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Floor Speech

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Ms. LUMMIS. Mr. President, it is always an honor to address the people of the United States from the floor of the U.S. Senate, and tonight is no exception.

I want to thank my colleague from Oklahoma for his wonderful remarks.

In order to form a more perfect Union, our Founding Fathers gave us a government that filters the will of the majority through a deliberative process of amendment and debate. For centuries, this has meant that legislative change, while slower in the United States than in some other countries, is moderated through healthy compromises and informed by a greater number of voices. This, in turn, has tended to give us legislation that benefits more Americans.

In recent decades, one of the most important factors in this process has been the Senate filibuster. It is one of the defining characteristics that sets the Senate apart from the House, and I served in the House. I remember how frustrating it was to send bill after bill to the Senate only to watch those bills die.

But because the House is set up on a more partisan basis, some of the bills we sent over here were pretty partisan. So the Senate has a chance to either look at those and reject them as purely partisan or, more frequently, take up bills that have been crafted on a bipartisan basis in this body, and I respect that.

The House is about simple majority rule, but the Senate, thanks in part to the filibuster, is defined by the rights of the minority party. Simply put, it gives the party not in power a voice to speak for forgotten Americans and for small States like Wyoming.

I am continually amazed at the whiplash-inducing about-face that Senate Democrats are doing on this issue. It was mentioned earlier by the previous speaker. Senate Democrats may be trying to end the filibuster today, but until recently, they sang a very different tune. As was pointed out, Majority Leader Schumer, in 2005, said that abolishing the filibuster would be doomsday for democracy--doomsday. Majority Whip Durbin said in 2018 that ending the filibuster would be the end of the Senate as was originally devised and created going back to our Founding Fathers. Vice President Harris signed a letter in 2017, with 31 Democratic Senators, urging the protection of the filibuster. President Biden was also a big supporter of the filibuster, calling it a Senator's right to require 60 votes for legislation and claiming that efforts to undermine the filibuster are a ``power grab'' by the majority party.

Well, today President Biden and Senate Democrats are trying to do just that, grab power. They are trying to overhaul our voting system by nuking the filibuster and seizing unchecked power.

Some of their more levelheaded and forward-thinking colleagues really are hesitant to do that. To their great credit and to the benefit of the institution of the Senate, my colleagues Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin recognize that what goes around comes around. Senator Manchin criticized the idea of a filibuster carve-out for election takeover legislation saying that ``anytime there's a carve-out, you eat the whole turkey.'' There is nothing left.

Senator Sinema wrote in the Washington Post that Democrats had more to lose than gain by changing filibuster rules, noting that the best way to achieve durable lasting results is through bipartisan cooperation.

You know, I agree. We saw earlier this year, the infrastructure bill was the product of bipartisan discussion, and it produced legislation that had an overwhelming majority of the votes in the Senate. Now, I was not a ``yes'' vote on that bill. I was a ``no'' vote on that bill. I felt it spent too much money, but I will say this. It was a fine work product that was developed by people of good will in both parties. They accepted ideas that I had and that others of us had who eventually voted against the bill, and they worked tirelessly for months. They would not give up because they recognized that when you can get a significant majority in this Senate to support something on a bipartisan basis, you have a better product for the Nation.

And I will say, I am proud of their work. I compliment them as frequently as I can for that work product, even though I didn't vote for it. It was an example of true bipartisanship, a true bipartisan compromise.

That is another reason that I have worked with my friend from Arizona Senator Sinema and with my friend from Oregon Ron Wyden on financial innovation. I had never met Ron Wyden until that bill. That infrastructure bill came to the floor, and it had an amendment on the definition of broker that would apply in financial innovation instances. It did not adequately represent what really happens in the world of digital assets.

So Senator Wyden and I met here on the floor. We became friends and started working on financial innovation issues, digital assets. And even though we were unsuccessful in changing the definition of ``broker'' in that bill, it forged a working friendship that I am confident will last for as long as I am here and as long as he is here together.

That is one of the reasons that I have come to believe so strongly in the filibuster. I saw it work in that specific piece of legislation, even in my first year in the U.S. Senate. It is why I have worked with Sheldon Whitehouse from Rhode Island on a foreign agent registration reform. It is why I have worked with other Members of the other party on issues where we see more common ground than we see differences.

If you want lasting change, it requires broad bipartisan support. Otherwise, the next administration will work to overturn your actions.

The last time Democrats changed the filibuster, it ultimately led to three Supreme Court Justices picked by President Trump. If Democrats thought that was bad, they should think carefully before changing the filibuster for other legislation. We should all think long and hard, as we prepare to vote, over this radical proposal.

I implore my Democratic colleagues, consider when the Senate was in Republican hands and when President Trump wanted Republicans to end the filibuster. Republicans rejected the Republican President's request to end the filibuster, and they did it out of respect for this institution. I am sure it was frustrating for the previous President. In some ways, it was frustrating for people like me.

I was not in Washington during the 4 years of the Trump Presidency. I was here during the 8 years of the Obama Presidency, serving in the House. I was not here during the Trump Presidency. I was back in Wyoming. In that time, you know, we were characterized as being a big red State, where a bunch of people in a ``basket of deplorables''--I was in there with them--were living and clinging to their guns and their Bibles and we were treated like outcasts in our own country and it felt antagonistic. It was part of what creates this great divide that this country is in right now. That is how we felt about ourselves.

I have to tell you, that is how we felt when President Biden went to Georgia and gave a speech and compared anyone who didn't support election reform to people like George Wallace. He compared people in my State and me, quite frankly, to a bunch of racists. That rhetoric is so damaging to trying to heal this country.

We all know our Nation is divided right now. Yesterday didn't help. If we want a more perfect Union than we have today, we need more compromise, not less. That is why we have institutional norms like the filibuster. When one party starts tearing up the norms, they might gain in the short term, but they do irreversible, lasting damage not only to our institutions but to our ``e pluribus unum,'' ``out of many, one.'' If we want to be one, we should keep the filibuster in place.

As those entrusted with the upkeep of our Constitution for future generations, we need to take a longer term view of what will be best for the country, not just our short-term political aspirations. Our Founders understood that the ends do not always justify the means. That is why we have the separation of powers--two Chambers of Congress and a Bill of Rights that protects the individuals, that protects freedom. Sometimes you have to choose the harder right over the easier wrong. Compromise is hard. I will tell you, I am not all that good at it. I am trying to learn from the people in this Senate Chamber who are so successful at it.

You know, the American people have placed a great deal of faith in each one of us to get this done. I have faith in us as well.

I will admit that I really disliked my first year in this U.S. Senate. It was a huge disappointment to me. It was ugly. It was nasty. It seemed un-American.

But I still have faith in us. We need to protect our institutions. One of those institutions is the filibuster. I think it will allow us to continue to be a nation that is out of many and yet is still one. God willing, that will be the case.

Thank you.

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