we proposed a 15-member commission just like what was done after the failed election of 1876. we're encouraging people to spend ten days going through all the issues so states can have one last opportunity to address any challenges. then the states as the constitution directs, would make the final decision on their electors. i have some colleagues who have said that a ten-day commission is not enough time so they have counterproposed just ignoring the lingering questions. we need to do something. my challenge today is not about the good people of arizona -- mr. grassley: we'll stand in recess until the call of the chair.

the vice president: the senate will come to order. the vice president is present, and the senate would like to give a brief statement with the indulgence of the here providing over the senate.e here providing ork continues. we condemn the violence that took place here in the strongest possible terms. we grieve the loss of life in these hallowed halls, as well as the injuries suffered by those

who defended our capitol today. and we will always be grateful to the men and women who stayed at their posts to defend this historic place. to those who wreaked havoc in our capitol today, you did not win. violence never wins. freedom wins. and this is still the people's house. and as we reconvene in this chamber, the world will again witness the resilience and strength of our democracy, for even in the wake of unprecedented violence and vandalism at this capitol, the elected representatives of the people of the united states have assembled again on the very same day to support and defend the

constitution of the united states. so may god bless the lost, the injured, and the heroes forged on this day. may god bless all who serve here and those who protect this place. and may god bless the united states of america. let's get back to work. mr. mcconnell: mr. president. the vice president: the majority leader. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent the majority leader and the democratic leader be allowed to speak and that the time not count against the two hours of debate in relation to the objection raised on the state of

arizona. the vice president: is there objection? without objection, so ordered. mr. mcconnell: i want to say to the american people the united states senate will not be intimidated. we will not be kept out of this chamber by thugs, mobs, or threats. we will not bow to lawlessness or intimidation. we are back at our posts. we will discharge our duty under the constitution and for our nation. and we're going to do it tonight. this afternoon, congress began the process of honoring the will of the american people and counting the electoral college votes. we have fulfilled the solemn duty every four years for more

than two centuries. whether our nation has been at war or at peace, under all manner of threats, even during an ongoing armed rebellion and the civil war, the clock work of our democracy has carried on. the united states and the united states congress have faced down much greater threats than the unhinged crowd we saw today. we've never been deterred before, and we will be not deterred today. they tried to disrupt our democracy. they failed. they failed. they failed to attempt to obstruct the congress. this failed insurrection only underscores how crucial the task before us is for our republic.

our nation was founded precisely so that the free choice of the american people is what shapes our self-government and determines the destiny of our nation. not fear, not force, but the peaceful expression of the popular will. now, we assembled this afternoon to count our citizens' votes and to formalize their choice of the next president. now we're going to finish exactly what we started. we'll complete the process the right way by the book. we'll follow our precedents, our laws, and our constitution to the letter. and we will certify the winner of the 2020 presidential

election. criminal behavior will never dominate the united states congress. this institution is resilient. our democratic republic is strong. the american people deserve nothing less. the vice president: the democratic leader. mr. schumer: mr. president. mr. president, it is very, very difficult to put into words what has transpired today. i have never lived through or even imagined an experience like the one we have just witnessed in this capitol. president franklin roosevelt set aside december 7, 1941, as a day that will live in infamy. unfortunately, we can now add

january 6, 2021, to that very short list of dates in american history that will live forever in infamy. this temple to democracy was desecrated. its windows smashed. our offices vandalized. the world saw americans' elected officials hurriedly ushered out because they were in harm's way. the house and senate floors were places of shelter until the evacuation was ordered, leaving rioters to stalk these hallowed halls. lawmakers and our staffs, average citizens who love their country, serve it every day, feared for their lives. i understand that one woman was shot and tragically lost her life. we mourn her and feel for her friends and family. these images were projected to

the world. foreign embassies cabled their home capitals to report the harrowing scenes at the very heart of our democracy. this will be a stain on our country not so easily washed away. the final terrible, indelible legacy of the 45th president of the united states, undoubtedly our worst. i want to be very clear. those who performed these reprehensible acts cannot be called protesters. no, these were rioters and insurrectionists, goons and thugs, domestic terrorists. they do not represent america. they were a few thousand violent extremists who tried to take over the capitol building and attack our democracy. they must and should be

prosecuted to the full extent of the law, hopefully by this administration, if not certainly by the next. they should be provided no leniency. i want to thank the many of the capitol hill police and secret service and local police who kept us safe today and worked to clear the capitol and return it to its rightful owners and its rightful purpose. i want to thank the leaders, democrat and republican, house and senate. it was speaker pelosi, leader mcconnell, leader mccorrespondent think and myself who came doth together and decided that these thugs would not succeed. that we would finish the work that our constitution requires us to complete. in the very legislative chambers of the house and senate that were desecrated, but we know always belong to the people and do again tonight.

but make no mistake, make no mistake, my friends, today's events did not happen spantainiously. the president, who promoted conspiracy theories that motivated these thugs, the president, who exhorted them to come to our nation's capital, egged them on, he hardly ever discourages violence and more often encourages it, this president bears a great deal of the blame. this mob was in good part president trump's doing, incited by his words, his lies. this violence in good part his responsibility, his ever-lasting shame. today's events certainly -- certainly -- would not have happened without him.

now, january 6 will go down as one of the darkest days in recent american. a final warning to our nation about the consequences of a demagogic president. the president who enable him, the captive media that parrots his lies and the people who follow him as he attempts to push america to the brink of ruin. as we reconvene tonight, let us remember, in the end, all this mob has really accomplished is to delay our work by a few hours. we will resume our responsibilities now, and we will finish our task tonight. the house and senate chambers will be restored good as new and ready for legislating in short order. the counting of the electoral votes is our sacred duty.

democracy's roots are deep and strong and they will not be undone ever by a group of thugs. democracy will triumph, as it has for centuries. so to my fellow americans who shocked and appalled by the images on their televisions today and who are worried about the future of this country, let me speak to you directly. the divisions in our country clearly run deep, but we are a resilient, forward-looking and optimistic people, and we will begin the hard work of repairing this nation tonight because here in america we do hard things. in america, we always overcome our challenges. i yield the floor. mr. mcconnell: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. mcconnell: i yield two minutes to the senator from oklahoma, senator lankford.

the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. lankford: mr. vice president, you said things more eloquently than we say them in oklahoma. in oklahoma we'd say something like, why in god's name would someone think attacking law enforcement and occupying the united states capitol is the best way to show that you you're right? why would you do that? rioters and thugs don't run the capital. we're the united states of america. we disagree on a lot of things and we have a lot of spirited debate in this room, but we talk it out and we honor each other. even in our disagreement. that person, that person, that person is not my enemy. that's my fellow american. and while we disagree on things and disagree strongly at times, we do not encourage what

happened today ever. i want to join my fellow senators in saying thank you to the capitol hill police, the law enforcement, the national guard, the secret service who stood in harm's way while we were here debating. they were pushing back. and i was literally interrupted midsentence speaking here because we were all unaware of what was happening right outside this room. because of their faithfulness and because of what they have done. i want to thank him. ronald reagan once said, peace is not the absence of conflict. it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means. peaceful people in my state and oklahoma want their questions answered but they don't want this, what happened today. they want to do the right thing, and they also want to do it the

right way. they want to honor the constitutional process but they also want to have debate about election security because they want to make sure it is right. which is why it is an important issue that still needs to be resolved. transparency in government just doesn't seem like a bad idea. obviously the commission that we have asked for is not going to happen at this point. and i understand that. and we're headed towards tonight -- towards the certification of joe biden to be the president of the united states. and we will work together in this body to be able to set a peaceful example of the days ahead. i yield the floor. the presidingthe vice presidente democratic leader. mr. schumer: the senator from nevada, senator cortez masto. the vice president: the senator from nevada.

ms. cortez masto: i know that many believe that for america to succeed, our politics must find common ground. and that has never been clearer than today when armed rioters stormed the u.s. capitol, emboldened by president trump's false and inflammatory rhetoric about the 2020 elections. i believe that we in this chamber have a special duty as leaders to work together to lower the temperature of our politics. and i hope that my colleagues who have questioned the legitimacy of this election in arizona and all of these other states now see the dire and dangerous consequences of sewing doubt and uncertainty. -- of sowing doubt and uncertainty. i also know that is u.s. senators we also take the oath that we support the constitution

against all enemies foreign and domestic. at this moment in history i can think of nothing more patriotic than renewing our faith in the charters of freedom that our founding fathers crafted for our republic, starting with the fundamental american principle in our declaration of independence that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. the people have spoken in this election and our only job here today is to do what they asked. it is not to argue election security. that's not the place for what we are doing today. our constitution specifically reserves to the people the right to meet in the respective states and vote for the president and vice president. as a result, individual states oversee and implement the election process, not the federal government. to guard against fraud or

irregularities in the voting process, the states are required to have robust election security measures. likewise, state legislatures have the opportunity to examine evidence of voter fraud before they certify their electoral college votes. and our courts, from district courts to the united states supreme court, adjudicate legal challenges and election disputes. all of those things happened after the 2020 election. statehouses and courts across the country took allegations of voter fraud seriously and followed the constitutional process to hear challenges to this year's elections. no state found evidence of any widespread voter fraud, and neither did any court asked to review the states' findings. in arizona, republican governor doug ducey, democratic secretary of state katie hobbs, republican attorney general mark bernavich

and state supreme court justice robert rudenow all certify the results of the lengths on november 30. and we know we have heard arizonans have been voting by nail for almost 30 years and governor ducey as expressed confidence in the process many times. he said we do elections well here in arizona. the system is strong and that's why i have bragged on it so much. he further stated, we have some of the strongest election laws in the country. laws that prioritize accountability and clearly lay out our procedures for conducting, canvassing and even contesting the results. and they are right. arizona has one of the most transparent election processes in the country with built-in accountability starting with auditing. we have heard unfounded allegations that voting machines in arizona and elsewhere somehow changed vote tallies or somehow improperly rejected ballots

while claiming to accept them. these allegations all ignore the fact that arizona counties conducted ballot audits by hand to double-check the machine counts and these audits found no widespread fraud or irregularities. maricopa county, the county where more than 60% of the state population resides, conducted a post election handcount audit in the week after the election, which showed perfect 100% accuracy in the machine tabulations. so why would we need, my colleagues, to call fora 10-day message audit to be conducted by a legislative commission when it's already been done by the state of arizona? what happened to states' rights? the audit involved checking ballots for the president denying election but also ballots for federal and state legislative elections. the audit report shows every

precinct's machine and hand-count he totals for each of the races audited and the for every one, the difference between the hand count and the machine count was zero. maricopa's audit report stated, no discrepancies were found by the hand-count audit boards. seeking to find any reasoning to contest these results, some of the state republicans then tried to claim that maricopa county failed to follow state law in conducting the audit by selecting voting center locations to audit instead of voting precincts. this was wrong. and this, too, went to a court. and rejecting this claim, the state court in arizona found that the county followed the properly issued guidance on hand-audit procedures from the arizona secretary of state. and the court found that maricopa county officials therefore could not lawfully have performed the hand-count audit the way the plaintiffs

wanted it done. if they had done so, they would have exposed themselves to criminal punishment. the vice president: the senator's five minutes violence expired. ms. cortez mass mosquito:i would say, please do not disenfranchise the voters of arizona. certify their votes tonight. thank you. the vice president: the majority leader. mr. mcconnell: mr. president, i yield up to five minutes to the senator from utah, senator lee. the vice president: the senator from utah. mr. lee: mr. president, at the time i prepared my remarks for today, it seems like a lifetime ago, a lot has changed in the last few hours and so i'm going to deliver some of the same remarks but it has a little bit of a different feel than it would have just a few hours ago. my thoughts and prayers go out to the family members of those who have been injured or killed today. my heartfelt gratitude goes out

to the capitol hill police who valiantly defended our building and our lives. while it's true that legitimate concerns have been raised with regard to how some of the key battleground states conducted their presidential elections, this is not the end of the story. we each have to remember that we've sworn an oath to uphold, protect, and defend this document, written nearly two and a half centuries ago by wise men raised up by god to that very purpose. that document makes clear what our role is and what it isn't. it makes clear who does what when it comes to deciding presidential elections. you see, because in our system of government, presidents are not directly elected, they are chosen by presidential electors and the constitution makes clear

under article 2, section 1, that the states shall appoint presidential electors according to procedures that their legislatures develop. then comes the 12th amendment, it explains what we're doing here today in the capitol, that the president of the senate, the vice president of the united states shall open the ballots and the ballots shall be counted. it are those words that contain every scrap of authority we have in this process. our job is to open and then count, open, then count. that's it. that's all there is. now, there are, of course, rare instances, instances in which multiple slates of electors can be submitted by the same state. that doesn't happen very often. it happened in 1960, it happened in 1876. let's hope it doesn't ever happen again. in those rare moments, congress

has to make a choice, it has to decide which electoral votes have to be counted and which did not. that did not happen here, thank heavens and let's hope that it never does. now, many of my colleagues have raised objections or had previously stated their intent to raise objections with regard to these. i spent an enormous time on this issue over the last few weeks. i met with lawyers on both sides of the issue. i met with lawyers representing the trump campaign, reading everything i could find about the constitutional provisions in question, and i spent a lot of time on the phone with legislators and other leaders from the contested states. i didn't initially declare my position because i didn't yet have one. i wanted to get the facts first and i wanted to understand what was happening. i wanted to give the people serving in government in the contested states the opportunity to do whatever they felt they

needed to do to make sure that their election was properly reflected. i spent an enormous amount of time reaching out to state government officials in those states, but in none of the contested states, no, not even one, did i discover any indication that there was any chance that any state legislature or secretary of state or governor or lieutenant governor had any intention to alter the slate of electors. that being the case, our job is a very simple one. this simply isn't how our federal system is supposed to work. that is to say, if you have concerns with the way that an election in the presidential race was handled in your state, the appropriate response is to approach your state legislators, first and foremost, these

protests from -- hearing from those who have raised concerns, they should have been focused on their state clils, not our -- captain yols, not our nation's capitol. yes, we are the election judges when it comes to members elected to our own body. yes, the house of representatives, they are the judges of their own races there. we also have the authority to prescribe as a congress rules governorring the time, place, and manner of elections for senators and representatives. there is no corresponding authority with respect to presidential elections, none whatsoever. it doesn't exist. our job is to convene, to open the ballots and to count them, that's it. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. the vice president: the democratic leader. mr. schumer: the senator from colorado, mr. bennet. the vice president: the senator from colorado.

mr. bennet: thank you, mr. vice president. colleagues, it has been a terrible day for everybody here and for our country. one of the things i was thinking about today is something i often think about when i'm on this floor and that is the founders of this country, the people that wrote our constitution actually knew our history better than we know our history. and i was thinking about that history today as we saw the mob riot in washington, d.c., thinking about what the founders were thinking about when they wrote our constitution, which is what happened to the roman republic when armed gangs doing the work for politicians prevented rome from casting their ballots for consult, for senators, these were the offices in rome and these armed gangs ran through the streets of rome keeping elections from being

started, keeping elections from ever being called, and in the end, because of that, the roman republic fell and a dictator took its place. and that was the end of the roman republic or any republic for that matter until this beautiful constitution was written in the united states of america. so it is my fervent hope is that the way we respond to this today, my dear colleagues, is that we give the biggest bipartisan vote we can in support of our democracy and in support of our constitution and in rejection for what we saw today and what the roman republic saw in its own time. there's a tendency around this place, i think, to always believe that we're the first people to confront something when that's seldom the case and to underappreciate what the

effect of our actions will be. we need to deeply appreciate in this moment our obligation to the constitution, our obligation to the democracy, our obligation to the republic. there are people in this chamber that have twisted the words, twisted the words of a statute written in the 19th century that was meant to actually settle our electoral dispute, to leave them with the states, as the senator from utah was saying, to give us ministerial role, accept in -- except in very rare circumstances, that is what that law is about that the senator from texas was talking about today. and that's the law that's leading us to be asked to overturn the judgments of 60 courts in america, many of them courts in arizona, some of whom

have -- have howled the president's lawyers out of the courtroom because there's no evidence of fraud. by the way, the fact that 37% or 39% of americans think there's evidence of fraud does not mean there is fraud. if you turned a blind eye to a conspiracy theory, you can't now come to the floor of the senate and say, you're ignoring the people who believe the -- the election was stolen. go out there and tell them the truth which is that every single member of this senate knows this election wasn't stolen and that we, just as in the roman republic, have a responsibility to protect the independence of the judiciary from politicians who will stop at nothing to hold on to power.

there's nothing new about that either. that's been true since the first republic was founded. so now we find ourselves in a position just days after many senators here swore an oath to uphold and defend the constitution, every single member of the house of representatives swore the same oath as well. and i think we've got a solemn obligation and responsibility here to prove once again that this country is a nation of laws and not of men and the only result that we can reach together is one that rejects the claim of the senator from texas and the other members of the house and senate who seek to overturn the decisions that were made by the states, by the

voters in the states, and by the courts. if we follow what they have proposed, we will be thes ones -- the ones that will have disenfranchised every single person who cast a vote in this election, whether they voted for the president or they didn't. i urge you to reject this and i deeply appreciate the opportunity to serve with every single one of you. thank you, mr. president. the vice president: the majority leader. mr. mcconnell: i yield up to five minutes to the senator from electoral -- the senator from georgia. the presiding officer: the -- the vice president: the senator from georgia. mrs. loeffler: mr. president, when i arrived in washington this morning, i fully intended to object to the certification of the electoral votes, however the events that transpired have forced me to reconsider and i cannot now in good conscience object to the certification of

these electors. the violence, the lawlessness and siege of the halls of congress are abhorrent and stand as a direct attack on what my objection was intended to protect, the sanctity of the american democratic process. i thank law enforcement for keeping us safe. i believe that there were last-minute changes to the november 2020 election process and serious irregularities that resulted in too many americans losing confidence not only in the integrity of our elections but in the power of the ballot as a tool of democracy, too many americans are frustrated with what they see as an unfair system, nevertheless there is no excuse for the events that took place in these chambers today and i pray that america never suffers such a dark day again. though the fate of this vote is clear, the future of the american people's faith and the core institution of this democracy remains uncertain. we, as a body, must turn our focus to protecting the

integrity of our elections and restoring every american's faith that their voice and their vote matters. america's a divided country with serious differences but it is still the greatest country on earth. there can be no disagreement that upholding democracy is the only path to preserving our republic. i yield the floor. the vice president: the senator from kentucky. mr. paul: i wrote a speech for today i was planning to say that i fear the chaos of establishing a precedent that congress can overturn elections. boy was i right. chaos, anarchy, the violence today was wrong and un-american. the vote we are about to cast is incredibly important. now more than ever the question is, should congress override the certified results from the