United States' Fiscal Situation
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Arizona, and I would really just commend the people who watch C-SPAN, all 14 of them, the greatness of my friend from Arizona and how much he focuses on the spending concerns of our country and the vast amount of debt that we are passing down to our children and grandchildren and what we can do to fix it. He is one of the smartest guys on the subject, and I am deeply proud to serve alongside of him.
I appreciate his time here. I actually would like to sit here for 1 hour or 2 to regale him with charts, but I have to go do another thing.
Mr. Speaker, I am here right now because the American people are demanding that we, the elected leaders in Washington--that we in the people's House--that we secure the elections of the United States. They are tired of wondering whether their votes matter. They are tired of wondering if those who have no right to vote--those who are noncitizens--are actually packing our ballot boxes with illegal votes.
I am more determined than ever to secure our elections, but in an age of progressive, suicidal empathy, basic concepts such as voter ID and proof of citizenship have been attacked as suppression. Let me be clear: Nothing could be further from the truth.
Voter ID, voter identification, is arguably the single most commonsense proposal to ever grace this Chamber. A proof of citizenship requirement to register to vote is an idea so basic, so assumed, and so inherent to a functioning republic that opposition to it would offend every man who signed his name to our Declaration of Independence.
I have good news for the American people. No longer will our elections be governed by a check box if we do our jobs in this House Chamber and our colleagues in the Senate do their jobs. No longer will people pretend to be an American and, thus, influence our elected leaders. No longer will our elections be insecure if we do our jobs.
Last week, I joined with my friend, Senator Mike Lee, in the Senate Chamber to introduce a bill that we call the SAVE America Act. This legislation builds upon bills that we introduced last Congress, the SAVE Act, legislation that was focused on a simple idea of requiring demonstration of citizenship and for States to guarantee that their voter rolls are matched to guaranteed citizenship to be able to have an election in that State.
We had a simple bill to guarantee that only citizens are voting in American elections. Now we have added another simple concept: voter identification. Under the SAVE America Act, an individual will be required to provide that proof of citizenship in order to register and, on election day, required to demonstrate voter identification in accordance, by the way, with a majority of American States.
Mr. Speaker, the problem is that we passed the SAVE Act. We passed the SAVE Act in the previous Congress, and Chuck Schumer and Democrats stopped it. We passed the SAVE Act in this body last year, in this Congress. So far, Chuck Schumer and Democrats are saying that they wish to stop it in the Senate.
So the question is: What will we do here in this House Chamber? I am proud to say that our House leadership is working with us to advance the SAVE America Act as early as next week to be able to move that bill off of the House floor, to get it sent over to the Senate, and thereby allowing the Senate to be able to move that legislation, if--if the Senate will do what it can do, which is force those who are saying that they are going to filibuster to actually take the floor of the Senate and filibuster.
See, people don't understand Senate rules. They think that the ``Mr. Smith Goes to Washington'' version of the filibuster is the filibuster. But the truth is that Senators have, for a long time, hidden behind the rules to say that there is somehow a magical 60-vote threshold to move legislation through the Senate.
There is not. The 60-vote number is simply a fake filibuster--a zombie filibuster, as my friend, Mike Lee, calls it, meaning it is an arbitrary rule that was put in place to, yes, if you have 60 votes, you can shut off debate.
The core of the Senate--the core of the filibuster was about people being able to speak. Because on the Senate floor, you can speak, you can vote, or you can be assessing whether you have a quorum. Those are pretty much the things that you can do on the Senate floor.
So guess what. If you have a quorum, if you have 51 Senators sitting on the floor of the Senate demanding action for the American people, such as passing the SAVE America Act, then you can force the vote, unless a Member wishes to speak.
If Members in the Senate wish to speak against passing a commonsense piece of legislation that polls at 80 percent, then let them do it.
Let Democrats go to the floor of the Senate. Let them take the floor. Let them look at 51 Republicans sitting on the Senate floor who want to move a bill that 85 percent of White Americans, 82 percent of Hispanic Americans, 76 percent of Black Americans, 71 percent of Democrats, and 95 percent of Republicans believe we should pass so that we can have security in our elections.
We can pass the SAVE America Act. We will do that in the House Chamber next week. We will have citizenship. We will have voter ID. We will send it to the Senate, and if the Senate does its job, if Senate Republicans put this on the floor of the Senate, then we can force action and force Democrats to stand up on the Senate floor and oppose the will of over three-quarters of the American people.
I want to see them try. I think if we do it, I think we will win, and I think we will save this Republic, and we will save America.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Last year, we had five Democrats join with us and, this year, four Democrats joined with us. I think there will be pressure for a number of Democrats to join with us here and in the Senate.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I want to yield the gentleman his time, but I will just close by saying: We sit here in this Chamber under the In God We Trust motto. We sit here in front of this flag. We think about all of the people who came before us who sacrificed for this country. This is the most basic of things that we can do to restore trust in a Republican form of government, where Representatives are sent to Washington to represent them.
They have to believe in it. They have to believe in us. They have to believe in the country. What more can you do besides guarantee that their votes count by ensuring that it is only citizens voting in our elections?
Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Arizona for yielding.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. ROY. God bless you, brother.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source