Voting
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I listened carefully to the Republican leader's statement about the institutions of the Senate, the traditions of the Senate, the rules of the Senate, the precedents of the Senate, and why we are dutybound to follow them, but I couldn't get this image out of my mind as he spoke: the image of that news that came to us one day that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had tragically passed away.
And we all remember what happened next. It was the same Republican leader who sent the word out to his Republican Members: Don't even entertain the possibility that President Obama is going to fill this vacancy on the Supreme Court. We are going to keep this vacancy open in the hopes that we can elect a Republican President to fill it.
Now, that was 8 months at least, maybe 10 months, before the election. And it was the first time in the history of the United States that a Republican leader of the Senate used his power to browbeat his members not even to meet with Merrick Garland, the President's nominee, President Obama's nominee. They wouldn't even entertain an office meeting with him to discuss it. It was out of the question. The Supreme Court was going to have 8 members, period, and not one more because there was an election coming and a Republican opportunity in that election. And so that is what happened. You remember it well, and I do too.
So when I hear about preserving the sanctity of traditions in the Senate, I can't help but remember that vacant seat on the Supreme Court for almost a year. I cannot help but remember that in the last year of Obama's Presidency that he was denied the opportunity which other Presidents routinely were given to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. That was the reality.
And now there is a question of the future of the filibuster, and I will concede that the filibuster has been part of the profile in the Senate for a long, long time--for many decades. But what the Senate Republican leader fails to note is that the use of the filibuster is out of control.
We now have filibusters threatened on everything in sight. It was by design, not by accident. And it was by design to slow down the business of the Senate and stop the production of the Senate, and that is why day after weary day this Chamber is empty. Nothing is happening because a filibuster is usually looming over the body.
And for those who want to restore the Senate to an actual legislative body with actual debate and amendments on the floor, we are being told by the Republican leader that we are somehow denying the basic birthright of the Senate, and we know that is wrong. We know that the Senate, as many of us remember, has changed dramatically.
It was 25 years ago that I came to the Senate. We voted a lot. We actually had 12 appropriations bills come to the floor of the Senate every year--every year--under an open process where any amendment could be offered and debated and voted on, and ultimately that appropriations bill would go into conference with the House and end up doing what it was supposed to do, funding our government.
I can't remember the last time that happened. I think it has been 10 years now since the subcommittees for appropriations did their normal business with the budget resolution and prepared these bills. It is gone. Why? Why is it gone? Wasn't it the tradition of the Senate that you consider those bills? It is gone because of abuse of the filibuster.
Any amendment that is offered is threatened with a 60-vote requirement and things grind to a halt. And you know the net result of it? We have something called an omnibus. All the spending bills are merged into one massive piece of legislation. Let the staff write it. Let the Members look over their shoulder and see if there is anything in there of interest, and we pass it year after year after year.
Is that another fine tradition of the Senate that we want to protect? I hope not.
Let me say a word about voting, if I can. For as long as we have had this Nation, there has always been a basic question as to who will choose the leaders.
Our Founding Fathers showed a lot of wisdom, but they missed it when it came to voting--at least by this century's standards because they denied the vote to African Americans who, by and large, were slaves in that culture, and they denied the vote to women. And they said that basically propertied individuals were the ones who would choose the leaders of our country.
We have a different view of America's democracy today, and many of us believe that every eligible person in this country should be given an opportunity to vote that is not a hardship.
So in the 2020 election, we had a record turnout. There were many of us who felt we should build on that to have an even larger turnout in the next election--let the people speak, let the people vote.
And in about 20 different State legislatures controlled by the Republicans, exactly the opposite was decided. They decided that they would restrict opportunities to vote. Too many darn people voted in that 2020 election, and the results weren't what some of the Republican legislatures and Governors expected. So they decided they wanted to change it--reduce the opportunity for early voting, reduce the opportunities for registration, reduce the opportunity for same-day registration.
They argued that some States have them and some don't. Well, the bottom line, as we see it on the Democratic side, is if we are going to open opportunity for people across the country who are eligible to vote without hardship, then we ought to do it across the board, and that is why we support legislation--Federal legislation ordained and envisioned by our Constitution to establish standards that will make it easier to vote.
The Senator from Kentucky likes to come to the floor and say, well, New York doesn't have all those good things. He may be right. But why shouldn't they? As far as I am concerned, Illinois, New York, Hawaii, all States should be governed by standards and give people an additional opportunity to vote.
I would rather come down on the side of a larger turnout of the electorate and let democracy speak than the alternative, which is being suggested by the Republican leader. They want to selectively make it difficult for some people to come and vote. I don't. I think they are wrong.
Time and again, the Senate Republican leader came to the floor and called things fake. I guess we are now into that characterization and can thank President Trump for leading us down that path. What is not fake is this. Throughout the history of the United States, the opportunity to vote has been denied, primarily to people of color and the poor, year after year, in an effort to try to ensure that election results turned out a certain way.
For the longest time, my Democratic Party was guilty of that sin. I readily confess it because history makes it clear, but now that mantle has been passed to the party of Abraham Lincoln, the Republican Party, which is now trying to restrict the right to vote across the Nation.
When you heard that in Georgia you couldn't provide water or food to people waiting in line, it probably struck most Americans as odd. Why would they say that?
Well, visualize, if you will, the lines of voters, and you will find, if your memory is the same as mine, that largely they were minority voters who were standing in line for hours to vote--hours to vote.
And so the Georgia State Legislature and others have said, if you give them water or food, you have violated the law. Let them stand in line without any support.
Really? Is that what it has come down to? The fear that if you give a cup of water to someone waiting in line to vote, you are buying their vote? I just can't believe the thinking that leads to that. But we know behind it were a lot of situations where machinery and voting places were limited to minority populations.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source