Legislation That Demands the Attention of Every American

Floor Speech

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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, this afternoon we will be voting on legislation that demands the attention of every single American. This will be one of the most important votes that Members of this Chamber will ever take in their entire careers. It is an issue that we never thought we would actually have to address, but that moment has come to us now.

Should Americans and Americans alone determine the outcome of American elections, or should we allow foreigners and illegal aliens to decide who sits in the White House and here in the people's House and in the Senate?

As the progressive wing of Washington has slowly crept in and marched through our institutions and has infected every level of government, they have brought us to a generation-defining moment. That is the moment that we have upon us now.

Because the Democratic Party has shown time and time again that they want our borders wide open to every country on the planet and they want illegal aliens voting in our elections, we now have reached a fateful decision point.

Here is the critical question: Should only American citizens, citizens of this country, be allowed to determine who controls the people's House, the Senate, and the White House?

Every Republican, every one of our colleagues, emphatically says yes. The answer to that question is yes, and every Republican will vote for the bill that we have on the floor today.

This is a question that almost every American agrees with us upon. Here is the number: 89 percent of Americans believe that only Americans should decide our elections, and that includes, by the way, 82 percent of Democrats, 80 percent of Black and African-American voters, and 76 percent of Hispanic and Latino voters. Everybody who looks at this question answers it the right way, just about everybody.

We are about to find out here very shortly if all of the Members of this Chamber agree.

Americans all over the country understand what is at stake here. They refuse to hand over our country to illegal aliens, cartels, traffickers, violent criminals, and murderers. That is what is at stake.

Now, I hate to say it, but we have so many noncitizens in the country right now that if only 1 out of 100 of those illegal aliens voted, you are talking about hundreds of thousands of votes being cast.

Remember, these aren't huddled masses of frightened families yearning to be free.

In January of this year, we took the largest delegation of Members of Congress to the border. January 3, we went to Eagle Pass, Texas. It was the epicenter of the open-border crisis at the time. We met with Border Patrol agents and high officers in U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. They told us the truth.

They said, down there at Eagle Pass, of all the many, many countless people who come across that border illegally, because Joe Biden and Secretary Mayorkas opened the border wide, they said: You should know this, Members of Congress, 70 percent of the people who crossed illegally at Eagle Pass, down there in the Del Rio sector, are single adult males between the ages of 18 and 49. These are not huddled masses of people seeking refuge from persecution and seeking asylum here for just causes. These are people who do not have our best designs in mind.

Because of Joe Biden's open-border policies, we have ISIS smuggling rings operating in our country. We have cartels who have operational control of the border. We have Chinese and Russian spies here in our midst roaming freely in our country. We have murderers and rapists offending again and again across the country, and they are never deported.

These are people who Joe Biden and his administration are releasing into the country every day. The Director of the FBI has testified multiple times now before Congress, before our committees, and he has said: All the red lights are flashing. What is he referring to? The unprecedented dangerous situation.

The enemy is here. The enemy is in our country now and is endangering American citizens, law-abiding citizens.

You see the headlines on the news now almost every day: another violent act committed by an illegal.

Joe Biden did that to the country. His administration did that because they opened the border. They engineered the open border. It is absurd and outrageous, and people know it. That is one of the things that is going to be a big factor in November.

I will tell you this, too. Since our elections are so razor thin, it is not just the physical safety of our communities that are in jeopardy. It is also the integrity of the ballot box.

With just a few precincts and a few States often now deciding the makeup of the Congress and the White House, we aren't just facing dangerous individuals; we are facing a dangerously high number of dangerous individuals who could actually change the outcome of our elections and thus determine the future of this great Republic.

Just as our dear friend Congresswoman Miller-Meeks will tell you, she won her elections in 2020 by 6 votes. Some of these elections, some of your elections, are very, very close. We have to keep that in mind.

Here is the solution. Today is this fateful moment. Again, I think it may be the most important vote you will make as a Member of this body because you are going to determine the course of this country today. You are going to determine whether you want the elections to be safe and fair.

The SAVE Act is the bill before us. It is not complicated. It is written in very plain language so everyone can read it and understand it. We are merely suggesting that because so many illegal aliens are in the country--and there is no disputing that there are millions upon millions of them. I think the actual count is probably somewhere close to 16 million illegals who have come across the border in the last 3\1/ 2\ years since Joe Biden opened it wide beginning on his first day in office--because there are so many of them here, I ask our guests in the gallery this question: Is it worth adding a layer of protection to ensure all of those illegals cannot register to vote? Everybody would answer yes, if we asked for an audible response, because that is obvious to us.

Everybody understands the SAVE Act will do several important things, and all of them are obvious, commonsense measures.

Here is the list:

Number 1: It requires State election officials to ask about citizenship before providing voter registration forms. What a concept.

Number 2: It requires an individual to provide proof of citizenship if indeed he or she wants to register to vote in our Federal elections.

Number 3: It provides States with access to our Federal agency databases. Why is that so important? So they can remove noncitizens from voter rolls and confirm citizenship for individuals who lack that all-important proof of citizenship.

Number 4: It directs the Department of Homeland Security to determine whether to conduct removal proceedings if an illegal alien, a noncitizen, has been identified as having registered to vote in Federal elections.

American citizens will be protected and in no way harmed by this bill. There is not a conceivable argument that the Democrats can make to oppose the commonsense measures that we are putting before them today. Nothing changes the voter registration process in the States.

The only people who will face hurdles here are those who are trying to break our Federal laws. That is why it is patently absurd that the White House issued a veto threat. President Biden says he is going to veto the bill, and Democrat leadership right now is engaging in a very robust whipping operation to stop this bill from being passed. It is absolutely outrageous, and the American people need to know what is happening here.

It is dangerous. It is dangerous for the future of our country. It is dangerous for the future of your family, if you are watching at home.

Joseph Story was a great American legal scholar and Supreme Court Justice, the author of the seminal ``Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States'' that we used to have to read in law school. He said it this way on this subject. This is very important. Listen to what he said.

He said: ``If aliens might be admitted indiscriminately to enjoy all the rights of citizens at the will of a single State, the Union itself might be endangered by an influx of foreigners, hostile to its institutions, ignorant of its powers, and incapable of a due estimate of its privileges.''

He said that so well. I wholeheartedly agree. I know everyone on our side of the aisle does.

If we are going to maintain this great American experiment, this grand experiment in self-governance that we have now kept for 248 years, if we are going to keep it for more, then we have to ensure that the outcomes of our elections remain in the hands of Americans alone.

Now, some of our colleagues are arguing and some of the outside interest groups who want those open borders, the open borders crowd, they are pointing out that it is already illegal to vote, and you don't really need to do this. That is true, it is illegal to vote under Federal law. Only a U.S. citizen is supposed to vote in a U.S. election.

But here is the problem: The law is not being followed. Even though it is already illegal, this is happening.

Let me give you a couple examples.

In Georgia, State election officials are catching thousands of noncitizens who are trying to register to vote, but they are one of only a few States that is making that effort right now to check the voter rolls on the front end before the disaster occurs.

In May, the State of Ohio, they had to remove 137 noncitizen voters from the rolls when they did a quick check.

In May of last year, Virginia removed almost 1,500 noncitizens from their voter rolls. Here is the catch: It was only after more than 800 of those noncitizen ballots had been cast in 2019. They already participated in an election illegally.

It shouldn't surprise us that criminals who break our border laws are also going to break our election laws. These are not paragons of virtue in all these cases, as the 70 percent of people who come across the border who are military-aged males come into our country without any deterrence at all. They are not law-abiding citizens. They are illegal aliens, and they should not be participating in the election.

Remember, if just a small percentage, a fraction of a fraction of all those illegals that Joe Biden has brought in here to vote, if they do vote, it wouldn't just change one race, it might potentially change all of our races.

Now, despite the claims of our opponents, it is also true there are no current preventative mechanisms to ensure that only those registering or voting are actually citizens.

Perhaps the Democratic Party would prefer that we only identify fraudulent voters after the fact, after an election is already decided and the new Members are sworn in. That is not acceptable. That doesn't instill trust. It doesn't ensure the integrity of the system.

Of course, that is nonsense. It is good and right to take preventative action now. We can look out on the horizon. We know the storm is coming. We know we have an unprecedented number of illegal aliens. We know many of them are being encouraged to register to vote, and they are doing so. We know we have a problem.

We have a duty here under the Constitution to ensure it doesn't happen. We have an instrument before us, a piece of legislation, that will do just that, and there is no excuse--no excuse--to oppose it.

Of course, preventative action is desperately needed because of all this, and the stakes are so high, and the loopholes are so wide that we have to do it.

Regardless of what the detractors say, the voter laws are really that lax. If a citizen wants to vote for President, they just have to go to their local DMV, they go to the local welfare office or some other government agency, and they are given a very simple form that says while you are here signing up for taxpayer benefits, Mr. Noncitizen who just came across the border and was sent here by plane, train, or automobile by an NGO who, by the way, is sending the receipt for that to the U.S. taxpayer that we are all funding, hey, since you are here and signing up for benefits, do you also want to register to vote? On the form that was passed by Congress back in the early nineties, the motor voter registration law, it just has one little box that asks: Are you a U.S. citizen? How many people are checking that box who are not supposed to?

Well, the problem is, whoever is working there is not allowed under current law to ask for proof of that citizenship. If somebody checks the box, they can't stop them and say, hey, do you have any paperwork to prove that? Where are you from? You have a funny accent. Oh, you don't speak English? Are you a citizen? They don't have any way to prove it.

I believe I stand with the American public when I say our elections are just too important to simply rely on the honor system by people who have already proven they have no regard or respect for our laws.

Would we be so foolish as to think every one of the 500 got-aways sneaking through our southern border every single day have good intentions? Come on. We have got to apply reason and common sense.

Would we prefer to wait for fraud to happen and only do something after elections are finalized? No. We have to catch the fraud on the front end so there is no question about the integrity of our votes. Again, this is our duty to do so.

If we don't catch any unlawful voters, great, that is wonderful. It means our systems are secure. If we do catch unlawful voters, then good, we stop them from voting. We did what was right by the Constitution, right by our Federal law, and right by the people that we represent.

I will conclude with this: I have been here 8 years. Every so often in this Chamber, we take a vote that clearly reveals what we think about the world. There are important votes every day, but there are some votes that define who we are. It defines our world, and it defines what we believe about the Constitution and about the rule of law. It defines our careers, and it defines our character. It is a signal to the voters fundamentally about what we believe about our country.

Republicans want 100 percent participation by citizens in our elections, eligible citizens who can vote. We want everybody to vote. We want 100 percent participation, but we want zero percent fraud. We want American citizens to be the lone people who decide our elections.

Here is the question that is about to be answered on this floor: Do Democrats want that same thing, or do they want to hand over our country to the worst impulses and nefarious plans of foreign spies and criminals who will exploit the system for their own gain?

Republicans are anxious to get this done. We are anxious to take the necessary steps to protect the integrity of every single vote, and we will ensure that we have free and fair elections, and we will ensure that only Americans decide American elections.

The question that will be answered--and it is not a rhetorical question; this is a real live exercise--can Democrats say the same thing? Is there any measure that they will take to reduce the opportunity for fraud? Today is their chance, and, unfortunately, I am not that hopeful that they are going to do the right thing, but you are about to find out.

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