Mr. President, I would like to address the Senate today regarding a bill that has been passed by the House of Representatives known as H.R. 7008. H.R. 7008 performs two badly needed functions to restore faith and integrity in our system of…
Mr. President, I would like to address the Senate today regarding a bill that has been passed by the House of Representatives known as H.R. 7008. H.R. 7008 performs two badly needed functions to restore faith and integrity in our system of government: Firstly, it bans Members of Congress from using their unique access and knowledge to profit through stock market speculation; secondly, it requires something very simple, a voter ID.
You have got to show an ID when you pick up something at will call if you are there to pick up tickets to the theater, if you are picking up a prescription at the pharmacy, if you are going to the bank, if you are boarding an airplane--you are doing all kinds of things that are part of Americans' day-to-day experience where it matters whether you are who you claim to be, you have got to show an ID.
We should require nothing less when it comes to the exercise of one of the most fundamental rights that Americans have; that is, their right to vote.
You see, when someone else votes in your place, they displace your vote. They offset your vote. If they are double voting, if they are voting when they are not allowed to vote because they are not a citizen or otherwise, if they do something foolish and they try to go and vote, they will be caught if they are asked to produce an ID at the balloting place.
So this bill accomplishes both of these things. And like I say, both of them would do a lot to restore faith, confidence, and integrity in our system of government.
Dealing specifically with the voter ID requirement in this legislation, this is a very straightforward requirement. When you show up to vote, you just have to show an ID, just like you do at the bank, just like you do at the pharmacy or the doctor's office or the bank or when boarding an airplane.
And if you vote by mail, then that is easy to accommodate. You just include a simple photocopy of your photo ID.
Now, we have gone to great lengths to make sure that everyone is taken care of here, to make sure that there is not a single U.S. citizen that would be disadvantaged or unable to vote if we were to pass this.
So for those who, let's say, for whatever reason, don't have access to a photocopier and they want to vote by mail, well, we have taken that into consideration. The bill requires States
to provide the public to free access to photocopy machines so they can make a photocopy of their photo ID and send it in with their mail-in ballot if that is what they are using in their State.
Now, it is interesting. Right now the headquarters of the Democratic Party here in Washington, DC, displays a sign very prominently, and that sign makes clear that 100 percent of the visitors to the Democratic Party's headquarters have to show a photo ID when they enter.
Now, if they have to do that--and we know they have to do that when attending the Democratic National Convention to enter the convention hall, much less participate as a voting member of the Democratic National Convention. You have to prove who you are, and you have to show that you have the right to be there and the right to participate.
So far be it from us to second guess the Democratic Party in deciding people need to prove who they are to enter their convention hall or their party headquarters. We should have voters do the same thing.
And Democrats are smart in doing that because, after all, they don't want somebody showing up to their convention. I mean, good heavens, what if a Republican showed up to their Democratic National Convention and tried to skew the results of their convention by pretending to be a Democrat--a Democrat delegate no less. That wouldn't be fair.
So they are absolutely right to require photo ID and to require delegates to present their convention credentials so that they can show that they are who they claim to be and that they have the right to participate at their own convention.
Americans at every corner of our country and at every point along the political idealogical spectrum in this country agree that this makes sense to do, specifically in the context--not just of needing to produce ID where it matters whether you are who you claim to be, but specifically in the context of voter ID, of having to produce identification at the moment you vote, at the place where you vote. Mr. President, 83 percent of American voters, in total, support voter ID, and that includes a whopping 71 percent of Democrat voters.
So this is neither Republican nor Democratic. This is neither liberal nor conservative. This is simply an American issue because we don't want anyone's right to vote to be taken away. We don't want anyone disenfranchised, and that is exactly what happens when you allow someone who is not whom they claim to be, who is not entitled to vote, to show up and cast a vote, and that is wrong. So today we have got a really good opportunity to address these two issues that Americans are deeply concerned about, and I hope we can take advantage of this opportunity.
Now, the vote on the House of Representatives' side of this bill-- like I say, it was just passed recently by the House of Representatives--it was bipartisan. You had Republicans overwhelmingly support it, but you also had a number of House Democrats voting with every House Republican in favor of this bill with the clean voter ID requirement attached.
So we are going to be talking about this for a little while tonight, and I just want to encourage my Democratic colleagues on this side of the Capitol right here in the U.S. Senate to follow the lead of the wise Democrats who joined every Republican to vote for this in the House of Representatives.
We need to get this done. We should get it done. We have the opportunity to get it done tonight, and we will be talking more about that in a moment.
Mr. President, we see a lot of debates around here on a lot of different topics--too many topics, in my view, given the fact that the Federal Government is a government enterprise with narrow responsibilities.
In Federalist 45, James Madison described the powers of the Federal Government as few and defined while describing those reserved to the States as numerous and indefinite.
We are in charge of national defense, weights and measures, trademarks, copyrights and patents, regulating trade or commerce between the States with foreign nations and with Tribes, bankruptcy laws, intellectual property laws, coastal roads, declaring war, granting letters of marque and reprisal, serving as the sole sovereign lawmaking authority for what we now call the District of Columbia, the city where we stand today. That is about it. There are a few other powers, but the lion's share of it can be found somewhere in that list of relatively limited authorities that I just described.
We venture sometimes too far afield from those powers, and that is one of the reasons why a lot of things come up.
My point in reciting all this is that in all the debates we see, which probably range further than they should, we see some things that are weighty and some things that are more on the trivial side. Just to cite one random hypothetical, one minute, you could see something debated and maybe passed on this floor recognizing, I don't know, National Sofa Care Week or something like that that goes by sort of with a yawn, and then the next moment, we will be debating something more weighty, something more significant and more definitely relevant to the U.S. Government's powers.
Under article I, sections 4 and 5, this legislation that we have been discussing this evening, H.R. 7008, deals with a couple of core powers that Congress has, one of them involving the regulation of behavior and activities on the part of Members of Congress, Members of the House and the Senate. In the second instance, you have the regulation of the casting of ballots for Federal elections--for elections for Federal office, elections for the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. We certainly have authority to act in both of those two areas.
There is not a lot of dispute--in other words, there is a lot of bipartisan consensus over the fact that it is time to restrict stock buying and selling on the part of Members of Congress. It is stunning, however, that the voter ID component of H.R. 7008 is at all controversial. This one should be a no-brainer. For the American people, it is a no-brainer. Democratic voters--71 percent favor voter ID requirements. When you add Republicans--so Democrat voters and Republican voters combined--you take it up to 83, 84 percent. If you poll Republican voters alone, we are talking in the mid- to high-90 percentile range for people who support voter ID requirements.
The reason for this is simple. This is obvious. It is intuitive. It is just as we have to prove who we are everywhere else we go where who you are matters and whether you are who you claim to be can make a big difference.
Americans intuitively understand that whatever mild inconvenience might accompany having to provide documentation for who you are, when most of the time, that can be done with a simple card like a driver's license, for example, a passport, something like that, something showing who you are that is issued by the government--we have come to accept as a society that that is just sort of the cost of living in our country. That is part of what it takes because if we didn't do that, the alternative would be bad.
You don't want to show up to your bank one day and discover that somebody else impersonating you, falsely claiming to be you, came in and withdrew all of your money. You don't want that.
We don't allow people to board aircraft without a photo ID, and the reason is there are all kinds of things that can happen in the sky that are dangerous, and you don't want to make it too easy for somebody claiming to be who they are not to board an aircraft and then carry out, you know, crimes of one sort or another--acts of terrorism, perhaps.
These are just a couple examples of the myriad instances in which we have to prove who we are. It is not an undue burden; it is a momentary detour from what we would otherwise be doing.
Most of the time, most people, when they show up to vote, already have their wallet with them, and in their wallet, they presumably have a driver's license or another form of government-issued photo ID, so why not require them to show that?
We saw tonight my friend and colleague, the distinguished Senator from California, contorting himself into a pretzel trying to explain why it is we can't pass this bill. To be clear, his objection, as far I can tell, didn't relate nearly as much to anything else in the bill other than the voter ID provision. That is the concern.
The question is, Why is it that when 70 percent of Democrat voters and 83, 84 percent of all voters, Democrat and Republican combined--why is it that my Democrat colleagues are so adamantly opposed to this? Why do they care? Why do they want the status quo?
I am always reluctant to speak on someone else's behalf because what they say--No. 1, I don't have the ability to read minds, but sometimes, what they say can give us an indication. We have had Democratic politician after Democratic politician part from their own Democratic voter base, which overwhelmingly supports voter ID, time and time and time again, showing up and saying: Oh, we don't want voter ID.
Why?
Now, they actually say this: We believe this would shut out a lot of our voters.
What? Is that an admission that a lot of their voters aren't who they claim to be? that a lot of their voters perhaps aren't U.S. citizens and aren't eligible to vote?
This ought to be concerning to everyone. It ought to be concerning especially to Democrat voters, especially in States that have elected a Democrat Senator who is now opposing any and every sort of voter ID requirement.
A few months ago when we had the SAVE America Act on the floor for, I don't know, 10 blessed days--should have been longer, but it was on the floor for about 10 days. During that time, I was on the floor a lot responding to arguments that they made, and I think I heard every single argument they made.
The overwhelming majority of them--and I mean probably 95-plus percent of the arguments they made against the SAVE America Act-- weren't even against the voter ID provisions of the SAVE America Act. Overwhelmingly, they were instead about the proof of citizenship issue. In fact, many of them, Democratic Senator after Democratic Senator, intimated one way or another that they are OK with voter ID requirements. So why are they opposing it? You have to ask yourself that question.
In Latin, there is a word for this: ``Cui bono?'' Who benefits? Who benefits from people being able to show up and claim to be someone they are not or from someone showing up who is not entitled to vote because they are not a U.S. citizen? Who benefits from that?
I can tell you it is not Republicans. Why? Well, you don't see a single Republican politician making the ridiculous, absurd arguments against voter ID and citizenship verification that these guys are making. Who benefits from illegal voting? Their words seem to suggest that they are benefiting.
This issue isn't going away. The SAVE America Act isn't going away. Voter ID requirement demands aren't going away. I will be back. I will be back day after day, week after week, until this passes because the American people deserve to go to bed every night knowing that their government is run by people they themselves elected, not foreign nationals. They don't want a government that has been chosen with significant foreign influence in our elections.
There was a time when the Democrats in this august Chamber--a time not so very long ago indeed--spoke of little else other than their fear of foreign election interference.
If we don't face the real challenge as to foreign election interference right now, as long as we are not passing the SAVE America Act or its key components, it would appear that those who are against this are just fine now with foreign election interference.
The American people shouldn't be because, again, it is not free. When somebody else votes who is not who they claim to be, when somebody else votes claiming to be a citizen and they are not a citizen, it robs hard-working
Americans, actual American citizens, of their most sacred, their most fundamental right: their right to vote.
No. No. We can't look the other way, nor do we, in my view, have any business taking a 6-week recess until such time as we have done everything humanly possible to get these reforms put into law. The American people deserve better than this. Most of them don't have that luxury of doing that.
Now, I know it is a time-honored Senate tradition. I know it is a tradition that has its roots back to long before the advent of modern air-conditioning and to a time when Washington, DC--you know, it is typically not the most pleasant weather in Washington, and this Chamber, I am sure, became suffocatingly hot and muggy, so for a long time, we had that August recess. Well, we have air-conditioning now. We can handle it.
It is true we frequently do take a recess in August, but it is not written in stone anywhere, it is not written in law anywhere that we have to do that. I would be fine doing that if we had gotten our work done. I would be fine doing that if we knew how our government was going to be funded past September 30. Right now, we have no idea. So when the government remains unfunded and we have no idea how we are going to secure an election system that, quite frankly, is recklessly, criminally insecure--we have no business leaving this Chamber for 6 weeks when we have no idea how we are going to take care of any of that. These problems are not going to solve themselves while we are gone.
I remember 15 years ago when I was first sworn in. I was younger then. I had a full head of hair. I was only 39 years old. I was the youngest Member of the Senate when I got sworn in.
Right after I got sworn in, we were walking one evening around the Capitol. I was showing it to my family. My daughter Eliza was 10 years old at the time. She pointed to one of the little doors out in the hallway just outside the Senate Chamber.
It is a door that is maybe 18 inches tall at the most. I later learned that it was installed when they built this wing of the Capitol in the late 1850s. That was their source of water. They had a pipe in there. The custodial staff at the time used it to get water so that they could clean the floors. I didn't know that at the time.
As we were walking around, my 10-year-old daughter Eliza asked me: Dad, what is that door for?
Not knowing how to answer, I just said the first thing that came to mind. I said: Well, that is for the House elves. The House elves live in there.
Of course, there are no House elves here, but sometimes, we act as if we are relying on the House elves to not only clean the Capitol but also clean up the messes that we make and that we leave undealt with, unaddressed legislatively while we are gone. The cavalry is not coming. We are the cavalry. The House elves aren't going to show up and do our work for us if we retreat into the sunset for 6 weeks.
We have to do this. We had an opportunity tonight to make a meaningful dent in our election security problem. And it is tragic that the Democrats chose not to let this reasonable measure pass into law--a measure that 71 percent of their voters and 83 percent of all American voters support. They can't handle it--apparently because they benefit too much when people vote illegally. Shame on them for taking that position, but shame on us if we leave before the job is done.
Lastly, far too much gets said around here about, Oh, we can't do X, Y, or Z because we don't have 60 votes. I get that that is said. That cannot become our anthem. That is an absurd suggestion.
Now, I know it takes 60 votes to invoke cloture, but, you know, long before there even was a cloture rule--there has only been a cloture rule for 109 years. Before that time, we still had the filibuster, just no cloture. Remember, a cloture vote is just one way of breaking the filibuster.
If a supermajority of Senators--under the current rule, three-fifths, 60 votes in the Senate--if 60 Senators want to force debate to come to a close even if some Senators want to continue debating, then the Senate can do so, but that is not the exclusive means by which you can break a filibuster. Other techniques are available--techniques that were available for nearly 150 years before the first cloture rule was even adopted in 1917.
If you can't break a filibuster and you don't have 60 votes to bring debate to a close using cloture, you can put legislation on the floor, and you can debate it, and you can require any Senator wishing to filibuster to continue to show up and continue to speak to prolong debate.
The filibuster is about speaking; it is about debating; it is not about perpetually forestalling the passing of legislation until you have 60 votes for it.
Passage in this Chamber, with rare exceptions not relevant here, is set at a simple majority, at 51 votes. And if the Vice President is with you, you can do it at 50 votes. The Vice President supplies the tie-breaking vote of 51, and then it is passed. We could do that.
We should be putting this measure on the Senate floor. We should be debating it for weeks on end, if necessary, cutting into weekends and long-scheduled recess time, if necessary, making clear we are going to keep debating it until it passes, and making clear that the minute those filibustering it fail to show up and continue to speak, we will call the question, and we will pass it with a simple majority.
We could do that. We should do that. It takes time, yes. But time is on our side. We have got weeks in which to do this. We should do that.
Now, if we don't want to do that, there are other mechanisms available to us. We could continue to attach it to other must-pass vehicles. We could also push something in the form of budget reconciliation.
Now, that is a little trickier. You could bypass the need for cloture with budget reconciliation, but it has to be budgetary, and it has to meet a whole bunch of requirements.
It has to be budgetary, which means it needs to manage changes in mandatory outlays or revenues; and it can't, among other things, have budgetary features that are merely incidental to policy changes.
But there are ways that we could capture some of the benefits of the SAVE America Act through reconciliation.
But my point is just to say there are multiple ways of skinning this cat. I don't care nearly as much which way to skin it. I would personally prefer to bring it up on the floor and debate it until it passes. I think that is the cleanest way of doing it. But I am not a purist on that. I don't insist it be my way or the highway. I am just saying we do have to do it. We can't pretend this isn't here. This will not disappear simply because we leave.
The cavalry is not coming. We are the cavalry. There are no house elves who will come and fix our election security problems. So let's get this done. And for the love of all that is sacred and holy, let's not go on a 6-week recess with all of this undone. The American people deserve better.
