Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. KIM. Mr. President, the average price of a gallon of gas in New Jersey right now is $3.68. A month ago, it was $2.94. In that month, we have started a war with Iran--a war that this administration doesn't have a plan to end; a war that has cost 13 American lives and has injured hundreds of others. That is putting America's reliability as a partner further in doubt and driving up costs across the board at a time when costs are already too high for most Americans.

Now, what are we doing about this crisis and trying to address it? What are we doing to drive down the costs that the American people are demanding that we take on? What are we doing to make it easier for Americans to pay their bills and to be able to provide for their families?

We are here on the Senate floor today debating a bill that Donald Trump wants because he is afraid. He knows that he is at the weakest point of his Presidency. His approval numbers are way down. And in a little more than 230 days, voters will go to the ballot box for the midterm elections.

So instead of working to lower costs, instead of ending this war and getting gas prices down, instead of focusing on working families, Donald Trump has Senate Republicans here to peddle a bill because, in his words, ``It will guarantee the midterms''--a bill, by the way, that, again to quote Donald Trump, ``supersedes everything else''; a bill that Trump says he would ``close government'' to ensure it passes.

So clearly we see something that is not what the American people want to see get done, not of benefit to the American people at a time when they are demanding that we take on the high cost of living, but instead something that is good for Donald Trump.

So while you are cutting back on driving because gas prices are skyrocketing and you are seeing prices at the grocery store go up because it is a lot more to transport food and you are rethinking that vacation because the CEO of Delta just said airline tickets are about to go up too, Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are focused on passing a bill that drives up your costs.

The SAVE America Act is an awful bill, and I will talk a little bit about this bill in a moment. But what this bill represents at its core is Donald Trump's extreme agenda when it comes to elections. It is an election that is built to, in Trump's own words yet again, ``guarantee the midterms.'' He said that Democrats won't be able to win for 50 years if this goes through.

He is saying the quiet part out loud about why he is doing this, and that is because his agenda has three core tenets: No. 1, let the billionaires buy the elections; No. 2, let politicians pick their voters; and No. 3, price people out of voting.

Let's start with the insane amount of big money in our politics today. According to a report last year by the Brennan Center, the amount of dark money spent in Federal races in 2024 was nearly $2 billion. That is hard to imagine, just unfathomable amounts of money being poured into our elections right now. It is nearly double what it was just 4 years prior in 2020.

That dark money represents a real threat to the integrity of our elections. A report published last month by the Campaign Legal Center highlights the way that the superrich can use our weakened campaign finance laws to basically bribe public officials. The report exposed the story of a man named Velutini, a Venezuela billionaire who was charged with criminal bribery and was later pardoned by Donald Trump after his daughter gave $3.5 million to a Trump-supporting super PAC.

These kinds of straw donor actions can take place when we have a campaign finance system that has been built for corruption. That is exactly what we are seeing--a system working exactly how it is supposed to, which is marginalizing the American people and average working families and lifting up the power of billionaires and corporations. It is a system that has been built so billionaires can buy the candidates they want, and if they get into trouble, they can buy themselves a get- out-of-jail-free card literally.

If my colleagues are concerned about election integrity, getting $2 billion of dark, corrupt money out of our system would be a good place to start, and I think you would find bipartisan support to be able to take that on.

The next place is getting rid of a system that Donald Trump has supercharged where politicians get to pick their voters, not the other way around like the Constitution says it should be.

Gerrymandering has never been weaponized like what we are seeing right now under the direction of Donald Trump. He is so afraid of losing the House of Representatives that he has threatened Members of his own party who didn't want to go along with his plans. Just a few months ago, he targeted Republicans in Indiana, saying that ``anyone that votes against redistricting . . . will be met with a MAGA primary.''

So we have a system, championed by Donald Trump, that lets billionaires buy the elections and politicians pick their voters. So where does that leave you? Where does that leave the American people? Well, if this bill passes, it will make it harder for people to be able to vote. It will make it such that they have to pay for a constitutional right of voting, which is so sacred to our democracy.

Voting shouldn't cost people extra money; it shouldn't require you to be able to have a poll tax. For millions of Americans, they will need to potentially scramble to get a new form of ID.

Maybe my colleagues will say: Oh, just go get a passport.

Well, look, a new passport costs $165, and to expedite it in order to vote costs much more than that. And we need to be able to deliver that quickly, so that is an added $22 on top of that. That is nearly $250 for your right to vote. That is nearly $250 when this administration has hurt our ability to get healthcare, be able to fill our tanks with gas, be able to get groceries. They made it more expensive across the board, and they have given massive giveaways to those at the very top.

This bill will make it harder for married women to vote if their current legal name doesn't match the name on their birth certificate. How does that make sense? It will make it harder for seniors and young people to vote by throwing up new restrictions on mail-in voting, requiring seniors and others to have to go and register in person when they haven't had to do that before.

Why is it that we are trying to make it so hard for Americans to be able to vote? But then you realize that is the point. That is actually the point of this all. Trump wants to make it harder for you to vote and make it easier for him to have his bidding. Why else did we see this happening right on the tail of so much of what he was doing in pushing gerrymandering so blatantly against our Constitution and our laws? Trump wants to make it more expensive for Americans to vote because that makes it easier for him and his supporters and his donors to be able to buy their way to power. He wants congressional Republicans to cease doing anything else and pass this bill so he can ``guarantee the midterms.''

Well, that is not what the American people want. They want a choice. It is their choice. They are supposed to be in the driver's seat of their democracy. The American people want our elections to be secure.

I want our elections to be secure. I want to make sure that voters can have full faith in our electoral process.

I have been fighting for years to get dark money out of our politics, to reverse Citizens United, which I believe is going to go in the history books as one of the most dangerous moments of our democracy. That has unleashed a torrent of dark money and problems and this nightmare we are seeing ourselves in.

I have been fighting to end the practice of letting politicians pick their voters since my first day here on the House side. I even stood up to my own party in New Jersey by suing to fix a broken ballot that let power players pick candidates, not voters.

This is not about partisanship; this is about delivering for the American people and preserving their ability to be able to drive our democracy.

We have real work that we can do to make our elections safer, get rid of this dark money, and make sure the voters get to pick their politicians. But that is not the bill that we have before us, and that is not the bill that Donald Trump is pressuring my colleagues here to push through. Instead, this bill is a distraction from Donald Trump's failures and is a desperate attempt to compensate for the power he sees slipping away right between his fingers.

We can't let him do this. We can't let him distract us from the real problems our constituents are facing today of $3.68 a gallon in New Jersey for our gas. Let's put an end to this distraction. Let's stop doing Donald Trump's bidding to hold onto power and do what we are supposed to do--to focus on what the American people want--which is, right now, so clearly about lowering the prices that they see skyrocketing every single day. That is what we are here for, and that is what they want us to do.

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