Providing for Consideration of S.J. Res. Disapproving the Rule Submitted By the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection Relating to ``Overdraft Lending: Very Large Financial Institutions''; Providing for Consideration of S.J. Res. Disapproving the Rule Submitted By the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection Relating to ``Defining Larger Participants of A Market for General-Use Digital Consumer Payment Applications''; Providing for Consideration of H.R. No Rogue Rulings Act of Providing for Consideration of H.R. Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act; and for Other Purposes

Floor Speech

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Mrs. LUNA. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this rule. As many of you might know, for over 2 years now I have been championing the cause to allow new female Members of Congress the right to vote. Some of the American people might be surprised that if you are a female Member and you have a child, that you can't vote. This means you can't execute your constitutional authority.

For almost 2 years now in this cause I have met with leadership. I have exhausted all tools in my legislative toolkit to be able to bring this to the floor. As I was met with much opposition, I finally used the last tool that I had at my disposal which was something known as a discharge petition where I collected 218 signatures and expanded the ability to vote while recovering from childbirth not just to mothers but also to young fathers in our governing body.

Now leadership, because of the fact they don't like the fact that I was successful at this, is trying to change the rules, but I want to talk about how fundamentally dangerous this rule change is.

As of right now, they slipped language into this rule, and I will get to what they attached the rule to in a second, that would permanently kill any ability for new Members of Congress to be able to bring this up and allow those Members who just had a child to be able to vote. That is dangerous because of the fact that, A, not only if I argue this from the Republican standpoint that we have a very slim majority, but also to think about the message that that sends, allowing female Members to be able to vote.

In addition to that, I would also like to add that for a while we have had the majority and we have had the ability to bring legislation to the floor on election integrity and also to call out rogue judges, and yet they chose at this point in time to tie this discharge petition killer to this rule that would also permanently paint me and the Members supporting it, and I would like to also share that I am one of the most conservative Members of this body, I would like to hold up my voting record to anyone else as not just being anti-election integrity but also enabling a position that I don't typically agree with.

That in itself, I would say, in this entire process has been the most disappointing especially from among my party. I would also ask my colleagues to remember that up until 1916, female representation was not a common thing in Washington, D.C.

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Mrs. LUNA. Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to give this a fair shot. Vote ``no'' against the rule and allow this to come to the floor so that we can address it for the first time, I would say, in congressional history and do the right thing. If we don't do the right thing now, it will never be done.

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