Floor Statements

Mr. President, I am grateful for the opportunity to partner with my colleague from Texas on this infrastructure development, and I ask for the support of all of my colleagues.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I believe healthcare is a human right. And with all the incentives on the table for Georgia to expand Medicaid, it is past time to do so. My home State of Georgia, where State leaders have refused to expand Medicaid, has the opportunity to provide affordable healthcare to 646,000 people who could qualify.

I refuse to allow Georgians to suffer and be cut off from care while politicians play games. This is why I introduced recently the Medicaid Saves Lives Act. This is legislation that would allow people in States like mine, that haven't expanded Medicaid, an alternative path to health coverage; because for far too many, access to affordable, reliable healthcare is the difference between life and death.

I agree with Martin Luther King, Jr., who said that, ``of all the injustices, inequality in health care is the most shocking and the most inhumane.'' So I am grateful that this plan, the Medicaid Saves Lives Act, which I introduced the other day, is positioned to be included in the forthcoming economic package.

That is why I rise again on the Senate floor to tell the story of another Georgian, a story that gets to the heart of why this bill is important.

This is Amy Bielawski. Amy is the owner of a small business, Hare- Brained Productions. It is an event planning and entertainment company in Tucker, GA. As you can imagine,

Amy's company took a significant hit during the pandemic.

Unable to book regular gigs and plan events--events that all of us miss as we have been clawing our way back from this pandemic--Amy qualified for unemployment benefits this past year. And with that critical support, Amy had temporary access to affordable marketplace plans created by the Affordable Care Act.

But with the end of Georgia's unemployment benefits looming and the entertainment sector still suffering from the effects of the pandemic, her access to coverage--the coverage she so desperately needs--is on the brink again.

At the same time, she will have to manage her thyroid disease, high blood pressure, pituitary gland tumor, fibroids, and all the other health hiccups that come along with aging.

If Georgia was to expand Medicaid or if there was a Federal Medicaid Program for nonexpansion States like Georgia, Amy would no longer have to worry about getting reliable health coverage for her chronic conditions. This is the human face of the public policy we make or the public policy we fail to make.

As our State's healthcare options stand now, Amy says she ``doesn't think they care about people like me falling through the cracks.'' Even more disappointing, when asked what Medicaid expansion would mean for her, Amy was reluctant to even picture that future. She said: Well, it is really difficult to say ``because I've never had consistent healthcare--it is hard to imagine.''

Think about that. It is hard for somebody who works every day with a kind of entrepreneurial thrust and serious work ethic, grit, and determination, in the richest country on the planet. She says it is hard for her to imagine having consistent healthcare. She says she is ``used to being shoved aside and doing without.'' With all of Amy's health issues, doing without, as she puts it, can only work for so long.

We are costing Georgia more and more every day by not providing access to healthcare to the people who need it most. Like Amy's story speaks to, without affordable and comprehensive coverage, preventive care and annual appointments are skipped. Conditions that could perhaps be treated or seen at their early stage and prevented, worsen, and Georgians end up using emergency rooms instead of addressing these health issues in primary care appointments months prior.

This past year, Amy herself had to go to ER because of chest pains, and with a history of high blood pressure, she couldn't ignore the sharp pain in her chest that wasn't going anywhere. So she made her way to the ER. After all, what if it was a heart attack?

A short stay later, after spending less than an hour in a hospital room, she went home with a $3,000 bill. That is bad policy for her. It is certainly bad policy for every Georgian. What kind of costs would be avoided, for the hospital and for Amy herself, if she had access to a primary care provider through Medicaid, and more regular, affordable, consistent access to care?

In other States, Amy would be eligible for Medicaid. And, according to Amy, access to reliable, quality, affordable healthcare through Medicaid would be nothing short, she says, of ``MIRACULOUS.''

Amy is one Georgian who represents the stories of hundreds of thousands in our State and across the country who need the Medicaid Saves Lives Act. And until we get this done--because I believe that healthcare is a human right--I am going to keep lifting up Amy's story and the stories of other Georgians who would benefit from this lifesaving legislation.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, since my first day here in the Senate-- and even before that--one of the issues I have been working to address is how my own home State of Georgia, where State leaders have been digging in their heels, refusing to expand Medicaid--how it is that citizens can somehow provide affordable healthcare to their families-- nearly 500,000 Georgians who are uninsured. They are in the Medicaid gap.

That is why last week I introduced the Medicaid Saves Lives Act, legislation that would create a program almost identical to Medicaid that is administered by the Federal Government and would allow people in States like Georgia who have not expanded Medicaid, an alternative path to health coverage because we know that Medicaid literally saves lives.

I was proud to introduce this legislation with my colleagues Senators Baldwin and Ossoff and that it has the support of healthcare stakeholders in Georgia and from across the country. Entities like the Georgia Hospital Association and the Grady Health System understand how expanding Medicaid in Georgia will improve health outcomes across the State, strengthen our rural hospitals and healthcare workforce, and create good-paying jobs.

Medicaid saves lives and also saves jobs. As it turns out, the right thing to do is also the smart thing to do. And so I am glad that this plan is on its way to being included in the forthcoming economic package, and I am going to do everything I can to keep pushing to make sure that it happens.

But today, I come to the Senate floor to talk not so much about policy as much as to talk about the people behind the policy efforts that we lift up. We should always endeavor to see the human face of the public policy we put forward.

So I want to talk today about Cynthia English. She is a truckdriver in Albany, GA. It is a town in the southern rural part of our State. Cynthia turns 46 in just a few days. Her birthday, actually, is this coming Saturday.

Happy birthday, Cynthia.

Cynthia, a hard-working woman, suffers from diabetes and hypertension. She says that she has previously applied for Medicaid and other healthcare programs but has been repeatedly denied because she does not have any children. She does not have any dependents. So she has been denied, in spite of her relatively low income. She is in the coverage gap.

She says that those denials made her feel like she couldn't get any type of help. In fact, Cynthia says that in the past, her diabetes and her blood pressure have had her in ``real bad shape,'' so much so that complications with her diabetes once sent her to the emergency room.

Think about the cost of that for her and for all of us, unable to get the kind of routine care that all of us need but especially if you have a chronic illness like hypertension or diabetes. It doesn't make sense for her or for us that she is in this situation. Without health insurance, Cynthia says she couldn't go to the doctor and that, due to the cost, it was hard to pay for medication. To put it bluntly, as Cynthia said, when you are sick in Georgia, ``they still really don't help you if you don't have any health insurance or Medicaid.''

Thankfully, Cynthia was able to find the Good Samaritan Clinic in Albany. As a pastor, I have to say that is a good name for a clinic, the Good Samaritan Clinic, in Albany. It offers healthcare to people like her in the coverage gap. She has been able to receive care for her conditions, including a pinched nerve in her neck and back caused by sciatica, another condition that went undiagnosed for far too long because of her lack of health insurance.

If it wasn't for the Good Samaritan Clinic, Cynthia says she wouldn't be here. But it is still not enough--grateful for them, but that is not enough. That clinic does amazing work, but that is not enough.

In other States, Cynthia would be eligible for Medicaid. According to Cynthia, having additional support provided by Medicaid would help her pay for her medications and get all the care that she needs. A hard- working woman, doing all the right things, cannot get the coverage that she needs.

So behind the public policy, we have to remember the stories of real people, people like Cynthia, because there are millions of Cynthias in Georgia and across our Nation who need the Medicaid Saves Lives Act. Until we get this done, I am going to keep lifting up Cynthia's story and the stories of other Georgians who would benefit from this critical lifesaving legislation

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I rise today at a defining moment in American history and at a time when I sincerely believe that what we do or fail to do will have long-lasting and far-reaching implications for the health, viability, and vitality of the world's greatest democracy.

We debate many important issues in this Chamber, but this issue, the issue of voting rights, I argue, is decidedly different. It is formative and foundational. It is the framework in which all of our other debates take place, for this issue is about the preservation and the protection of the democracy itself. That is, after all, what we claim to be. That is who we are--a democracy built on that sacred idea of one person, one vote.

With all the arguments taking place in the country right now, with all of the audits being ordered, and with all of the voting legislation being feverishly passed in States all across our country, clearly, ironically, there is agreement--albeit for different reasons on the right and on the left--that democracy itself is in danger. Folks on the left and folks on the right believe that there is something broken and it needs to be fixed.

If that is, indeed, the case, what kind of Congress would we be in the whole history of Congresses if, seeing that discussion out there, we refuse to even debate the matter in here? Who are we and how are we to hide in a moment like this?

So I rise with what I think is a simple request of my colleagues. Let's do our job. Resist the easy route, the temptation to hide behind Senate procedure, and let's have a principled conversation in front of the American people about voting rights. Let's have that conversation right here, right now. How could we do otherwise?

It is said that we are the most important deliberative body on the planet. Well, colleagues, how derelict in our duty would we be if, in this defining moment we refuse to even have a debate--a debate--about how best to preserve and protect that which is most precious: the democracy itself.

In my maiden speech this past March, I made an urgent call upon this body to act to protect the right to vote, and I warned then that the cords of our democracy were dangerously frayed. That was not theoretical stuff from me. I hail from Georgia. I argued then that our democracy was being frayed by unfounded conspiracy theories that led to an attack on this very Chamber and undermined by an onslaught of State- level proposals aimed at suppressing the vote.

Since I gave that maiden speech, things have only gotten worse. When I spoke here in March, 250 voter suppression proposals had been introduced in 43 States--250 proposals. Now it is 389 proposals in 48 States. A violent assault on this Capitol is now metastasizing to voter suppression proposals all across the United States of America. Since I spoke here in March, Georgia and 13 other States have enacted these voter suppression bills into law--14 in total. That is 14 States, and counting, where partisan actors, power-hungry politicians have acted along partisan lines to make it harder, not easier, for eligible voters to cast a ballot and guarantee that ballot will actually count.

In Georgia, after record voter turnout in a historic election, there is now a provision in S.B. 202 that allows partisan actors at the State level to take over the board--to take it over--to take over the process at the local level as voters are casting their ballots. Imagine that. That same law also allows any citizen to challenge the voting rights of an unlimited number of citizens, making it difficult to see how you can certify any election.

Let's not kid ourselves. In this Chamber, of all places, a few months after January 6, this is dangerous stuff. That is one reason we need to debate the legislation before us.

I am hoping to include a provision I introduced yesterday with some of my colleagues that will prevent politicians from being able to overrule local election officials and therefore subvert the voices of the people. This provision will also protect local election volunteers from harassment and intimidation.

Right now across the Nation, constitutional rights are being assaulted, and I fear that if we don't act as a body in this moment, we will have crossed a dangerous Rubicon in our Nation that will make it extremely difficult for the next generation to secure voting rights for every eligible American.

This is not just another moment in another Congress. We should not think of this as rote and routine. This is a defining moment that calls upon us to speak, to debate, to act. After all, Congress represents the people. It is the job of Congress, as prescribed in article I, section 4, to ensure that the people are not squeezed out and locked out of their own democracy. This is not our house; this is the house of the people. We are stewards of that trust. We have to ensure that the voices of the people can be heard in their own house, and that is why I am urging my colleagues to begin debating on the voting rights legislation before us. That debate is happening right now out there. How could it not happen in here?

I know some of my Republican friends are vowing to prevent this debate, to stop it before it begins. And we are not talking yet about passing the bill. Be very clear. We are just talking about talking about it, and they don't even want to do that. Really?

Surely some of my Republican friends believe at the very least that in this Chamber, we should be able to debate about voting rights. After all, voting rights are preservative of all other rights. And what could be more hypocritical and cynical than invoking minority rights in the Senate as a pretext for preventing debate about how to preserve minority rights in the society?

I stand here as a proud American. I believe in democracy with all of my heart. I believe that democracy is the political enactment of a spiritual idea, that we are all children of God, and that we have within us a spark of the divine and therefore a right to help determine our country's direction and our destiny within it.

I believe in democracy, government of the people, by the people, and for the people. I believe that the blind spots in our public policy and the wrongs in our history are made right through the power of democracy, people of diverse perspectives helping us to see more fully and embrace more completely what it means to be a government of the people, by the people, for the people. It is how Black people finally gained their citizenship; women, the suffrage; members of the LGBTQ+ community, their dignity and equality under law.

Diverse perspectives and voices help us to see what we would not otherwise see, and that is precisely what is being imperiled right now by all of these voter suppression bills and by some in this Chamber to forestall a necessary debate about voting rights at this defining moment in our history.

Mr. President, who are we and how are we to hide at a moment like this? Why are some people hiding? To what end? For what purpose? At whose behest? From whom are they hiding--the American people who sent us here in the first place?

I hope we can take a bipartisan vote to begin debate on this important piece of legislation because that is what democracy is all about. History is watching, and the future is waiting to see if we are who we say we are--the United States Senate, a serious-minded, deliberative body, the United States of America, a nation built on that simple but sublime principle: one person, one vote.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I want to thank my colleague, Senator Brown, for bringing us together in this way, reading from a letter from a Birmingham jail by Dr. King, April 16, 1963. Dr. King writes:

Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues-- Senator Brown; Senator Booker; the Presiding Officer, Senator Bennet-- in shining a bright spotlight on the tragedy of child poverty and what the Senate needs to do and can do to eliminate poverty permanently-- child poverty across our country.

Someone has said that children are the casualties of every age, and while this is a longstanding problem, the fight could not be more urgent as countless families work to pull themselves out of the economic misery caused by a once-in-a-century pandemic. This pain is felt all across our country.

But as we talk about the issue of child poverty, this is not theoretical. For me, it is personal. I grew up in public housing. I am one of 12 children in my family. I am No. 11 and the first college graduate. I stand here today as a U.S. Senator, but I am the product of good Federal public policy and good public schools. I know that what we do in this Chamber makes a difference in the lives of families and in the lives of all of our children. My life's journey is a testament to the promise of our country, the greatest country on Earth, when we make the necessary investments in our youth and enable them to thrive.

As a pastor, I speak to young people all the time, and I often go back to my hometown of Savannah, GA, and communities all across Georgia like the neighborhood I grew up in. In my efforts to inspire children who are struggling, I tell them that your parent's income does not have to determine your outcome. It is not where you start; it is where you end up.

Now, that is what I say to them, and I believe it, because they need to be inspired to give it all that they have got. But the truth is, when I tell them that their parent's income does not determine their outcome, that is not based simply on what they do, but on what we do. That has to be made real through good public policy.

That is why I am so proud to work with my Senate colleagues and I was so happy to join this U.S. Senate at such a critical time in our country, and in a moment, when we, buoyed by the people of Georgia who made a historic choice, our majority enabled us to pass the American Rescue Plan.

Over the past year, we have seen how the consequences of COVID-19 and the economic downturn that followed it have both illuminated and exacerbated so many of the longstanding disparities that have challenged Georgians, Americans, and people everywhere. We know that low-income families and children, especially, have not only not been spared but have, in many ways, suffered more than most. Children are casualties at every age.

According to data from the Center for American Progress, we know that nearly one in five children in Georgia was living in poverty last year. Think about that: nearly one in five children in poverty in the middle of a pandemic. It is tough enough to live in poverty, but it is even tougher to live in poverty in the middle of a pandemic. What could be tougher than being a child in poverty in a pandemic?

Another 217,000 of those children live in what we could call extreme poverty in the United States--stock markets soaring and children struggling and no relationship between what is happening on Wall Street and what is happening on their streets. It is our job to make it true when I say to them that their parent's income need not determine their outcome.

I don't know about anyone else, but I think that these high rates of child poverty are unacceptable in the greatest, richest country on the planet.

Often, we tell our children to stay on the right road, to stay out of trouble, and we should--stay focused--but we ought to spread that net of responsibility.

The truth is, poverty is its own violence. Poverty is a violence that traumatizes the mind, oppresses the body, and bruises the human spirit, so that is why the American Rescue Plan is so necessary, so important, and so historic. I am glad that Senators Booker, Brown, and Bennet--I feel a little left out, the odd guy out here--I am glad that we were able to push through, in the American Rescue Plan, a landmark expansion of two tax credit programs: the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit.

Now, I am calling on all my Senate colleagues to join us in making these expansions permanent. By increasing the child tax credit, thousands of more dollars a year will flow into the pockets of the children and families who need it most, cutting poverty--child poverty--nationwide in half.

In Georgia, more than 1 million families with children will benefit from the increased tax refund, and it will lift more than 171,000 Georgia children out of poverty. Those are my neighbors and yours. Those are kids around my church and who attend my church.

So I want to be clear. Not only were we able to expand the tax refund so that more families are getting more money, but we were able to do so in such a way that it gives families a monthly cash payment providing greater financial security.

This is going to be a gamechanger for so many families, especially those who did not previously qualify for the credit when it was used just to offset taxes already owed to the government. Prior to this expansion, we had folk who were too poor to get our help. There is something wrong about that--too poor to get our help. This expansion corrects that. Now, we are putting dollars directly into the hands of the families who need it the most.

In the COVID package, we were able to strengthen the earned income tax credit, nearly tripling the maximum tax refund allowed for qualifying workers because we have to make sure that childless families in our communities also have the support they need to pay their rent, keep food on the table, and more to keep our communities strong.

Taken together, expanding and extending these programs are a major move toward eliminating child poverty and poverty in general once and for all in Georgia and all across our country, but it is still not enough to truly tackle the issue. We have included this in the American Rescue Plan; now, we must make it permanent. As so often is the case, the right thing to do is also the smart thing to do. This will not only help these families, it will help the American economy.

I am just old enough to remember when they started talking about trickle-down economics. I know some communities where they have been waiting for decades for that trickle. It hadn't trickled down; it is trickling up.

The right thing to do is often the smart thing to do. When we help these families, it is actually good economic policy. Because when you help poor families with children, they buy things like food, baby diapers, a coat for their kid, and it helps the American economy.

The right thing to do is the smart thing to do. If Congress can slash child poverty for 1 year, why wouldn't we or shouldn't we do it once and for all? And so I urge the Senate to stand up and do this work in this moral moment in America.

In just a few days, I will go home. I will stand up, and I will preach on Easter Sunday morning. This year, as it turns out, Easter is on April 4. It is the anniversary of Dr. King's death. So I will be thinking about Dr. King as I preach this coming Easter because Dr. King spent his last birthday, January 15, 1968, in his office, at our church, among other things, planning the Poor People's Campaign, trying to organize us and get us ready to stand up against poverty. He spent his birthday thinking about other people's children because he understood that his children would not be OK until other people's children were OK.

April 4 is his birthday. April 4 is also Easter this year. Let's make these tax credits permanent and resurrect hope and possibility and promise for all of America's children.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, before I begin my formal remarks, I want to pause to condemn the hatred and violence that took eight precious lives last night in Metropolitan Atlanta.

I agree with Georgians, with Americans, with people of love all across the world. This unspeakable violence visited largely upon the Asian community is one that causes all of us to recommit ourselves to the way of peace, an active peace that prevents these kinds of tragedies from happening in the first place.

We pray for these families.

Mr. President, I rise here today, as a proud American and as one of the newest Members of the Senate, in awe of the journey that has brought me to these hallowed Halls and with an abiding sense of reverence and gratitude for the faith and sacrifices of ancestors who paved the way.

I am a proud son of the great State of Georgia, born and raised in Savannah, a coastal city known for its cobblestone streets and verdant town squares. Towering oak trees, centuries old and covered in gray Spanish moss, stretched from one side of the street to the other, bend and beckon the lover of history and horticulture to this city by the sea.

I was educated at Morehouse College, and I still serve in the pulpit of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, both in Atlanta, the cradle of the civil rights movement. And so like those oak trees in Savannah, my roots go down deep, and they stretch wide in the soil of Waycross, GA, and Burke County, and Screven County. In a word, I am Georgia, a living example and embodiment of its history and its hope, of its pain and promise, the brutality and possibility.

At the time of my birth, Georgia's two Senators were Richard B. Russell and Herman E. Talmadge, both arch segregationists and unabashed adversaries of the civil rights movement.

After the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board ruling outlawing school segregation, Talmadge warned that ``blood will run in the streets of Atlanta.''

Senator Talmadge's father, Eugene Talmadge, former Governor of our State, had famously declared: ``The South loves the Negro in his place, but his place is at the back door.''

When once asked how he and his supporters might keep Black people away from the polls, he picked up a scrap of paper and wrote a single word on it: ``Pistols.''

Yet there is something in the American covenant, in its charter documents and its Jeffersonian ideals, that bends toward freedom. And led by a preacher and a patriot named King, Americans of all races stood up. History vindicated the movement that sought to bring us closer to our ideals, to lengthen and strengthen the cords of our democracy, and I now hold the seat--the Senate seat--where Herman E. Talmadge sat.

That is why I love America. I love America because we always have a path to make it better, to build a more perfect Union. It is the place where a kid like me, who grew up in public housing, the first college graduate in my family, can now stand as a United States Senator.

I had an older father. He was born in 1917. Serving in the Army during World War II, he was once asked to give up his seat to a young teenager while wearing his soldier's uniform, as they said, ``making the world safe for democracy.'' But he was never bitter. By the time I came along, he had already seen the arc of change in our country. He maintained his faith in God and in his family and in the American promise, and he passed that faith on to his children.

My mother grew up in Waycross, GA. Do you know where that is? It is way 'cross Georgia. Like a lot of Black teenagers in the 1950s, she spent her summers picking somebody else's tobacco and somebody else's cotton. But because this is America, the 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else's cotton went to the polls in January and picked her youngest son to be a United States Senator. Ours is a land where possibility is born of democracy: a vote, a voice, a chance to help determine the direction of the country and one's own destiny within it--possibility born of democracy.

That is why this past November and January, my mom and other citizens of Georgia grabbed hold of that possibility and turned out in record numbers, 5 million in November, 4.5 million in January--far more than ever in our State's history. Turnout for a typical runoff doubled, and the people of Georgia sent their first African-American Senator and first Jewish Senator, my brother Jon Ossoff, to these hallowed Halls.

But then, what happened? Some politicians did not approve of the choice made by the majority of voters in a hard-fought election in which each side got the chance to make its case to the voters. And rather than adjusting their agenda, rather than changing their message, they are busy trying to change the rules. We are witnessing right now a massive and unabashed assault on voting rights, unlike anything we have ever seen since the Jim Crow era. This is Jim Crow with new clothes.

Since the January election, some 250 voter suppression bills have been introduced by State legislatures all across the country, from Georgia to Arizona, from New Hampshire to Florida, using the big lie of voter fraud as a pretext for voter suppression--the same big lie that led to a violent insurrection on this very Capitol the day after my election. Within 24 hours, we elected Georgia's first African-American and Jewish Senators, and hours later the Capitol was assaulted. You see in just a few precious hours the tension very much alive in the soul of America. The question before all of us at every moment is, What will we do to push us in the right direction?

So politicians, driven by that big lie, aim to severely limit and in some cases eliminate automatic and same-day voter registration, mail-in and absentee voting, and early voting and weekend voting. They want to make it easier to purge voters from the voting roll altogether. As a voting rights activist, I have seen up close just how draconian these measures can be. I hail from a State that purged 200,000 voters from the rolls one Saturday night in the middle of the night. We know what is happening here. Some people don't want some people to vote.

I was honored on a few occasions to stand with our hero and my parishioner, John Lewis. I was his pastor, but I am clear: He was my mentor. On more than one occasion, we boarded buses together after Sunday church services as part of our Souls to the Polls program, encouraging the Ebenezer Church family and other communities of faith to participate in the democratic process. Now, just a few months after Congressman Lewis's death, there are those in the Georgia legislature-- some who even dared to praise his name--that are now trying to get rid of Sunday Souls to the Polls, making it a crime for people who pray together to get on a bus together in order to vote together. I think that is wrong. As a matter of fact, I think that a vote is a kind of prayer for the kind of world we desire for ourselves and for our children, and our prayers are stronger when we pray together.

To be sure, we have seen these kinds of voter suppression tactics before. They are part of a long and shameful history in Georgia and throughout our Nation. But refusing to be denied, Georgia citizens and citizens across our country braved the heat and the cold and the rain, some standing in line for 5 hours, 6 hours, 10 hours just to exercise their constitutional right to vote--young people, old people, sick people, working people already underpaid and forced to lose wages to pay a kind of

poll tax while standing in line to vote. And how do some politicians respond? Well, they are trying to make it a crime to give people water and a snack as they wait in lines that are obviously being made longer by their draconian actions

Think about that. Think about that. They are the ones making the lines longer through these draconian actions. And then they want to make it a crime to bring grandma some water while she is waiting in a line that they are making longer. Make no mistake, this is democracy in reverse. Rather than voters being able to pick the politicians, the politicians are trying to cherry-pick their voters. I say this cannot stand.

And so I rise, Mr. President, because that sacred and noble idea--one person, one vote--is being threatened right now. Politicians in my home State and all across America, in their craven lust for power, have launched a full-fledged assault on voting rights. They are focused on winning at any cost, even the cost of democracy itself. I submit that it is the job of each citizen to stand up for the voting rights of every citizen. And it is the job of this body to do all that it can to defend the viability of our democracy.

That is why I am a proud cosponsor of the For the People Act, which we introduced today. The For the People Act is a major step in the march toward our Democratic ideals, making it easier, not harder, for eligible Americans to vote by instituting commonsense, pro-democracy reforms, like establishing national automatic voter registration for every eligible citizen and allowing all Americans to register to vote online and on election day; requiring States to offer at least 2 weeks of early voting, including weekends, in Federal elections, keeping Souls to the Polls programs alive; prohibiting States from restricting a person's ability to vote absentee or by mail; and preventing States from purging the voting rolls based solely on unreliable evidence like someone's voting history, something we have seen in Georgia and other States in recent years. And it would end the dominance of Big Money in our politics and ensure our public servants are there serving the public.

Amidst these voter suppression laws and tactics, including partisan and racial gerrymandering, and in a system awash in dark money and the dominance of corporate interests and politicians who do their bidding, the voices of the American people have been increasingly drowned out and crowded out and squeezed out of their own democracy. We must pass For the People so that the people might have a voice. Your vote is your voice, and your voice is your human dignity. But not only that, we must pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

You know, voting rights used to be a bipartisan issue. The last time the voting rights bill was reauthorized was 2006. George W. Bush was President, and it passed this Chamber 98 to 0. But then, in its 2013 decision, the Supreme Court rejected the successful formula for supervision and preclearance contained in the 1965 Voting Rights Act. They asked Congress to fix it. That was nearly 8 years ago, and the American people are still waiting. Stripped of protections, voters in States with a long history of voter discrimination and voters in many other States have been thrown to the winds.

We Americans have noisy and spirited debates about many things, and we should. That is what it means to live in a free country. But access to the ballot ought to be nonpartisan. I submit that there should be 100 votes in this Chamber for policies that will make it easier for Americans to make their voices heard in our democracy. Surely, there ought to be at least 60 in this Chamber who believe, as I do, that the four most powerful words uttered in a democracy are ``the people have spoken''; therefore, we must ensure that all of the people can speak.

But if not, we must still pass voting rights. The right to vote is preservative of all other rights. It is not just another issue alongside other issues. It is foundational. It is the reason why any of us have the privilege of standing here in the first place. It is about the covenant we have with one another as an American people: ``e pluribus unum,'' out of many, one. It, above all else, must be protected.

So let's be clear. I am not here today to spiral into the procedural argument regarding whether the filibuster in general has merits or has outlived its usefulness. I am here to say that this issue is bigger than the filibuster. I stand before you saying that this issue--access to voting and preempting politicians' efforts to restrict voting--is so fundamental to our democracy that it is too important to be held hostage by a Senate rule, especially one historically used to restrict the expansion of voting rights. It is a contradiction to say we must protect minority rights in the Senate while refusing to protect minority rights in the society. Colleagues, no Senate rule should overrule the integrity of our democracy, and we must find a way to pass voting rights, whether we get rid of the filibuster or not.

So as I close--and nobody believes a preacher when he says ``as I close''--let me say that I, as a man of faith, believe that democracy is the political enactment of a spiritual idea, the sacred worth of all human beings, the notion that we all have within us a spark of the divine, and a right to participate in the shaping of our destiny. Reinhold Niebuhr was right:

[Humanity's] capacity for justice makes democracy possible;

but [humanity's] inclination to injustice makes democracy

necessary.

John Lewis understood that and was beaten on a bridge defending it. Amelia Boynton, like so many women not mentioned nearly enough, was gassed on that same bridge. A White woman named Viola Liuzzo was killed. Medgar Evers was murdered in his own driveway. Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman, two Jews and an African American, standing up for that sacred idea of democracy, also paid the ultimate price. And we in this body would be stopped and stymied by bipartisan politics? Short- term political gain? Senate procedure? I say let's get this done, no matter what.

I urge my colleagues to pass these two bills, strengthen and lengthen the course of our democracy, secure our credibility as the premier voice for freedom-loving people and democratic movements all over the world, and win the future for all of our children.

I yield the floor.

(Applause.)

Mr. President, contrary to the suggestion from my colleague from Pennsylvania, this provision has everything to do with COVID-19 relief.

The thing about this terrible pandemic is that it has both illuminated and exacerbated longstanding disparities rooted in our racial past, and for too long, farmers of color have been left to fend for themselves, not getting the support they deserve from the USDA, making it even more difficult for them to recover from this pandemic.

We have an opportunity here to lift all of our rural communities by aiming the aid where it is needed given our historic past, which is very much present. So I urge all of my colleagues to oppose this amendment that strips these communities that have been forgotten by our government of the relief that they so desperately deserve. It will have an adverse effect on the very relief that we are trying to provide to all rural communities.

Mr. President.

I send a question to the desk.