 10 amendments, in 1791.
  Their argument doesn't stand up--not at all. Do you know why? Do you 
know how we know that? Well, that is because of article I, section 4, 
clause 1. Article I, section 4, clause 1. On the one hand, it makes 
clear that there is an assumption, before you even read that one, that 
States, of course, will be in charge of conducting elections for State 
and local offices. Why wouldn't they be? They always would be. They 
always have been. They always will be. That is their exclusive domain. 
They can do whatever they want on those elections. They have to have a 
republican form of government; that is about the only restriction on 
State and local offices, except where the Constitution specifies 
elsewhere.
  But with respect to Federal elections, yeah, article I, section 4 
does, in fact, give the States some authority in conducting Federal 
elections. And, yeah, they weren't too keen on the idea of there being 
a single Federal election authority that would be in charge of running 
all Federal elections. It wouldn't have made sense at the founding, and 
even if it had made sense at the founding, I think they would have 
found that thought horrifying, just as I do and most of us do today. It 
is not what we are doing here. It is not what we want. It certainly 
wouldn't be allowed under article I, section 4. And yet they are 
speaking as though that is what we are doing, and that is not at all 
what we are doing.
  Article I, section 4 says that, yeah, the States will conduct these 
elections for U.S. Senators and U.S. Congressmen and they will 
establish the rules and regulations concerning those elections that 
they will conduct. Then comes this line which my colleagues 
conveniently omit, make no reference to, and pretend does not exist in 
this context, just like they ignore the text beginning on line 22 of 
page 12 of the legislation we are now debating. Here is what that 
language says:

       [B]ut the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter 
     such Regulations.

  Meaning such regulations, such laws governing specifically the 
election of Federal officers who are elected; namely, Representatives 
and Senators.
  We have that power. We can supplement those. We can alter those. We 
can prescribe our own. Why? Well, because we are the sole sovereign 
lawmaking organ of the Federal sovereign government, and so it makes 
sense that they put this authority in article I, section 4.

  So this is well within our authority. This doesn't trample on, 
conflict with, undermine, contradict, or otherwise work against the 
sovereign authority of the States. And certainly nothing about the SAVE 
America Act undermines that. It is entirely consistent with it. In 
fact, I have long believed that federalism--that is, the vertical 
protection built into the Constitution, one of the twin structural 
protections--you know, the whole Constitution is about limiting 
government. It is about prescribing the structure and the form, 
affirmatively prohibiting the government from doing certain things; in 
some instances prohibiting the Federal Government from doing some 
things or the States from doing others. In some instances, it prohibits 
government, generally--whether State, Federal, or local--from doing 
certain things.
  Separate and apart from that you have got these core structural 
protections. One operates vertically--on a vertical axis, if you will--
and we call that federalism. That is your relationship between the 
Federal Government on the one hand and the States on the other. The 
Federal Government is depicted--when we depict this graphically--is 
above, on top of, the States because where the Federal Government has 
authority, it is above the States and localities. But its authority is 
limited.
  James Madison described this relationship in Federalist 45 when he 
said the powers of the Federal Government are few and defined and those 
reserved to the States are numerous and indefinite. You might imagine 
it as sort of a pyramid-shaped structure. It is broad at the base and 
narrow at the top. But at the top is the Federal Government. It is in 
charge of only a few basic

[[Page S1414]]

things designated as Federal by the U.S. Constitution.
  The Federal Government's actions and laws passed by the Congress of 
the United States into law trump inconsistent State law. They control 
wherever, whenever the Federal Government has authority to act. That is 
the relationship we call federalism.
  The horizontal protection operates within the Federal Government 
itself, saying that within the Federal Government we have three 
distinct branches. We have one that makes the laws. That is Congress, 
the legislative branch. We have another branch headed by the President. 
That is the executive branch, whose job it is to execute, implement, 
enforce the laws made by Congress. And then the third branch headed by 
the Supreme Court, whose job it is to interpret the laws--not just in 
the abstract, not to render advisory opinions--they don't have that 
power--not to answer esoteric, legal, or constitutional questions in 
the abstract--they don't have that power--but to resolve actual cases 
and controversies, meaning disputes, between two or more parties where 
they disagree as to a particular point, a particular interpretation of 
the law--of Federal law, to be specific--whether that be statutory or 
constitutional.
  Anyway, back to federalism. The point is, to understand federalism 
appropriately, you can't assume that either the Federal Government may 
always dominate the States nor that the States may always dominate the 
Federal. Each has to operate within its own sphere. And just as it is a 
bad thing for the Federal Government to act where it should not, 
trampling the just authority of the States and their political 
subdivisions--the local governments--it is every bit as repugnant to 
the constitutional structure for the Federal Government not to act 
where it is empowered to act and where it is morally compelled to act.
  It is no less offensive to the principles of federalism whether you 
are ignoring the constitutional protections in one direction or the 
other. They are both bad. In this circumstance, it would be bad to 
assume that the U.S. Congress, as my Democratic colleagues are arguing, 
somehow lacks the authority to tell the States that in conducting 
elections--not elections generally but specifically elections for 
Federal office, those for the U.S. Senate, U.S. House races--that the 
Congress of the United States can have no say in that, in how that 
happens. That would be lawless indeed. Not only would it be lawless; it 
would be inconsistent with how we have always handled these things.
  There are a lot of laws on the books. There are four or five or six 
principal laws that tightly govern the States' conduct of elections and 
the relationship between the Federal Government and the States and the 
way they conduct elections. There are myriad others that relate to or 
modify or impose restrictions on the conduct by the States of Federal 
elections.
  So it is not just that we have the authority in the abstract under 
the Constitution. It is also that the Congress has repeatedly exercised 
that authority in a number of laws, including the Federal criminal 
prohibition imposing a felony offense for anyone who is not a citizen 
of the United States who casts a vote in a Federal election. That is a 
felony criminal offense.
  So if that is lawful--and no one here has questioned the 
constitutionality of that law. And given that no one has questioned the 
constitutionality of that law, I find it puzzling indeed that they 
challenge the constitutionality of a law that is designed to make sure 
that that law is not rendered dead letter; that it is not rendered 
vestigial, irrelevant, moot, unenforceable, undetectable, or otherwise 
nonoperative.
  That is exactly what is happening here, that particular provision of 
law prohibiting and criminalizing noncitizen voting in U.S. elections. 
It is, in fact, largely vestigial and inoperative and unenforceable 
because it is undetectable--unless we pass the SAVE America Act or 
something akin to it, something that would do something similar to it.
  Another law passed by Congress, also treading on and intruding into 
in some ways, if you want to see it that way, the State's conduct in 
Federal elections within their State, the 1993 NVRA--especially the way 
it was interpreted by the Supreme Court in 2013 in a case called 
Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona--made this one necessary.
  In other words, the whole reason why the SAVE America Act is even in 
existence, the whole reason we are here having this debate, the whole 
reason I wrote this law a couple years ago with my House counterpart 
Chip Roy of Texas--he and I authored this together because we put all 
these pieces of the puzzle together.
  A lot of people had heard about that ruling in 2013. They heard about 
NVRA. They were aware of some of the other developments that have made 
this boil up, you know, kind of past the boiling point in recent years. 
We put them all together and realized: Oh my goodness, our Federal 
elections are in trouble unless we close this loophole that has come 
into existence over the years because of the Supreme Court's 
interpretation of the NVRA and a number of other factors and 
immigration patterns and the way the States are responding to some of 
those changes.
  So isn't that ironic. Not one of them has argued that the NVRA is 
unconstitutional--not one of them.
  Not one of them has argued that the Federal criminal ban on 
noncitizen voting in Federal elections is unconstitutional, 
constitutionally problematic, inconsistent with the principles of 
federalism--not one of them.
  Not one of them has argued that the Help America Vote Act of 2005--
no, that wasn't 2005. That was earlier. Not one of them has argued that 
that is unconstitutional.
  I don't think I have heard them refer to the Voting Rights Act as 
unconstitutional or any other Federal statute governing the conduct of 
Federal elections.
  Not one of them has been characterized as unconstitutional. Why is 
that? And why do they characterize this as unconstitutional or as 
problematic under principles of federalism? That is curious, isn't it? 
Makes you wonder. Maybe this isn't really about federalism, just as it 
is not really about Jim Crow, just as it is not really about misogyny, 
just as it is not really about Jim Crow 2.0 racism or people who live 
in rural communities or people who have a strange aversion to carrying 
documents around with them--whatever it is. No, it is not about any of 
those things.
  They will have to tell us what the real reason is, but it makes you 
wonder: Who benefits? Who benefits from a system that makes it really, 
really easy to vote and really, really easy to cheat? Who benefits from 
a system that freely allows noncitizens to walk into just about any DMV 
in just about any State in America and, with a couple of strokes of a 
pen while applying for a driver's license, say: Yeah. By the way, I 
want to register to vote too.
  All you have to do while applying for a driver's license is check a 
box saying ``I want to register to vote'' and sign your name at the 
bottom saying, ``Yeah, it is OK for me to vote. I am a citizen and 
otherwise able to vote.''
  Who benefits from that? Could that be the real reason? There has got 
to be a real reason, or maybe it is a category of real reasons because 
it sure as hell isn't about federalism, and it sure as hell isn't about 
racism or misogyny or Jim Crow or any of these bullcrap arguments. I 
hate to say that word in this Chamber, but it is true. These are 
contrivances. They are pretextual arguments, and they are damned lies, 
every last one of them. This is appropriate for Federal authority. It 
just is. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
  The real stunning thing about this is that the same people in this 
very Chamber who have the audacity to argue that this is somehow 
incompatible with federalism, these are the same people who between 
2021 and 2023 supported a bill in that Congress commonly known as H.R. 
1.
  Do you want to know what H.R. 1 did? H.R. 1 did exactly what they are 
now falsely accusing us of doing in this bill, in the SAVE America Act. 
It was a wholesale Federal takeover that, as I recall, every last 
Democrat in this Chamber who was serving at the time who is still here 
today supported.
  It would have, among other things, subjected every voting 
jurisdiction in the United States to preclearance, meaning that every 
time they made any change to their election laws, any change to their 
precincts, legislative

[[Page S1415]]

districts, any of those things, they would have to go to Washington, 
DC, bow before some bureaucratic pinhead Democratic political appointee 
at the Department of Justice, kiss the ring, and wait to receive 
preclearance, approval for a State law or a local law making any 
changes to their election laws.
  And that was just the beginning. That thing went on and on and on so 
much so that it would have flipped on its head what James Madison 
described about federalism in Federalist 45. Remember when he said that 
the powers of the Federal Government are few and defined and that those 
reserved to the States are numerous and indefinite? This would have 
turned that completely upside down in the field of elections and said 
that the powers of the Federal Government are numerous and indefinite 
and that those reserved to the States are few and defined--and, by the 
way, exercised only at will, only at the sufferance of the benevolent 
Federal sovereign.
  This is wrong. They should be ashamed of themselves for making this 
argument. And it is cover for something else. It is cover for the fact 
that they don't have a legitimate argument, so they have to make 
up stuff that isn't true, and I am sick of it--now, not sick of it in 
the sense that I am going to stop for even a second calling them out on 
it. I am just getting started. I am having fun--fun in the sense that I 
am peeling back the layers of the onion, revealing their arguments to 
be disingenuous, false, and utterly indefensible.

  If they have real arguments, bring them forward. I would love to hear 
them. I would love nothing more than to hear one real argument about 
this bill that isn't built on a lie, isn't built on a distortion of 
this legislation, on a distortion of American history, on a distortion 
of the motives of the Members of this body whom they constantly defame. 
I would love it. Do you know why? Because at that point, we would come 
back and we would make changes to the law. We would make changes 
because all we want to do is make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. 
And if they can point out an actual, real problem with it, we could fix 
it. Yet we haven't heard any of that, not from that side of the aisle.
  The first legitimate set of arguments or potentially legitimate set 
of arguments that gives us something to work with--somebody who has 
some concerns with it--have come from a Republican Senator, my friend 
and colleague from Alaska, Senator Murkowski.
  Now, I disagree with her ultimate take on the bill, her opposition to 
it, but I understand now what some of her arguments are, and I am 
confident we can work through this. I am confident, first of all, that 
we can work through her concerns even under the existing text, and I 
hope--I hope--that we can bring her along, that she can get to a point 
where she is comfortable voting for this legislation as is. But even if 
we can't, I am also confident that, if necessary, we can make changes 
to that that will get her comfortable with this bill text.
  Some of her concerns relate not to the bill text, not to the bill we 
are now considering, but to a substitute amendment or perhaps other 
amendments that may have been filed but that we have yet to consider, 
that have yet to be called up, that may or may not be considered, may 
or may not be adopted once they are called up, if they are called up. 
We will deal with those in time, but don't attribute those to the bill 
we are now debating because they are not in there.
  The concerns she raised with the actual legislation, with the actual 
House-passed legislative vehicle that came over here 48 hours ago in 
the form of a message that we voted to proceed to--she identified some 
actual concerns there that we can work with. Again, I think we can get 
her comfortable with it. I think there are things that the State of 
Alaska could do even under the existing legislative text that could 
make Senator Murkowski comfortable.
  But even if we can't get there, I am willing to consider and explore, 
as needed, even some changes if that is what it takes to bring her 
along. Why? Because she has raised actual arguments that are rooted in 
fact rather than paranoid fantasy, rooted in reality rather than lies, 
rooted in genuine concern for the well-being of her constituents rather 
than cheap political points. And she is not lying, and I appreciate 
that about her.
  We have yet to hear any of those arguments from the other side. We 
have yet to hear any reasonable suggestion as to the other side and how 
the other side views that we could do this, we just have to go about it 
a different way.
  Now, starting yesterday, we started hearing something new from some 
of our Democratic colleagues, something that I found mildly encouraging 
and still find somewhat encouraging. Some of them have started to say: 
You know what, maybe voter ID laws aren't such a bad thing. Maybe we 
could live with those.
  It is a good thing because voter ID laws are overwhelmingly popular. 
I don't care if you are a Republican or a Democrat; if you live in the 
North, the South, the East, the West, the Midwest, the dead center of 
the country, wherever; whether you are a Democrat or a Republican; you 
are Black or White or some other race; you are male or female; you are 
liberal or you are conservative--it doesn't matter. If you meet any of 
those characteristics, regardless of what your background is, 
overwhelmingly--like by the odds of anywhere from 7 to 3 to 9 to 1--you 
are going to be in support of voter ID laws.
  So they have started to acknowledge: Yeah, maybe we could do that 
part.
  Well, great. We still need the citizenship stuff, but if they are OK 
with voter ID laws, let's get that done.
  Now, in response to that, my friend and colleague from the State of 
Ohio Senator Husted came to the floor just an hour or two ago and 
offered what I thought was a very reasonable accommodation--an 
accommodation in the form of a good-faith gesture; an olive branch, if 
you will--to the Democrats saying: Hey, you all have started to say you 
could live with voter ID laws. Let's take the voter ID language out of 
this bill, offer it up as a freestanding piece of legislation--not 
always a fan of doing that in every case. Sometimes you need everything 
to pass in one piece. For various reasons, it needs to happen together. 
This isn't one of those. We can pass that alone. I would do it right 
now. Shoot, if my colleagues will agree to it, we could pass it right 
now.
  That is what Jon Husted tried to do just a couple of hours ago.
  Jon Husted is a smart guy. Jon Husted knows more about elections and 
how to run them than probably not just any Member of the Senate here 
today but probably any Senator who has ever served in our 239-year 
history as an institution.
  He came and he said: Let's try to pass this.
  We had a chance an hour or two ago to do that. Well, that drew an 
objection from the Democrats. Why? They have all been saying: Hey, we 
are OK with voter ID laws; it is that citizenship stuff we don't want 
to deal with.
  The question of ``why'' is another matter. We will get back to that 
in a minute.
  So we said: Let's do it. Let's go. Let's freaking go. Let's get this 
thing passed right now, and then we can move on to the other stuff.
  I am not going to give up on the other stuff because we need that 
too. I am open to negotiation if people have ways of making it better. 
But let's get this done right now.
  He offered it up, and it drew an objection from the Democrats. What 
did they say about it? They made arguments about a completely different 
set of provisions that had nothing to do with voter ID. It was the 
strangest thing I have ever seen. I don't know what was going on there, 
but anybody who saw that objection, if you paid careful attention, it 
had not a darn thing to do with what he was offering. They were 
objecting to completely different provisions that he wasn't offering at 
the time.
  So we are going to have to do that again sometime soon, hopefully in 
the next 24 hours or less. Let's try to do that again. Maybe this time, 
they will realize what we are actually approaching. Let's get that 
done, and then we can move on and deal with the rest of the provisions 
dealing with citizenship.
  If they have qualms about any particular provision, again, I am all 
ears. Not only am I willing to hear it, I am

[[Page S1416]]

eager to hear it. I want to hear what the actual reason is insofar as 
there are real reasons other than: We like the status quo. We want 
people to have the option of voting as noncitizens if they are 
noncitizens, if they want to break the law and risk getting caught, 
because we know they won't get caught because it is impossible to get 
caught under this regime.
  The 1993 NVRA passed by this body, as interpreted wrongly but 
conclusively by the Supreme Court of the United States in 2013, as 
affected by immigration trends resulting in 30 million-plus noncitizens 
residing in this country today--10 to 15 million of whom came into this 
country unlawfully between 2021 and 2025 alone--have all brought us to 
that point.
  There is another feature that makes it really, really dark, really, 
really scary, and it is this.
  In some States, States have started allowing noncitizens to vote. It 
starts out small, as it has with those States, a handful of four or 
five States. And in some cases some of those States, often blue States, 
not red, are saying: It is OK. Some of our local elections, you don't 
need to be a citizen to vote.
  There is, of course, nothing in the U.S. Constitution that says they 
can't do that. There is nothing in Federal law that I am aware of that 
says they can't do that, as long as it is with something other than a 
Federal election.
  I think it is crazy. I think it is absolutely nuts. I don't know why 
you would ever let a noncitizen vote in any election inside the United 
States, but if they want to do it and their State constitution or their 
State law allows it, States are allowed to do dumb things. This is a 
dumb thing, but they are allowed to do that.
  But here is the scary part. The scary part is that those same 
jurisdictions just quietly refuse, along with most nearly all blue 
States--that is, States run by Democrat Governors and/or Democrat-run 
legislatures--they refuse to share information. They refuse to 
cooperate with Federal authorities, the same Federal authorities who 
have been directed under existing law to maintain databases like the 
SAVE database that is designed to keep track of who is a citizen and 
who is not and voter registrations and things like that.
  These jurisdictions, these blue State jurisdictions, including and 
especially those that allow noncitizens to vote in their local 
elections, are defiantly refusing to share their information, pursuant 
to a memorandum of understanding or otherwise, with Federal authorities 
whose job it is to keep track of these things.
  That is kind of scary if you think about it because there are 
reasonable questions that ought to be asked that aren't being asked and 
must be asked about the fact that if you are registering noncitizens to 
vote in those local elections where noncitizens in those jurisdictions 
are allowed to vote, however misguidedly, it must mean that they are 
registered. Once they are registered, how exactly is it that you 
separate out those who are registered to vote as noncitizens in local 
elections, and how do you prevent those same registered voters from 
then gaining access to a ballot in a Federal election?
  They have gone mum. They have become mute. They refuse to cooperate. 
They have stonewalled. They have shut out the Federal authorities. They 
won't tell them their methodology. They won't tell them what they do. 
They won't show them their voter rolls. That is kind of scary. That 
shows a level of awareness of their known risk that perhaps just maybe 
to some of these people is not a risk. To some of them maybe it is not 
a bug; it is a feature.
  What if it is part of their strategy for winning elections? Might 
that explain why almost no blue State is willing to give them the time 
of day? Now, sure, they can wrap themselves in the flag--I don't know 
which flag it is, it is not the American flag, in some sort of flag--
and say: We don't want to share information because privacy, because 
America, because data security.
  What does that even mean? I mean, first of all, you have got this 
brooding omnipresence of a government, which I will be the first to 
admit has way too much information about all of us all the time. It is 
spooky. These guys can track down stuff your mother did in second 
grade. They have got information already on every economic transaction 
that you have ever engaged in, tax data, the banking transaction 
information, too, all the information that the Federal Government 
collects from any Agency. If you travel, they know where and when you 
have entered and exited the United States, all kinds of data. And this 
is before we get into what happens under FISA section 702 with the so-
called incidental collection where you happen to be talking to somebody 
who, unbeknownst to you, is an agent of a foreign power, and all of a 
sudden what you thought were private communications are being swept up 
and loaded onto Federal databases that can be searched by your name, 
knowing that you are a U.S. citizen, knowing that a particular phone 
number is yours.
  So, yeah, the Federal Government has got a lot of data. It is spooky. 
I don't like it. But why all of a sudden are they wrapping themselves 
in the flag and saying: Yeah, we don't want the Federal Government 
having any ability to review data on our voter files. Why? Why are they 
all of a sudden concerned about that? Have we ever had a lapse in the 
SAVE database of something that resulted in the release of personally 
identifiable information? Not to my knowledge. If there were, we would 
find it. And if there were, it would pale in comparison to other data 
breaches we have had through all kinds of Federal Agencies.
  And we are talking about voter registration files that they are 
wanting to examine and have access to for one purpose and one purpose 
alone. It is not to track down voters and ask them relentlessly whom 
they are going to vote for. It is not even for a nefarious purpose, 
even one that can be speculated on that is the supposed motivation for 
this thing.
  I don't even know what it is they are freaking out on, but more to 
the point is the very legitimate reason why they need this information. 
Why? Because we have Federal laws and those Federal laws prohibit 
noncitizens from voting in U.S. elections. And we have a system in 
place that prohibits any noncitizens--any of the 30 million or so, at 
least the subset of 30 million or so noncitizens residing in this 
country--it prohibits them from voting. That is all they are trying to 
get to is to make sure the people that are not allowed to vote are not, 
in fact, registering to vote or voting.
  Why are they so freaked out about that? Now, don't get me wrong. I 
love the impulse to protect privacy. That is not what this is about or 
they would say so.
  If it were the case, there would be something about this particular 
regime, about the SAVE database that would give us some indication that 
this is a genuine privacy risk. It is not. And I haven't even heard any 
of them try to make the case that it is because it is not.
  They like the status quo for some reason. Can't get into their heads, 
but I do have to wonder, Who benefits from the status quo? Who benefits 
if noncitizens are voting in U.S. elections? Is that what they are 
really afraid of--losing an edge?
  Now, sometimes the mask slips a little bit, and I wonder if some have 
maybe admitted to more than they intended to. I have heard a number of 
my Democratic colleagues over the last 48 hours say things like the 
following--not just the last 48 hours but in the last few weeks as 
people have been speaking publicly and in here about their concerns 
about the legislation.
  Some of them have uttered words to the effect that: This might 
exclude more people who tend to vote as Democrats.
  Could that be the reason? They are worried about noncitizens 
overwhelmingly voting as Democrats, that they will lose votes that way? 
Surely, that is not the reason they are concerned about that, is it? 
Let's hope not.
  I mean, I would hope that neither party and no Member of this body 
would want their party to win elections that way by having noncitizens 
vote.
  And yet if that is not their reason, they are throwing up an awful 
lot of dust and dirt and smoke. A bunch of arguments that are just bad 
in some instances, illogical in others, and more often than not, false 
and demonstrably false. Could that be why? That is kind of scary.

[[Page S1417]]

  It is one of the reasons why I am growing increasingly suspicious. 
Usually in this body we have a lot of disagreements. And I have got 
good friends at every point across the political spectrum in this body, 
within my own party, across on the other side, some of the people--I 
really like most personally, some of the people I work with a lot 
legislatively and agree with them on a lot of things and some are 
people that I don't agree with on a lot of issues and a number of them 
are across the aisle and Members of the other party.

  And most of the time, even when we are debating on issues where I 
know there is genuinely deep-seated, honest disagreement on matters of 
policy, even if I don't agree with them and even if they cut more or 
less along party lines, I can nearly always at least understand their 
argument, and I can see what the countervailing point is. I can usually 
articulate it, even if I don't share their ultimate conclusion, what 
their concerns are.
  I can't do that here because I have yet to hear a single compelling 
or even credible argument from the other side on this.
  The only person I have heard today or in the last 48 hours speak on 
this floor who is currently opposed to this bill came from the senior 
Senator from Alaska who raised some observations that, while I don't 
share her conclusion, I understand where she is going, and I am 
earnestly desirous to engage in further conversation with her to see if 
we can close that gap.
  I think there are ways that this could be implemented, even with the 
current text, that could satisfy her concerns, which are legitimate. 
And if we can't do that with the current text to her satisfaction, I 
would love to be able to, and I think we could accommodate her concerns 
through some modest legislative changes to the existing text. We will 
see where that goes, and I am optimistic about that.
  But with the exception of the arguments she has raised, I have yet to 
hear any credible argument about this bill. What I have heard are 
arguments made over and over and over again that bear no resemblance to 
existing Federal law, that are indefensible when compared to the actual 
legislative text that we are considering, to the legislative and 
historical backdrop against which we are evaluating that legislative 
text, and so that does make me wonder why.
  You know, years ago, maybe 20 years ago or so, as on many occasions, 
I was planning on watching a Supreme Court argument, and as I sometimes 
do, I read the briefs before the argument. I was not a litigant in the 
case, but I was interested in the case. I read the briefs, and I came 
to a pretty firm conclusion, as sometimes happens, as to who was more 
likely to win the case at the end of the day.
  When I attended the oral argument the next day, the oral argument 
didn't go quite as I expected. I had a pretty--I was quite convinced 
before the argument that, based on the briefs, I believe it was the 
petitioner--the petitioner is the party who is trying to get the lower 
court ruling reversed before the Supreme Court--I believe it was the 
petitioner who I decided was almost certainly going to lose.
  The lawyer representing the petitioner--who was one of the more 
venerated members of the Supreme Court bar, a seasoned practitioner who 
had argued many, many times before the High Court, one of the best 
lawyers in America, certainly in the realm of appellate and Supreme 
Court litigation--his argument surprised me, as did the outcome of the 
case.
  The reason the argument surprised me is that unlike every other 
argument I had ever seen or heard about that lawyer arguing, this one 
strayed pretty far from the arguments raised in the brief. Usually, you 
can't get away with this. I was surprised when he did get away with it, 
but he got up there. I don't know how else to describe it other than to 
say that it reminded me of a sort of ``who is on first, what is on 
second'' routine.
  He threw out arguments that, to me at least, appeared to be designed 
only to confuse the members of the Court, which is hard to do because 
now, as was the case then, these are not just nine people wearing 
robes, but they are nine of the smartest legal minds in the entire 
country. They are bright. They are not easily distracted.
  But this lawyer was so good, he got up there, and with 30 minutes of 
``who is on first, what is on second,'' got them so confused that 
somehow he managed to win the case. I wonder if that is what is going 
on here.
  There is that old saying: If the law is against you, pound the facts; 
if the facts are against you, you pound the law; when they are both 
against you, pound the table.
  The other side is pounding the table. They are pounding the table 
because they have got nothing. At least they have got nothing in terms 
of an argument they can make credibly and with a straight face.
  So instead what do they do? They pound the table while making 
arguments that are utterly indefensible. I ask the question, Why? Who 
does that?
  Now, these are not untalented statesmen. They are not novice 
lawmakers. My Democrat colleagues are some of the most seasoned 
rhetoricians and legal minds and legislators that this country has ever 
known, both in cases where I have agreed with them and where I have 
disagreed with them, sometimes sticking with where most Members of my 
party agree and sometimes departing from them to join with them. I have 
seen them make arguments, and they are darn good at it when they have 
them.
  This one is different. They are not making good arguments, and that 
tells me one thing: They don't have them. So they grab for whatever is 
there, hoping to kick up enough dust to create fear, uncertainty, and 
doubt to a degree sufficient to take away from what is otherwise an 85-
15 issue of Americans who overwhelmingly support this legislation and 
the policies underlying it. Well, I can't prove it in the sense that I 
can't peer into the mind of any other individual, let alone 47 of them, 
but at the same time, I don't have any other rational explanation for 
it.
  These are smart people. When they have good arguments, they raise 
them. They are not making them here. They are lying. They are 
distorting. They are overlooking. They are ignoring reasons that are 
plain--in black and white. They ignore them even after they hear them 
from my own mouth while they have been in the same room. They ignore 
them. What does that tell you? They are pounding the table. They are 
kicking up dust because they have not got anything else. That should 
tell us something.
  It is an honor to live in this country. It is an honor to be a U.S. 
citizen. This is often referred to--and I fundamentally believe that it 
is--as the greatest civilization that human history has ever recorded. 
We are honored and privileged to live in a day and age with so many 
blessings and so many benefits, and those blessings and benefits 
wouldn't exist but for the fact that we are a nation of laws.
  We are far from perfect. We honor our commitments, our Constitution, 
our Declaration of Independence, and our system of laws imperfectly, 
but we aspire toward that which is good. We aspire toward law and 
order, and generally speaking, that runs the spectrum whether you are a 
Democrat or a Republican or something in between. But we can lose that. 
It is not guaranteed to us. You can't pass it in the bloodstream. 
Unless we fight for and defend the principles of the American 
Revolution with every generation--and those of us with the 
responsibility to safeguard the Constitution, unless we look out for 
it--we can lose it.
  The expression is: If everyone is family, no one is.
  If everyone is a citizen, no one is.
  If everyone has the benefits of citizenship even in the absence of 
actual citizenship, you are going to have problems. In previous eras, 
maybe this wasn't as much of a problem--before we had 30-million-plus 
noncitizens in the United States, 10 to 15 million of whom came in 
illegally in a 4-year period alone.
  Especially now, when as many people are here under these 
circumstances--when we couldn't have made it easier if we had tried for 
people to register to vote and, in fact, vote as noncitizens even 
though Federal law prohibits it--we have made it impossible to detect 
it. When you make it impossible to detect it, you make it even more 
impossible to prove it, to prosecute it, and to convict upon it.

[[Page S1418]]

  Shame on us, if in knowing what is happening, we do nothing.
  The American people know better. The American people expect more. 
They understand that bad things happen when we settle. So, no. Don't 
settle for lawlessness. Expect the rule of law.
  Don't settle for just letting anyone vote in Federal elections. 
Expect that U.S. citizenship means something and that we will fight for 
your right to exercise that privilege and that prerogative of the vote 
without allowing others to steal and dilute it.
  Don't settle for open borders. Expect enforcement.
  Don't settle for a system that openly encourages, allows, tolerates, 
and facilitates those bent on foreign election interference in America. 
Expect lawmakers who will defend the sovereign prerogatives of the 
United States of America.
  I personally believe that Almighty God has protected this land, 
blessing us with these great security barriers in the form of a vast 
ocean to our east and another vast ocean to our west and friendly 
countries to our north and south. We have been richly blessed not just 
with those things but with navigable waterways, easily travelable 
interstate highways, interstate airways--something our Founding Fathers 
couldn't have dreamed of.
  We have been blessed by all of these things--the interconnectedness 
that comes from the opportunity that is given, rather uniquely, to 
Americans. It is a place that is somewhat unique. Almost anywhere in 
the world, you can live really well if you are wealthy, but America is 
somewhat unique in that, if you are born here or even if you are born 
somewhere else and you come in here penniless, naked, afraid, hungry, 
thirsty, you have the reasonable hope and expectation that, if you are 
reasonably capable, if you work hard and you play by the rules, one 
day, you can retire comfortably or, in some cases, wealthy.
  That is something special, and that ``something'' depends upon the 
rule of law, and it depends upon our willingness to look out for those 
who are citizens of the United States. We don't do this out of malice 
for those who are not citizens. We do this out of love for those who 
are.
  You see, it matters when you are a citizen. It matters that much that 
we are willing to undertake this fight. I am willing to continue this 
fight as long as it takes. I will keep coming back to the Senate floor 
day after day, week after week, month after month if it takes that 
long--and, yes, I intend to do that. We will stay on this bill as long 
as it takes to get it passed. I have promises to keep and miles to go 
before I sleep. I will stop at nothing until this is done.

                          ____________________