For the People Act of 2021--Motion to Discharge

Floor Speech

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Mr. CRUZ. It would constitute a massive power grab by Democrats. It would disenfranchise millions of Americans. It would do precisely the opposite of its nominal title, ``For the People.'' It is, instead, for the politicians because it entrenches politicians and ensures that the people cannot vote them out of office.

It would strike down virtually every reasonable voter integrity law in the country, including voter ID laws supported by the overwhelming majority of this country; including prohibitions on ballot harvesting-- again, widely supported by people in this country. It would mandate that felons be allowed to vote, and it would automatically register millions of illegal aliens to vote.

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Mr. CRUZ. There is a reason for that. That ensures that redistricting is controlled by the people.

We have an unfortunate pattern in today's Congress, which is today's Democrats no longer believe in democracy. Their bill, S. 1--what many call the Corrupt Politicians Act--is designed to prevent the voters from voting Democrats out of office.

This bill, the bill to remove the State legislatures from their constitutionally appointed responsibility of being in charge of redistricting, would instead assign that to commissions and ultimately to the Federal courts, to unelected Federal judges.

Now, redistricting and gerrymandering can lead to ugly consequences. This is not new. The Founders were well aware of the ugly consequences of gerrymandering. Indeed, the very word ``gerrymander'' comes from Elbridge Gerry, one of the Founders whose district was so contorted, it looked like a salamander. That is where the district came from.

The Founders knew that if you give redistricting to elected politicians, they will act based on political concerns. The reason the Founders did so is, even with those down sides, it keeps the process accountable to the people. If you instead hand it over to unelected commissions or to unelected Federal judges, the people are disenfranchised. That is a serious mistake.

I would note, over a decade ago, I defended the constitutionality and the constitutional assignment of that responsibility to the State legislatures before the U.S. Supreme Court in the Texas redistricting case, and we won a landmark 5-to-4 victory where the Supreme Court upheld the clear constitutional authorization of legislatures to engage in redistricting even if they engaged in political concerns because the check on that is not unelected judges second-guessing the people; rather, the check on that is democracy and the people engaging in their own check and balance.

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Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President.

Indeed, in a landmark case before the U.S. Supreme Court, racist southern Democratic politicians tried to force the NAACP to hand over their donor list, and they wanted to do so for reasons that were not difficult to discern, because they intended to persecute those who dare contribute to the NAACP.

And the Supreme Court, in a landmark decision, concluded that the Constitution protects against that forced disclosure. But I will say, the majority leader said just a few minutes ago that surely there must be some area of common ground, and indeed there is on this issue.

I think all of us, if we were speaking in a moment of candor, if we were not engaged in our typical partisan battle on the floor, would acknowledge the current system is stupid. The current system makes no sense. Super-PACs make no sense. Why is that? Because in all of our elections--every one of us has run for election--there are super-PACs, which are independent groups. It is illegal for us, as candidates, to speak with those independent groups. And in every one of our races--I see the Senator from Arizona. He is going have a hotly contested race. It wouldn't surprise me to see $100 million or more spent in his race, perhaps on both sides. Much of that will be spent in super-PACs.

It is illegal for us, as candidates, to communicate with those super- PACs. So we are left with the bizarre situation where there is millions or sometimes tens of millions of dollars being spent on behalf of us; millions, sometimes tens of millions of dollars, spent attacking us; and we can't communicate with them. We hope it has some bearing or relevance to what we believe.

Every Congress, since I have been here, I have introduced legislation to end this. This is legislation called the SuperPAC Elimination Act. This act does two very simple things. No. 1, it allows unlimited individual contributions to Federal campaigns, not from unions, not from corporations but from real human beings, from people--unlimited contributions.

I would note this is the way the State of Texas handles State elections.

No. 2, my legislation, the SuperPAC Elimination Act, requires immediate 24-hour disclosure. So if an individual writes a check to a campaign, that gets disclosed immediately, and you can debate about whether that contribution was corrosive or not.

This legislation would not prohibit super-PACs, but, as a practical matter, super-PACs would fade from relevance because every candidate would much prefer money given to their campaign, where you can spend on your own message. It would make far more sense to have an open, transparent system.
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