Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleagues from Oregon, Senator Wyden, for his remarks; Senator Merkley, for his leadership on the bill; and Senator Baldwin from Wisconsin, for her extraordinary leadership and service to our country.

It is a great privilege to be here today. My friend Cory Booker from New Jersey has been fighting for these issues for his whole career. Who knows, as I know, that anyone who studied the history of our democracy knows it has always been hard to make progress. This struggle has always been a battle of our highest ideals and our worst instincts as a country.

It has been true since our founding, when the same people who wrote that ``all men are created equal'' also perpetuated human slavery and denied equality to so many others. In fact, I don't think it is too much to say that our history is a story of our struggle with that contradiction between the promise of equality and the reality of inequality in America--between our highest ideals and our worst instincts. We struggle with that today.

Since he took office, over and over, President Trump has called on our worst instincts in almost everything he has done, including his attacks on access to healthcare, housing, and education for LGBTQ Americans.

Just last week, he went out of his way to strip transgender Americans of their access to healthcare, but just as President Trump was depriving hard-won rights, dragging us backward again, in Colorado, on the very same day, our State legislature passed a law to make it harder to wage violence against LGBTQ people in my State.

And listen to this: The vote was 63 to 1 in the Colorado House. It was 35 to 0 in the Colorado Senate.

Notwithstanding President Trump's anti-civil rights, anti-civil liberties agenda, in Colorado--a Western State, a purple State-- Republican and Democratic elected officials, in their legislative season, are fighting for our highest ideals and rejecting our worst instincts.

In fact, my State passed our version of the Equality Act over a decade ago. It is why we banned conversion therapy and passed Jude's Law, which makes it is easier for transgender Americans to change their name and government documents. It is how we have elected our State's first openly gay Governor, Jared Polis, and our first transgender State legislator, Brianna Titone. It is why we were one of the first States in America, I say to my college from New Jersey, to pass real accountability for police brutality with a bill led by Leslie Herod-- Colorado's first LGBTQ State legislator of color. This week, we passed that bill 52 to 13 in the House and 32 to 2 in the Senate. It contains many of the same reforms that Senator Booker and Senator Harris are leading on here.

So I am here to tell you that there are more and more in Colorado and in the country who understand what equality has come to mean in America and how to resolve some of these contradictions in the year 2020, and, this week, even the U.S. Supreme Court seems to understand it.

Just in the last week, a Republican-appointed Justice rejected Donald Trump's arguments and wrote for a majority of the Court, affirming equality for LGBTQ Americans. Then, this morning, the Court overturned President Trump's malicious attack on Dreamers, reaffirming the rule of law and, for the moment, protecting three-quarters of a million people who know no other country but the United States of America.

Now it is time for the Senate to do our work, finally, and pass the Equality Act. The House passed the Equality Act 13 months ago, and we have not acted in our typical fashion. That is another 13 months when LGBTQ Americans could get married on a Sunday and be fired on Monday, another 13 months when our neighbors could be denied housing, denied healthcare or be turned out of a store because of who they are.

Americans understand that no good comes from hoarding freedoms and equality. When we take the opposite view, we act against our traditions. As a nation, we will never flourish if we choose to depend on a permanent underclass that is deprived of some or all of the rights and freedoms others enjoy. Free people do not remain free by denying freedom to others. We should vote on the Equality Act and pass it today.

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