[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 52 (Saturday, March 21, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1467-S1472]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SAVE America Act
Mr. CASSIDY. Madam President, I am here to talk about the SAVE
America Act.
I have had two people already tell me my sign is upside down. The
Presiding Officer is probably thinking it. I can tell the pages are
too. It is a lot easier to show your photo ID when you go to vote than
it is to read the poster. How do I know that? Because I go to vote and
I show them my photo ID in Louisiana, which has a long history of,
shall we say, people voting who are already buried. We no longer have
that history since we have begun to put photo IDs out.
Think about that. It is no imposition upon our people, and now we
don't have a problem with voter integrity despite our having had a long
history of it, so I am told.
We keep on hearing that it is too difficult, so we have a
commonsense, widely supported bill which is being objected to. The same
people objecting to this bill don't object to having to show an ID to
buy a gun, which is a constitutional right, but when it comes to this
constitutional right and protecting its integrity, it doesn't work. The
SAVE America Act is supported by 71 percent of Democrat voters and 95
percent of Republicans. If only it were supported by 71 percent of
Democrat Senators. That is why I am a proud cosponsor.
You might scratch your head when you hear that some refuse to support
it. I think that there is a small leftwing base who opposes this who is
very vocal; therefore, that is the genesis of the opposition, but this
does not keep an eligible American from casting a ballot. It doesn't
take away someone's constitutional right.
I will say Mike Lee, who is sitting next to me, has been working with
those who object to its passage in order to meet their concerns.
For example, one of the concerns is that, if someone marries and
changes her name and her driver's license is different than her birth
certificate, she won't be able to vote. I just confirmed with Mike--and
he can tell me the page number and the line number, of course--that now
all you have to do is sign an affidavit. My wife was born a Layden.
When we married, she became a Cassidy. If she went and they said,
``Well, your birth certificate says Layden and now you are a Cassidy,''
she would sign an affidavit. ``I am married, and my name is now
Cassidy,'' and--boom--she is there. So, as to the concern that it is
discriminatory against women who marry and take their husbands' last
names, just sign an affidavit.
Similarly--and, again, I don't always find Mr. Lee the most
reasonable person. On this, he has been very reasonable, which is that,
when you go originally to vote and you have to prove you are a citizen,
Mike--I am sorry. I should not be addressing him--you can sign an
affidavit establishing that I don't have my birth certificate but that
I was born on this date, in this community, and you get to register to
vote. The State shall come up with a mechanism by which that is
allowed. It is really an attempt to meet the objections of those who
oppose this bill. The lack of documentation is not an issue.
By the way, I will also point out, I have lost my birth certificate
in the past. I called the place where I was born, and within a week, I
had it in the mail, but now I am sure you can do it online. So even
should you need a birth certificate--people lose birth certificates all
the time. Then they get them back.
We have to show a photo ID or our citizenship sometimes, like, at
least on a weekly basis. You fly. You open a bank account. You cash a
check. All of those are routine activities of our lives, and you show
your driver's license, which is a Real ID.
Those who are opposing this say that they are concerned regarding the
woman who marries and takes her husband's name. That has been
addressed; that you have to prove citizenship, but you don't have the
documents when you go over to vote. That has been addressed; that the
very fact of showing an ID is discriminatory. Yet over and over again
in life, we show IDs to do things that are part of daily life.
I will note that, when New York City Mayor Mamdani offered New
Yorkers a chance to make a little extra money snow shoveling during the
blizzard last month, he required not one but two forms of valid ID.
So it is a weak argument when leading Democratic figures are having
their citizens show ID. It is a weak argument that you have to endure
some incredible hardship to show an ID to vote.
By the way, I have been asked about the talking filibuster. I have
supported returning to the talking filibuster since I joined the Senate
in 2015. I still remember Jimmy Stewart's ``Mr. Smith Goes to
Washington.'' It was rough on the Senators, but being rough on the
Senators, frankly, kind of pushed people together to get something
done. I am from Louisiana. For the longest time, Huey Long had the
record for the longest filibuster, but that filibuster eventually
either broke him or it broke the Senate in the sense that they were
willing to compromise to get something done.
So, to my Democratic colleagues, I ask you to listen to the people.
Pass the SAVE America Act.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Banks). The Senator from South Dakota.
Mr. ROUNDS. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the SAVE
America Act, legislation that I have cosponsored to make certain that
only U.S. citizens are voting in our elections.
This legislation would require proof of citizenship in our elections,
and it would require that this citizenship be
[[Page S1468]]
identified when registering to vote and by presenting a valid photo ID
when casting your vote at the ballot box.
As of last fall, 36 States were requiring voters to present IDs in
order to vote. This includes my home State of South Dakota, where you
can present your driver's license, passport, or Tribal ID. All we ask
to cast your vote is that you can prove you are an American citizen and
that you are who you say you are. That shouldn't be controversial. In
fact, it should just be common sense.
Our neighboring State of Minnesota says that most voters will not
have to show identification at all. In fact, if you want to vote, you
can simply ask someone else who is registered in your precinct to vouch
for your identity. One person can vouch for up to eight people. This
loose requirement does not appropriately address voter integrity.
We require identification for many parts of everyday life in America.
You need your photo ID to open a bank account, to rent a car, to start
a job, or to board a plane. In New York City, you need two forms of ID
just to shovel snow. Requiring identification to vote should be the
standard.
The American people understand that. In a recent poll, over 80
percent of Americans favor requiring all voters to show government-
issued photo IDs to vote; that includes 95 percent of Republicans, 85
percent of Independents, and, yes, even 71 percent of Democrats. Let me
say that again: 71 percent of Democrats support voter ID laws. Our
Democrat colleagues are on the wrong side of their own constituents.
This legislation implements a reasonable policy with broad support
from all sides of the political spectrum. I simply do not understand
why our colleagues on the other side of the aisle continue to hold up
this legislation.
Voting in elections is a constitutional right, but it is also a
privilege. We live in the greatest country in the world, partially
because of our free and fair elections to choose our leaders. We
compromise these values when we allow noncitizens to vote in our
elections.
The right to vote in our country belongs to the American people, not
foreign nationals. American elections should be for the American
citizen only. American leaders should be decided by Americans.
I urge my colleagues to support the SAVE America Act to uphold the
law and protect voter integrity.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
Mr. BUDD. Mr. President, I rise today on behalf of 80 percent of
Americans, including millions of North Carolinians who are asking
Congress to ensure that only Americans can vote in American elections.
The charge here, it is really that simple, but I find it ironic that
we are once again debating an 80-20 issue because my Democrat
colleagues refuse to accept the stance held by an overwhelming majority
of their own constituents.
Staging political theater on such commonsense issues, it has really
become routine for Democrats. Let's take, for example, a few things:
keeping our borders wide open, opposing the deportation of dangerous
criminals, defunding the police, backing radical gender ideology for
children, and allowing biological men to compete in women's sports.
And, like clockwork, here we are again, but this time my colleagues
across the aisle are refusing to keep our elections fair, transparent,
and secure by requiring proof of citizenship to register and have voter
ID at the polls. Over 70 percent of Democrats across our country--
Democrats--believe that voter ID should be required, but it seems that
Senate Democrats couldn't care less.
And why is that? Because instead of accepting the will of the people
that they represent, Senate Democrats have chosen to dig their heels in
on their failed campaign as the party of open borders and illegal
immigration.
By opposing the SAVE America Act, Senate Democrats are telling the
American people, loud and clear, that they don't care about preserving
the right to vote for American citizens because of their political
agenda, which props up illegal immigrants over working-class Americans.
My Democrat colleagues should understand that it is a Federal offense
for any noncitizen to vote in a Federal election. Providing proof of
identification is a basic security measure, and everyone knows that.
When you board an airplane, you go to the doctor, you start a new
job, or even if you get a library card, you are required to show proof
of government identification.
In North Carolina, we require every voter to show a government ID
before voting. Twenty-three other States already have this same voting
law on their books, and nearly every European country has voter ID laws
in place. And why? Because power in a democratic society is vested in
the will of the people, and that fundamental right to self-
determination must be protected at all cost.
I want to address a misleading claim that my Senate colleagues across
the aisle continue over and over and over to repeat. Senate Democrats
claim that the SAVE America Act would somehow disenfranchise millions
of Americans, and that is just false.
This legislation does not target any American citizen eligible to
vote; instead, it protects them. The SAVE America Act ensures that only
U.S. citizens participate in Federal elections by requiring States to
maintain accurate voter rolls and stopping noncitizens from voting.
That is not disenfranchisement.
But, at its core, this bill is about restoring trust. The American
people deserve to have confidence in our Federal elections, and they
deserve peace of mind to know that their right as American citizens to
determine the future of our country is not diluted by noncitizens
meddling in our democratic process. The SAVE America Act puts the
integrity of our Republic first again.
President Trump--he has been a steadfast champion of voter ID, and he
has encouraged Congress to move this legislation forward because the
state of our Nation depends upon protecting the power of the people,
and I agree with the President. Ensuring that certainty in our Federal
elections, it really shouldn't be controversial at all.
But every single time President Trump supports a policy, no matter
how logical it is, Democrats draw a hard line in the sand and they
oppose it. Common sense and deciding policy based on the merit of its
principles seems right now to mean nothing to Senate Democrats because
they refuse to come to the negotiating table to responsibly lay out
their concerns and negotiate in good faith.
And when I travel to all 100 counties in North Carolina, I hear the
same frustration. Americans see Congress stuck in gridlock with
negotiation replaced by partisan stonewalling. I think the American
people deserve better.
I am all for having passionate disagreements, you know, but a
friendly debate, it is just as American as it gets. But discord should
never be an excuse for obstruction, and partisan games are no
substitute for responsible governance.
That is not what Americans sent us here to do. We must listen to the
80 percent of Americans calling on us to restore trust in our Federal
elections by ensuring that only citizens can vote.
The American people, they didn't send us here to posture. They sent
us here to legislate, and legislating requires setting aside
partisanship, returning to common sense, and doing what is best for the
country and not what is politically self-serving.
So I hope my colleagues across the aisle--that they will listen to
the overwhelming majority of Americans, Republicans and Democrats,
calling for action and vote to pass the SAVE America Act now.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here to speak about the so-called
SAVE America Act, which I think probably would be better described as
the ``Steal the Next Election Act'' because of the purpose that this
bill has to throw the election and to throw political influence in
America to the Republicans.
[[Page S1469]]
You can imagine why they would want to engage in special weapons and
tactics to try to win the 2026 election when you see the political
disaster that they are enmeshed in: the mess that the Trump
administration has made of the economy, the stench of corruption
pervading the administration, a war that is running up gasoline prices
and has no end in sight and no evident plan. Wherever you look, you see
a party in complete disarray with Americans angry, frustrated, and
befuddled by the nonsense, and an election coming.
So, of course, they want to change things at the ballot box.
Now, where would you go to test that proposition, that the purpose of
this bill is to throw elections to the Republicans? Who might have a
view on this that we should listen to?
Oh, right. The President of the United States, the one who has caused
the Republicans the political catastrophe that they have looming from
the disastrous second term that he has inflicted on this country.
``Republicans have to win this one,'' he said. Get this bill passed
is what he is talking about. ``Republicans have to win this one. We'll
never lose a race for 50 years.'' That is how much the President thinks
this bill will tank American elections in favor of him and his
billionaire donors who already have way too much influence in our
politics.
He is talking about us here, Democrats, ``we know.'' ``They know if
we get this''--if Republicans get this bill--``they probably won't win
an election for 50 years, maybe longer.''
This is the President of the United States, the head of the
Republican Party, the person most responsible for the mess that
Americans are rejecting, and he is being pretty candid about what the
purpose of this bill is; it is to throw the election. It is to
politically interfere with the coming election so that the Republican
Party, and, more importantly, the billionaire backers who are pulling
the strings and giving it its direction don't lose, don't see split
government, don't see compromise, don't see Congress in the people's
hands again.
``Republicans have to win this one,'' he said. ``We'll never lose a
race for 50 years.'' And this isn't about political influence with
comments like that, from the head of the Republican Party?
You may think he is thinking about some dim and distant future
perhaps, that this effort on the floor of the Senate right now to throw
the election to the Republican Party isn't immediate.
Whoops. There he goes. ``It will guarantee the midterms.'' The guy
says the quiet part out loud. I will give him that.
He tells Republicans: You are going to win the midterms at levels
that you can't even believe. How would you win the midterms at levels
that you can't even believe? Well, you probably can't believe that you
would win the midterms based on current polling as Americans reject the
wars, the spending, the waste, the corruption, the cost increases. You
can't even believe it, unless you get this bill--unless you are going
to get this bill--and then you are going to win every election for a
long time.
It is a conceded point by the head of the Republican Party--Donald
Trump--the one who has caused this year of disaster, this year of
change and disaster--that the whole purpose of the exercise we are
going through is to lock in Republican control--more wars, higher
costs, worse corruption--by making elections unwinnable for Democrats
for 50 years by guaranteeing Republicans the midterms.
So let's not pretend there is some high-and-mighty, civic-minded
motivation for this. That is just a screen. Behind the screen, Trump
can't help himself. He admitted what this is all about: It will
guarantee the midterms. You are going to win the midterms at levels
that you can't even believe, and you are going to win every election
for a long time.
We'll never lose a race [for] 50 years.
We will ``never lose a race [for] 50 years.''
We will have so fixed voting in this country--not enough with the
gerrymandering, not enough with the dark money--we now have to fix
elections so that Republicans will never lose a race for 50 years. He
has admitted it. He has admitted it.
And how do they do that? Well, until recently, Director of Homeland
Security former Secretary Noem said: We just want to make sure that the
``right people'' are voting. The ``right people.'' Gee, who might that
be?
And so this whole scheme gets cooked up, marketed falsely as some
civic safe voting proposition, when what it really is, is a scheme to
influence elections so that the creepy billionaires behind the
Republican Party can continue to control the decisions that get made in
this town. That is what this is about, plain and simple.
My friends will say: Oh, this is just a voter ID bill. Everybody
loves voter ID. You will hear 80-20 more than you can imagine.
Oh, voter ID. Just voter ID. People should have to bring their ID
when they vote.
Well, we did that in Rhode Island. It was a bit of a pain. You can
imagine an individual person--let's say an 80-year-old woman--widow--
living alone, living in, say, a senior high rise in Providence or in
Pawtucket. She is not traveling. If she had a passport, it has lapsed.
She is not driving. She hasn't had a car in 5 years. Her community is
largely in that high rise and people who come to help and help bring
her groceries. She has a Social Security card because she is on Social
Security, but the Social Security card isn't a photo ID.
So when you bring in voter ID, you have now dumped on that lady a new
hassle. She has been voting her whole life. She has been voting for 60-
plus years, and now suddenly they have a problem with her voting--even
when she comes downstairs to the voting machines that get set up in the
senior center lobby to make it easier for seniors to vote, and
everybody in the building knows her; but no ID, no vote.
So, in Rhode Island, we went through the hassle of helping people who
needed an ID--who for perfectly legitimate reasons didn't have one--get
an ID. It was unnecessary. We had essentially zero voter fraud, but we
did it and we put in the work and it worked out fine.
So let's not pretend this is just a voter ID law. This points its
attack at voter registration. If you move, you have to reregister to
vote. If you are young and are registering to vote for the first time,
that is where you run into the obstacles designed to prevent certain
people--people who aren't the ``right people''--from being able to
vote. That is where you run into the problem.
And worse than that, they are trying to take the voter information
that we entrust to our secretary of state and to our elections board.
They are trying to get the private information of voters in our voter
rolls and put it into a national website controlled by, oh, the
Department of Homeland Security, the ones who are running ICE around in
neighborhoods, the one who ran their agents through the Rhode Island
courthouse and threatened a judge with smashing his car windows when he
tried to vouch for his high school intern whom the ICE agents wrongly
thought was a 30-year-old person they were looking for. We are going to
trust the entire country's worth of voter information to that
operation?
Look at what just happened in Fulton County. In Fulton County, a
Trump U.S. attorney from Missouri sent the FBI in Georgia into the
election headquarters to seize all of the voter data that they had. I
have separately explained what a completely fouled-up operation that
was and how the way in which they did that search warrant left enormous
holes for any defendant, who was later charged based on evidence
obtained in that search warrant, to run a truck through that
prosecution.
They violated really basic rules that prosecutors follow--prosecution
101--rookie, dumb errors. And that leads to only one of two
conclusions: One is they are idiots. They are incompetent. They have no
idea what they are doing. And there is some sense around that because
the local U.S. attorney in Georgia wanted no part of this mess. It was
being directed by Washington through Missouri into Georgia. The FBI
special agent in charge in Georgia didn't seem to like it much. He got
run out of his job--presumably for objecting to this nonsense.
But there is a worse theory than that this was a completely
incompetent screw up of a search warrant execution, and that is: They
didn't mind leaving
[[Page S1470]]
all these holes for a future defendant--somebody charged on the basis
of that evidence--to exploit. They didn't mind opening these
unnecessary vulnerabilities in a case for a defendant who might later
be charged to exploit because they never thought there would be a
defendant.
The point wasn't to do a criminal prosecution or even a criminal
investigation; the point was to use the search warrant process falsely
in order to get their hands on a massive amount of voter data in a
swing State. That is being litigated right now, and we will find out.
But that is the kind of effort by this administration to use the
Federal Government to seize private voter data. That would be exactly
consistent with why we need to worry about DHS, which only wants the
``right people'' to vote, getting a massive amount of personal voter
data.
In Rhode Island, our Secretary of State is fighting that right now
because he understands that Rhode Islanders want their voter data to be
private, to be safe, and not to be part of some massive political
election interference operation run using ICE, using the FBI, using
DHS, and using this voter information to hand out to political
operatives, to make sure that a weaponized Federal Government is not
used to try to throw the election.
It is no small thing to have the Department of Homeland Security want
data on every voting American. In recent years, Republican heads would
have exploded about that idea. It used to be a party that cared about
voter privacy; that in the contest between an individual and the
government, tried to take the side of the individual. But now that
their billionaires control the government--flip. Now they are on the
side of the government, and they want your data.
It is so bad that it seems they have even had one of their little
``Musk rats''--the ``doggy boys''--running around in government.
Remember that operation when Musk was the President's close adviser,
and there were DOGE people? Turns out, there may even have been your
Social Security data taken. We will find out more about that.
So this is no small thing. And if you want to know what the motive
is, just ask the people who are running this. We just want to make sure
the ``right people'' vote. ``We'll never lose a race [for] 50 years''
if you pass this bill. ``It will guarantee the midterms.'' You are
going to win the midterms at levels you can't even believe and you are
going to ``win every election for a long time.''
That is putting the fix in. That is using the power of government to
put the fix in to fix the elections, to choose who runs the government.
That is about as un-American as it gets.
So why is it that they are so afraid about the midterms? What is it
that makes them have to put in place mechanisms--from voter ID to
registration restrictions to data control--that will give them the
tools to guarantee the midterms? Why not run on the record? Because the
record stinks--that is why--and voters know it.
This is where President Trump's approval rating has gone. He is down
15 percent. He is down more than 25 percent since when he came in. That
is a crash in confidence. And I believe this ended before this Iran--
what did he call it?--``excursion'' that has driven up gas prices by
about a dollar a gallon already, with no end in sight.
So they are looking at an election disaster, and for a really good
reason. Here are Trump's job approval ratings. His disapprovals have
been going up and up and up to nearly 60. His approval has been going
down and down and down to below 40. There is a more than 20-point swing
between his disapproval and his approval. That is a politically lethal
place to be. That is a signal that you have made such a mess of your
unified control of government that voters want something different,
want something new, want a change, are sick of the nonsense. And when
you are looking at that and you are looking just a few months down at
November--man, time to make sure you change the law so that we can make
sure the right people--the right people--are voting.
Let's take a look at a few examples of why it is that Trump's
disapproval is more than 20 points above his approval. Why is it that
they are in such trouble politically? Why is it that these approval
ratings have dropped 15 points and 25 from before net zero? This is a
real problem.
And we are not the only ones looking at this data. The billionaires
who run the Republican Party these days--the billionaires who tell
Trump what to do and boss him around and give him big gifts and super
deals for his family and his cronies and his friends--they are watching
it too. They have never had it so good right now. They can basically
secretly, quietly run the U.S. Government through the Republican Party.
What a deal. Poor men wannabe rich. Rich men wanna be King. And they
get to be King from the shadows, with dark money and influence and a
Republican Party that hops to their tune. So they are not happy either.
That is why they need emergency measures that will guarantee the
midterms. That is what we are involved in today--trying to make sure
elections are fair, trying to make sure everybody has a shot to vote,
trying to make sure--for real--this is an election that reflects what
the American people get to choose.
Why are these numbers so terrible for Trump and Republicans? Because
things aren't so great for the American people right now. The annual
cost of residential electricity is up in almost every State in the last
year. In some cases, it is up a lot--$278, $210, $123, $159, $171 up in
Maine. People understand that their electric bills are going up, and if
they are paying attention--if they are paying attention--they
understand that their electricity bills are going up because Trump and
his administration are deliberately pushing clean energy away from the
grid. They are deliberately keeping cheap, clean energy off the grid so
that, for any given level of demand, the grid has to go where if it
doesn't have the cheap, clean energy? It has to go to the polluting
fossil fuel plants.
Those plants set the grid price when they are called up, and when
they set the grid price, they are more expensive than clean energy, so
everybody's costs go up. All that excess money--the billions of dollars
that get sucked out of consumers' pockets, out of ratepayers' pockets
when they have to pay the higher prices of fossil fuel compared to the
lower prices of clean energy--that whole delta of billions of dollars
flows where? Right to Trump's billionaire fossil fuel donors, to the
ones that he went to in Mar-a-Lago and said: Give me a billion dollars,
and I will give you everything you want. I need your money to win this
race.
And what did they do? They coughed up hundreds of millions of
dollars. Did they get to the billion? We don't know because so much of
the money is so dark. But we know they got hundreds of millions to
Trump. Now he is paying them back by stopping and slowing down clean
energy, which would lower costs for people, and instead he drives the
cost up. That is why so much of this is happening.
I will give you an example. The Trump administration has messed
around twice with the offshore wind farm off of Rhode Island called
Revolution Wind. Out of the clear, blue sky, for no cause, they dropped
a stop work order on the project, stopping it dead when it was about
80-plus percent complete. Well, that caused them a little problem
because the Trump administration had been in court defending that very
project against fossil fuel front groups who were suing it to slow down
its arrival on the grid.
So the lawyers--the regular, normal Federal lawyers who were in there
defending this, defending their permit--suddenly had to pull a 180
about the same project, in the same courtroom, and suddenly say ``Oh,
no. That project we have been defending until this minute is suddenly
now all bad'' because of this ridiculous stop work order.
Well, the judge didn't take long to throw out that stop work order
because it was illegal and even preposterous, and the Trump
administration then let the appeal period expire. So there is no longer
a time to appeal it. So it is like: OK, that is done. Back to work,
everybody.
Sure enough, they went back to work. What happened 30 days later, 2
days before Christmas, without notice? Men and women going out to work
on these projects were told: Nope. New
[[Page S1471]]
stop work order. Sorry about your Christmas. Not sure when you will
ever come back to work. Too bad you were relying on all those nice
wages. You are done now.
Well, fortunately for the project, that second stop work order
crashed and burned in court just as badly as the first illegal stop
work order had.
My point is they went to enormous, illegal effort to slow down that
project. Why? Because, by contract, Revolution Wind is going to bring
9-cent kilowatt hours to our Rhode Island grid. Nine-cent kilowatt
hours is what they sell for by contract. And how much does it cost on
our grid, on average? Eighteen cents. Revolution Wind was going to
bring 350,000 homes' worth of low-cost, 9-cent clean power onto our
grid, so they wanted to stop it because then, without that clean,
inexpensive power, the grid would have to go up, up, up what they call
the generation stack, calling up more and more different units to burn
gas and oil and make electricity. And all that extra money gets moved
from customers' pockets to Trump's big donors, his big fossil fuel
donors. It is a scheme. It is on purpose.
These people may not know it yet, but by November, I hope they will
learn that the reason their electric rates went up was on purpose--on
purpose--so that Trump and his cronies could pay off his big fossil
fuel donors with all that extra revenue from their delay and their
blocking of cheaper, cleaner energy--in the billions. In the billions.
Of course, it is not just electricity where people know that they
have an administration that is not looking out for them but is looking
out for the big corporations, the big polluters, the big donors. You
probably can't read this, so I will read it.
``My cost of living has increased'': 80 to 16.
``My grocery costs have gone up'': 79 to 17.
``My utility costs like electricity have gone up'': 69 to 22.
These are huge numbers that match the dissatisfaction I showed
already with where Trump is--more than 20 points in the hole with
voters and going the wrong way, approval rating collapsing before the
whole Iran mess has kicked into voters' budgets. It is a real mess.
Our electricity prices, look where they are going--up, up, up, up,
up, for the exact reason I said: because the Trump administration is
blocking clean, cheap energy to force the grid to have to spend more
and more money on Trump's big fossil fuel donors.
When a really big clean energy plant comes onto the grid, the grid
moves to it because it is the cheapest. They pull the cheapest power
first to meet demand. So when a big wind farm comes on, when a big
solar array comes on, that means there is a fossil fuel plant somewhere
at the top of that generation stack that doesn't get to run anymore,
and the owners of that fossil fuel plant don't get paid for running it,
and the fossil fuel dealers who fuel that plant don't get paid. So they
have a vested interest in blocking clean energy, and they are doing it
because basically they have infiltrated and occupy the Trump
administration.
Just look at the appointees and look at the behavior, and all of it
drives costs up. Electricity prices are surging in the United States,
and what people are going to understand by November is that those
electric prices are surging on purpose. Ratepayers are being dragooned
into a scheme to pay back Trump's big donors with their money.
Costs of housing: up, 69 to 21.
Healthcare costs: up, 61 to 26.
Medicaid has been cut. People already know that. Half of the
Americans already understand that Medicaid has been cut even though the
cuts were postponed until after the election. Wait until they actually
land in people's pocketbooks.
Social Security and Medicare have been cut: 42 to 40.
That is where all that is.
But check all of these: cost of living, grocery, utility, housing,
healthcare--60 to 80 versus 26 to 16.
The American people know what is going on, they know what is being
done to them, and they know who has done it.
So that is why they have just got to make sure only the right people
are voting.
We did some work on another big cost area for Americans when I was
the chairman of the Budget Committee.
One of the biggest expenditures that a family has is home insurance
on their home. It is very expensive, and it is going dramatically up.
In some cases, not only are the premiums going dramatically up, but the
insurance companies are finding that they can't insure the property any
longer; it is too risky.
So the poor owner gets a notice of nonrenewal--that is what it is
called. You have been a loyal customer for 15, 20 years, you have made
your premium payments on time every time, and the company sends a
letter to you in the mail, comes through your mailslot: Sorry. Sorry.
We can't insure you any longer. You are going have to find a new
insurance company.
This creates a huge hassle in the life of that family, which almost
always ends up with a more expensive policy or one with a lot less
coverage.
This is happening all over the country, and it is happening because
of climate risk. It is happening because along our coasts, the rising
sea levels, the warmer oceans, the worse storms, the bigger hurricanes
that come ashore are making it impossible for insurers to provide
insurance to homeowners.
It is also happening out West, although out West, it is not coastal
storms and flooding that are making people's homes uninsurable; it is
wildfire.
Whether it is wildfire or whether it is coastal flooding, the cascade
is the same; the dominoes that fall are the same.
First is you have the climate risk. And why do we have the climate
risk? We have the climate risk because the fossil industry, which is
now running the Trump administration, has spent billions of dollars and
decades in Congress making sure we let them pollute for free. And they
have won. They have succeeded. It is still free to pollute carbon
dioxide and other greenhouse gases. We have never put a price on carbon
emissions.
Nothing else is free to pollute. Nothing should be free to pollute.
You don't get to dump chemicals in a river and get away with it just
because the river carries it away.
So this homeowners insurance problem is a massive, massive cost
problem for homeowners across the country.
Here in Florida--you can see how acute the problem is down in
Florida. In Florida, I think we are at $14,000 average homeowners
insurance for a standard $400,000 policy, and it is predicted,
depending on the county you are in, to double, triple, or quadruple.
What does it do to the value of your home when a $14,000 home
insurance cost doubles or triples? What if you now have a $40,000
instead of a $14,000 annual carrying cost to own your home? Its value
crashes.
That is the cascade. You go from climate risk; to uninsurability; to,
oops, now I can't get a mortgage on this property because if you can't
insure a property, no one will issue a mortgage on it, to its value
crashing, to a recession.
Those warnings are all over the place--and not from Save The Whales,
not from the League of Conservation Voters, not from the Sierra Club,
but from the former risk manager of Goldman Sachs, from the former head
of the Bank of England, from the international Financial Stability
Board, from the former Chief Economist of Freddie Mac. The warnings are
legion.
Here is another cost that families are more and more dealing with.
This is the rate of nonrenewal increase, where the insurance company
says: Sorry, your property is now uninsurable--at least by our
standards.
Here are nonrenewal rates by State. Again, you see the coastal States
hit pretty hard, but there is also wildfire coming in.
This was the work of my Budget Committee. Then some other groups
followed up and did some more detailed work.
This is where home insurance premiums are changing. They are already
up. What this did was to look forward, not to say ``OK, they are up;
they have doubled in the last few years'' but ``Where are they going to
go? Where do we predict they will go?'' The prediction here is that
insurance premiums are going to climb as much as 300 percent in the 30-
year period of a mortgage holder buying right now.
What does he have to look forward to? Well, if you are down here and
you
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are already paying 14,000 bucks a year--it is even more in Miami--and
it is going to go up 300 percent, it is going to quadruple, these are
people who have a real cost problem now, and they have a real cost
problem coming, and behind that comes a real home values problem.
If you are a Palm Beach billionaire and you want to swap mansions,
that is fine. You can do that. You don't even need a mortgage; you just
pay with cash. But if you are living north of Tampa in a development
and you bought your house with a mortgage and you want to sell it, the
person you want to sell it to is going to need a mortgage. If your
property is now unmortgageable because it is uninsurable, there goes
your market of buyers.
We talked to people in Florida when we did this investigation who
literally cannot sell their home at any price. It is not fancy enough
for a billionaire, and it is not mortgageable and insurable for a
normal person. They are just stuck. They are just stuck.
Here, what the map shows is where they expect to see changes in home
value, again, in the next 30 years, in the period of a mortgage entered
into at the time, and they are looking at changes in value, dropped 20,
40, 60, 80, and even 100 percent--a total wipeout of home value--based
on that home insurance, mortgage, property values cascade because we
won't take care of the climate danger that everybody in their right
mind knows exists.
The fossil fuel industry has a big reckoning coming from that mess,
and they do not want to be responsive to voters. They want the White
House and the House and the Senate controlled by a party that they
control. They want this election to keep Republicans in power so that
they are not held to account for the fraudulent climate denial, for the
dark money corruption, and for the looming catastrophe in home
insurance rates. And the way they do that is making sure with this bill
that ``we just make sure only the right people are voting.'' So the
stakes are very high right now.
I will close, because I think I have the floor only for another few
minutes, by talking just briefly about Kansas. Why would a Rhode
Islander want to talk about Kansas? I will tell you why. Because they
tried this in Kansas. They had a similar law in Kansas, and it went to
court, and the court threw it out as unconstitutional. The SAVE America
Act resembles a law in Kansas that was decided to be unconstitutional.
There are some other interesting things the court found. Across 19
years, the proponents of that law could only show 67 noncitizens
registering to vote or even attempting to register to vote. Over 19
years, 67 people.
If you look just at the Presidential elections in that period,
Kansans voted in this number: 5.5 million votes cast. So those 67
people are 0.0012 percent of voters.
For the pretext of trying to deal with those 67 attempts, the effect
was to keep 31,000 legitimate Kansas voters from voting--31,000 kept
from voting to solve a problem of 67 that didn't even exist because
most of them were only attempts.
So this is a solution to a nonproblem. The solution that it provides
is to the problem of Trump and Republicans having made such a hash of
things that they are now in a 20-plus point hole.
So the billionaires who run the Republican Party and, through the
Republican Party, run this body, run the House, run the Oval Office,
make all the decisions for their own benefit--this is their clawing
hand coming out of what seems like election disaster ahead to try to
just grab back the power they are losing because their Republican Party
has made such a hash of things. That is what this bill is. It is the
dead zombie hand of the billionaires who are seeing the exact same
approval rating as Trump taking the Republicans into a crash of an
election and trying to solve that problem by guaranteeing the midterms
by making sure that just the right people vote.
I yield the floor.
Mr. LEE. Would the gentleman yield for a question?
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. No.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.