would never know so obviously -- not obviously, bill clinton never communicated topically or privately what he thought should happen in and divorcement matter and i think we need to contemplate a context policy which assumes a communication that's private is apt, or whether one needs to have a context policy that says you will not -- the white house will not communicate publicly or privately with the department of justice on enforcement matter, which is pretty much the current way of councils office much like the. >> we are going to this to go to the u.s. senate here on c-span2. senators will vote shortly on the confirmation for the next white house office of first management.

mr. peters: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from michigan is recognized. mr. peters: madam president, i rise in support of ahuja and her

nomination to be the director of the office of personnel management or the o.p.m. o.p.m. needs an experienced, qualified leader who is committed to the federal workforce and is invested in their future. ms. ahuja is that leader. she understands the unique challenges facing o.p.m., and she has the management experience and vision needed to restore and strengthen the workforce. i am confident that ms. ahuja is the right person to lead o.p.m. at this pivotal time. i urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the confirmation of kiran ahuja for director of o.p.m., and i ask unanimous consent that the vote scheduled to occur at 2:30 would occur immediately. the presiding officer: is there an objection? without objection. the question is on the nomination. mr. peters: i ask for the yeas and nays. the presiding officer: is there a sufficient second?

there appears to be. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote:

vote:

vote:

vote:

the vice president: on this vote, the yeas are 50, the nays are 50. the senate being equally and evenly divided the vice president votes in the affirmative. the nomination is confirmed. under the previous order, the motion to reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table, and the president will immediately be notified of the senate's action. under the previous order, the senate will proceed to legislative session to resume consideration of the motion to proceed to s. 2093, which the clerk will report. the clerk: motion to proceed to calendar 77, s. 2093, a bill to expand americans access to the ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics, and so forth and for other purposes. the vice president: under the

previous order, the time until 5:30 is equally divided between the two leaders or their designees. a senator: madam president. the vice president: the senator from michigan. ms. stabenow: madam president, i have first, it looks like 12, 12 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the senate. they have the approval of the majority and minority leaders. the vice president: duly noted. ms. stabenow: thank you. madam president. the vice president: the senator from michigan. ms. stabenow: i rise today to encourage all of my colleagues to support the motion to proceed that is in front of us. we might disagree about the underlying bill. in fact, we do disagree. republicans and democrats disagree about the underlying bill. but that fact shouldn't prevent us from even having the

discussion about the bill and about the issue. it's what we were sent here to do, to talk about the important issues that face the american people. i can't think of anything more important, anything more fundamental to our democracy than the freedom to vote. and that's what we're talking about, the freedom to vote. we are sent here to make our best arguments, to try to persuade members who don't see the issue in the same way that we do, and in the end, to vote on important legislation like the bill that is in front of us to protect our freedom to vote as americans. i want to thank senator manchin for being willing to engage in this process in good faith and for his hard work on the issue. i have to wonder why my republican colleagues won't do the same.

what are they so afraid of? it's hard to believe that they're afraid of even having the debate, even having the debate. are they afraid that if the american people hear both sides that the american people will figure out what they're trying to do? after all, the aim of the for the people act is simply to protect americans' freedom to vote and ensure their voices are heard. sadly, these rights are under attack all across the country, including michigan. state lawmakers have introduced at least 389 bills to make it harder to vote in 48 states. and in 2021, at least 14 states have enacted 22 new laws to take away people's freedom to vote. it's clear, this is part of a

coordinated nationwide assault on a fundamental right that my friend, the late congressman john lewis, called precious, almost sacred. right now in michigan, republicans in the legislature are trying to push through a package of bills that will make it much harder for people to vote. some analysts have even described the bills as being worse than the ones in georgia, except we aren't watching them try to criminalize water. why are they doing this in michigan? well, met me go back a bit. michigan is traditionally a ticket-splitting state, what you would call a purple state. in 2010, michigan elected a republican governor. two years later, michigan helped give president barack obama a second term. two years later we elected a republican governor. and two years later michigan

supported donald trump by the narrowest margin of any state, just over 10,000 votes. after that election, democrats did not start a massive effort to take away people's freedom to vote. we got to work. we organized. we listened to people about their concerns, and we worked hard to gain people's support for the next election. that's what you usually do. rather than trying to stop people from voting. we did that hard work in michigan, and you know what? we won the next election. in 2020 in the middle of a pandemic, more people in michigan voted than ever before. 5.5 million of us. and michigan voters clearly and resoundingly chose joe biden to be our next president and kamala harris to be our next vice president.

and they won by more than 150,000 votes. that's 14 times donald trump's margin in 2016. but what did the trump campaign do? well, their campaign has allies that filed eight lawsuits in our state. lost every one. and in the only case that was appealed to the michigan supreme court, the court declined to hear the case despite having a majority of republican justices. republicans know that michigan's election was fair. the results were accurate, and joe biden and kamala harris won our state. the people of michigan voted. michigan counties verified it. our state certified it. there was no evidence of fraud that would begin to suggest that

we need legislation like what michigan republicans are pushing. the republicans just didn't like who michiganders voted for. that's the same thing that's happening here. the republicans don't like being in the minority. they don't like who people voted for. well, you have a choice. you can work hard, try to gain people's trust, try to do things for people, win the next election. or you can try to take away their freedom to vote. i mean, think about it. think about the fact -- in michigan, republicans didn't like who we voted for, so they're coming after the voters. they're coming after the voters. we know this was happening all across the country. it's wrong. it's un-american, frankly. and that's why we need this

legislation, to protect our freedom to vote and to stop billionaires from buying elections. we are committed to i can maaing sure people have their freedoms protected, and we are committed to making sure that billionaires are not buying our elections as well. we want to end the partisan gerrymandering that makes people's votes count -- some count more than other, or rig the system. and we're committed to making sure that the wealthiest people in the country are not buying elections. why is this important? we've seen how so-called dark money groups that don't have to report anything, funded by a handful of billionaire donors, pour unlimited amounts of money into our elections in an attempt to influence the ute come. -- to influence the outcome. it's easy to understand why the

average voter might feel like their voice isn't being heard. the for the people act takes crucial steps to give people their voices back. it improves disclosure requirements so that citizens have a right to know who's giving the money. who's had behind those dark money donations? it reforms the federal election commission so they can better enforce the election laws already on the books. and it takes steps to protect our elections from foreign influence. i, for one, think these are essential to our democracy. i know my senate democratic colleagues feel the same. however, senate republican colleagues disagree. so let's pass this motion to proceed so we can talk about it, so we can have a debate about

it. michigan voters made their voices heard. the american people made their voices heard. -- in the election. we need to be debating this issue and make sure that our voices are being heard across the country. madam president, i yield the floor. i would suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from alaska. ms. murkowski: madam president -- the presiding officer: the senate? a quorum call. ms. murkowski: i request that proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. murkowski: thank you, madam president. this afternoon we will have

before us, as members of the senate, legislation that is entitled the for the people act. before i speak to the for the people act, senate bill 1, i want to the make clear to colleagues that i have been keenly focused, interested in ensuring that when we have elections in this country that they are free, they are fair, and they are accessible to all, that barriers to voting should be placed on the sidelines. for the past three sessions of congress now, i have been the only cosponsor of the voting rights advancement act. this was a measure that in prior congresses was led by senator leahy, and i was pleased to be able to join him as a cosponsor. that measure is now -- has now

been introduced on the house side as the john lewis voting rights act, a measure to basically reestablish a preclearance system which was in place until 2013, and then it was pretty much upended with the supreme court ruling in shelby. i certainly and absolutely intend to cosponsor that measure again under its new name, the john lewis voting rights act. i will work with senator leahy. i will work with senator manchin. i will work with anybody on this initiative to help update this formula to ensure that we do have just exactly that -- access to voting that is equal, that is fair, that is free from discrimination. madam president, i note at the outset of my comments this morning the support for that

legislation so that, again, folks understand that i fully understand that access to the ballot in this country is not perfect and, again, that i have stood behind legislation to ensure that our elections are fair. we've come a long way. we've come a long way, but i think we all recognize that there is a long path ahead of us. so let me turn to s. 1, the for the people act. my fear is that this measure does not move us further down the path. if you look at the bill, it is wholly partisan. unlike the john lewis voting rights act, which is very narrowly focused on voting rights, s. 1 has been described as sprawling. it's been described as ambitious, which is fair --

ambitious is not a bad thing, but it's clearly, clearly very broad. and it certainly contains some noteworthy goals, but i fear that there are provisions contained within s. 1 that take it too far or that i think are bad policy or that i simply think are beyond the power of congress to regulate. my concern, and i've shared with many, is that the bill that we have in front of us is not so much about voting rights as it is a federal takeover of the election system, and a partisan takeover of the election system. the way the bill is advertised that somehow we can't count on states to do votes fairly, i have a problem with. i come from a state where we

were under preclearance for a long period of time. i recognize that. we had a history that was not one that i think we're proud of in terms of ensuring that there was fair and open, equal access to all. but what we have seen in the state and have we have worked through that process that was in place some years back is that we have come to this place where we can, we have demonstrated that we can run a proper and an honest election. we've proven this time and time again. so so much of my concern with what we have in front of us is that when you nationalize something, when you have the federal -- federal overall oversight, it ends up being a one size fits all mandate coming out of washington, d.c., that in many cases doesn't work in a place like alaska. there are certain aspects of

s. 1 that i absolutely do support. early voting. we shouldn't be limited to just the day of the election. i think we recognize that. what we can do to ensure that early voting is there i think is important to us. i come from a state where you want to vote absentee, there is no excuse required. you can just vote absentee because it is more convenient to you. i will tell you, i was really surprised to find out how many states do not allow for that. i think that's something that we need to address. i am supportive of that. i think we need to be doing more when it comes to ease of voter registration. and, again, in -- in the state of alaska, we have put in place ways to make it easier for folks to register.

but, again, i'm looking at what we have done in alaska, proud of some of the measures that we have put in place, but i recognize that we did this without d.c. prescriptives or mandates of uniformity. so in walking through some of the -- some of the concerns that i have, i menges -- i mentioned making voter registration easier. well, the we the people act mandates voter registration. in alaska what we have put in place is that alaskans are automatically registered unless they specifically opt-out, they are automatically registered to vote when they sign up for their permanent fund dividend. this is obviously very exclusive and unique to one state and one state alone. but under this measure that we

have in front of us, it would require state election officials to register any eligible uneligible citizens. if we allow for automatic registration for your p.f.d., there are a lot of alaskans who do not sign up for the p.f.d. or are not eligible for the p.f.d. will the state have to have two different systems here in how we meet this mandate. so i'm looking at it and saying that is a fair amount of micromanagement here. if a state wants to implement an automatic system, it should do so as alaska did, but without the thread of the federal government looming behind them, making sure that the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed in exactly the way the election commission thinks it should be. i don't think that we want to make the administration of

elections involved an even more burdensome effort, more costly. if you look at it, you can say, let's make sure we can allow for easier registration, but let's not impose burdensome mandates. early voting requirements. this is another issue with the bill. the bill requires 15 days of early voting. this is something that we already do in alaska, works great, but also requires that each polling place must be open for at least ten hours a day. so we're back here in washington, d.c., telling us in alaska that you have to have your polling place open for ten hours a day. think about this in context of a small community. and i'll take a super small community, arctic village. about 150 people live there total, not 150 voters, 150

total, so it wouldn't make sense for the state to maintain poll workers for ten hours a day for 15 days in a village like arctic village. the whole town can prac lickly -- practically vote in an hour. but that is not the point. the point is you're imposing a federal mandate in a one size one-size-fits-all approach that might not fit there. and same day voter registration across the country. again, in alaska, we have been doing a frit fair job as to how we run our elections. i think it's reasonable that we be allowed to have voter registration deadlines that work for the administrators in their respective states. i know some people are surprised, but the fact of the matter is we don't know everything best back here in

terms of how to -- how to implement or how states should be implementing. states should have the latitude to implement a registration system that works with the state's geography, with their i. iter infrastructure, with their election funding, other limitations that they may have. forcing states to allow ballot harvesting, this is another area of s. 1 that i have a problem with. this practice involves paid campaign operatives, going out, collecting ballots and returning them to be counted. i don't know, i look at this one and see so many ways in which this can be abused and exploited. if a state wants to permit this practice with certain perimeters, that's fine, but not all states should be forced to do so by the federal government and not be made subject to d.c.'s idea of what actually

works here. maintaining voter rolls. i think we all want to make sure that voting roles are current -- rolls are current and accurate, but the provisions of s. 1 go very fair. the bill would require states to, quote, have reliable experts. this is not defined. they have to be able to establish that before removing a voter. what is not considered objective and reliable is a failure to vote or a failure of a voter to respond to a notice sent by the state informing the voter they've been removed. you will have a situation here where the undefined term will have people who long since left the jurisdiction remaining on the voter rolls. there is the issue of restructuring the federal election commission. from its very inception, this was designed to be, this was meant to be a body that was bipartisan to specifically ensure that no political party

would grant its candidates an unfair advantage in elections. and so you've got a restructuring that is proposed here that i think presents a flaw. it would reduce the number of seats on the f.e.c. from six to five, from two political parties and one ostensible independent. a president could find someone to vote in his or her favor each time but never registered as a member of a particular political party. this would also be given the responsibility of handing out loads of cash from the public coffers. i -- i take issue with this and i think that you've got a fair amount of folks in my state and across the country that do take issue with that as well in terms of public funding. s. 1 creates a new structure of

public financing of campaigns that matches small dollar donations on a 6-1 basis. i look at this and i've got concerns about why anyone thinks it's a good idea to have even more money in politics, but it's easy to me to see how this could be exploited by a partisan board holding the purse strings here. so, again, i look at that as a particular example of what are we doing with this in this voting rights bill? i mentioned in my introduction here that i feel that you have many provisions in this measure that are likely unconstitutional. to start, while congress has broad authority to regulate the times, places and manner of congressional elections, our powers are much more limited in how a state chooses to appoint its electors to the electoral

college. there we may only determine the time of choosing electors and the day on which they should give their votes. so every provision that purportedly changes how a state chooses its electors could face significant and i think justified challenges in court. there are numerous provisions which try to criminalize speech that is almost certainly protected. even the aclu opposed parts of this bill because it would limit speeches of citizens as well as compel speech. two years ago the fourth circuit invalidated a law nearly identical to a provision contained in this bill. another issue is the issue of tax returns and whether or not congress can mandate candidates for president to release their tax returns.

i -- i think it's only reasonable that they should do so. but the concern that i have is that the constitution is really pretty clear in outlining the requirements to be president and releasing tax documents is not one of those. so it just kind of presents a challenge there. can we direct that? there's an issue. requiring states to -- to create redistricting commissions may also be unconstitutional since congress cannot coerce or come men dear state governments. also cannot have convicted felons to vote or have an ethics code on the justices of the supreme court. while these may be good ideas, is the constitutional authority there? i think there is real question

to that. so, madam president, my concern, and i'm coming to the end of my comments here. my concern about this measure is that while the title is strong -- the title is strong for the people, i'm not certain that this measure will do what those who have hoped that it would do will do. it will make administering elections more difficult, more expensive, subject to federal micromanagement. again, i mentioned the issue of questions of constitutionality and whether aspects of it will be thrown out. passing this into law could result in messy litigation that leaves election law unclear for years to come. i'm concerned about one size fits all that is challenging. we're a pretty amazing 50 states

but we're all a little bit unique. but how states have -- have leeway or latitude in determining what works, i think, is important. so i recognize that we are at a place in a time when credibility and -- and faith in our institutions is at a really weak moment. a very weak moment. and so when we -- when we think about the things that are core to our institutions, one of those -- one of those fundamentals is -- is the fairness of -- of our elections. and so ensuring that we are -- that we are taking an approach in this nation where all people

feel that the election process is for them as equal and fair as it is for their neighbor down the street or their -- their fellow american all the way across the country. how we are able to deliver on this promise is something that we need to continue to strive towards. so i'm going to continue to work on voting rights reform. i'm going to be doing that through the template of the john lewis voting rights act. americans need to have faith in our institutions. they need to know that our elections are fair, that they are easy and accessible for all. and we can't instill that trust with a wholly partisan effort. we've got some work to do. we've got a lot of work to do,

and it's important work. so i thank you, madam president. i yield the floor. a senator: madam president. the vice president: the senator from colorado. mr. bennet: thank you, madam president. when i got up this morning, the farthest thing from my mind was that i was going to have a chance to see you today. and since i am seeing you today, madam president, i want to say thank you. i want to say thank you for your role in this administration, in leading the biden administration to make a proposal that was passed in the american recovery plan that's going to cut childhood poverty in this country almost in half this year. and what people should know is not only that the president, the president sitting here led that effort at the white house, but she led it from the very beginning. it was one of the original sponsors of that legislation. and even though the president's

budget has said we ought to make it, extend it to 2025, i just want to let you know, madam president, that we're still fighting here to make it permanent. and i think we should make it permanent. we've already had -- this isn't why i'm here today, but we've already had columbia university tell us that there's going to be an eight times annual return on the investment that we make as part of the recovery because instead of mitigating for the problems of kids in poverty, we will actually be eliminating poverty for almost half the kids in this country, for millions of american children. and not only that, over 90% of american kids are going to benefit from this biden-harris tax cut that's in this package. i just want to say thank you for that. we've got to keep working on it. i agree that it ought to be extended for years and years and years. for me, that means permanent.

we're going to keep trying to do that. so thank you. and thank you for leading on the issues that we're here to talk about today, because this is the moment that we are challenged in ways that we've never been challenged before. five months ago, madam president, a violent mob stormed this floor. five months ago, trying to stop the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next. and they took us out of this room, and they took us to one of the senate office buildings. and i was watching the television as i was there, and all i could think about was what's the rest of the world thinking about when our capitol is being stormed. by a violent mob of our own citizens, by a violent mob of our own citizens. and not just what our adversaries are thinking. not what is russia thinking, what is china using with this footage, what are the iranians

going to do with this footage, but what are people like my mom and her parents who are polish jews who survived the holocaust, and after making it through one of the worst moments in human history, were able to rebuild their shattered lives in this country, in the united states of america. and to think about similarly situated people all over the planet for whom this is the greatest hope still for freedom and for liberty, for democracy itself. that's what's at stake, at least as far as i'm concerned, in this debate. and i know the president understands this well, and i hope others understand this well, that even before january 6, our democracy was under attack. it was under attack as a result of gerrymandering. it was under attack because of the way special interests

control the agenda on this floor and down the hall. it was under attack because of voter suppression that nobody in the 21st century imagined we'd ever see in our country again. not to mention the fact of citizens united which unleashed the floodgate of money of billionaires to control our political system. this is an effort to separate the american people from their exercise in self-governing. it's an effort to destroy the american people's confidence in their exercise in self-governing and making it harder to vote is a huge piece of this puzzle. this isn't the first time in our history that we've been confronted by this kind of stuff. i've said before, and it's absolutely true, that you go back to the founding of this country, it's a story of, on

the one hand, the highest ideals that have ever been written down by human beings and the worst instincts that have ever been conjured by human beings. in our case, that was enslaving other human beings. and our history is a story of that battle between those highest ideals and those worst instincts. and every single time americans have stepped up and they found a way to make our country more democratic, more fair, and more free. small-d democrat. and that's what we have to do again. that's our job now, because today in ways that were unimaginable to me when i was in college, except when i read it in the history books, antidemocratic forces are stronger than any time since jim crow. and it's true. that's a fact. what i was reading about in the

1980's about laws that had been fought against in the 1960's, they're back in 2020. if you think i'm exaggerating, here's some examples. in georgia, bills to undermine nonpartisan election officials so that politicians can overturn outcomes they don't like. in arizona, the same kind of thing, a partisan election audit. in florida, a bill to restrict vote by mail. state legislators attempting to give themselves the power to toss out an election, as i said, that they don't like. these are laws all across the country. there are 250 or so of these laws that are being passed. and, by the way, not a single one of those is being passed with a democratic vote, a vote from a democrat. in 250 legislatures -- and you know what else doesn't exist in any one of those legislatures?

the filibuster does not exist in any one of those legislatures. we need to stand up for our democracy, and that's why we need to pass the for the people act. the bill includes commonsense reforms that are broadly supported by the american people. i know, we know these reforms work because they've worked in colorado, where we've banned gerrymandering. we have automatic voter registration, we have early voting, we have vote by mail, we have increased election security. this is all nonpartisan. this is all common sense. this wasn't done by democrats. it was done by republicans and democrats working together. what's the result? we have the second-highest voter turnout rate in the country, 72%. i'm so sick and tired of saying that. i want us to be number one so that i don't have to hear from senator klobuchar how minnesota

is number one. i come here, and i have to say we're number two. that's not good enough. we need to be number one. but if we had this across the country, the agenda in washington would look more like what the american people actually sent us here to do. so this isn't just about voting rights, although that's very, very important. it's not just about elections. that's very important. but we could finally, probably create universal health care in this country, improve our schools, make sure that we had an economy that when it grew, it grew for everybody, not just the top 10%. we probably stopped spending our time cutting taxes for the wealthiest americans when our income and equality has never been higher. although now that i mention that, i realize because of the president's leadership, president biden's leadership

we've started to do that, because we've cut taxes now for the vast majority of americans because of the work that they've led. we can change the destiny of america. that's what we can do, and that's what this exercise in self-government is about. we can show that we can compete with the communist government in china and send a signal to people like my grandparents all across the world that american democracy is stronger than ever and that they should trust it, they can count on it, and maybe get a piece of it for themselves. that we remain a beacon of freedom and self-government, and that we remain committed not to our worst instincts, but to our highest ideals. i'd encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this legislation. and with that, i thank my colleague from north carolina for his indulgence.

madam president, thank you very much for yours as well. i yield the floor. a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from north carolina. mr. tillis: welcome back, madam president. thank you for giving me an opportunity to talk about the bill we'll have before us in about an hour and a half. i have to stand here and rise in opposition to the for the people act. i think you could appropriately tell that the for the people act, we're going to be voting on it later today, but it would dramatically alter election laws across our country. i've been in the senate for six and a half years, and this ranks up there as one of the worst bills that i've seen come before this body. i know my friends on the other side of the aisle like to talk about it as being essential for protecting democracy, but in the face of that it could be unconstitutional and taking away the rights of states to

administer their elections, i find it hard to believe it's anything but a motivated attempt to federalize the nation's election system. the for the people act would achieve it through a number of, i think, overreaches. i'm only going to talk about a few. for one, voter i.d. the for the people act would essentially render null voter i.d. laws across this country. instead of an i.d., which most of us have and virtually i think every citizen should have, you'd simply just sign an affidavit to say you are who you say you are. i've heard the georgia law, for example, brought up as providing egregious limits or obstacles to approving who you say you are. in a hearing a month or so ago, we had an official from georgia in a judiciary committee. i said could you expwhrain -- explain to me what the challenge is. if somebody gets an absentee

ballot like you do in north carolina -- we have no excuse absentee balloting. we've had it for years. i supported it. i voted that way several times. we had people say it was just an egregious imposition to note a 10 or 12 character on the driver's license. you just simply have to write a number down. if you have an ink pen, i guess you can say if you don't have a writing instrument that's an imposition on the voter. i don't thinki don't think it i. even in the georgia law, they even provide for people who want to vote who may not have a government-issued i.d. other documents that could be used in their place. we will talked about hundreds of bills that have been filed by republican legislators without a single democrat vote that are like the georgia bill that i just described which i think is arguably a fair bill.

but most of these bills are things that democrat and republicans should be able to agree on. you should cleanse your voter rolls. you should make sure people who have died, people who could be registered? one or more states are cleared from the voter rolls to prevent fraud and abuse, not necessarily perpetrated by any one party but just because the data could be out of date. back on voter i.d., i find it remarkable that we have a measure before us that we're going to be voting on today, a simple i.d. requirement that 80% of americans just this week in a poll said they think is reasonable. now you have to also understand we make accommodations. if you don't have an i.d. in north carolina, we move heaven and earth to make sure you need a government-issued i.d., i believe, to be able to move through society, to get a hotel room, to get on an airplane. i had to provide, i had surgery a couple of months ago. i had to present an i.d. to get

admitted into the hospital. i think we're disenfranchising people from the rest of society by not at least making sure they can identify who they are. there is no argument. you can get on a plane without an i.d. you can't travel internationally without an i.d. you can't get health care without an i.d. but for some reason, to do something, to exercise our right and our privilege to vote, we think that we don't need an i.d. i also worry about a provision in this bill that would allow nationwide ballot harvesting. there are only a couple of states that actually allow ballot harvesting. what does that mean? you have a worker coming up going door to door, encouraging somebody to vote. it may be somebody that doesn't want to vote. but now you're out there to capture their ballot and bring bunches of ballots to the polls. ballot harvesting is legal in some states. i know california. it's not legal in our state. in fact, there was a republican candidate who ultimately withdrew himself after winning a race after there were some -- a

couple of hundred ballots that were supposedly harvested. i don't think he knew about it, but it was a campaign operative that did it, and it cost him an election. and i'll tell you the one thing that really -- that i really do believe that the founding fathers were here in this chamber today, they would really be scratching their heads. it's the idea of taxpayer-funded elections. make no mistake about it, federal, state, and local dollars are used to make sure that we have election machines, that we have poll workers, that we have access and we can always improve access to the polls. but in this bill, they are saying -- and people in north carolina, if you were paying attention last year, my race was all in with me and my opponent, $296 million. there were a lot of ads on ■tv i had my friends call me up, screaming at the tv when they were mean to me, and i'm sure i had my -- my opponent who was a friend of mine say the same thing. but now what we're going to do,

if we were to pass this bill, is say tom tillis supporters are going to have to have money spent and directed to my opponent to try and beat me, and vice versa. millions and millions of dollars. and in states like north carolina, not only north carolina taxpayers, but taxpayers from across this country will see their taxpayer dollars come to north carolina to influence an outcome in a campaign that could be a thousand miles away. that is, i think, taking taxpayer dollars and then spending them on something that they are personally opposed to, foond -- offended by is something i don't think the founding fathers would ever have envisioned as being appropriate for this great nation. so, ladies and gentlemen, today at about 5:30 -- i think a little after -- the for the

people, or as i said the fool the people act is going to be before us, and it's going to fail. we know it. senator schumer knows it. so why are we doing it? are we doing it for messaging points? are there some far-left liberals that just want the vote on the floor knowing full well it's not going to pass? have we actually tried to do any work to figure out what role the federal government should play in actually improving election outcomes that ultimately need to be administered by the state? no, that hasn't happened. so today we're going to come on the floor. this measure is not going to move forward. and somebody maybe is fooling, i don't know, far-left groups just to say we tried, but they didn't try because if they had tried they would have reached across the aisle and try to figure out something that made sense that could pass with 60 votes. so, mr. president, the for the people act is far afield from what our founding fathers envisioned. can we improve our election processes across this country?

yes. but i would prefer to have the 50 laboratories of democracy figure out how to improve it and have other states implement it or perhaps even other states in the northeast that have far fewer voting days than we do in north carolina. they could learn from that. maybe we should create standards and incentives for that sort of stuff, but not a federal takeover of the state -- the elections in this country. and for that reason, i will be opposing the for the people act. thank you, mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from ohio. mr. portman: mr. president, i thank my colleague from north carolina for his thoughts. we are on the cusp of a vote here on legislation that would dramatically change the way we conduct our elections in this country. as my colleague said, are all elections perfect? no. but i have to tell you i'm really proud of what we do in ohio. we make it easy to vote. we also make it hard to cheat. that's the right balance. this bill, s. 1, is called the for the people act. what it actually does is it

strips away control from people in ohio and elsewhere to build or write election laws in our own states and centralizes that control here in washington, d.c. that's not consistent with the constitution or "the federalist papers." in addition, some of this proposed change attempts to undermine the first amendment rights that we hold so dear as americans. i'm proud of the way we conduct our elections in ohio, in part because we have high turnout. in fact, we have record turnout last year. that's great. and i don't want to leave it up to federal employees here in washington, d.c. to determine how our system should work in ohio, which is what this legislation would do. i mentioned the constitution earlier. it gives the primary power over the election administration to the state. it's very clear about that. it also said in federalist 59, which is alexander hamilton who was the guy most interested in these federalist issues, he said it is clear that the federal government should only get involved in very extraordinary

situations. last fall, 5.97 million ohioans cast a vote. that's a record, as i said. and it represented 74% of eligible voters in ohio. despite that and despite the challenges of running the largest election in our state's history during an unprecedented pandemic, we ran what was widely reported on the right, on the left, by the media, as a secure and successful election. in fact, i think the most successful election we have ever had. our state-run bipartisan county boards of election with two democrats and two republicans in each county were able to do that because they know what's best for ohio, and they are held accountable. but this partisan bill claims washington, d.c. somehow knows better. s. 1 strips the power from accountable democratically state representatives in my state and around the country and congressional districts and hands them over to a federal panel, again staffed by

unelectable, unaccountable third parties and a computer program. again, i think it should be something that is part of what elected representatives are held to account for, is how we draw our congressional districts. it mandates the controversial practice of ballot harvesting. i don't like ballot harvesting. i think it makes it easier ■fo operatives on the right and the left to conduct outright voter fraud. it would force taxpayers to fund the political campaigns of candidates they don't support. it turns the federal election commission into a tool of which ever party controls the whitehouse. instead of being even, it would actually be lopsided and be partisan. it seemingly contradicts the 26th amendment by forcing states to let individuals register to vote as early as 16 years old. and then it could allow those 16 or 17-year-olds to vote by banning state voter i.d. laws. the vast majority of americans support voter i.d. laws. it's a fact. republicans, democrats, and independents think they ought to have some sort of i.d. when you come to vote, but this bill bans

that safeguard. i could list other serious flaws of the proposal, but the bottom line is that this legislation has been presented as a safeguard for democracy when it actually contains some radically undemocratic provisions. i'm in favor of state-level commonsense efforts to increase voter confidence in our elections. we absolutely should do that. we need to protect democracy by ensuring again that people know it's easy to vote, it's accessible. that's good. we should all want that. but we should also make it hard to cheat and make sure we have security in our elections so people know they have trust in the system their vote is going to count as it should. again, that's what we do in ohio. i don't think this legislation furthers those objectives. instead, i think it would amount to a federal takeover of our election system which has always been in the domain of the states. this is a carefully constructed framework of checks and balances including between the branches of government. i cannot support legislation that would run so counter to

what the framers of the constitution intended and the election system that works well in my home state of ohio. i yield back. the presiding officer: the senator from mississippi. mr. wicker: mr. president, i, too, rise in opposition to s. 1. and urge a no vote. the bill that the senate will be asked to consider today is a truly radical piece of legislation. it turns out because of that, it's an unpopular piece of legislation. the kind of bill the senate was created to help stop from becoming law. s. 1 seeks to transform the way we do elections in this country, and to do so on a narrow partisan basis. here's what americans need to understand about this legislation. first, it would strip away the power of the states to run elections and hand it to the federal government, showing a

complete lack of trust in local and state leadership. it would also spend millions of taxpayer dollars to help politicians run ads for their campaigns. taxpayers would suddenly have to finance partisan messages they may strongly disagree with. raising serious fifth amendment questions. -- first amendment questions. s. 1 would nullify sensible voter i.d. laws across the country, including voter identification laws in predominantly democrat states like connecticut and delaware. and the legislation would also give the federal government the right to draw congressional district lines even though states have done this since the beginning of our republic. at its root, this bill is based on a myth, and i consider my words here, it's based on a lie,

and that lie is that voting rights are somehow under attack in states like georgia and texas. this is utterly absurd, and i think the voters in those states understand that. the election reforms recently passed in georgia, for example, have actually expanded access to the ballot box, making it easier to vote but also making it harder to cheat. the new georgia law does this, among other things. it expands the window for early voting. the new georgia law allows no excuse mail-in voting to continue. it adds 100 new ballot drop boxes. it allows voters to get a government-issued i.d. for free. and it increases transparency in elections, for example, making sure the ballot counting does not stop in the middle of the night as we have seen in past elections. these reforms are entirely reasonable and widely popular

across america, and were based on broad input from local stakeholders. my colleagues who are pushing s. 1 say they are trying to save democracy, but in fact the bill would actually harm democracy. s. 1 would undermine the security of the ballot box, causing more and more americans to question the outcome of our elections. we should be working to strengthen trust in democracy, not weaken it. mr. president, the only thing bipartisan about this bill is the opposition to it. in my home state of mississippi, every member of the house of representatives, democrat and republican, voted against this legislation, including democrat representative vinnie thompson, a chairman of a committee in the house of representatives. the chairman of the democratic national convention of 2020 who said he voted for it because it was opposed by his constituents.

the aclu has come out against s. 1 saying that some provisions unconstitutionally impinge on the free speech rights of american citizens and public interest organizations. hardly a right-wing conspiracy group, the aclu. the united states chamber of commerce, along with 300 other organizations, has said this legislation is fundamentally incompatible with the american tradition and the principles enshrined in our constitution. and when you ask the public about the specific proposals in this bill, many americans, conservative and liberal, democrat, republican, and independent, are outright opposed. according to a recent poll, 81% of people say they are concerned with allowing voters to vote without any form of photo i.d. 83% are concerned with ballot harvesting practices, this practice of having party

operatives go door to door and pick up large numbers of ballots to turn them in. 68% of the democrats are opposed to so-called ballot harvesting. and 50% of people say they oppose taxpayer dollars being used to pay for political campaigns. this, again, cuts across party lines. so it is clear that s. 1 is not popular. it's clearly at odds with the views of the majority of the american people. every senator that votes yes will need to prepare to explain to voters why they wanted to overturn state voter i.d. protections, allow ballot harvesting, force taxpayers to pay for political campaigns, and enact a partisan federal election commission. that's why s. 1 should be

rejected this afternoon, and that's why it will be rejected. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from alabama. mr. shelby: mr. president, today -- this afternoon i want to discuss my grave concerns with s. 1. many have said that this political power grab is a solution in search of a problem. i agree with that. this bill contains, i believe, a number of alarming progress visions that would have a devastating impact on our nation's electoral process. it would make our elections more chaotic and less secure. this legislation contains more than 800 pages of bad policies that i believe america does not need and does not want.

i believe that the strength of our election system is in its diversity, allowing each state to determine what's best for them. s. 1 would force a single partisan view of elections on more than 10,000, mr. president, jurisdictions across the country. for example, state and local election administrators would be forced to change, one, how they register voters and which voting systems they use, how they handle early voting and absentee ballots and how they maintain voter lists. it makes election fraud harder to detect by allowing unlimited battle harvesting, making it more difficult to maintain accurate voting lists. a recent university poll found that 80% of americans support requiring a form of

identification before a person can vote. think about it -- 80%. remember, now. americans are now -- presently americans are required to present a photo i.d. to do a number of things. we do it every day, at an airport to board a commercial flight, in a hospital for any outpatient or in-patient procedure. at the pharmacy to purchase over-the-counter sinus medication or prescription, at the bank to open a bank account, apply for a mortgage, drive by or rent a car, get married, purchase a gun, rent a hotel room, donate blood, obtain a passport, pick up packages at the u.s. post office. we all do this every day. this legislation would permanently tip the scales in favor of the democrats by

politicizing the federal election commission, pouring federal tax dollars into campaigns and killing free speech. do americans really want their taxes going toward a federal campaign fund that would finance the expenses of all candidates running for congress? s. 1 would reverse years of improvements that have been made in many states, improvements that protect security, integrity, and the credibility of our elections. each state, i believe, should be left with the freedom and flexibility to administer their own respective elections without interference from the federal government. s. 1 mandates ballot drop boxes, which increase the risk of fraud by allowing people other than the voter -- other than the voter to drop off marked ballots outside of the view of election officials.

as i mentioned before, this bill provides government funding for campaigns. $6 of federal funding for every $1 raised to small donors. my gosh, it would be a windfall for a lot of them companies. this essentially forces americans to fund candidates they don't agree with and support attack ads against those that they do agree with. it federalizes federal districting, putting in one set of federal rules for withdrawing federal districts, something that has traditionally been a role for each state. lastly, mr. president, s. 1 requires states to give felons the right to vote since they are out of prison. while this is a bad bill all around, i believe that these are some of the top worst provisions and provisions the american people oppose the most. one, gutting voter i.d. laws,

two spending tax dollars on political campaigns, three, allowing unlimited ballot harvesting, and, four, turning the federal election commission into a partisan operation. so just to name those, among thoars, is -- others is the reason to vote against this bill. i think the american people don't want this and they don't want to be the recipients of such harmful policy. i do not support this bill and i trust that a majority of the senate will not vote accordingly. thank you. ms. collins: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from maine. ms. collins: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, the right to the vote is the hallmark of a democracy. it is what distinguishes us from

authoritarian regimes where elections have tainted if they are held at all, where the free and fair elections that define america do not exist. president abraham lincoln once said elections belong to the people. voting is an action we choose to take to exercise a fundamental freedom our constitution grants to the people. so when we hear of a bill entitled for the people, we naturally would assume at first that it must be enhancing our democracy, but a closer examination suggests otherwise. in fact, s. 1 would take away the rights of people in each of

the 50 states to determine which election rules work best for their citizens. let's start with some indisputable facts. this legislation was first introduced in 2019, prior to last year's presidential election. it was not considered in the senate. it did not become law. nevertheless, according to the census bureau, the 2020 elections saw the highest voter turnout in the 21st century, equally significant asian americans and hispanic americans voted in record-high percentages, and there was higher turnout across all racial

groups, including black americans, than in 2016. the census bureau, mr. president, also asked eligible nonvoting americans why they didn't vote in 2020. the majority of respondents said that they were not interested, didn't like any of the candidates, were too busy, or simply forgot. the point is, would the record high turnout in 2020, it is very difficult to make the case that this bill is necessary as some have said to save our democracy. this was a bill that was introduced to enhance partisan messaging, not to enhance participation in our elections

as the over the top rhetoric about this bill highlights. consider, for example, the debate over georgia's new election law. in many ways georgia's election law actually makes it easier for citizens to vote than in other states that have not been subject to the same backlash. georgia allows no-excuse absentee ballots. delaware, new york, massachusetts, and connecticut do not. georgia's new law provides a minimum of 17 in-person early voting days. delaware, new jersey, and connecticut had no in-person early voting days at all in 2020. although new jersey enacted a

new law to allow early voting, earlier this year, to great fanfare, it actually has fewer -- eight fewer voting days than georgia. despite having these, and many other different election rules, delaware, connecticut, and georgia had very similar levels of black voter turnout in the 2020 election. massachusetts, by contrast, had just more than half the black voter turnout of georgia. this information contradicts the underlying premise in s. 1 that we must overturn the law of every state in our nation in order to preserve the right to

vote. this legislation would force numerous changes to laws in states that have been successfully conducting elections for a very long time. let me use the state of maine as an example. a state that consistently ranks at or near the top of the nation in voter participation, i am pleased to report. mr. president, maine does not have early voting. maine does not allow ballot harvesting. maine does not count absentee ballots that arrive after the polls close on election night. maine does not allow voters to receive absentee ballots automatically without requesting

them. yet, in 202071% of -- in to 20, -- in 2020, 71% of mainers cast votes. these results further demonstrate that absent a compelling need, the federal government should not be preempting the election laws of all 50 states. now let's examine the burdensome list of federal mandates advocates of this bill would impose on each and every state. let me highlight a few of the significant flaws. the bill would require states to allow ballot harvesting where third parties, usually political

operatives, collect ballots from voters. this raises obvious and significant concerns about voter intimidation, coercion, and ballot security. the bill would prohibit voter i.d., overturning existing law in 35 states. it would require that absentee ballots be accepted up to seven days after the election which could lead to chaos and distrust in particularly close races. the bill would transform of federal election commission into a partisan entity which would jettison the requirement for bipartisan agreement on significant issues and lead to

partisan enforcement. another problem with this bill is that it would allocate billions of federal dollars to congressional campaigns, forcing americans to subsidize the campaigns of politicians with whom they vigorously disagree or simply dislike. even very wealthy officeholders would be eligible for public financing. do we really need more money in political campaigns when federal funds could be used to combat the opioid epidemic or to reduce hunger among children or to spur economic development and the creation of more jobs? now, mr. president, there are, of course, times when it's

compelling and appropriate for congress to intervene. the voting rights act of 1965 is an excellent example. it was it was passed at a time when many americans, particularly black americans faced overwhelming barriers designed to prevent them from voting. section 2 of the voting rights act is still in effect today. it prohibits voting practices and procedures that are discriminatory. it also allows the department of justice to sue any state or local government to enforce this provision. certainly there are improvements that can be made in our election laws. for example, i support efforts

to disclose dark money in campaigns. i support mandatory reporting to the f.b.i. of a foreign government contacts a political campaign with an offer of assistance. and i have worked with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to provide generous grants to states so that they could better secure their voting infrastructure against cyber threats and foreign intrusions. unfortunately s. 1 is not legislation that could ever form the basis of a reasonable bipartisan elections reform bill. and it is far more likely to sow

more distrust in our elections than to ease the partisan divisions in our country. for the reasons that i have discussed, i shall cast my vote against this flawed bill. thank you, mr. president. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from washington. ms. cantwell: mr. president, i come to the floor this afternoon to actually urge my colleagues to support this important legislation. and i listened to my colleague from maine on her remarks. and i take her at her word. any chance to work on these election issues in the future i guarantee you we're all ears. i say that because i come from the state of washington, and we have a very high election turnout. we have a very high election turnout rate because we have a vote by mail system that's been developed over a long period of time. my colleague knew my predecessor

slade gordon who was a three-term senator in the 2,000 election. i won by 2,229 votes. and i'm forever grateful to senator gorton for having faith in that election. that election that included provisional ballots and signatures and all sorts of things that people really understood. i think that's the principle here. our election in the state of washington is based on your signature. that's the way it is now when you vote in person. and it is the way it is when you vote by mail. so our system has a lot of security in it, and this legislation that's before us today is to make sure that these rights, these civil liberties and constitutional rights of individuals are upheld throughout the united states of america. now, i understand some of my colleagues may not like the ethics reform or campaign finance reform in the underlying bill. i support them. but at the heart of this debate is whether we're going to fight

to make sure that the federal government does its job on constitutional rights. i feel like there's a little bit of hiding going on on this discussion about whether we have a role, that this is somehow left up to the states, which reminds me when rosa parks was sitting on a bus, we didn't say it's just up to those individual states or when people were denied equal accommodations at hotels, we didn't say it was just up to those states. and we certainly didn't say when people used police dogs trying to intimidate women to vote in the 1960's that it was just up to those states. no, no, no. we did something about it. we passed the 1964 civil rights act and the 1965 voting rights act. we did that because intimidation was happening. and we needed to correct for it.

so i hope that our colleagues will think about this issue because to me it's the same debate we're having on criminal justice reform. so many people on the other side of the aisle said, you know what? this is up to local police departments and it's just up to the local governments, and that's all there is to it. no, that's not all there is to this. this is about whether we do our job in upholding these constitutional rights when certain states don't do that. and so these american voting rights are guaranteed by our constitution. the 15th amendment provides that voting rights cannot be abridged on the account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. the 19th amendment which turned a hundred years old last year provides the voting rights cannot be denied on account of sex. the 26th amendment provides that americans 18 years of age or older cannot be denied the right to vote on account of age. generations of americans fought for these rights over many decades, and they didn't come

easy to us as a nation. and nor should we overlook now these issues as we think that these rights, these constitutional obligations that we should be fighting for and should uphold are facing challenges at the local level. i know that they -- my colleagues say that these are state rights to hold these elections. article, section 4 provides congress to make or alter rules for federal elections. the authority has repeated will i been upheld as broad and comprehensive. the u.s. supreme court has held that the election law gives congress the authority to, quote, override state laws to regulate federal elections. now, this was in a pretty fame owtion case in 2015. the majority opinion in the arizona state legislature versus the arizona independent redistricting commission, justice ginsburg wrote, quote,

the dominant purpose ever the elections claw, the historical -- clause, the historical record bears out was to empower congress to joamp write state election rules. the clause was also intended to act as a safeguard against manipulation of electoral rules by politicians and factions in the states to entrench themselves or place their interests over those of the electorate. end quote. so these issues are very clear. it is calling on us to make sure that we uphold those constitutional rights. but according to the brennan center for justice at new york university school of law, at least 14 states from georgia, florida, oklahoma, and many others have enacted voting rights since the 20 election to restrict individuals. my colleagues have been out here talking about some of those restrictions. and i think those that are -- placeundue burdens on

individuals that we should be addressing. yes, states have been at a different pace in allowing vote by mail or identification as it relates to the vote by mail system. but we should be empowering people. we should say that we want to empower more people to vote under a system that is fair and gives them those opportunities to do so. so there are at least 64 bills restricting voting rights moving through 18 state legislatures, and i think that we should be making sure here that we have clarity on what will help us continue to empower the public to cast their vote. this comprehensive bill also authorizes $1.7 billion in new federal grants to help secure the security of our voting system. again, i like our vote by mail system in washington state. it's based on my signature to the ballot that is checked at the ballot.

i can tell you in the last election because of the reusss and various things that went down, 13 different people said that they voted for me. but they didn't. and the election system caught that. they knew that it wasn't me and they checked the signature on the ballot and they knew that it was me. so even though the system has had people who are trying to cause distrust and discourse about whether we have the right system is working. and the more we empower people, the better our democracy. so this legislation requires the director of national intelligence to report on threats to election infrastructure, including cyber threats and requires the president to develop and implement a national strategy for protecting u.s. domestic institutions. i know that these are things that we should be updating. and the reason i say that, because we've had throughout our history following the civil war

and reconstruction, there were localities that used discriminatory tactics like poll taxes and literacy tests to keep african americans from voting. the black community endured this both -- this kind of intimidation. and in the years following, the americans have protested and marched for these voting rights. and out of this struggle congress passed and president johnson signed the voting rights act of 19 -- the civil rights act of 1964 and the voting rights act so make sure that we kept these promises of our constitution. so the federal government has had to intervene and we have done so and i'm glad that we did. so i hope that we will continue toll say that these provisions that are so important to guaranteeing the right to franchise for americans are there and that they are continuing to be modernized. i hope that what we'll do today is the start of an erts to -- an

effort to focus on this. i take my colleague at her word. i'm sure she is sincere about wanting to vote -- to help do something on election and our democracy. we need to start that process today. we need to move forward and we need to address these issues. we can't live in a world that allowed us to move forward on a very close election in washington state. that wasn't the only one we had. we had another one i think was decided by probably, you know, a few hundred votes. and were there issues? yes. and guess what? the system resolved it. the system found any mistakes. i keep mentioning, you know, a gentleman who basically when it got down to somebody thought this was a governor's race was going to get down to 10 or 15 votes basically decided to say that he had voted for his wife who had passed away. and admitted because he knew in the end that they were going to

find out. and he thought it was better for come forth and say i made a mistake. she'd already passed. i sent in her ballot. it wasn't something i should have done. and we have a system that can work based on our signatures. it can and does today. when you go in to vote in person, you sign your name and that's the signature and that is the security of the system. and it has allowed us to trace and find and now expand to vote by mail. and it's time for us to say let's not make voting harder in the united states of america through a system that basically disenfranchises people but make a system in the united states of america that is about giving people these opportunities so that people can feel this enthusiasm that we see when we successfully pull this off. and what we need to be doing

here is to show states that an 83% vote turnout in the state of washington is a great victory. a high turnout is a great participatory system, and that's what we should be striving for with these reforms that are about security and about our constitutional rights. i hope our colleagues will support them. mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the following senators be permitted to speak prior to the scheduled vote. blunt for up to 15 minutes. merkley for up to 15 minutes. klobuchar for ten minutes. and senator schumer for 15 -- for 5 minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. blunt: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from missouri.

mr. blunt: mr. president, when i look at this substitute, i'm reminded of the adage the new boss is the same as the old boss. in this case the new bill is the same as the old bill. it's got a different number but it still maintains the same flawed policies that s. 1 maintained. obviously the majority would like to pass this bill or they wouldn't have had labeled it their most important piece of legislation for this congress. the house of representatives labeled the same bill h.r. 1, their most important piece of legislation for this congress. the changes basically give election officials more time to implement policies that i don't think we need and i think they -- the changes don't make the bill less bad. in fact, what the bill does is it creates a new boss for elections but the new boss is the federal government. it's not about voting rights. it doesn't add any group or any individuals to the group of

people who can vote. the kind of things that congress has done in the past starting when the first century of the country and moving on until today, it's frankly a politically motivated federal takeover of the election systems that would make, in my opinion, elections more chaotic, less secure, less nimble in their ability to deal with individual circumstances that occur on election day. the strength of the election system, mr. president, is the diversity of the election system. this is what president obama thought in 2016. he may not still believe that, but i still believe it. s. 1 would force a single partisan view of elections on more than 10,000 voting jurisdictions across the country. taking control away from states, taking control away from local officials, and frankly they're the closest people to the

voters, and instead giving it to people in a faraway national capital without the same sense of importance of people believing that what happened on election day at your precinct is what the voters intended to have happen that day and that the people who were voting were the people that were legally able to vote, not people who may have voted somewhere else, not people who may no longer live in the jurisdiction that they're voting in and no longer equal fade to vote for -- qualified to vote for that state official or representative but people who are legally able to vote. i think this makes fraud easier to commit and, frankly, harder to detect. what we should be doing is making it easier to vote and harder to cheat. i think what we're doing here is making it easier to cheat and harder to find out.

we allow -- in this bill, if it was the law -- unlimited ballot harvesting. this is where anybody can go around and collect ballots and theoretically be sure that they get to the election authority, but who knows? who knows what ballot got lost in the mail and what ballot never got in the mail? one of the things the ballot harvester would develop a pretty good sense of is how the person voted whose ballot they were harvesting. this bill undermines popular voter i.d. laws that more than half of the states have implemented. it makes it more difficult to maintain accurate voter lists. it permanently tips the scales in favor of our friends on the other side by politicizing the federal election commission, a commission that was established just like our ethics commission, mr. president, in the senate, with an equal number of one party and no imbalance.

this politicizing the federal election commission. it makes it a partisan agency, not a bipartisan policing agency. it pours federal funds into campaigns, and it chills free speech. bad policy, i think, mr. president, in search of a problem. now, democrats have said this is necessary to increase voting rights, particularly for minorities, but the overall turnout in the year 2000 was about two-thirds of all the voters, the highest percentage of voters that partisan ped in over a century. -- that participated in over a century. so what we had here was an election that had the highest level of participation in over a century. most states had their highest voter turnout in 40 years, and we decide we need to change the system. s. 1 isn't just about bad policy; it's about what

democrats have seen as a political imperative. now, frankly, this has been the bill that democrats have offered for about the last 20 years. it varies a little bit from time to time, but about 20 years ago and maybe before that -- i was a chief election official in our state at that time; i don't remember democrats offering this before 20 years ago, but starting about two decades ago, every couple of years and certainly every time democrats get a majority in the house, they pass this bill or one almost exactly like it. when asked about what it would take to maintain the current majority in the house, speaker pelosi said, well, we'd be better if we could pass h.r. 1 and s. 1. that sounds like she thinks there is a political advantage there, and i respect the speaker's political judgment and always have respected speaker pelosi's political judgment.

her judgment would be that this would be better for democrats than not changing the current election law. s. 1 is really full of unnecessary -- as it turns out, unpopular provisions. under the label, would you like to vote for a bill that would secure democracy? of course who wouldn't want to be for a bill that secures democracy? this bill has been around long enough that people have begun to understand what's in it. the same list that's been out there before. this bill would over--- would render state voter i.d. laws meaningless by requiring states to allow affidavits in lieu of identification. in other words, you say who you are at the polling place. well, anybody who's going to try to cast a ballot at the polling place they shouldn't cast probably also is likely to be willing to say that they're qualified to vote at that ex-will. in a recent -- in that election

t in a recent poll, 80% of americans supported voter i.d. laws. another poll just a couple of weeks ago, national support for voter photo i.d. was 75%. that included 69% of black voters and 60% of democrats. so we've got a principal position of this bill that 80% of all voters, at least 75% of all voters, and 60% of democrats are for but this bill changes that law that makes sense to almost be everybody. this bill requires unlimited ballot harvesting that i talked about a moment ago. the only time i recall a congressional discussion recently about ballot harvesting was last year when the house of representatives refused to seat a republican-elected member because that campaign had used

ballot harvesting. now we have a law that requires every state not to prohibit ballot harvesting, and the risk of fraud, the risk of every ballot not getting to the place ballots need to be certainly increases when you hand them to a ballot harvester, usually somebody paid by a campaign for a party to go around and collect ballots and someone whose motivation to get those ballots all turned in may not be everything you'd want it to be. 62% of respondents in one poll said ballot harvesting should be illegal. another provision in this bill that clearly is not a popular provision, if people begin to look at it. now, again, voting to protect democracy -- sure, that's popular. but the way this bill does it when people look at it, it's not popular. the bill requires states to give felons the right to vote in federal elections when they're

out of prison. some states do that, some states don't. of course, if this bill passed, every state would the have the choice of going ahead and doing that or having two sets of voter rolls, one for federal elections and another one for nonfederal elections. that, of course, makes no sense at all, and what this bill anticipates is that no matter what states wanted to do, this is a provision that they'd have to adopt. there's another way to get that done -- go to state legislatures and explain the value of having that change, if that change needs to be made. this bill restricts the ability of states to maintain accurate voter rolls. many states, states with democrat governors and democrat secretaries of state and democrat legislatures, have worked hard to see that they had a system in place to where you would periodically check and see if the people who are registered

to vote are still where they registered to vote from. you know, our state -- i think a lot of states -- if you move to another county and register to vote there, you're supposed to say as part of that process who you could notify to get you off the voter rolls, but there's no requirement that that has to happen, and a periodic check of the voter rolls was seen not too long ago as a huge protection of democracy. this makes it much harder to do. but a 2018 poll found that 77% of americans supported this kind of voter roll maintenance. frankly you it would be pretty hard to come up with a bill that had stay-at-home major tenets -- that had so many major tenets that were out out of step with what people think the government ought to be and what they want their state government to do. this bill provides government funding for campaigns, $6 of

federal money for every $1 raised in small donors. now, small attorneys is under $2 -- now, small donors is under $200. the current members under this bill could receive collectively up to $1.8 billion from the federal government to run their campaigns. to attack their challenger or whatever they want to do with their campaign money, $1.8 billion to do that. pretty easy to qualify for this money. we have seen people raise money in the first quarter of this year that would have qualified. in the case of our friend shall the senator from texas, senator cruz, somewhere between $25 million and $30 million would go to his friend. we had a markup 0en this bill in the rules committee. not a single member of the rules committee, democrat or republican, including senator

cruz, should thought senator cruz should get $24 million or $25 million from the federal government for his campaign. the bill creates a partisan federal elections commission. itest goes rid of that bipartisan -- it gets rid of that bipartisan makeup that's been there from the very start. this bill chills free speech in that it creates a disclosure document that makes it really -- people reluctant to give money to other groups that aren't candidates who'd like to talk about elections, and it federalizes restricting. is $1 would put in place one set -- s. 1 would put in place one set of rules for redistricting that of the always been the role of states. if the states want to give that to somebody other than the legislature, they can do that and many states have done that. but states have been the constitutional designated place to determine how they draw

congressional maps in their own state. and even in a state manages to comply with all these requirements, the -- under this bill, the justice department would have to be involved. under this bill, the court of jurisdiction in all cases on redistricting would be the federal court in washington, d.c. not the federal court in the circuit that missouri is in, not even -- you wouldn't even start at the district court in kansas city or st. louis. the federal court in washington, d.c., would be the place you'd go. but of course the purpose of the bill is to provide all these election decisions to one place. the idea that the best decisions are always made in washington, d.c., on all topics is an idea that most americans don't agree with. there are things they think we can do and should do and can only do because they can't do them any other way -- like

defend the country and set big, national priorities. but for well over 200 years now, local election officials responsible for the sense of credibility of what happens on election day have done this job. i think they've done it well. this bill would require states to take burdensome actions and make expensive changes in their election system, even if the states have already adopted some of the so-called reforms, they'd in all likelihood have to make changes in their system to comply. so the federal takeover of elections shouldn't happen. i urge my colleagues not to support it happening. the american people don't want to see the things imposed on our election system that are in this bill, and i urge my colleagues to vote against this harmful legislation. and i would yield back.

mr. merkley: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. merkley: madam president, every day that i have the honor of coming to work in the hallowed halls of this building -- a symbol to the country and the world of america's commitment to liberty and to justice, freedom and democracy -- i'm humbled. i'm humbled by the faith and responsibility that the people of oregon have placed in hey to advocate on their behalf -- in

me to advocate on their behalf. i'm humbled by the responsibility to exercise the power of this office to use the opportunity to lift up all americans, to create a foundation for families to thrive, to tackle significant challenges like human rights and global warming. but among all these responsibilities, one is the highest, which is to defend our constitutional republic. and in that constitution, the single-most important power given to every american is the right to a voice and a vote. a voice and a vote in the decisions of this government and the direction of our nation. as we saw too clearly on january 6, when this very building was attacked by a mob intent on burning the ballots of millions of americans, democracy based on free and fair elections is far from guaranteed.

each generation, each new set of senators and house members has the responsibility to defend it anew. the sad truth, however, is that a violent mob storming the capitol isn't the only way to attack our democracy. it can also be attacked by the quiet plotting of powerful and privileged individuals who hate the concept of government of, by, and for the people, and they work to undermine and corrupt the workings of our republic to produce instead government by and for the powerful. in his inaugural address, our second president, john adams, remarked that we should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties. if anything partial or extraneous should p infect the purity of our free, fair,

virtuous and independent elections. my friends, our democracy, our elections are being infected. our elections are under siege from gerrymandering which destroys the principle of equal representation. our system is under siege from dark money, enabling billionaires and powerful corporations to buy our elections. it is under siege by state laws being passed week to week right now that target specific communities to prevent them from voting, thereby manipulating the outcome of elections. indeed, in at least 22 laws have been enacted in 14 states since january to infect our free and fair elections to deliberately erect barriers meant to make it harder for targeted groups of americans to vote, to silence the voices of students and low-income americans, native americans and seniors, of black and brown

americans who have fought too long and too hard to have their voice and their vote stolen from them, ripped from them now. we have a responsibility as united states senators to ensure every american's freedom to vote. just as this institution sought to do more than half a century ago, when in this chamber we passed the 1965 voting rights act. we have a responsibility to ensure that every american's voice is heard and that our elections reflect the will of the people. we can fulfill that responsibility by enacting national standards for voting to ensure that every american can have a say in the key decisions impacting their daily lives, a say expressed through the ballot box. that ballot box is the beating heart of our republic, and

those who seek to erect barriers to seitz having access to -- to citizens having access to it are committing a crime against our democracy. we have to stop that criminal action against the rights of americans. we must create those national standards by taking up this bill, the for the people bill, debating it and ultimately passing it to defend our constitution. the for the people act is be comprehensive. it does popular, commonsense things to put the american people back in charge of their government and their country. it sets national standards so every american has equal freedom to vote no matter where they live. in this country, if you are an american, you have the right to vote plain and simple, full stock. it doesn't matter what your zip code is or your income or the

color of your skin or your religious beliefs. you have the right to vote. many of the state laws restricting voting are designed to eliminate early voting in person or by mail, and we know exactly why. it is because the leaders in these states know how easy it is to manipulate the vote on election day. in these targeted communities, the state's leaders want to be able to decrease the number of polling places, reduce the hours, change the locations, put polling places and locations with limited parking, put out false information about the date of the election, and purge targeted voters from the roll of registered voters knowing that when they show up on election day, it's too late to correct the error and be able to exercise their right to vote. the antidote to these horrendous, racist attacks on the freedom and right of every american to vote is early voting in person and by mail. and this act guarantees 15 days

of early voting. it sets forth the opportunity to require an absentee ballot, to return the ballot by mail or through dedicated drop boxes. the second big goal in national standards set forth in for the people act is to stop billionaires from buying elections. elections in america are intended to reflect the will of the people, not the will of the powerful and privileged. thomas jefferson once described this as the mother principle, saying that government is a republican only in proportion to how they embody the will of the people. if the megawealthy can flood our campaigns with billions of dollars sent through shell companies, untraceable money and manipulate the outcome of the elections, then jefferson's mother principle is murdered because the outcome serves the powerful, not the people. the for the people act says the

people should have an equal chance of being heard and that the people listening ought to know who's actually behind those voices and those messages. it does that by creating an honest ads policy. political ads people see online have to disclose who's paying for them and requires disclosures of megadonors contributing to political campaigns. if you or i give a modest donation to a campaign that campaign has to disclose who we are. shouldn't the same thing that's true for an average american be true for the megadonors? this standard sets that equal standard. third, the national standards set forth in this bill restore equal representation by ending gerrymandering, the process by which we draw congressional districts to favor one party over another, and by doing so attack the sacred principle of equal representation. this creates a lot of bias in the house of representatives

down the hall. take michigan, in 2012, 20 h 14 -- 2014 and 2016, because of gerrymandering the other party held a decisive advantage in the statehouse, in the senate and in the delegation. the for the people act with defends, restores the principle of equal representation. it does it by creating independent redistricting commissions made up equally of democrats, republicans, and independents. that means candidates running for office actually have to use the power of their ideas, the persuasion of their personality, not a rigged system to hold power. finally, the standards in this bill target corruption by expanding, by addressing and eliminating conflicts of interest. public servants should serve the public, not themselves.

that includes members of congress. , the administration, and for the first time ever, the supreme court. this bill does that by striking down outrageous and corrupt conflicts of interest, strengthening divestment requirements saying the president and vice president have to use blind trust or limit their personal holdings to assets that don't pose a potential conflict of interest. it slows the revolving door between public service and k street. it requires cabinet secretaries to recuse themselves from any issues in which a previous employer or client has a financial interest. the bill requires candidates for vice president or president to disclose their tax returns to prevent hidden conflicts of interest. it creates a code of ethics for the supreme court, something all other federal judges already have. none of these four principles is about helping one political party over the other. in fact, the provisions i've just laid out are wildly popular

among the american people. an overwhelming supermajority of democrats, republicans, and independents support these four principles. it's as bipartisan as you can get. even when it's broken into its specific provisions, three out of four americans, democrats, republicans, independents, say they support these reforms because they believe in the vision of government of, by, and for the people. it's in our d.n.a. americans believe that dark money should not be able to flood our elections. they believe billionaires and corporations should not be able to buy elections. they believe our nation is ill served by corrupt conflicts of interest. they believe in the vision and ideals of our we the people republic. and this bill is meant to do just one thing -- make real the promise of democracy for all

americans. powerful special interests don't want that. it threatens their hold on power by ending the ways they've rigged the system. and so they're all about striking down this bill. why is that? we hear how republican leaders say that they like this rigged system. apparently they like dark money in campaigns helping to buy elections. apparently they like targeting groups of individuals to prevent them from voting, taking us back to the racist efforts that existed before 1965 voting rights act. apparently they like gerrymandering, thinking it's a source of political power down the hall, which political scientists say it is. but should it be principle or power that we fight for here? it should be the principle, and the oath of office we took to

uphold the constitution. standing before a crowd on a november afternoon to dedicate the soldiers national cemetery in gettysburg, president lincoln remarked that they were gathered together to not only dedicate it to the men who had fallen in battle, but to the ideal for which they gave their lives, that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. today it is our responsibility to carry that ideal forward and to ensure that government by the people, of the people -- of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the united states of america. we in this chamber must pass the for the people act.

thank you. i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

a senator: madam president. the vice president: without objection. a senator: madam president -- the senator from minnesota. ms. klobuchar: are we in a quorum call? the vice president: we are. ms. klobuchar: i ask that the quorum call be vitiated. the vice president: without objection. ms. klobuchar: madam president, i come to the floor to speak in support of proceeding to debate

legislation that is critical to our democracy, legislation that is based on two simple ideas -- that americans must be able to freely choose their elected officials, and that government must be accountable to the people. not to those with the most money. these are not democratic or republican ideas. they are core american ideas. but for too long, these rights have been under attack, which is why we need the critical democracy reforms in the for the people act. i'm honored to be leading this legislation with senators merkley and schumer and to have worked with my colleagues as chair of the rules committee, worked with my colleagues in the house and civil rights and democracy reform groups and you, madam president, to bring this bill forward today. the freedom to vote is fundamental to all of our freedoms. it is how americans control

their government and hold elected officials accountable. it is the bedrock of our government. it is the founding principle of our country and has stood the test of wars, of economic strife, and yes, a global pandemic. but protecting this right has not always been easy. throughout our country's 245-year history, we have had to course correct and take action to ensure that democracy is for the people and by the people and that it has lived up to our ideals. at the beginning of this year, we were reminded on january 6 that it is up to us to protect against threats to our democracy, to ensure that it succeeds. i still remember that moment 3:30 in the morning when senator blunt and i and, yes, vice president pence walked from this chamber with the two young women with the mahogany box full of

the last ballots to get over to the house to finish our job so that you, madam president, were declared the vice president and president biden was declared the president. that's upholding our democracy. that's doing it together, democrats and republicans doing our job. and what this bill is about to me, this bill is about carrying on that torch to protect our democracy. today the vote to begin debate on this legislation will likely get the support of all 50 democrats. senator manchin, along with the rest of our caucus, has made clear to the country that standing up for the right to vote is bigger than any one person or thing. it's about us. it's about us as americans. i deeply appreciate the work he has put into the proposal. he's putting forward today, and i look forward to continuing our discussions with him. he is doing this in good faith.

there are many good things in that proposal, and today we are here together to reaffirm we will not give up this fight. it is just beginning. the 2020 election showed that you can make it safer to vote while giving voters the options that work for them. if it's vote by mail. i see my colleague, senator smith here. minnesota is so proud of our same-day registration. that's worked for us. made us number one in voter turnout in the country time and time and time again. many states during the pandemic took steps exactly like that in sending options for voters like safe vote by mail. and now 34 states have no excuse vote by mail. 34 states. the result, nearly 160 million americans voted more than ever before in the middle of a pandemic.

i still remember those voters in the primary in wisconsin standing in make-shift garbage bags with make-shift masks over their face in the middle of a rainstorm, in the middle of a pandemic, standing in line to vote. and in an election that the trump department of homeland security declared the most secure in our history, the american people elected, yes, president joe biden and vice president kamala harris. but in the wake of that historic election, there has been a pervasive, coordinated, and overwhelming effort to undermine the freedom to vote in future elections with over 400 bills introduced in legislatures all across the country. 22 laws to restrict voting have been enacted in 14 states, and 31 more bills to roll back the right to vote have passed at least one chamber of a state legislature. as reverend warnock put it, in this chamber, in his maiden

speech as senator, some people don't want some people to vote. that is what's going on here. the new law in georgia makes it harder to request mail-in ballots, drastically limits ballot drop boxes and makes it a crime to hand water and food to voters waiting in line to cast their ballots, when in previous elections georgians have stood in line for up to ten hours to vote. one of the new montana laws ended same-day registration on election day after it had been in practice in the states for 15 years, with senator tester joining me in trying to bring this practice across when we introduced that bill across this nation. in the weeks ahead, similar bills are expected to pass in even more states, including texas where the governor has promised to call the legislature into special session to pass a bill to restrict voting that was blocked at the end of regular session, thanks to the heroic efforts of democrats in the

texas state legislature that blessed us with their presence just last week. these are not empty threats. they are real efforts to disenfranchise regular americans from voting, senior citizens, people with disabilities, people that can't stand in lines for ten hours just to wait to vote. in the face of these efforts to roll back voting rights in so many states, the for the people act is about setting basic national standards to make sure that all voters in this country can vote legally in the way that works for them. regardless of what zip code they live in, regardless of if they live in a big city or in a suburb or out in a small town in western minnesota. it is about reducing the power of big money in our elections by ending secret spending by billionaires and special interests, and it is about

making anticorruption reforms to ensure politicians work for the people, not for themselves. republicans have said that this bill is designed to provide a political advantage, but as former republican commissioner of the federal election commission, that chair under george bush, trevor potter, has said in explaining his support for this bill, and he appeared as a witness in my hearing for this bill, he said this bill does not give power to any particular party over another. it gives power back to the voters. and giving power back to the voters is exactly what we need. there is an amplified attack on the right to vote this year, but we have seen serious efforts to restrict voting rights since the supreme court gutted the voting rights act eight years ago. the voting rights act of 1965 that marked the cornerstone achievement for the civil rights movement and became the law because of the tireless work of

people like john lewis who put their lives on the line to secure voting rights. 56 years later, we are still fighting that battle. at the same time, we haven't had meaningful campaign finance or epic reform. our democracy desperately needs the proposals in this bill. and guess what? the american people agree. yeah, this bill is bipartisan, except right here in this place. it's bipartisan because one poll released recently found that 78% of americans, including 63% of republicans, support making early in-person voting available for at least two weeks before election day. that's a proposal in our original for the people. it is in the managers' amendment that we are voting on cloture on. and it is in senator manchin's proposal. another poll found that 83% of likely voters support public disclosure of contributions to groups involved in elections.

also the disclose act in all three proposals. and yet some of my republican colleagues want to limit disclosures. by the way, disclosures were championed by justice scalia. and yet, what happened in our committee hearing on this, our markup? republicans filed amendment after amendment to gut those provisions of the bill. so while they make claims, -- they may claim my friends on the other side of the aisle that this isn't popular, it's just not true. they claim it is not bipartisan. it is just not true. the bill contains nine bipartisan bills, including the honest ads act which i first introduced with senator john mccain and senator warner, and now senator lindsey graham took up that cause. our provision, that provision would finally hold the social meeting of companies accountable to make sure there are disclaimers and disclosures on

political ads. the work i have done with senator lankford madam president, when you were in the senate to make sure we have backup paper ballots. we still have eight states that don't have backup paper ballots. that provision is in this bill. many of the bill's provisions have already been adopted in red, blue, and purple states and have the support of governors and election officials from both parties. 21 states have voter registration including red states like idaho, wyoming, and iowa. that's great, but our question should be why don't all 50 states have it, especially when the constitution of the united states specifically says that congress can make and alter rules for federal elections. it is as clear as the words on the page. 20 states have automatic voter registration laws, including alaska, georgia, and west virginia. 25 states allowed all voters to vote by mail in the 2020 election, and 44 states have

early voting. what this bill does is to take the best of the best and puts in place minimum standards so that no matter what state you call home, you have access to the ballot box. that is why senator merkley has worked so hard on this legislation. that is why senator schumer made this bill senate file number one. the bill that we are voting to advance includes changes that directly respond to concerns about implementation from both democratic and republican state and local officials. we heard those concerns, and the democrats on the rules committee, which included senator warner and senator king, we worked on that managers' amendment and made it easier for rural areas, extended the time systems, and got at their concerns. and then senator manchin has come up with more ideas and more things that we can do to make the bill strong. we heard from election officials that requiring states to accept mail-in ballots for too long

after election day would delay them from certifying the results, so we shortened the window. i could go on and on and on. in good faith, we have worked to make this bill work for america, and now it is time to allow for debate on this bill. our republican friends on the other side of the aisle, they say this bill -- this is one thing that senator mcconnell would say in the hearing, that it would cause chaos. i'd say this. chaos is a five-hour wait to vote. senior citizens standing in the hot sun for five hours, for ten hours, that is chaos. chaos is purging eligible voters from voter rolls and modern-day poll taxes and one ballot box for a county of five million people, which is exactly what they did in harris county, texas. that is exactly what is happening in that state right now. chaos is voters in wisconsin waiting in line to vote for hours in the rain in their

home-made masks and plastic garbage bags. the angry mob on january 6 that came into this very chamber, that spray painted the columns, that attacked police officers, that injured people left and right, that is chaos. as i said from the stage on inauguration day, under that bright blue sky where you could still see the spray paint at the bottom of those columns and the make-shift windows we had in place, i said this -- this is the day our democracy picks itself up, brushes off the dust, and does what america always does, goes forward as a nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. well, we cannot do that if americans are disenfranchised, if they are not part of our democracy. republicans have sadly made it clear that this is not legislation they are willing to negotiate or even debate. they won't even give it a week. they won't even give it a few days. just last week, they held a press conference to tell the

american people that they don't believe congress should act to protect the right to vote or get rid of secret money in our elections. so honestly, i would love to get some support from the other side of the aisle, but we have to be honest. i don't expect we're going to get it. so my republican colleagues, this is not the end of the line. for this bill. this is not the end of the line. this is only the beginning, because if you have your way, those voters won't just be at the end of the line. they're not going to be able to vote. in the rules committee, we will be holding a series of hearings, not just one hearing, a series of hearings, and we are taking it on the road. the first time in a long time. we are going to georgia and holding a field hearing there so we can hear firsthand from people in the state on what is happening and why we must carry out the constitutional duty in this chamber to act. and i urge my republican

colleagues to recognize the work being done in states to restrict the freedom of americans to exercise their sacred right to vote. our nation was founded on the ideals of democracy, and we see for ourselves in this building how we can never take it for granted. we can't let state legislatures get to pick and choose who votes and what votes get counted. that's not how a democracy works. i urge all of my colleagues to do what the american people are asking us to do and to do what is right. vote today to bring us closer to passing legislation to strengthen our democracy. we can't wait in line and we can't make the people of america wait in line. the time do this is now. thank you, madam president. i yield the floor. mr. schumer: madam president. the presiding officer: the vice president: the majority leader.

mr. schumer: let me thank so many of my colleagues, including our chair of rules, the senator from minnesota, our lead sponsor on this bill, senator merkley and so many others who have done so much on this legislation. now, what makes a democracy a democracy? it's the right of citizens to choose their own leader, to forge their own destiny rather than have it decided for them. the right to vote. the right that generations of americans have marched and protested to achieve. women who reach for the ballot and marchers who were bloodied on a privilege in selma. the right that soldiers have fought and died to defend, buried now in patriot graves from gettysburg to normandy. and now voting rights are under assault in america in a way that

we have not seen in many, many decades. republican state legislatures are limiting polling hours, location and ballot box drop boxes, making it a crime to give food and water to voters in line and in states like texas to try to move sunday voting hours so it's harder for black people to vote. it is the worst sweeping effort targeting all the ways that historically franchised voters, black and brown americans, students, the working poor access the ballot. we can disagree about solutions to this problem, about what policies might be more effective. but we should all agree this is a problem. we awd all agree that protect -- should all agree that protecting vote rg rights is worth --

voting rights are worthy of debate. that is what this next debate is about. should the united states senate even debate -- even debate how to protect the voting rights of our citizens? the story of american democracy is full of contradictions and halting progress. at the time of our constitution's ratification, you had to be in most states a white male protestant landowner to vote. how many in this chamber, how many of us would have been able to participate in thoars first election -- in those first elections? the truth is many of us, particularly on our side of the aisle would not have been able to vote. but ever since the early days of the republic, americans launched mighty movements, fought a bloody civil war, and, yes, passed federal election laws to expand the franchise until there were no more boundaries.

are we going to -- are we in a blackslide here in the 21 -- backslide here in the 21st century. are we going to be drawn back into the muck of voter suppression? are we going to let the most dishonest president in history continue to poison our democracy from the inside? or will we stand up to defend what generations of americans have organized, marched, fought, and died for, the sacred, sacred right to vote. the thing that makes a democracy a democracy. i plead with my republican colleagues, stand up, my republican colleagues. stand up to a man who has lied. we all know he has lied. you know he has lied about our elections. do not let this man lead you around by the nose and do permanent damage to our

democracy. at least have the decency and honor to let this chamber debate. i urge my colleagues to vote yes. and ask -- i yield the floor. the vice president: the clerk will report the motion to invoke cloture. the clerk: cloture motion, we, the undersigned senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule 22, do hereby bring to a close debate on the motion to proceed to calendar number 77, s. 2093, a bill to expand americans access to the ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics, strengthen ethics rules for public servants and implement other anticorruption efforts for for the if fying our democracy and

for other purposes. signed by 17 senators. the vice president: by nawrks the mandatory -- by unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum call has been waived. is it the sense of the senate that debate on the motion to proceed to s. 2093, a bill to expand americans access to the ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics, strengthen ethics rules for public servants, and implement other anticorruption measure ps for the -- measures for the purpose of fortifying our democracy and for other purposes shall be brought to a close? the yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote:

vote:

the vice president: on this vote, the yeas are 50, the nays are 50. three-fifths of the senators duly chosen and sworn not having voted in the affirmative, the motion is not agreed to. mr. schumer: madam president? the vice president: mr. majority leader. mr. schumer: madam president, i want to be clear about what just happened on the senate floor. every single senate republican just voted against starting debate -- starting debate -- on legislation to protect americans' voting rights. once again, the senate republican minority has launched a partisan blockade of a

pressing issue here in the united states senate, an issue no less fundamental than the right to vote. could we have order, madam president? the vice president: the senate will be in order. mr. schumer: i've laid out the facts for weeks. republican state legislatures across the country are engaged in the most sweeping voter suppression in 80 years. capitalizing and cat liced by do not's big lie. these state governments are making it harder for younger, poorer, urban and nonwhite americans to vote. earlier today the republican leader told reporters that, quote, regardless of what may be happening in some states, there's no rationale for federal intervention. the republican leader flatly stated that no matter what the states do to undermine our democracy, voter suppression

laws, phony audit, the senate should not act. my colleagues, my colleagues, if senators 60 years ago held that the federal government should never intervene to protect voting rights, this body would have never protected -- passed the voting rights act. the republican leader uses the language and the logic of the southern senators in the 1960's who defended states' rights and it is an indefensible position. -- for any senator, any senator, let alone the majority leader -- the minority leader to hold. and yet that was the reason given for why republicans voted in lockstep today, regardless of what may be happening in some states, there's no rationale for federal intervention. that is both ridiculous and awful. all we wanted to do here on the floor was to bring up the issue of voting rights and debate how combat these vicious, oftentimes

discriminatory voting restrictions. and today every single democratic senator stood together in the fight to protect the right to vote in america. the democratic party in the senate will always stand united to defend our democracy. i spoke with president biden earlier this afternoon as well. he has been unshakable in his support of s. 1. i want to thank the president and the vice president for their efforts. but regrettably, regrettably, our efforts were met by the unanimous opposition of the senate minority. once again, senate republicans have signed their names in the ledger of history alongside donald trump, the big lie, and voter suppression to their enduring disgrace. this vote, i'm ashamed to say, is further evidence that voter

suppression has become part of the official platform of the republican party. now, republican senators may have prevented us from having a debate on voting rights today, but i want to be very clear about one thing -- the fight to protect voting rights is not over, by no means. in the fight for voting rights, this vote was the starting gun, not the finish line. let me say that again. in the fight for voting rights, this vote was the starting gun, not the finish line. as many have note odd, including my friend, senator warnock this morning, when john lewis was about to cross that bridge in selma, he didn't know what waited for him on the other side. he didn't know how long his march would be. and his ultimate success was never guaranteed. but he started down that bridge anyway.

today democrats started our march to defend the voting rights of all americans. it could be a long march, but it's one we are going to make. today we made progress. for the first time in this congress, we got all 50 democrats unified behind moving forward on a strong and comprehensive voting rights bill. and make no mistake about it, it will not be the last time that voting rights comes up for a debate in the senate. republicans may want to avoid the topic, hoping that their party's efforts to is up express votes and defend the big lie will go unnoticed. democrats will not allow that. democrats will never let this voter suppression be swept under the rug. we have several serious options for how to reconsider this issue and advance legislation to combat voter suppression. we are going to explore every

last one of our options. we have to. voting rights are too important, too fundamental. this concerns the very core our democracy and what we are about as a nation. so we will not let it go. we will not let it die. this voter suppression cannot stand, and we are going to work tirelessly to see that it does not stand. i yield the floor. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the vice president: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call: a senator: mr. president.

the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island is recognized. mr. whitehouse: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the pending quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: mr. president, e majority leader in his strong remarks about the beginning of the process of passing s. 1, not only to deal with the question of voting rights, but to deal with the question of the dark money plague that is infesting our democracy and taking the power over decision-making in this body and in this building away from regular people and putting it into the hands not only of special interests but of special interests who are happy to operate in secret. one of the ways in which this power has been deployed has been with respect to the judicial branch of government, and i am here now for my third speech in

the scheme series to draw attention to this problem. in the first two scheme speeches, i described the corporate power game plan offered by lawyer louis powell to the u.s. chamber of commerce and the subsequent effectuation of that game plan by justice louis powell appointed to the u.s. supreme court two months, two months after his secret corporate power game plan went to the chamber. the execution of the powell plan was one of three converging threads that led to the scheme

to capture the court. the powell plan, thread one, was a political response recommended for america's traditional corporate elite, which had been traumatized by the social upheaval of the 1960's. the second thread, thread two, was a separate strain of american ire that had been simmering on our society's fringe for many decades. the extremists on this simmering fringe were traumatized by things long accepted as mainstream by most americans. the fringe resentments shifted with the varying tides of news and events, but regularly boiled over against several targets. one was the role of jewish people in finance, the press, hollywood, and after f.d.r., in government.

another another was the improving economic and social season of minorities. another was the arrival of immigrants, particularly non-european immigrants but backlash to immigration from ireland and italy had been profound as my home state experienced back under the know-nothings. other resentments sprang from imaginary events, conspiracy theory, delusions, and crackpot ideas. this persistent strain along the american fringe was con chronicled in richard hofstetter's 1964 essay, the paranoid style in american politics, later a popular book. this latent strain of paranoid extremism showed itself in groups like the john birch society which never gained social or political acceptance. it was fed and nurtured by a

handful of right-wing foundations set up by a few colossally rich and politically irate and frustrated families. it boiled up in the presidential campaign of senator barry goldwater which ended in one of the worst landslide defeats in american history. it drove the educational aspirations -- the occasional aspirations of the libertarian party whose extremist platform suffered predictable but humiliating crushings at the polls. all of this defeat over all of these decades concentrated the strain, isolated its most persistent and determined elements, and added to it an emotional payload of resentment. one target of this precinct was the existence of government regulation. the libertarian party in 1980

ran on a platform of ending social security, ending medicare, closing the post office, undoing the american highway program, stopping public education, and eliminating all our public regulatory agencies. even the federal aviation administration that keeps planes from bumping into each other. this platform barely attracted 1% of the vote, an unsurprising but humiliating crushing. that humiliating crushing was suffered by david koch, libertarian party candidate for vice president and the party's major funder. the koch family is spectacularly, unimaginably rich. privately held koch industries pours hundreds of millions of dollars into their pockets every year. the family annual income exceeds most families' dreams of

lifetime wealth. the kochs have social ambition, putting their names on educational tv programs, art centers, and university buildings. they are not the sort of people who take humiliation well. they are also not stupid, and the family has long and sometimes dark international experience, including odious efforts in previous decades to build factories for evil regimes. made confident by the arrogance of wealth, driven by extremist ideology, spurred by the resentment of humiliating political rejection, experienced in the devious ways of the international world, steeped in the corporate skills of long-term planning and patient execution, and with unlimited resources to indulge themselves, the koch brothers, charles and david, were uniquely positioned

to take this long-standing, latent, extremist fringe and amplify it and direct it by plan, in secret, and over decades, if need be. if front groups needed to be set up, so be it. subsidiaries were a familiar concept. if identities needed to be laundered off money they gave, so be it, telling lawyers to find or design a way to do that was familiar. if fringe groups needed to be coordinated to work collectively with each other, so be it. organizing with others through trade associations and lobbying groups was familiar activity. and if money needed to be spent, well, so be it. money was no object. and getting people to do things for you for money is a familiar practice of the very rich. the nurture and guidance of the

kochs breathed new strength and life and deregulatory purpose into the nativist far-right fringe. meanwhile, in the regulatory arena, we did the third of the three threads. major corporate interests from the railroads first to banks, chemical companies, and polluting industries had assembled over time a quietly powerful presence to help them in administrative agencies, to assure that regulation was friendly to business, and even more than that, under the right circumstances, with the right people and pressures, could be turned to advantage of the regulated industry. in administrative hearings and rule makings, regulated

industries regularly outgunned public interest groups. law firms dedicated to this lucrative corporate regulatory practice sprouted, gleaming stables were kept of well-tended professional witnesses who could reliably spout the corporate line in agency proceedings. companies played the long game in these regulatory agencies, creating minor victories step by step, inch by inch, that together summed up to major gains. many of these gains were deeply buried in the weeds of arcane policy and technical detail, inscrutable to the general media, and so invisible to the general public. revolving doors spun between

regulatory commissions and industry so that agency decision-makers often reflected the values, priorities, and interests of the regulated industry, not the general public. at the extreme, the regulatory agency became servant to the industry master, a phenomenon well known and well documented as regulatory capture. i wrote a separate book on this, captured, so i won't dwell on it at great length here. it's enough to note that regulatory capture is so common that it has been a robust field of academic research and writing now for decades, both in economics and in administrative law. so these three socioeconomic

strands con verged. america's regular corporate elite took up the powell memo strategy of emboldened political engagement, seeking to reclaim their power and restrain the unwelcome changes roiling american society. the extremists of great wealth brought to the right-wing fringe and its motley array of extremist groups an unprecedented strategic discipline, unlimited resources, and the tactics of hard-edged corporate organization. the regulatory capture apparatus was there for the hiring, eager to pursue the new prospects offered by big industries and eccentric billionaires. out of this slumgullion of

immense wealth, extreme political ambition, and expertise at regulatory capture, how long would it take for people to start thinking about capturing not just regulatory agencies, but courts? indeed, the united states supreme court. as it turned out, not long. the court had made itself a target of the right wing. brown versus board of education provoked massive resist -- resist tense across the south -- resistens across the south, out to defend public schools. roe v. wade provoked, as it still provokes, the religious right. so did engelv. vitali,

restricting prayer in schools. griswaldv. connecticut defended those upset by the 1960's sexual revolution. miranda v. arizona, mappv. ohio, and gideon v. wainwright offended the tough on crime crowd. to the far right, the supreme court offered a bounty of things to hate. even without the powell memo's corporate plan of, and i quote, exploiting judicial action, quote, with an activist-minded supreme court, the court would likely have been an irresistible target. with that plan and that recommendation, it began to come together. and so the scheme was launched,

fed by three political tributaries. one, the corporate plan in lewis powell's memo to the chamber. two, the koch-powered far-right fringe. and three, the mercenaries of regulatory capture. mr. president, the effort to capture the court has likely been the most effectual deployment of right-wing and corporate resources into our common american political life. and america is now a very different place as a result of it. much of it, like the proverbial frog in the proverbial pot, we have seen gotten used to. and we accept it now as normal when it isn't. to be continued.

i yield the floor. mr. whitehouse: and i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. cruz: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from texas. mr. cruz: i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. cruz: mr. president, i rise today to celebrate a win for the country. today the united states rightly failed to advance the corrupt politicians act, meaning that this bill will not come to the senate floor for a final vote. this is a huge win for the citizens of the united states. this is a huge win for

democracy. and it's a huge win for the integrity of our elections. the corrupt politicians act is the most dangerous legislation we've considered in the senate in the nine years i've served in this body. it's an attempt by senate democrats at a brazen power grab. it's an attempt by democrats to federalize elections and to ensure that democrats won't lose control for the next 100 years. this bill isn't about protecting the right to vote. it's precisely the opposite. it's about taking away the right to vote from the citizens and giving it instead to the corrupt politicians in washington who want to stay in power. the corrupt politicians act would strike down virtually every commonsense voter integrity law adopted by states across the country. 36 states have adopted voter

i.d. laws, a reasonable and commonsense step to protect the integrity of elections that over 70% of americans support and over of 0% of after -- 60% of african americans support. in fact, recent polling now shows support for voter i.d. at over 80% thanks no doubt to the relentless assault on voter i.d. mounted by senate democrats. the corrupt politicians act would repeal the vast majority of these voter i.d. laws. likewise, 31 states prohibit ballot harvesting, the corrupt practice of paying political operatives to collect other people's ballots. so what would the corrupt politicians act do? it would strike down all of those laws in 31 states and would mandate ballot harvesting nationwide. it would mean that paid political operatives from the democratic national committee

could go to nursing homes and collect a vote. some of those votes no doubt from individuals who may be no longer competent to make a decision. and the reason 31 states have acted the ban -- to ban ballot harvesting is because it inviting voter fraud. an exclusive operative can fill out the ballot for a senior citizen who no longer has the capacity for make a decision, and if that citizen has the temerity to vote in the way the operative doesn't like, there's nothing to prevent the operative from throwing that ballot in the mail and simply not sending it in, only sending in the ballots that happen to comply with their own political preference. if you care even one wit about election integrity, striking down every prohibition on ballot harvesting is precisely the wrong step to take. the corrupt politicians act

would also automatically register to vote anyone who comes in contact with the government. so if you get a welfare check, if you get an unemployment check, get a driver's license, go to a state college or state university, you're automatically registered to vote. what's the problem with that? the problem with that is that the authors of the bill know is that would register millions of illegal aliens to vote. millions of illegal aliens come into contact with the government and automatic registration is designed to register millions of illegal aliens. how do we know this? we know this among other things because the bill explicitly immunizes the state officials who would be registering illegal aliens to vote. it grants a safe harbor and says when you illegally register illegal aliens, you'll have no liability. if you care about the integrity of elections, registering millions of illegal aliens to

dilute and steal the votes of legal american citizens is exactly the opposite way to go. not only that, many states have reasonable restrictions on felons and on criminals voting. what does the corrupt politicians act do? it strikes all of those down and instead mandates that all felons should be allowed to vote. murderers, rapists, child molesters all allowed to vote because democrats have made the cynical calculation that if millions of illegal aliens are allowed to vote and million, of criminals and felons are allowed to vote, that those individuals are likely to vote democrat. and democrats want to stay in power. the bill also prevents states from correcting voter roles and from removing people who pass --

rolls and from removing people who passed away. you can't go in when someone is dead and say dead people shouldn't be voting. no, this bill mandates leave the dead people on the rolls, another step designed to invite fraud. moreover, the corrupt politicians act is welfare for politicians. this bill is designed to give hundreds of millions of dollars every year to corrupt incumbent politicians to keep them in power. it matches for contributions under $200 6-1 federal funds so that the members of this body would receive collectively over a billion dollars in federal funds to stay in power. that's great if you're a corrupt politician who wants to prevent a challenger from ever defeating

you and if you want to prevent the voters from making a different choice, then you flood them with federal funds to make it so you can't beat corrupt incumbents. but that's not what you do if you want to protect the right to vote. this bill is brazen. it is so brazen that the joke really is admitted in one provision of the bill. the federal elections commission was created in the wake of watergate designed to protect integrity in our elections. it was from the beginning designed to be bipartisan. three republican, three democrats because congress recognized that a partisan federal elections commission would be deanly -- deeply injurious to our democracy. that to have a federal election commission with any integrity, it needed to be bipartisan which

means you needed a bipartisan majority to act in order to ensure that neither party weaponizes the federal election laws. what does the corrupt politicians act do? turns the federal election commission into a partisan body. shifts it from three republicans and three democrats to three democrats and two republicans. it turns it into an arm of the democratic senate committee in effect. nothing in this bill is as cynical as that provision. we're in a 50-50 senate. we have close elections in this race. mr. president, you're a sophisticated political player. i want you to ask for a second in a close election, in the weeks before the election, if the senate majority leader had the ability to launch investigations from the federal elections commission, to bring prosecutions from the federal

elections commission, to sue the political opponents of the majority, how much would that invite abuse? i understand right now democrats are in power of both houses of congress and the white house. power can be intoxicating. but i do want to point out it wasn't that long ago, mr. president, you and i were both in this body four years ago when there was a republican president and a republican house and a republican senate. you didn't see the republican majority try anything as brazen as the corrupt politicians act. you didn't see a republican majority trying to rig the game, trying to change the rules so that republicans could never be defeated in the next election. you didn't see the republican majority trying to turn the federal election commission into a partisan weapon.

i ask you, mr. president, what level of comfort would you have as an elected democrat if mitch mcconnell had control of the federal election commission, if it were republican partisan agency. i think you would be entirely justified in being concerned that it would be used as a political weapon to hurt you. your last election was a relatively close election. imagine two weeks before the election if a republican federal election commission and now sweeping investigation into massive campaign finance violations by the incumbent senator who happened to be of the party that was out of power. you would rightly feel that was proteskly un-- grotesquely unfair and yet that's what every senate democrat just voted to create. you know, the most pernicious

aspect of this bill has been the racial demagoguery that it has invited. we've heard the senate majority leader invoke in booming terms specters from our sorry history of racial discrimination in the past. the senate majority leader has used the phrase jim crow 2.0 repeatedly as has the president of the united states, as has the vice president of the united states, deliberately inflaming racial tensions, suggesting that laws, commonsense voter integrity laws in states like georgia and texas, things like requiring voter i.d. or requiring signature verification and absentee ballots are somehow a modern manifestation of jim crow. that is a grotesque lie. and, mr. president, the majority leader knows that. the president of the united

states knows that. the vice president of the united states. they know they're lying. but ironically they've inadvertently said something that is accurate about this piece of legislation. jim crow legislation was grotesque and ugly. it was legislation that was drafted without exception by democratic politicians. jim crow was written by democratic politicians. and its purpose, when the jim crow laws were written, were to prevent the voters from ever voting out of office democratic politicians. one of the ugliest chapters of our nation's history. and thankfully we repudiated jim crow. well, the majority leader used the phrase jim crow 2.0 and inadvertently he's right but not about what he's describing. he's right about the corrupt politicians act. the corrupt politicians act follows the exact same pattern

that jim crow did. it is partisan legislation written by elected democrats, designed to keep elected democrats in office and to steal the right to vote from the citizenry to decide on somebody else. democracy is too important for that. and the kind of cynical, racial demagoguery we've seen around this bill while ignoring the substance of it and i will point out the media has been eager to ignore the substance of it. the media says should we protect the right to vote? yes, we should protect the right to vote. this bill takes away your right to vote. this bill is designed to prevent the voters from choosing to throw the bums out, the most

fundamental right of any voter to throw the bums out whether they're one side or the other side. we the people have sovereignty and this bill, the corrupt politicians act was designed to take that power from the people and give it to the politicians in washington. today was a victory. it was a victory for the american people, a victory for democracy. it was a victory for the constitution and a victory for the rule of law. i yield the floor.

mrs. gillibrand: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from new york. mrs. gillibrand: i rise today for the 13th time to call for every senator to have the opportunity to vote on a commonsense bipartisan bill, the military justice improvement and increasing prevention act. this bill would ensure that members of our military would get the justice and the justice system that their sacrifices deserve. we do not have time to delay. i've begun calling for a floor vote on this bill since may 24. that's 29 days ago. since then, it's estimated that 1,624 service members will have

been raped or sexually assaulted. more will have been victims of other serious crimes, and many of them will feel that there's no point in even reporting the crime because they have no faith in the current military justice system. that's because right now, if a service member reports a crime, the case and their fate will be put into a commander's hand. this bill argues instead that our service members who are victims of serious crimes or who are accused of serious crimes should have those cases reviewed by an impartial, trained military prosecutor. and it does not say the commanders are removed from their responsibility with regards to the military justice system. it doesn't say the commanders are relieved of their responsibility of ensuring good order and discipline. under this bill, commanders will still have the full array of tools to implement good order and discipline.

counseling, restriction, confinement, protective orders, riot reduction, nonjudicial punishment, summary court-martial and even special court-martial. none of these change under the law. in addition, under today's system, only 3% of commanders have the right to do screenen convening authority for general -- convening authority for general court-martials. the truth is a small number of commanders will be even affected by this legislation. but i can promise you the view from the service members will be significant because they will now see that if they are someone who has been assaulted or harassed or had any justice need, that the person reviewing the case would be highly trained and unbiased, and if you are a black or brown service member who's disproportionately punished under the current

system, you would know the decision-maker was impartial, unbiased, and highly trained. this change is something that will help for both victims of sexual assault but also for defendants' rights. for serious crimes, we need both pieces of this puzzle, and this bill provides both. it will still allow commanders to take the administrative steps to send a message to their troops about what is or is not tolerated, and 97% of them have to do that every day without having convening authority for general court-martial. and it will allow for victims and their families to get real justice. the military justice improvement and prevention act will deliver the results that our service members and their families deserve, without compromising command authority. that is what our allies have said. u.k., germany, israel,

australia, netherlands, canada have all testified to our body in various hearings and various committees that they saw no diminution in command control and no diminution in the ability to prepare and train troops. the truth is, this is a reform whose time has come, and every minute we delay, we are not standing by our service members. it is a change that has been supported by veterans groups across the country, whether it's the iraq and afghanistan association of veterans, whether it's the vietnam veterans association, whether i.t. the foreign legion or the veterans of foreign wars. military veterans support this bill. this is a change whose time has come, and i request that we have a floor vote to decide this. 66 senators on a bipartisan

basis support this. the committee has been addressing this issue for eight years. we've already passed 250 smaller reforms, none of which mass had a dent on the problem. it's time to do the reform that survivors have asked for and that veterans organizations support. i ask unanimous consent that at a time to be determined by the majority leader, in succumbation with the republican leader, the senate armed services committee be discharged from further consideration of s. 1520 and the senate proceed to its consideration, that there be two hours for debate equally divided in the usual form and that upon the use or yielding back of that time, the senate vote on the bill with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. reed: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. reed: thank you, madam president. and let me thank my colleague from new york for her work to

move this issue forward. but once again i would object to the request for the reasons i've previously stated and, in addition, madam president, today the ranking member of the committee, senator inhofe, released the written views of each member of the joint chiefs of staff which he had requested on senator gillibrand's proposed legislation. i understand that some of our body might discount these views and that's their prerogative. but i do believe it is important that their voices be part of the public discourse. they have dedicated their lives to the service of this nation. they have led troops in combat. they have experienced all of the issues that the face commanders, face subordinates a. they have a unique, i think, position within the system. and in addition, the military will have to implement whatever

system congress devises, and it will require their expertise and skill. as such, i would like to enter these records into the record and ask unanimous consent to do so. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. reed: thank you, madam president. now, i won't quote from these letters at length now, but i would just point out that the chiefs are open-minded about change the way we prosecute sexual assault and harassment within the ranks so am i. i think that is something that i hope becomes clear in our progress legislatively moving forward. but they nevertheless trust the importance of ensuring that any change congress enacts must be carefully tailored to address the problems we are trying to solve and the critical problem we are trying to solve is sexual assault, sexual harassment, any kind of crime connected to sexual misconduct. and, in addition, the adequate time and resources must be

afforded for implementing any of the changes we propose. the nature and the magnitude of the change we are contemplating here is complex. we have to make sure we do this right. further, we've heard over the past few years from leadership of the military services judge advocate services court who have uniformly opposed these changes in nature and scope and these are the military lawyers, the very military justice experts to whom this bill would invest authority currently reserved to commanders. i believe we should listen to them as well. move prudently and deliberately to address the problem at hand. so as i've said a umin of times already, i intend to include the administration's recommendations that derive from the president's independent review commission in the markup to the defense bill, subject to amendment, not to move a bill on the floor without the chance of my colleagues in the committee to have their voices heard. these ladies and gentlemen have dedicated themselves to military

policy for many years. they are experts in different did i mentions of this issue, and they will -- dimensions of this issue and they will add significantly. to simply take a bill and send is it to the floor without amendments, i think had is not the way to proceed. i anticipate a bill that will be strengthened through debate and discussion and deliberation by the committee, and with that, a madam president, i would reiterate my objection to senator gillibrand's q. mrs. gillibrand: madam president? the presiding officer: the objection 10 is heard. mrs. gillibrand: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from new york. jill july i disagree with the chairman -- mrs. gillibrand: i disagree with the chairman because the service chiefs and commanders for the last eight years have objected to any serious reform and, in fact, what they have said time appeared time again, trust us you trust us we'll get this right and have objected to any major reform. and in fact, that's what they did anytime we tried to reform the military. they objected on the same basis

using the same words when we tried to repeal don't ask, don't tell. they objected in the same way when we tried to allow women to get credit for being in combat. they objected in the same way when we integrated the military. and so to hear these objections over and over again, after the committee has studied this issue for eight years, and allowed 250 reforms to be put into the ndaa, all of which were okayed by the d.o.d., just flies in the face of reality. the military has demanded sole responsibility of these cases for the he's years that i have worked on this issue and have theyent didded the problem? no. -- dented the problem? no. has the rate of cases going to trial increased? no. has the rate of cases that have ended in conviction increased? no. so under no measurable has the d.o.d. got a handle on this. and for the chairman to say it

has to go through the committee, this issue has been going through the committee for eight years. and in fact when i've passed bipartisan reform with people like senator joni ernsts on the safe to report language, it was taken out in conference by the same d.o.d. staff that didn't want it in there in the first place. so under the chairman's view, this bill could certainly go through committee. we have more than half of the members. but i promise you, it will be watered down or taken out in conference because the chairman and the ranking member are against it and they have the authority to do so. so he is not offering a fair process. the fact that this bill has 66 cosponsors -- how many bills in america in this body have the support of ted cruz and liz warren? of mitch mcconnell and senator the senator from none. this is the kind of bipartisan bill that this country is yearning more, kind of commonsense reform that can

protect service members. and while the chairman is so interested in supporting what the generals and the admirals and top commanders want, why does he not listen to thes service members themselves, to the people who have suffered sexual assault, to the people who have suffered racial bias in prosecution? those are the people that he should be listening to, not the top brass. we've deferred to them the entire ten years i've been 10 years i've been on this committee and in the entire ten years our committee has failed. it is time to bring this bill to the floor. i yield the floor. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from maryland. mr. van hollen: i ask that the quorum call be suspended. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. van hollen: thank you, madam president. just a short time ago, on this senate floor, we witnessed a low

point for this body. we witnessed every republican senator voting against moving forward to consider legislation to strengthen our democracy. we witnessed all 50 republican senators voting to block consideration of the for the people act. i don't know why people are afraid of debating this issue which is so fundamental to our country at this particular point in time. this bill, the for the people act, has many important provisions. one of them, of course, is to establish minimum national standards to make sure that every eligible american voter can access the ballot box. that should be something we all want. we should want every american

eligible to vote to be out there exercising his or her right to vote, to participate in the decision-making in our democracy. and yet, not a single republican senator voted to proceed with that debate. even though this bill is more important now than ever before because we see as we speak republican state legislators in so many places around our country voting to erect barriers to the ballot box. we see this in state after state a pure partisan power play to rig the rules, to win elections by subtraction. not to win elections through the hurley burly debate over issues

of our day. not to win elections by talking about the agenda that somebody is advocating and why someone should vote for a particular candidate. that's the way it's supposed to be, but these are legislatures that are putting up barriers to make it harder for people to access the ballot. and specifically designing these barriers to try to limit participation by people of color and by younger voters. we saw that even before the aftermath of this election. we saw it in the aftermath of the supreme court decision in shelby v. holder. we saw texas and north carolina and other states adopting these kind of restrictive voting laws. you don't have to take my word for it. the u.s. courts took a look at the north carolina law that was passed a number of years ago and

said that they targeted african american voters with, quote, surgical precision to try to keep them from accessing the voting booth. and that's exactly the kind of thing that's going on now in state after state around the country. trying to win not by the great addition and multiplication of democracy but by subtraction and by division. and so why are these states doing this at this moment? they're doing it because of the big lie that was perpetrated in the aftermath of our presidential election. a lie that the former president persists in spewing and repeating to this very moment. the lie that he was somehow cheated or robbed out of an

election. the lie that led to the attack on this capitol on january 6. it's that lie that is giving rise to these actions in state legislatures. it's that lie that sadly led this body just a short while ago to block consideration of a bill to establish a commission to look at what happened on januar. that bill, too, was filibustered just like this one. in order to prevent the american people from getting to the bottom of the big lie. republican senators blocked that, too. they don't want the country to know, and they apparently are perfectly happy to allow all these state legislatures to put up barriers to voting as part of that big lie narrative.

and we know it's a big lie for so many reasons. of course, you know, president trump and his campaign took their claims to courts throughout the country. over 60 courts said those are ridiculous claims. president trump's own justice department, haste attorney general, former attorney general barr before he stepped down said there was no wrongdoing in this election that would change any kind of outcome. the president's point person at the department of homeland security responsible for monitoring the integrity of elections has testified before congress and said very clearly that the 2020 presidential election was the most secure election in american history. most secure in american history. that's from the person in charge of election integrity and

president trump's -- in president trump's own administration. and so why are all these states enacting these barriers to voting after an election that the trump homeland security department said was the most secure in history? it's because so many people turned out and voted in that secure election, and they didn't like the outcome. so when you don't like the outcome in election, instead of taking your case to the american people and saying that -- vote for us next time because here is our agenda for the country, here's what we're going to do, instead they decided that they're going to try to win by putting up barriers to try to prevent those large turnouts, especially among people of color, and we saw younger voters come out in 2020.

so the decision to block this bill from the -- from today is just a continuation of protecting the big lie. it's a continuation of protecting the big lie that is being fueled around the country by donald trump's continuous fraudulent claims. which unfortunately have seized the republican party. we saw what happened in the house of representatives. liz cheney, a stalwart conservative, ousted from her leadership position because she didn't pay homage to the former president. that's what's going on here. that's what's going on in the house, and that is what's reflected in this vote today. the refusal to even debate a bill to strengthen our democracy. come to the floor. tell us what you don't like,

tell us what you want to do. do you really believe that what these state legislatures are doing is a good thing for our democracy? i know it's easier not to have to talk about that. easier to ignore it all. but we're not going to let this issue go away. we're going to be here week after week to make sure that we continue to push this for the people act. now, in addition to the provisions to establish minimal protections so every eligible voter can access the voting booth, the for the people act also has a number of other very important provisions that are overwhelmingly popular with the american people. one of them is the incorporation of what's known as the disclose act. the disclose act is a very simple thing. it gets rid of secret corporate

money being plowed into our elections through these secret super pac's. you know, what happened after the decision in united were two things. one, corporate money now could flow in unlimited amounts into elections, but the supreme court at the time said you can at least be aware of who's spending all this money if you pass laws to make sure it's transparent. in fact, a lot of the justices who voted to overturn the uniteo allow corporate money in politics who were the majority in united also said in that same opinion that they essentially expected congress to enact laws to ensure transparency. in fact, eight of the nine supreme court justices in that case took that position.

and yet, the republican leader who in the early 2000's called for more transparency when it came to money being spent in elections, taking the opposite idea. we don't want the public to know who is spending all that money. we want it to be secret. i think most of us would agree -- and i know the american public agrees -- that they have a right to know who is spending millions and millions of dollars to try to influence their votes. we know that because survey after survey shows that republicans, democrats, and independents all agree that they should know who is spending all of this dark money. when you see a tv commercial that says, you know, paid for by

the committee for america, you should know who is financing that ad to try to influence your vote. it's a very simple principle. voters have a right to know. it was a principle agreed to by, you know, conservative jurists like justice scalia. and yet, the position of the republican senators today was we don't even want to talk about that. we don't even want to debate that provision. by the way, that provision, the disclose act, passed the house back in 2010, and it came here to the united states senate, and the senate version of the disclose act was debated on this senate floor. 59 senators at that time voted

to proceed with the bill. you might say 59 senators, that's a majority. why didn't it pass? because of the filibuster rule. they needed 60. 59 senators said we want disclosure. 59 senators said get rid of secret money. but because of the filibuster rule, it didn't pass. it couldn't get to final passage on a simple majority. if that had passed back in 2010, we wouldn't have our airwaves flooded with secret money today. we would have done what the american people wanted. the disclose act is in this bill now, and once again 11 years later, republican senators are filibustering the bill for the

disclose act. they don't want the american people to know who is spending all of that money, mostly corporate money, flowing underground, under the radar screen, through our political system to try to -- to try to elect candidates of the choice of whatever special interests are spending that money. but they don't want you to know who they are who are spending all that money to elect people. so why don't we all agree we're going to get rild of secret -- rid of secret money. apparently we don't want to debate that. another provision that is universally popular with the american people is the idea that we should have nationwide, nonpartisan congressional districting. let's draw congressional districts not based on politics but based on some nonpartisan

criteria. i think we all heard the line that it should not be the case that politicians are picking the voters. voters should pick their elected firms. these days people can draw congressional districts maps with incredible precision with the use of computers and literally try and draw a congressional district designed to get exactly the electorate they want. i don't think that's the way the founders expected it to end up working, to get a computer that could draw these districts with that kind of precision and accuracy. and so one of the other important provisions in the for the people act is let's draw congressional districts so that we the people can make these decisions without the lines having been drawn to

predetermine the outcome. that's also in this bill. it also has some other important provisions that i support to try to reduce the impact and influence of big money contributors to allow people with lesser means to be able to contribute to elections and have some element of public financing so that the system is more geared toward the public interest than relying exclusively on the private big contributions. that's another provision that's in the for the people act. some people may disagree with that. come to the floor, debate it, offer an amendment to get rid of it. let's vote. but what we saw today was a refusal to engage in the democratic process of debate and consideration of a bill.

they used this provision, the filibuster provision to block a bill to help protect and strengthen our democracy. and that -- that is a sad and shameful day in the united states senate, but i'm going to end with this. this issue is not going away. i was glad to see that even as every republican senator voted no, every democratic senator united together to say we stand for the idea that we should have some minimal national standards for access to the ballot booth to protect our democracy, that we should get rid of secret money in politics. every democrat said let's proceed to debate a bill that has those important provisions in it. and so we're not going away. this is a vote that may be a

temporary setback but it's my strong view that at the end of the day, democracy will prevail in the sense that it will be strengthened and that the american people are not going to stand for a process that reinforces the big lie that was perpetrated on this country. and so the good news, the good news, as i said, is every democratic senator said yes to moving forward. and we will find a way to get this done. we will find a way to protect our democracy. and i yield the floor.

mr. van hollen: madam president?

the presiding officer: the senator from maryland. mr. van hollen: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of s. res. 282 which was submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 282 recognizing july 1, 2021 as the 100th anniversary of the government accountability office and so forth. the presiding officer: without objection, the senate will proceed. mr. van hollen: madam president, i further ask that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. van hollen: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of s. 2184 introduced earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: s. 2184, a bill to amend the sarbanes-oxly act of 2002, to institute a trading

prohibition for certain issuers and so forth and for other purposes. the presiding officer: without objection, the senate will proceed. mr. van hollen: i ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. van hollen: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that at a time to be determined by the majority leader following consultation with the republican leader, the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of calendar number 74, s. 1251, that the only amendments in order be the following. lee number 2119. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. van hollen: i further ask that there be two hours for debate equally divided on the bill, that upon the use or yielding back of time, the senate vote on the lee amendment, that the bill be considered read a third time, the senate vote on passage of the bill as amended if amended,

and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. van hollen: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nomination, calendar number 115. the presiding officer: without objection, the clerk will report. the clerk: nomination, department of energy, ali nouri of the district of columbia to be an assistant secretary of energy, congressional and inster governmental affairs. mr. van hollen: madam president, i ask consent that the senate vote on the nomination without intervening action or debate and if confirmed, the motion be to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table all without intervening action or debate, that no further motions be in order for the from nation, any statements related to the nomination be printed in the record, that the president be immediately notified of the

senate's action and the senate then resume legislative session. the presiding officer: the question is on the nomination. all those in favor say aye. all opposed no. the ayes appear to have it. the ayes do have it. the nomination is confirmed. mr. van hollen: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 2:00 p.m. wednesday, june 23. 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. further, upon the conclusion of morning business, the senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the boardman nomination. further, that if cloture is invoked on the boardman nomination, all postcloture time expire at 5:45 p.m. úiso

reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. van hollen: madam president, if there's no further business to come before the senate, i ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order. the presiding officer: the senate stands adjourned until 2:00 p.m. tomorrow. an attempt to bring up a democratic bill on election campaign finance reform walked by republicans falling short of the 60 votes needed to start debate. tomorrow we expect the senate to work on judicial nominations live coverage when the senate is returned here on c-span2.

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