For the People Act of 2021
Floor Speech
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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman yielding.
Madam Speaker, as the gentleman knows, we have had a dialogue back and forth about the need for amendment, the need for debate on the floor. And what I would ask the gentleman is, for example, if the gentleman would agree that in 2004 we had former President Jimmy Carter, Democrat, and James Baker, Republican--hardly ideologues from the standpoint of division that we see today--agree that there are issues of bail and balance.
And what I would ask is: Why don't we have a debate here on the problems and concerns and potential fraud with mail-in ballots that is a nonpartisan concern? That is one example, and there are bunch. Why do we not have that debate robustly here on the floor for the American people to see, if we are talking about transparency?
And I ask the question respectfully of the gentleman from Maryland.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I would point out that the Speaker of the House came to the floor and used her magic minute, but doesn't stay on the floor and debate. There is no debate on this floor.
And then the Speaker said that there were amendments, 56 amendments. Forty-nine of them are Democratic amendments, hand-selected by a small group in the Rules Committee. Forty-nine are Democratic amendments.
So don't buy into the Kabuki theater that you are seeing on the floor of the House of Representatives.
You know what?
I can't ask to take down the words of the Speaker, even though the essence of her argument is that I am a bigot. Let's be very clear. The arguments being distilled on the floor today is that Republicans, my colleagues and I, that we are bigots.
Why?
Because they use fancy words like ``voter suppression'' to say that we are wanting to tamp down people's access to polls.
Nothing can be further from the truth. Heaven forbid we want to use voter identification. Heaven forbid we want to honor the will of the people through their legislature in the States passing rules to make sure that our system is actually working, using voter identification that the American people use to fly, that the American people use to do everything else. If I demand that, I am a bigot.
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