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Floor Speech

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Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, last week, the Vice President of the United States told us that a riot that happened here in the U.S. Capitol last year was the equivalent of the day in which Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor and the United States was pulled into a world war that took the lives of over 3 percent of the world's population.

And yesterday, we were treated to the President telling us that election laws that are being passed by various States across the country over the last year are basically the same, the equivalent, of the segregation that existed in this country in the 1950s and 1960s and before.

Now, look, if your daily routine is to wake up in the morning and turn on MSNBC as you ride your Peloton and then you go on Twitter as you are drinking your caramel macchiato and then you are reading the New York Times as you are eating your avocado toast, I imagine all this makes perfect sense to you. After all, for these people, they believe this ridiculous narrative that every Republican--every Republican--is an insurrectionist, probably a racist, wants to overthrow the U.S. Government, and wants to destroy democracy.

The good news is that the overwhelming majority of Americans happen to live back here on planet Earth. And what they are worried about, to the extent they even pay attention to any of this stuff that has been said over the last 2 weeks--what they are really worried about is the fact that everything costs more; you go to the grocery store and the shelves are empty; they have a small business and they hire someone on Monday who just disappears on Thursday and never comes back; you have got, every day, thousands of people illegally entering the United States across an open border; and, by the way, we have a surge in violent crime and lawlessness across the country. That is probably what they are worried about--in fact, I know it is--on a daily basis.

But to the extent they have paid attention to any of this, let me tell you something. First of all, I think almost everyone would tell you that what happened on January 6 here was a terrible thing; it should never have happened; and it should never happen again.

But I don't care how many candlelight vigils and musical performances you have from the cast of ``Hamilton,'' you are not going to convince, at least most normal and sane people, that our government last year was almost overthrown by a guy wearing a Viking hat and Speedos. OK?

And I don't care, you know, how many of these speeches the President gives in which he shouts out this hyperbole and all this melodrama, you are not going to convince people that having a State pass a law that says, for example, that you have to produce an identification is the same as segregation.

Nevertheless, despite the fact that that is what most people in this country are worried about--inflation and all these other things--that is not what we are working on here. That is not what we will spend this week on. That is not what the priority of this administration has been. That is not what the President is giving speeches about. You may care about inflation back home. They care about the fact--their crisis is that there are some laws in this country, for example, some States in this country, that do not automatically force everyone to register to vote. They just automatically register them. Well, that is the crisis.

They don't care that store shelves are empty. In fact, they have denied that the store shelves are actually empty.

For them, the real problem is that States have laws, for example, that don't allow these roving gangs of activists to bully people into turning over their ballot so they can show up at 6:59 p.m. on election day and just dump it on an elections official.

And by the way, they don't seem overly concerned that there are Americans that will be fired or not allowed into a restaurant unless they can produce their papers, their vaccine card.

The real problem is how dare you ask them to produce a voter ID--a photo ID in order to vote. That is their real problem.

So how can this be? I mean, how can there be such an enormous disconnect between what real people in the real world care about and are talking about on a daily basis and what we are going to spend our time talking about here and these speeches that have been given over the last week?

It isn't about the Capitol riot. Everyone agrees the Capitol riot was terrible and shouldn't have happened--I think most everyone does. But these are some of the same people who downplayed over 700 riots, thousands of cases of looting that happened in America in the summer of 2020.

It most certainly isn't about election laws that have been passed in the last year. They have been pushing these same bills with different titles and different names--they have been pushing all of this for the better part of a decade.

And it certainly isn't about voting rights. It is easier than it has ever been in the history of the United States to register to vote and to vote. And the proof is that in 2020, we had the highest turnout in over 100-and-something years. This isn't about any of that.

If you are paying attention, let me tell you what this is about. This is about power. It is about power. This is about changing the rules of the Senate so they have the power to ram through--to ram through--an election law. And this is about ramming through an election law to make sure that they never lose power, to make it easier to win elections for them and, therefore, have power for perpetuity.

You want to talk about defending democracy? Let's talk about the Americans, real people, who are afraid to donate to a political campaign, to put a bumper sticker on their car, to tell people who they voted for. They are afraid because they don't want to get canceled; they don't want to get boycotted; they don't want to get harassed--so they are afraid. They don't want to get smeared.

Do you want to talk about totalitarianism? Let's talk about the fact that the Attorney General of the United States has said let's go after some of these parents complaining at school boards and treat them as domestic terrorists.

And, listen, if you want to talk about segregation, then let's talk about a system of education that is both separate and unequal, divided between the people who can afford to spend $50,000 or $60,000 a year to send their kids to a fancy school where they get SAT tutoring and they get all kinds of advantages and the thousands--no, millions--of American parents who are Hispanic and African American and others who have no choice whatsoever as to where their kids go to school. They have no voice. They have to send their kid to the school the government tells them.

These people don't care about any of this because it is about power. It is not just the power to change election laws. We have seen it. It is about the power to tell you what you are allowed to say. It is about the power to tell you where you are allowed to go. It is about the power to tell you what you are allowed to do. It is about the power to intimidate, to destroy, to smear, to call a racist, a bigot, a hater anyone who dares get in your way, anyone who dares disagree with you. It is about the power to do that.

Well, let me tell you something. I was raised by and have lived my entire life alongside people who lost their country, the country of their birth, to power-hungry people just like that.

I warn you, do not stand by and allow it to happen to this one.

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