Filibuster

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to join my distinguished colleague from Arkansas. I agree with everything that he has said about this latest power grab by the Democrats in the U.S. Senate--of their effort to change the rules, to rig the rules, of course, through an agenda which I see, as do so many Americans, as radical and extreme and dangerous and scary. What the Democrats are proposing right here is to muzzle the voices of half of the country.

So why are they doing this? Well, it really has nothing to do with the priorities that are the priorities of the folks from my home State of Wyoming or from the previous speaker's home State of Arkansas or from the next speaker's home State of West Virginia. Oh, no, it has nothing to do with that. It has nothing to do with the priorities that the Gallup poll tells us are the concerns all around America: the coronavirus and the crisis we face there; the crisis at the southern border, where we are looking at almost 2 million illegal immigrants coming into the United States; crime in the cities, with murders up year after year and just amazingly up this year.

Then, of course, there are the raging fires of inflation, which are cutting into people's paychecks so that money doesn't go as far. When families in home States are looking at the fact that they are going to be paying about $3,500 more next year than the last and the year before that just to keep up, to maintain the quality of living, they have a lot of concerns. What the Democrats are trying to do isn't even one of them because the Democrats are trying to take a Federal takeover of elections. That is what they are trying to pass. They want to cram through a bill that they know otherwise would not pass.

So what is in the bill? Well, the Democrats want to do things like ban voter identification. You know, in my home State of Wyoming and I know in the previous speaker's State of Arkansas and the soon-to-be speaker's State of West Virginia, we know that people believe, if you want to get a ballot and if you want to vote, you should have to prove you are who you say you are.

In the home State of the Presiding Officer and the former Presiding Officer and in many States, if you want to go to a restaurant, you have to show your papers to prove you were vaccinated or to go into a building or to go to a sporting event. Yet the Democrats are proposing that you shouldn't have to show anything to prove you even are who you say you are in order to vote.

What about the incumbents who want to vote for this thing? Oh, did we mention there are taxpayer dollars going to incumbent Members of Congress to pay for their political campaigns? No wonder so many of the Democrats have voted for this. It is money into their own pockets.

The Democrats want Washington, DC, to micromanage elections across the country. They want to rig the rules of the Senate so they can enact this unpopular bill to take over elections in America.

The American people aren't asking for this. This recent Gallup poll that I alluded to asked people what they thought was the most important issue facing the country. Voting laws didn't even crack the top 20. In a list of 23, it came in as 23rd. It is the Democrats' No. 1 priority, and it is the last priority of the American public. It wasn't even an asterisk. It didn't even get 1 percent of the vote.

If the Democrats take over the Senate to take over elections and break the rules of the Senate, there will be no stopping them from passing the rest of this dangerous and extreme agenda.

Democrats know that there is an election coming in November. They can read the polls. They know it is not looking good for them. They know there is a very unpopular President in the White House. They know that their numbers are sinking, that their ship is sinking, and that they will soon be in the minority in both the House and the Senate.

Frankly, the election for the Democrats in the election after that doesn't look so good either because it only took 1 year for the people all across the country to recognize that the current President of the United States, Joe Biden, is both overwhelmed and ineffective as the President of the United States. There is no denying that.

Changing the rules, as the Democrats are proposing to do, really is their last chance to pass their leftwing, fringe ideas. It is the last chance to pack the Supreme Court. The Democrats in this body introduced legislation to pack the Supreme Court, to add four Democrats to the Court. It is the last chance to add new States to the Union. It is the last chance to give amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. It is the last chance before Democrats lose control of the Congress.

So why do they want to change the rules? It is because their agenda is so unpopular with the American people. They understand, as one Democrat said to another, that we have got to do it now because it is our last chance to force socialism on the American people whether they want it or not.

Instead of changing the rules, the Democrats should change their agenda. The Democrats should focus on what the American people say is important to them. It is our constituents who determine what is important to them. They are to communicate it to us. We are to represent them.

What is important to them? Well, it is getting ahead of the coronavirus, it is securing the border, and it is really to stop adding fuel to the fire of inflation when paychecks can't keep up with the costs of gas and groceries.

A Wall Street Journal story yesterday was about all of the Democrats who signed a letter saying: money from New England, Members of this body--they said energy costs are so high, the government should do something about it. This is after Joe Biden kills the Keystone XL Pipeline and stops oil and gas exploration, and their own home States are blocking pipelines which could carry inexpensive energy to the people who live there. Yet the Democrats want the government to do more. The government has done enough damage already.

There are lots of ideas that could pass the Senate and the House and be signed into law that would actually help the American people. Those are the things the American people are asking for. The American people are not asking for a blatant Democrat power grab to force through a very liberal agenda. People don't want to be muzzled. They don't want to have their voices silenced. They want real solutions. They don't want the Democrats' radical agenda.

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