Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHMITT. Mr. President, there are moments when the Senate is asked whether it will merely manage decline or whether it will still govern. This is one of those moments.

What is before us today is a test, a test of whether the Senate still understands what it is for, a test of whether article I of the Constitution still means what it says, that Congress possesses the power to write the rules of the road, a test of whether this body still exists to defend the American people, strengthen the Republic, and use constitutional authority for the common good.

That is why I rise in support of my substitute amendment to the SAVE America Act, and it comes before us at a fitting hour in our Nation's life. America is approaching her 250th birthday. We were taught in schools to think of the American founding as though it were unimaginably far away, sealed off behind glass, but 250 years is smaller than it seems.

President John Tyler was born during the First Congress in 1790. He was born in the very infancy of this Republic. President Tyler's last living grandson died only last year. That is how near the founding it still is and how recent this great experiment in self-government remains. And if the founding is that near, then our duty is that much clearer.

We are not the curators of a dead tradition. We are the stewards of a living Republic. Our Republic was founded on a daring claim: that free people could govern itself--not that a free people could drift forever; not that a free people could live off inherited greatness while its leaders refuse every hard question; not that a free people could dissolve every boundary, mock every limit, and still expect to remain free. No. The American founding rested on a harder truth: Liberty is fragile, and so it requires structure. Man has fallen, and so self- government requires virtue. A republic requires citizens, truth, and the courage to defend both. That is why this bill matters.

Some will say that this bill and all of its titles don't belong together; that five-pronged, three-titled amendment is just a package or a wish list or a collection of unrelated priorities. But that only proves they do not understand what time it is, and they don't understand what our Republic is.

The five prongs and three titles of this amendment are united by one central question: Will American law still defend the basic conditions of self-government?

Title I, Save American Voter, says the franchise belongs to its citizens and voting should be secure.

Title II, Save American Sports, says that women's sports exist for women and girls, acknowledging biological reality over a legal fiction imposed by elite ideology.

Title III, Save American Children, says that children should be protected from irreversible harm, not handed over to the appetites, fashions, and confusions of the age.

Citizenship, reality, responsibility--those are the basic truths a nation must defend if it intends to remain a nation.

Let me begin with title I. A republic has the right to distinguish citizens from noncitizens. That should not be controversial. That should not even be difficult. The vote is not a global entitlement. The vote is not a participation trophy for anyone who happens to cross our borders. It is one of the central privileges and duties of political membership. If citizenship means anything, it must mean something here first. That is why requiring proof of citizenship to vote in Federal elections is foundational. It is a minimum requirement. It is so common sense in a self-governing nation because a people who cannot say who belongs to the polity cannot remain a polity at all.

The same is true for voter identification. We are told endlessly that asking a voter to identify himself before casting a ballot is somehow oppressive, somehow unreasonable, somehow outside the bounds of democratic decency. The American people know better. That is why over 80 percent of American voters support voter ID.

Identity verification is ordinary in every serious sphere of life. We require it for small things, for lesser things, for trivial things. There is nothing wrong with requiring lawful voters to identify themselves before participating in the elections of those who will govern the United States of America. Honest elections require lawful voters, lawful ballots, and lawful verification.

And then there is the question of mail voting. For too long, this country has been told to accept a system of mass mail-in voting as though it were the settled inheritance of the American Republic. It is not. In its current form, mass mail-in voting is a modern phenomenon, and in many places it is a direct holdover from the COVID era. COVID is over. The emergency has passed. The extraordinary accommodations of that period should not become the permanent architecture of American elections.

For most of our history, the presumption was simple: If you could vote in person, you voted in person. You appeared before lawful election officials. Your identity could be verified. Your ballot could be secured. The chain of custody could be protected. The people could trust what they were seeing. That is not cruelty. That is not oppression. That is what republican government looks like.

Now, of course, there are those who are unable to vote in person, and they should be helped. Military voters should be helped. Individuals with disabilities should be helped. Those who are sick should be helped. Caregivers with real burdens should be helped. Those with genuine, qualifying hardships should be helped. But accommodation should remain the exception, not the organizing principle of the whole system because voting is not a consumer transaction.

The highest values in election administrations should be on legitimacy, public confidence, and trust. Not so long ago, even Democrats shared these values. The Carter-Baker Commission, formed by former Democrat President Jimmy Carter and former Republican Secretary of State James Baker III, made many of the recommendations that my amendment promotes: voter ID, proof of citizenship, and limiting mail- in balloting. Democrat Senators may not support these provisions, but their voters do. Seventy-one percent of self-identified Democrats support voter ID.

A free people should want its elections to be visible, accountable, and resistant to bad actors. That is what title I is trying to restore--not the denial of lawful voting but the integrity of lawful voting; not confusion but confidence; not looseness but legitimacy.

I know this issue because I have experienced these fights myself. When I served as Missouri's attorney general, I fought in court and defended our State's election integrity laws against a coordinated assault from the left in 2020. The left's dark money-funded election superlawyers did not merely challenge one rule here or there; they challenged the very idea that we can get serious rules to protect the ballot, deter fraud, preserve order, and sustain public confidence in the vote. They came for the safeguards that made elections credible. They came for the principle that absentee and mail voting must be governed by rules. They came for the simple proposition that the people are entitled not only to cast a ballot but to trust the system by which ballots are cast, handled, counted, and certified.

And Missouri won. We defended the truth that election law is the framework by which free people govern itself. Election law isn't the arcane inconvenience to be brushed aside whenever the left sees a tactical advantage. We defended the proposition that deadlines matter because finality matters. We defended ballot security because legitimacy matters. We defended verification requirements because public trust matters. We defended the authority of the people acting through their laws to insist that elections be honest, orderly, and worthy of confidence. And Missouri won.

That fight has taught me something I have never forgotten: The fight over election integrity is about more than mechanics or procedure; rather, it is about whether we still have the moral confidence to defend the elementary conditions of self-government--because once every safeguard is treated as suspect, once every verification measure is denounced as oppression, once every effort to secure the ballot is caricatured as hostility to democracy, what is really under attack is the public's faith that elections are fair, lawful, and real.

So when I speak today about voter ID, proof of citizenship, and limits on mass mail voting, I do so from experience. I have fought these battles before. I have seen the pressure campaign to dissolve the rules that protect the vote. I have seen how quickly common sense is denounced when it stands in the way of ideological ambition. I have seen when the public officials are willing to stand firm and that, when you do that, you can win.

That is what title I and Saving American Voters is all about. It is not extreme. It is not novel. It is the restoration of an old and necessary principle that, in a republic, the vote must be lawful, secure, and worthy of confidence of the American people.

Now, let me turn to title II. If the law cannot defend women from men acting as women, it cannot defend reality. Women's sports exist because men and women are not the same. That is biological reality. It is moral reality. It is the plain reality on which fair competition depends. And when the law refuses to recognize that reality, the category of women's sports becomes fraudulent.

Girls are told to surrender fairness. They are told to surrender privacy. They are told to surrender safety. They are told to surrender recognition. And they are told to do all of this so the ruling class can flatter itself for its own moral sophistication. The State has no right to impose that sacrifice.

I have two daughters. They both love sports. But this is more than just about sports; it is about whether the law is still going to reflect reality or whether it will be conscripted into enforcing a falsehood. It is about whether a civilization still possesses enough moral competence to say: What is the truth? And that is not cruelty. It is about whether we still believe that girls deserve a realm of fair competition that is actually their own. A serious republic does not ask girls to bear the cost of elite confusion. A serious republic tells the truth about the world and builds laws on that truth. That is what title II does.

Now, let me turn to title III. A decent nation protects children. Children are not ideological property. Children are not experimental material. Children are not raw material for the ambitions of activists, for the cowardice of institutions, or for the self-indulgence of adults who have forgotten the law exists first to defend those who need protection.

There are lines that a humane society does not cross. Irreversible medical interventions on minors for ideological ends are one of those lines. A child in distress needs guidance, protection, patience, love, stability, truth. A child in distress does not need a civilization so morally exhausted that it answers confusion with scalpels, sterilization, and permanent medicalization. The burden of uncertainty should favor preserving the child, not fundamentally remaking the child.

Too often, our ruling class has preferred euphemism to honesty here. We are told this is compassion. We are told this is care. We are told that the enlightened position is to ratify distress with irreducible harm.

It is not compassion to mutilate what cannot be restored. It is not compassion to medicalize what may pass. It is not compassion to turn children into lifelong patients before they are old enough to understand what is being taken from them, permanently. That is not mercy; it is cruelty masked in liberation.

A republic worthy of the name protects children from adult passions, from ideological capture, and from the fashionable madness of the age. That is what title II is trying to do.

And that is why these three titles belong together--because this amendment is more than a list of 80-20 issues that the American people are demanding. The SAVE America Act is the defense of the elementary truths on which republican life--small ``r''--still depends: America belongs to its citizens. Men and women are real. Children should be protected from permanent harm. If a nation will not defend these truths, it will not defend truth for very long. If a nation will not defend these boundaries, it will not keep any boundary for long.

And that brings me to this Chamber itself. Americans still love ``Mr. Smith Goes to Washington'' for a reason. They love it because they still want to believe something about this institution. They want to believe that the Senate, a uniquely American invention, can be used for the common good. They still want to believe that conviction can defeat cynicism. They want to believe that a man can come here and fight for his country rather than merely manage its decline.

Well, here is our chance to prove that hope is not foolish. The Senate is not a museum. It is not a Visiting Angels retirement village for proceduralism. It is not here merely to confirm nominees, pass omnibuses, and fund the legislative achievements of long dead men while the living Nation loses confidence in its own government.

The U.S. Senate is here to legislate in defense of the American people. The Senate is here to draw lines. The Senate is here to make judgments. The Senate is here to govern.

So the question for this Chamber is really simple: Are we here to govern or merely preside? Are we here to act for the people or simply explain why action is impossible? Are we here to use power rightly or merely to congratulate ourselves for the restraint while the country pays the price?

Because the stakes here are plain. We see distrust in elections. We see the collapse of moral clarity. We are seeing girls told to accept injustices as progress. We are seeing children offered up to the altar of extreme ideology. We are seeing a governing class that refuses to draw any line into the line that has already been erased.

And republics don't usually fall in one dramatic stroke. They weaken when truth is no longer defended. They weaken when citizenship is diluted. They weaken when institutions lose the will to govern. They weaken when elites ask ordinary people to live under conditions they themselves know are disordered. They weaken when men without chests hold positions requiring virtue and enterprise.

That is what this debate is really about. It is about whether the country still defends first principles. It is about whether the Senate understands what time it is. It is about whether constitutional power can still be used for the common good.

And as America approaches her 250th birthday, that question becomes even more urgent. A republic approaching its quarter millennium should not be content merely to remember greatness. It should show that it still knows how to govern itself. It should show that it still has the strength to defend citizenship. It should show that it still has the courage to defend women. It should show that it still has the decency to defend children.

Article I is supposed to be the branch of action. This body exists to do more than simply fund legislative achievements of long-dead men. The legislative power exists to make judgments, draw lines, and defend our country. The Senate should prove that it still understands that duty.

So pass this bill to restore integrity to Federal elections. Pass this bill to defend women and girls. Pass this bill to protect kids. Pass this bill to show the American people that we can still act in the defense of the American people. Pass this bill because these are commonsense reforms. Pass this bill because Americans are tired of being told that their most basic moral instincts are somehow beyond the pale. Pass this bill because a nation serious about the future doesn't apologize for governing itself. Pass this bill because America 250 should be more than some commemoration. It should be a renewal.

The age of excuses should end. The era of drift should end. The Senate should act, and the SAVE America Act should pass.
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