Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am honored to follow my very eloquent colleague from Vermont in the common cause that brings us to the floor tonight, which is to say no--no--to a bill that so fundamentally and far-reachingly would undermine--in fact, destroy--our democracy. It may sound like an exaggeration, but it is the truth.
Republicans want you to believe that this bill is about making sure that citizens vote. Actually, it is about making sure that citizens cannot vote. Trump and the Republicans can't win on their policy decisions, so they must win by taking away the vote this November and for elections to come.
Make no mistake, this bill will take away votes from millions of Americans. Literally, it will roll back the clock on the civil rights era, on decades earlier during Reconstruction, on the Civil War itself. It will move America back in time and jeopardize our very democracy.
The simple fact is 21 million Americans do not have the requisite documentation this bill requires to register to vote. Passports are expensive. A passport book costs more than $100. And birth certificates are not readily accessible to many, many people. I have to admit, I don't know where my birth certificate is. There are many people who may not have their birth certificate at all and will have to try to track it down and then spend the money that is necessary to obtain it.
Then, for 69 million married women who have changed their name but whose documentation reflects at birth their maiden name, they will be required to provide documentary proof of citizenship plus additional documentation like a marriage certificate or they will have to sign an affidavit.
The SAVE America Act is not about saving America. If it were, it would not make it harder for service men and women, our veterans, and our military families to vote. Think of it for a moment. It fails to recognize military IDs as valid proof of citizenship.
I want to emphasize this point for a moment because I think it so epitomizes what is evil about this legislation. A military ID can grant servicemembers access to military bases; highly secure, sometimes classified and in some cases restricted facilities; but under this Republican proposal, it just isn't enough to allow those servicemembers access to the ballot box, the foundation of democracy. They go to bases. They go to restricted areas. They can go to other kinds of military facilities. But they cannot go to vote.
It imposes burdens on servicemembers abroad, including children of servicemembers. It excludes them--military voters born abroad--and it imposes burdens on servicemembers and military families stationed overseas, requiring in-person proof of citizenship at a government office in the United States when registering or updating voter registration. So in order to vote, they have to know about the law, and then they have to make a trip to a government office, probably while they are on leave with limited amounts of time. They want to be with their family, and they have to spend additional time going to a government office to register to vote. These are men and women defending our right to vote, and this bill restricts their right to vote.
The bill would also impose unacceptable barriers to voting for disabled veterans and veterans living in rural communities. It would require veterans to travel long distances simply to register or update their registration. Yet, for veterans with service-connected disabilities, mobility challenges, or limited transportation options, this requirement will create unacceptable obstacles for them to exercise their right to vote--veterans, again, who served and sacrificed for our country, who defend our rights and liberties, including the right to vote, themselves effectively being denied that right.
It is wrong. It is wrong morally. It is probably wrong constitutionally. Our servicemembers, military spouses and children, and veterans sacrifice so much for this country. It seems unfathomable and unforgivable to make it harder for the military community to vote because of one President's vanity and vengeance and political games-- and the effort to win election.
Senate Republicans make a lot of promises when it comes to our veterans and our military. They have the best rhetoric going. I want to remind them that promises are meaningless unless they are kept; words are ineffectual unless there is action to support them.
While we sit here debating a bill that will make it harder for members of the military and veterans to vote, I want to remind this body that Senate Republicans continue to block the Major Richard Star Act--a bipartisan bill to deliver combat-injured veterans their full military pension. That is right. Republicans have blocked it twice just this year.
Let's keep in mind what this legislation does and why it is supported by the vast majority of Members of Congress and the people of the United States. It says, in effect, you cannot deduct from a combat- injured retiree's pay the amount that goes to that person for disability compensation. Republicans say the cost is too high. They say it is double-dipping. Our veterans have earned both retirement pay and disability compensation. They have earned it. It is not something given to them out of charity.
They have not only blocked the passage of that bill, but they have also blocked my efforts even to allow floor consideration of it. I asked for unanimous consent twice just to give us a vote. Let that sink in. They will not even allow a vote. It wouldn't take more than 30 minutes. Let's see if we have the votes. Let's see who is going to be accountable.
We made a promise to these veterans that they would receive both retirement and disability benefits. Our legislation would deliver on that promise.
Republicans in leadership can't find the courage to give this legislation a vote despite 77 Members sponsoring it--both sides of the aisle, across the ideological spectrum. Yet they have found floor time to try to pass this mockery of a bill, to pass the SAVE America Act--a bill that will make it harder for our military and our veterans to vote.
This isn't the message we should be sending to Americans, especially amid action that is putting more troops in harm's way. What a time. American troops deployed in kinetic action, in harm's way, and the SAVE America Act has a single, simple goal: turning away American voters at the ballot box, including our military and our veterans.
We have seen this discouragement of voting time and again: sending Tulsi Gabbard to Fulton, GA, continuing the false narrative that somehow there was fraud in the Georgia vote; continuing the distorted message that there is voting fraud rampant in the Nation. The statistics and the facts prove this contention is absolutely wrong. It is false, fallacious, mistaken.
The intimidation of poll workers, the demand for voting information, private information not available to the public--all of it unjustified, probably illegal. This administration continues to pursue it because the goal is to suppress the vote.
Let's be clear. Voter suppression is the objective. This bill is the cornerstone of that vast voter suppression effort. I will give him credit for his consistency. It has been constant, the effort that President Trump is demanding of Republicans in Congress to pass the SAVE America Act--a bill that would constitute the most significant restriction on the right to vote in generations--because Republicans cannot win this November without it, and they have said the quiet part out loud. In fact, President Trump has shouted the quiet part out loud. We don't have to read between the lines. He has made it absolutely clear that voter suppression is the end, the strategy, and the goal.
Over 20 million Americans--1 in 10 voting-age Americans--simply don't have access to the documentation that this bill would require to vote. Voting identification in some form ought to be required, no question. This is not a voter identification bill; it is a voter purge bill. It would take that private information from voter rolls and in effect eliminate those names from the rolls based on other information available to the administration.
If President Trump were really serious about stopping voter fraud, especially cyber interference and possible foreign influence, he would not have dismantled the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, he would not have decimated the Agency that is responsible for stopping voter fraud, he would not have dismantled the counterterrorism units of the FBI and the Department of Justice. He would make them more robust, devote more resources to them, because that is the way to stop voter fraud, is to have investigators and experts go after it, pursue it, prosecute it. But the goal here is not to go after noncitizen voting because that problem is negligible. It is miniscule. The objective is to stop legitimate voters from going to the polls.
Mr. President, 250 years ago, America broke from the chains of monarchy. They chose democracy, a government that is supposed to be by and for the people. But as we approach this Nation's birthday, we are challenged as never before to defend democracy by advocating the right of every American to vote in free and fair elections and defending that right--not enough to talk about it but to defend it.
Thankfully, we still do have our democracy. It is under threat as never before. We are seeing the tentacles of totalitarianism begin to strangle the free press through the FCC's vicious attacks, through the effort to stifle legitimate dissent within our government and among our people. But we know there are people willing to stand up and speak out. We have seen it in the indivisible rallies across the country. We have seen it in voter registration. We have seen it in the anger that we are all hearing and the angst and anxiety about the future of our great Nation in peril at the moment.
We will have it as long as we recognize that democracy is not a spectator sport. It is not something that is guaranteed unless we defend it. We will have it only so long as we keep it, as Benjamin Franklin warned. And we will have a republic, as he told the person who asked him after the Constitutional Convention, only as long as we can keep it. It is up to us. Our time is now.
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