Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise today to offer a tribute to one of my best friends and my political hero, my father-in-law, Linwood Holton, who died last Thursday at age 98.

I wanted to talk about Linwood and his influence on my life, but there is no more appropriate time to talk about him than right now, as we are about to cast a vote to proceed to the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.

Abner Linwood Holton, Jr., was born September 21, 1923, in Big Stone Gap, VA. Big Stone Gap is a tiny town in the far southwest corner of Virginia, a few miles from the Virginia-Kentucky border.

He was the son of a dad who helped run a small railroad--the Interstate Railroad--that would bring coal out of the coalfields to connect with a larger rail line that ran north and south through the Great Valley of Virginia.

Growing up at that time, with three siblings, with parents who cared deeply about him, he saw the challenges of the Depression. And my father-in-law was a very remarkable youngster because he had a deep empathy for other people that sometimes young folks don't always have.

My father-in-law wrote an autobiography called ``Opportunity Time'' in the early 2000s, and he described an experience in his life that was pivotal to the rest of his life. He was young, 8 or 9 years old. He lived in a community that was predominantly White folks. There were few African Americans in his town. It was a community that was connected to coal mines in Appalachia. He saw a friend of his talking to an elderly African-American man in an incredibly mean and disrespectful way, and it shocked him.

So he asked the man, after his friend had gone: Why did you let him talk to you that way? I can't believe that a youngster would talk to an adult that way.

And the man basically just pointed to the color of his skin and said: What choice do I have? That is just the way we get treated.

When Linwood wrote his autobiography--I can almost quote this directly from memory--he described that instance, and he said: It caused me to feel such shame then, and I feel shame as I write these words today.

Sometimes young people watch how others treat people, and they just absorb, OK, I guess that is the way you treat people. But Linwood, as a youngster, immediately could grasp, no, that is not the way to treat people.

I think he connected the discrimination against this African-American man with a discrimination that he kind of felt being from Appalachia. There were stereotypes about Appalachians--hillbillies or whatever else they might be called--and he resented that. He didn't like anybody looking down on him, and he decided that the answer to that was not for him to look down on others, but that, instead, anybody looking down on anybody else was doing wrong. I think this was also partly out of Lin's deep religious faith. He was raised in a Presbyterian church, in Big Stone GA, VA.

My father-in-law went on to go to Washington and Lee. Pearl Harbor happened. His parents wrote him and said: We know what you are going to try to do. You are going to try to drop out of college to go fight World War II. Please don't do it.

He promised his parents he would get through the end of the academic year, and did. And then he dropped out, and he joined the Navy.

I said to my father-in-law once: You were in Big Stone Gap. You had never even seen the ocean before. Why would you join the Navy and not the Army?

He said: In the Navy, you always get a bunk, and I hate sleeping on the ground.

So he joined the Navy. He was in the submarine corps in the Pacific during World War II. He participated in the occupation of postwar Japan. Then came back to Virginia, settled in Roanoke; met my mother- in-law, Jinx, who turned 96 10 days ago; had four children, including my wife, Anne--Anne was the second of their four children--10 grandchildren.

But after practicing law in Roanoke, he made a decision that he didn't like politics in Virginia and he was going to try to do something really important, which was create a competitive two-party system.

Virginia was dominated by a political machine called the Byrd Machine from the 1920s until the 1960s. So there wasn't really two-party politics. And the Byrd Machine was a machine in a particular way-- sometimes if we think about machines, we might think about corruption and bribery. That was not what the machine did. The Byrd Machine was corrupt in maybe even a more damaging way. It dramatically limited who could vote, who could participate; drove down turnout in elections through mechanisms, like poll taxes and literacy tests and other things so that very few folks could even participate in the democracy in Virginia--the mother of Presidents.

Linwood came back from the Pacific in World War II. There was a Governor's race in 1945, in Virginia, and a gentleman by the name of Bill Tuck, from Halifax County, won that race. And Linwood has told me this a million times: I came back and Bill Tuck won the Governor's race, and the total turnout in the race was about 8 percent of Virginia adults--8 percent.

Poll taxes kept people away. Literacy tests kept people away. The absence of a meaningful two-party system made some folks say: Why bother?

And Linwood said: I fought in the Pacific for democracy, and I come home to the Commonwealth of Virginia and this is what I'm faced with.

And so he took it upon himself to build a Republican Party so that there could be a competitive two-party democracy in Virginia that would give people a choice and that would break down barriers of all kinds to people being educated together, people working together, and people being able to vote and participate.

My father-in-law is most known because he was the Governor that integrated the public schools of Virginia after previous Governors had kept them segregated, even 16 years after Brown v. Board of Education.

The Byrd Machine had insisted that Governors fight against the Federal

Government, fight against bussing, fight against the notion that children could sit in a classroom next to somebody whose skin color was different.

In Virginia, during my lifetime, a number of jurisdictions even shut their public schools down for years, years at a time--in one instance, for 5 years--rather than let students go to schools together where they might sit with somebody of a different race. Prince Edward County and other counties shut schools down--Warren County in Northern Virginia, Norfolk.

Linwood wanted to break that up. That passion for racial equality from his early days led him to want to break that up because we are all equal, but also, education is so important; why deprive anyone of an educational opportunity? So he campaigned first twice for the House of Delegates in Roanoke and lost both times. Then he was the Virginia candidate for Governor, the Republican candidate, in 1965. He got 35 percent of the vote, which was unheard of for a Republican. Then he ran again in 1969, and he won the governorship on his fourth try for elected office.

Shortly after his election, a Federal court in Richmond ordered that schools be bussed to achieve the ending of segregation and have students be able to learn together regardless of the color of their skin.

Linwood did what was unthinkable in 1970. Instead of fighting against bussing and fighting against integration, he not only said ``I am going to support this,'' but he said ``I am going to support it with my own school-age children.''

My wife and her siblings lived in the Governor's mansion, and it wasn't in any particular school district. They could have gone to all- White schools in the suburbs. They could have gone to private schools. But, instead, the Governor and his wife, my mother-in-law, and the four kids decided, we are going to go to the neighborhood schools. And those neighborhood schools were primarily African-American schools.

Linwood escorted my sister-in-law, Tayloe, into John F. Kennedy High School, a predominantly African-American high school in Richmond, in the fall of 1970. The picture of the Governor and Tayloe walking into that predominantly Black school was on the front page of the New York Times. There had been so many pictures of Governors in the South standing in schoolhouse doors blocking African-American kids from coming into high schools and colleges, but there was only one picture-- only one--of a southern Governor escorting his daughter into a primarily Black high school to send the message that we are all equal; that education is important and the era of defiance in fighting against the Supreme Court is over.

Linwood also brought African Americans into State employment in leadership roles in very significant ways that had not been done before.

As people think about Governor Holton, they think about him as a pioneer who helped turn Virginia away from defiance and segregation to try to realize the original promise of equality that another Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, articulated in the Declaration of Independence. He did other things as well. He created the modern cabinet system in Virginia. He unified the Port of Virginia. These ports in Newport News, Portsmouth, and Norfolk that were kind of competing with each other--he brought them all together so they could compete with ports around the world rather than with each other. He imposed an income tax to clean up Virginia's rivers.

But his true legacy and what people think about him is, he was a champion for racial equality at a time when leaders were needed. And it was hard. It was hard. Linwood had spent now 20 years building up a competitive two-party democracy in Virginia, and he left office with a 77-percent approval rating when he was about 47 years old. But his party would have nothing to do with him. They were so upset with this founder of the Virginia modern Republican Party; they were so upset with him for integrating public schools that when he ran for the U.S. Senate just a few years later, in 1978--he had been out of office 3 years--in a four-way Republican-nominated convention, he finished third out of four because his pro-racial equality stand was so controversial. As you might imagine, that made my father-in-law a little bitter. He had worked so hard to build up a two-party system and to champion racial equality that that was hard for him.

I met my wife and started to date her shortly after he had unsuccessfully run for the Senate. I come from a completely nonpolitical family from Kansas City. I knew nothing about politics, nothing about Virginia. Then I got to know this kind of scary, you know, potential father-in-law who was notable and had been a Governor, and he seemed kind of intimidating to me. But as I got to know his story, I could see how proud he was of his accomplishments and of his children but how painful it was to have advanced in steps of courage toward something good and then be frozen out, basically, of politics thereafter.

Yet, through the miracle of longevity, people came around. They came around to appreciate him. Beginning in about the 1990s, people started to say: Linwood Holton--that was a good Governor. He lived long enough to see his reputation be restored and people understanding his pivotal role in helping Virginia move forward.

The obituaries and tribute to Governor Holton when he passed last Thursday at noon, peacefully--and my wife was there to tell her mother that her husband of 68 years had just passed--the tributes that have come in have been remarkable, and the family kind of laughed about the things that they are saying about Lin Holton. They are 180 degrees different than the things they were saying about him in the 1970s.

Pages, living well is the best revenge. Live according to your vows and stick by it. You know what. It will come back to you one day, and people will respect you for being a person of principle. That is how it was with Lin.

I am on the floor today--I was intending to come today regardless of what the vote was because I wanted to kind of collect my thoughts about my father-in-law. There are so many things he stands for: the value of equality; that losing isn't bad. He ran for office five times in his life, and he only won once. His record is 1 in 4. But nobody ever says about Lin Holton that he lost four elections. What they said is that he was Governor at a tough time and that he had courage and a backbone, and he did what was right. He was also a great voting rights Governor.

Here is where I want to conclude and then lead into the vote that we will cast on the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.

Remember I told you how when Linwood came back from World War II, there was a Governor's race, and the turnout was just so pitifully low because of things like poll taxes that were designed not only to disenfranchise African-American voters but poor White voters too. If you didn't pay your poll tax, it would accumulate year to year, and then you would go to vote, and you would be presented with a big bill. If you couldn't pay it, you couldn't vote. That is what kept voting percentages so low in Virginia.

Poll taxes were commonly used this way in the South, all over the South. Many States had abandoned poll taxes by the 1940s and 1950s because they disenfranchised not only African-Americans but also poor Whites. But Virginia still had a poll tax. That was one of the main reasons why turnout was so low in the election of 1945, and it became an object in the platform of the Republican Party that my father-in-law built to get rid of poll taxes. They tried and they tried, but they were outmatched in the Virginia Legislature, and the Byrd Machine wanted poll taxes.

This body, Congress, got rid of poll taxes as a prerequisite to voting in Federal elections in the 24th Amendment to the Constitution. It was passed and then ratified by the States in 1964, but poll taxes were still used in State elections in Virginia.

Get this: When Lin ran for Governor in 1965 and lost, the total votes cast were about 565,000 votes. When he ran for Governor in 1969 and won--with the support of business and labor and the civil rights organization--now the total vote was 965,000. In one cycle between two Governor's races, the turnout went up by 65 percent in one cycle, and it went up for one reason: In Harper v. Virginia in 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down poll taxes for State elections.

So when you cleared that obstacle out of the way, participation dramatically improved. Even though a Republican won, my father-in-law, it was great for democracy--small ``d'' in democracy--because more participation is a positive thing.

Last night, we had a Governor's race in Virginia, and it didn't end up the way I hoped that it would, but there was a good thing for democracy in that election. The turnout in last night's election in Virginia was 25 percent higher than in the Governor's race 4 years earlier. That is a huge, huge increase in voter participation. Why was the turnout so much higher? It was higher because our Virginia Legislature made a series of reforms to take Virginia from one of the hardest States to vote in in the country--couldn't vote easily early; couldn't vote in person early; had to have an excuse to cast an absentee ballot. In 2019, our two Democratic houses passed legislation that now makes Virginia one of the easiest States to vote in in the country. As a result, the turnout went up by 25 percent from the last Governor's race to the race last night.

Again, it wasn't the outcome that I wanted, but creating more opportunities for voting rights just wasn't to help the Democratic Party; it was actually to help small ``d'' democracy in the same way my father-in-law battled against poll taxes. When they were knocked down, there were more people willing to participate. The reforms we made in Virginia have enabled both Democrats and Republicans and Independents to participate more conveniently and thus have driven up voting turnout.

I am a strong supporter of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, restoring meaningful preclearance, and requiring jurisdictions that have a pattern of voting rights violations to seek preclearance. One of the reason I so strongly support it is I lived under the Voting Rights Act as the mayor of Richmond, and I lived under it as a Governor of Virginia, and it wasn't hard. When we were making changes, we would submit them to the Justice Department. They had 90 days to review them. They would ask us questions. We would have dialogue. They would usually give us a green light. When they gave us a green light, we had some assurance that we were not doing anything intentionally--we were not doing anything that even unwittingly gets in people's way in terms of being able to vote.

This bill would restore the preclearance requirement that the Supreme Court struck down in 2013 by requiring preclearance not of jurisdictions based on where they are--Southern States--but instead saying to any jurisdiction--North, South, East, West, Midwest--if you have had a pattern of voting rights violations in the past 25 years, you must seek preclearance, but as soon as you are clean, with no voting rights violations for 10 years, you don't have to seek preclearance unless you commit new voting rights violations. Even- steven. Every part of the country is treated the same.

The initial Voting Rights Act was completely bipartisan. Its reauthorization over years has been completely bipartisan. I stand on the floor to ask my colleagues, in the memory of my father-in-law, a Republican who was my political hero, who was a pro-voting rights person, as the Republican Party has been during much of its life, I ask my colleagues to join together and support vigorous participation of voters in this democracy.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have 9 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

committee on banking, housing, and urban affairs

The Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, November 3, 2021, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations.

committee on commerce, science, and transportation

The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, November 3, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing.

committee on environment and public works

The Committee on Environment and Public Works is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, November 3, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing.

committee on finance

The Committee on Finance is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, November 3, 2021, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing on a nomination.

committee on foreign relations

The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, November 3, 2021, at 9:45 a.m., to conduct a business meeting.

committee on foreign relations

The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, November 3, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a classified briefing.

committee on homeland security and governmental affairs

The Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, November 3, 2021, at 10:30 a.m., to conduct a business meeting.

committee on the judiciary

The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, November 3, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations.

committee on veterans' affairs

The Committee on Veterans' Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, November 3, 2021, at 3 p.m., to conduct a hearing.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations: Calendar Nos. 499, 500, 502, 503, and all nominations on the Secretary's desk in the Navy; that the nominations be confirmed en bloc; that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order to any of the nominations; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; and that the Senate then resume legislative session.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that if the Senate receives a message from the House of Representatives that it has passed a surface transportation authorization extension that is identical to the text of S. 3122 that the bill be considered read a third time and deemed passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 3 p.m., Monday, November 1; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed; that upon the conclusion of morning business, the Senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the Davidson nomination; further, that at 5:30 p.m., the Senate vote on the confirmations of the Robinson and Heytens nominations in the order listed; finally, that if any nominations are confirmed during Monday's session, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I rise to speak in favor of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021 in the expectation that the body will soon have a vote to proceed to debate on the bill, to proceed to debate in a forum before the American public, with an offer to our Republican colleagues to offer amendments, offer improvements, offer adjustments. This is incredibly important.

We had a vote on the Freedom to Vote Act last week, a bill that I am proud to be a cosponsor of, along with the Presiding Officer. And I am proud to be a cosponsor of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

What does the John Lewis bill do? It basically does two things. First, it restores a vigorous preclearance requirement that was part of the original Voting Rights Act, section 5, that was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 in the Shelby v. Mississippi opinion.

The Supreme Court in Shelby said that you could have a preclearance requirement but you couldn't apply that requirement only to the geographic jurisdictions that were covered in the original 1965 act; Congress would have to analyze and come up with a new set of criteria for who should have to get preclearance done.

The second thing the John Lewis bill does is it responds to a Supreme Court decision that was decided this summer, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, to specifically lay out the elements of a claim under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act--a claim that a local election practice or a State practice dilutes the strength of minority voting.

The preclearance requirement is the one that is the most important to me because, as a former mayor and Governor of Virginia, of Richmond and then the Commonwealth of Virginia, I lived under preclearance requirements, and I will spend a little bit of time talking about what that is like because it is actually pretty easy and pretty helpful.

But the way the John Lewis bill, in my view, very adroitly fixes the Shelby problem is it says: OK. Starting now, we are not going to treat the South differently than anywhere else in the country; we will treat every part of the country exactly the same. You are subject to a preclearance requirement as a State government or a local government if you have had a pattern of Voting Rights Act violations during the previous 25 years.

If you had just one, that isn't enough. This has to have been a pattern. And if there has been a pattern of Voting Rights Act violations, you are subject to preclearance. You have to submit proposed electoral changes to the Justice Department, and you have to keep doing that until you have had 10 years in a row where you haven't been subject to any voting rights violation.

So it doesn't penalize the South. Every ZIP Code in this country-- North, South, East, West, Midwest--is only subject to preclearance if there has been a pattern of voting rights violations--a significant pattern--over the previous 25 years. And as soon as you have 10 years without a voting rights violation, you can ``bail out'' of preclearance, and you don't have to submit your electoral changes to the Justice Department anymore, unless you commit new violations.

How reasonable. How reasonable.

We would want to have additional scrutiny of jurisdictions' voting rights practices if they have committed voting rights violations.

I was a city councilman and mayor of Richmond from 1994 until 2001. And every time we changed a polling place or did redistricting after a census or contemplated new rules about the timing in primary elections, we had to submit it to the Justice Department for a preclearance because Richmond--the capital of the Confederacy--had a documented history of suppressing minority vote for a very long time.

I was the Governor of Virginia--Lieutenant Governor and Governor-- from 2002 until 2010. And the same thing at the State level: when we did redistricting after censuses, when we contemplated in our legislature new voting rules, we had to submit to the Justice Department, preclearance requirement. We would send it to them 90 days before the proposed change would go into effect. The Justice Department would analyze the change. And then they, almost in every instance, in my experience, would reach back out and say: That is fine. Your change is fine. You can go ahead and implement it.

Sometimes they would reach out and say: We have a question or could you think about this; might you make an adjustment? So it was a dialogue. And that dialogue was productive.

And then the Justice Department would give Richmond or Virginia a green light and we would make those changes and we would make them with some assurance. It was actually helpful. It was helpful to run a change by the Justice Department and have it looked at by voting rights experts to make sure that we weren't unwittingly, we weren't intentionally--but that we weren't unwittingly doing anything that would suppress anyone's votes.

And once we got that preclearance green light, we would move ahead with the voting changes with confidence. It was simple. It was easy. It was a standard practice that we were all used to. It didn't impose any additional burden or time on the city government or the State government.

And so it deeply troubles me that colleagues of mine now are reluctant to go back to a vigorous preclearance requirement for jurisdictions that have had an established pattern of voting rights violations. This preclearance fix in the John Lewis Act is extremely important.

Two more points. I want to plead with my colleagues in the GOP--the Republican Party--on this bill, and then I want to express my sense of urgency about it.

By my reading of our history, the Republican Party throughout most of its life has been a great voting rights party--a great voting rights party. In the aftermath of the Civil War, it was the Republican-led Senate and House that passed the 15th Amendment--the

constitutional prohibition against any jurisdiction using race to disqualify a voter.

I would like to say that the Democrats in the late 1860s were supportive of those provisions; it was the Republican Party, frankly, that got the Constitution improved by passing the 15th Amendment.

The 19th Amendment, pages, guaranteed women the right to vote. Now, that was done in a Democratic administration, President Woodrow Wilson, at a time when Congress was majority Democrat, but it was done with the full support of the Republican Party. The 19th Amendment had strong Republican Party support.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965, which the John Lewis bill goes in and amends--it was done at the time that Democrats had the majority in this body, but it would not have happened without Senate Republicans. In fact, Senate Republican were more supportive of the Voting Rights Act than were Senate Democrats in 1965.

So there has been a pattern--1870, 1919, 1965--of the Republican Party being a party through much of its life--being a party that was interested in expanding the franchise and encouraging more people to vote.

It happened again when Richard Nixon was President.

The 26th Amendment, pages, giving 18-year-olds the right to vote, changing the Federal voting age in Federal elections from 21 to 18, that was done under President Richard Nixon--again, with both Republican and Democratic support.

The Voting Rights Act, after it was passed in 1965, had to be reauthorized every 5 or 10 years. And it was often reauthorized by unanimous vote, with Republican Senators largely being on board.

It really only was about the time of the beginning of the Obama Presidency, frankly, that the GOP, which had been rock-solid stalwarts for expanding the franchise, began to change.

When the Shelby decision was reached in 2013, it was just a couple of years after the Voting Rights Act had been reauthorized with solid and overwhelming Republican support.

And this particular fix in the John Lewis bill to say, OK, preclearance; we are not going to put a scarlet letter on you if you are in a Southern State; we will have everyone precleared if you had a pattern of demonstrated voting rights violations--we went to Republican colleagues with that in a bill near immediately after the Shelby decision and were not able to find even one--even one--Republican in the House or in the Senate that would sponsor a fix to this bill.

It is my hope that when we call this vote up in the next couple of days that colleagues of mine in the Grand Old Party, who have had this more than century-long tradition of being a party willing to expand the franchise and encourage people to vote, will reclaim their own heritage and decide to be a pro-voting rights party.

Last thing, sense of urgency. I was not only the mayor of Richmond and the Governor of Virginia--a State with a significant African- American population and a State with a very notable history, a challenging history, a painful history, a triumphant history as well; like most history, Virginia history is so mixed; there is so much pain and tragedy and triumph and hard to make sense out of it--but I have always been passionate for voting rights because of my understanding of our history and, particularly, the disenfranchisement that African Americans, women, and others have faced.

One thing I have never faced, though, is I have never faced disenfranchisement. I have been a supporter of voting rights for those who have. I was a civil rights lawyer. I did voting rights cases. So I have been a supporter. I have been an ally. I have been an advocate. But never in my life--never in my life--did I feel like Tim Kaine, a Caucasian male born in 1958--that somebody was trying to disenfranchise me.

I had that experience for 1 day of my life. And as passionate as I was before that 1 day, I now understand this in a completely different way. That day was January 6, 2021. As we were here in the Capitol and the Capitol was under attack by people who were attacking to try to stop the certification of the November 2020 election, they were basically trying to disenfranchise 81 million people who had voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

And my overwhelming reaction that day was complicated, and I was having a hard time figuring out what I was feeling. Even when we heard gunshots, even when we were being escorted and could see the rampagers not far from us, I was not afraid; I was furious. I wasn't feeling fear; I was feeling anger. And I realized later that that anger stemmed from the fact that at age 62, almost 63, for the first time in my life, just for a moment, I had a sense of what it meant to have someone else trying to disenfranchise me.

Many of my friends and constituents in Richmond--they have felt that sense for their entire lives. They felt it very personally. They feel it very personally. They hate that feeling. They want us to be that small ``d'' democracy, where everyone can participate. I had never felt that personally, but on that day, I did. And that day gave me just a glimpse--just a glimpse--of how devastating, demoralizing, frightening, angering it is to know that society is trying to keep you away from participation.

So that experience, which was just for a day because on January 7 I was back to my norm, where no one was trying to disenfranchise me--and yet those actions that are being taken in statehouses around this country to take away people's rights to participate, they mean something different to me than they did on January 5 because I had that one moment where I felt like this is me.

I sort of hated that day, but if it took that day to help me realize the importance of this issue, then that day had a purpose in my life that was not just a negative purpose, a positive one. And it is my deep hope that both parties, as we have before--Democrats and Republicans-- will join together to protect people's rights to participate in this greatest democracy on Earth.

I look forward to this debate. I look forward to getting a voting rights protection measure that is meaningful through this body, as has happened before. If we can do it here, we will be honoring a history, where, even when it has been tough, we have been able to do it. And we can do it again.

And with that, I yield the floor.

Madam President.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, we need to leave the science to scientists and researchers. Our public health Agencies, including the CDC and NIH, already release their studies publicly, and it is important that they have control over the release of this information.

Forcing researchers to put out studies on an arbitrary timeline--this bill requires all studies to be released within 14 days from the passage of the bill--could force the release of studies before data collection is complete, before they are done analyzing and reviewing the data, before it is peer reviewed. It might force them to put out studies that were funded that came to inconclusive results that might be confusing to the public.

So I think having a bill that would force release of material based on a date when a particular bill passed rather than when the science is done and it is ready to be released could be a recipe for disinformation and distrust.

The bill seems to imagine a scenario where there is critical science being hidden away or stonewalled, and I have no reason to believe that is true. That would be a dangerous suggestion at a time when we are trying to encourage people to follow the guidance of these Agencies, and the Agencies are working around-the-clock to provide lifesaving cures and up-to-date information about how people can keep their families safe from COVID.

Based upon those reasons, I object.

Madam President, I rise with my colleagues on Build Back Better, and I just want to emphasize two points that really matter to me.

First, Build Back Better is absolutely critical to combine with the infrastructure bill. If we make an infrastructure investment that will be the biggest since the Interstate Highway System, who is going to build it? Who is going to build it?

Open the paper. You can't hire schoolbus drivers. You can't hire truckers. We have a tight labor market right now. What Build Back Better does is massive investments in the American workforce, beginning with the workforce of tomorrow--our children--all the way up through community college, workforce development, and immigration reforms that will expand the Nation's workforce.

If we invest in infrastructure but don't think about making sure that we have the workforce to do it, what a missed opportunity. The Build Back Better plan has amazing investments in our workforce--the workforce we need right now and the workforce we will need for decades.

The second thing about Build Back Better that I particularly appreciate is what it does for children.

If we pass Build Back Better, we will have done for American children what Social Security has done for American seniors.

Let me just point something out.

Pre-Social Security, you would work your whole life; you would educate your kids; you would be the PTA president or the Little League coach or the Sunday school teacher. You would retire, and 50 percent of people would retire and then go below the poverty level. That was what being a senior citizen was in the United States before Social Security.

FDR basically said: We want you to have a dignified retirement because you have worked, and you have earned it.

So Social Security, once passed and implemented, dropped the senior poverty rate from 50 percent to 10 percent. There has never been a program that has been as successful in doing exactly what it was designed to do as Social Security.

Build Back Better can do the same thing for kids. We are a nation that has tolerated, for decades, a youth poverty level dramatically higher than the adult poverty level. What does that say about a society? Yet we have sort of acted like: Well, I guess that is the law of nature. I guess we can't do anything about it. I guess kids are just going to be a lot poorer than adults.

We don't have to tolerate it. We can do something about it with the combined impact of the child tax credit, the childcare tax credit, the funding for childcare, universal pre-K, paid parent and family leave, and free community college. If you put those things together, we will do for children what Social Security did for adults, and we will no longer be a nation that tolerates an unacceptably high children's poverty rate and says: Well, there is nothing we can do about it.

We can do something about it, and we will do something about it. That is why I so strongly support, with my colleagues, Build Back Better.

I yield back.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my legislative fellows Stephanie Gibbs, Tara Maher, and Tom Rakus be accorded floor privileges.

Mr. President, today, I want to discuss legislation I am introducing, the School Infrastructure Modernization Act.

To claim the Federal tax credit for historic preservation, a building renovation must be for a different purpose than that for which the building was previously used, a requirement known as the ``prior use'' rule. This bill waives that requirement for renovations of K-12 public school buildings. This will make it easier to restore historic-but- dilapidated school buildings across the country so our children have safe, modern spaces in which to learn.

As a Richmond City Council member and later mayor, I faced challenges familiar to many municipalities: overcrowded schools, aging buildings, and limited dollars in the budget. But in one particular case, I and a group of local stakeholders identified a creative solution. On one hand, we had an overcrowded Thomas Jefferson High School with in-zone and magnet students. On the other hand, we had a closed Maggie Walker High School that needed renovations. We put together a financing package that made use of Federal and State historic tax credits to renovate Maggie Walker High School and satisfied the prior use rule by consolidating the magnet program from Thomas Jefferson into a new Maggie Walker Governor's School for Government and International Studies. Today, some 20 years later, this is one of America's highest performing public high schools. Without the Federal historic tax credit, this would have been too expensive to make happen.

This bill will make it easier to do similar projects around the country. More modern school buildings will bolster the quality of public education, and carrying out these projects will generate private sector infrastructure investment and jobs. In Virginia alone, according to a 2013 study, more than 800 K-12 schools are at least 50 years old, representing some 40 percent of all the K-12 schools in the Commonwealth.

As the Senate considers tax reform and a comprehensive infrastructure package, I encourage my colleagues to support this common-sense incentive that is good for education, good for infrastructure, and good for jobs.

Mr. President, today, I want to discuss legislation I am introducing, the School Infrastructure Modernization Act.

To claim the Federal tax credit for historic preservation, a building renovation must be for a different purpose than that for which the building was previously used, a requirement known as the ``prior use'' rule. This bill waives that requirement for renovations of K-12 public school buildings. This will make it easier to restore historic-but- dilapidated school buildings across the country so our children have safe, modern spaces in which to learn.

As a Richmond City Council member and later mayor, I faced challenges familiar to many municipalities: overcrowded schools, aging buildings, and limited dollars in the budget. But in one particular case, I and a group of local stakeholders identified a creative solution. On one hand, we had an overcrowded Thomas Jefferson High School with in-zone and magnet students. On the other hand, we had a closed Maggie Walker High School that needed renovations. We put together a financing package that made use of Federal and State historic tax credits to renovate Maggie Walker High School and satisfied the prior use rule by consolidating the magnet program from Thomas Jefferson into a new Maggie Walker Governor's School for Government and International Studies. Today, some 20 years later, this is one of America's highest performing public high schools. Without the Federal historic tax credit, this would have been too expensive to make happen.

This bill will make it easier to do similar projects around the country. More modern school buildings will bolster the quality of public education, and carrying out these projects will generate private sector infrastructure investment and jobs. In Virginia alone, according to a 2013 study, more than 800 K-12 schools are at least 50 years old, representing some 40 percent of all the K-12 schools in the Commonwealth.

As the Senate considers tax reform and a comprehensive infrastructure package, I encourage my colleagues to support this common-sense incentive that is good for education, good for infrastructure, and good for jobs.

Mr. President, I am very proud to stand with my colleagues on the floor to talk about the Freedom to Vote Act. I was proud to work with my colleagues over many months--really, my purpose beginning in May--to help negotiate the bill to a place where it could do what needs to be done to accomplish the objectives my colleagues have described so well.

I want to offer just a few words from the heart about why I am so impassioned about getting this bill done. By my count, there have been 1,994 people who have served in the U.S. Senate--1,994.

One hundred of us share a unique experience. One hundred of us were here on the only day in the history of this body when we were attacked by violent insurrectionists attempting to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. So from whatever State we represent or whatever our background, we are unified in having shared an experience never to be imagined, never to be forgotten, and never to be repeated.

I believe the fact that we shared this experience together with the Senate staff who were here with us, this puts a unique responsibility on our shoulders.

First, let's understand what that day was about, that there are some who are trying to kind of downplay it--it was tourists visiting. We can laugh that off because we know that wasn't the case. There are others who are trying to downplay it in other ways--it was a riot, it was a protest, even that it was a violent protest. That is not what it was.

If it had happened on January 5, it would have been a violent protest. If it had happened on January 7, it would have been a violent protest. But it didn't happen on January 5. It didn't happen on January 7. It happened on a day established by law, at a time established by law, for a purpose established by law to disrupt that purpose.

It was a violent protest organized and inflamed by a President to occur at precisely the moment that the Congress of the United States was carrying out the constitutional duty to certify the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as President and Vice President of the United States.

It was designed to disrupt that certification, and it succeeded. For 5 or 6 hours, we were locked out of the Chamber while the rampagers tried to stop the certification of the election. We were barricaded in the midst of the peak of the COVID pandemic side by side with staff in a room as the insurrectionists tried to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.

Those words ``peaceful transfer of power,'' ``disrupting,'' what does that mean?

Let's unpack it further. It was an effort to disenfranchise more than 80 million people in this country who had voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It was the single largest effort to disenfranchise voters in the history of the United States. That is what happened as we were barricaded first in this building.

And how glad I am that you pages were not here. How glad I am I told my staff not to come to work that day. No one should have had to experience that. But it was an effort that succeeded for a period of hours to disenfranchise more than 80 million people.

Here is a powerful story. On that day, we knew who had been elected President and Vice President. We knew what the House majority would be, but we did not know what the Senate majority would be. The Senate majority wasn't clear in November, and it wasn't clear in December, and it wasn't even clear on January 5, when my colleague who just spoke, from Georgia, had his race called that he had won a special election in Georgia. As we were under attack, it was still in doubt as to who would be the majority party in the U.S. Senate.

As we were barricaded for hours in the midst of COVID in a room, side by

side with television monitors showing us what was happening at the Capitol, there then came a breaking news report that the last Senate race had been called in Georgia for Jon Ossoff, and so Democrats would now have a Senate majority.

I am a religious person. Things happen for a reason. It was unclear who would be the leadership in the Senate. But in the midst of a pandemic that had unnecessarily killed 600,000 Americans, and now with an ongoing attack against the Capitol of the United States--unique in American history--by people trying to disenfranchise 80 million people, the news suddenly came: We want new leadership. We need new leadership.

There is a reason for that. There is a reason that it happened in the middle of this attack. We have a burden on our shoulders to live up to the responsibility that we--100--uniquely share. That responsibility is to make sure that no voter--not 80 million, not 10 million, not a million, not 10, not 1--that no voter is disenfranchised in this country.

That is why we have been given this unique opportunity to lead at this moment in time. That is what being victimized by that attack means in terms of our responsibility to this country and to our history. We have to carry out that responsibility.

Now, if this were a Hollywood film, what would happen is the Democrats get the majority, and then all of a sudden we put to rest disenfranchisement--Democratic majority, we can stop the disenfranchisement of voters.

But, no, the Big Lie didn't stop. The Big Lie didn't stop when we found out we had the majority. And this is often the case in powerful stories in human history. Like, you know, when Moses leads folks through the Red Sea to the other side, it is not all great as soon as they get there. They still have work to do.

We got the majority, but we have work to do because in State after State after State, as my colleagues indicated, legislators in States where there are Republican Governors and Republican legislative Houses have thrown up one burden after the next to disenfranchise people, just as there was an effort to disenfranchise 80 million on January 6.

Let me be clear. These State legislators, they may not be wearing ``Camp Auschwitz'' T-shirts. They may not be carrying Confederate flags around. They may not be beating up police officers with flag poles or fence rails, but they are acting out of the same Big Lie that President Trump repeated ad nauseam when he encouraged people to come and be wild at the U.S. Capitol to overturn the peaceful transfer of power.

And so the States are embracing these strategies so well described by my colleagues to make it harder for people to vote, to enable partisan politicians to take the power to count votes away from electoral officials if they don't like what that count would show, to even criminalize people who are trying to help their neighbors vote.

Imagine this: making it a crime to give somebody water as they are waiting to vote, a crime punishable by up to a $1,000 fine, by up to a year in jail. This is the same Big Lie tactic that led to the attack on this body, and it is happening all over this country. There is a burden uniquely on our shoulders, if we were paying attention on January 6, to stand boldly to stop it and to stop it once and for all.

That is what the Freedom to Vote Act is about. It is about ensuring that these mass efforts of disenfranchisement, which reached their most vivid and flowering in the violent attack on our Capitol, don't occur and that people have the ability to get access to a ballot and to have confidence that their ballots will be counted with integrity and that weird schemes and stunts and penalties and criminal punishment won't be thrown in their paths by one high hurdle after the next to keep them from participating in a democracy that we proudly proclaim ourselves to be. That is why I am so proud to be one of the cosponsors of this bill with my colleagues.

I was a civil rights lawyer for 17 years. You might think that is why I like this bill. No. The thing that makes me passionate about the bill is I was an eyewitness to the biggest disenfranchisement effort in the history of the United States, and I don't think we can say: Yes, we were here, and we were eyewitnesses to it. It happened to us and the people we care about, but there is nothing we can do.

We can't say, after having seen what we have seen and done what we have done and been where we have been, that there is nothing we can do. We can't. We have to act.

Let me just conclude and say this: I have been on 10 ballots and been sworn into office many times as a city councilman, as a mayor, as a Lieutenant Governor, as a Governor, and as a U.S. Senator. When you get sworn in, you always say some version of this--it varies slightly in local and State office, as the Presiding Officer knows, who was also a mayor and a Governor, and it also has some version of this within it--a pledge to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

I had an epiphany in the days after January 6, and the epiphany was this: When I would take that oath of office, it was just kind of like the thing you would say so you could do your job. If you had asked me, ``Hey, Senator Kaine,'' or ``Hey, Governor Kaine,'' or ``Hey, Councilman Kaine, what is your job?'' I would have given you a job description, and the job description would have been that I want to build schools; that I want to make sure that our troops have the resources they need to keep our country safe. I mean, I always had a job description in my mind. I have been in elected office for 27 years now. I have always had a job description in my mind: education, healthcare, defense--the next thing on my ``to do'' list. I always had a job description in my mind.

Never did I think, until after January 6, that my oath of office was my job description. We say that oath of office, and we sometimes don't think about it. No. That oath of office is my job description, and I am kind of sorry that it took me 27 years to figure that out: to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Those who would disenfranchise 80 million or those who would disenfranchise 1 are domestic enemies of the Constitution of the United States.

I have pledged to support and defend that Constitution. This bill-- the debate that we will have and the vote that we will have--is a test of whether we mean what we say. I so look forward to engaging in this most important debate with my colleagues in the days to come.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, myotonic dystrophy is a rare, multi- systemic, progressive, inherited disease that affects successive family generations but is often misdiagnosed. Affecting as many as 1 in 2,100 individuals, myotonic dystrophy is the most common form of adult muscular dystrophy. However, there is currently no cure and there are no Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved treatments.

Today, I am pleased to introduce the first ever U.S. Senate resolution designating September 15th as International Myotonic Dystrophy Awareness Day. The resolution will help to highlight the devastating generational impact of this disease, focus global attention on accelerating drug discovery, and work to advance healthcare for our community.

Caused by an inherited genetic anomaly, individuals with myotonic dystrophy experience varied and complex symptoms, from locked muscles, to heart, breathing, digestive, hormonal, and cognitive difficulties. It is not uncommon for older family members to only be tested following the birth of an affected child, and despite the availability of simple genetic tests, misdiagnoses can persist for decades.

The different body systems affected, the severity of symptoms, and the age of onset of those symptoms varies greatly between individuals, even within the same family. Many of these individuals live with debilitating symptoms yet in the majority of situations, they never receive adequate or proactive medical care which could dramatically improve their quality of life.

More research is desperately needed to change this reality. Virginia- based researchers are among the global leaders working to better understand myotonic dystrophy and discover new treatments and a cure. Much of this work is being led by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and supported by Virginia advocates.

The Resolution calls for the advancement of scientific and medical myotonic dystrophy research at the National Institutes of Health and as part of the Peer Reviewed Medical Research Program of the Department of Defense; fostering biopharmaceutical innovation that will lead to treatments approved by the FDA and eventually a cure for myotonic dystrophy; advancing programs and policies that assist individuals with disabilities caused by myotonic dystrophy and the caregivers of those individuals; and encouraging awareness and education of myotonic dystrophy among patients, caregivers, clinicians, and researchers.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to see the Resolution designating September 15th as International Myotonic Dystrophy Awareness Day as an opportunity to raise awareness for this devastating disease and to promote and advance the health, well-being, and inherent dignity of all children and adults with myotonic dystrophy. I ask for their support.

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