Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I would like to begin by referencing the remarks of my colleague from Ohio and expressing my gratitude for the service and sacrifice of the airmen lost in action over Iraq recently.

As many know, Dover Air Force Base, in Dover, DE, is where the remains of every American who falls in service to our Nation overseas first returns to our soil. My State and the men and women of the Dover community and of the Dover Air Force Base have long considered it a sacred obligation, a blessing, and an opportunity to welcome the families who are grieving in order to help prepare their sons and daughters for ultimate burial in their home States. We have welcomed many Senators from across the country to what is known as a dignified transfer, which they carry out with great solemnity.

So let me join my colleagues from Ohio in expressing deep gratitude to the families of those who have fallen in action in the air over Iraq and for their service and sacrifice and for the support to the United States military that all of us should be offering at this time of great solemnity. S. 1383

With that, Mr. President, I am going to turn to the issue of the day in front of this Chamber.

What is the issue of the day? It is a bill known as the SAVE Act. It is a bill that is principally focused on voter disenfranchisement and voter suppression.

Americans today face a whole series of crises: the cost of living and the war in Iran. Our war of choice in Iran is now in its third week, and the cost to American families continues to rise. Prices--costs at home for consumers--are rising as well. I just checked a few minutes ago. A month ago, in my home State of Delaware, a gallon of gas was $2.87. Today, it is $3.68. That is a 30-percent jump in just a month, the fastest increase in gas prices since the 1973 oil embargo. Nationally, there is a similar rise of $2.95 to $3.84.

The larger point is that most Americans know they are paying a lot more at the pump. They are paying more at the pump, and it is going to end up having all sorts of secondary consequences for costs because what passes through the Strait of Hormuz isn't just oil--it is oil, it is natural gas, it is petrochemicals, it is fertilizers, it is helium. It is a whole series of things that are essential to our modern economy.

We are on the verge of planting season--it will soon be spring--and American farmers are seeing their fertilizer prices jump as well. You might not have ever thought of it, but helium is absolutely critical to a whole series of advanced industrial products, both medical and semiconductor, and it is a byproduct of natural gas production. Most of the world's helium also passes through the Strait of Hormuz. As I am sure you have heard many times today on the news and on the floor, Iran has blocked the Strait of Hormuz not for Iranian ships and not for allied ships that are going to China or to other countries but for the United States and our allies.

We have watched in the last few years as our adversaries have come closer and closer together--Iran, China, North Korea, and Russia. These four countries have deep and rapidly deepening partnerships in military security, in cyber offense, and in the support for terrorism throughout the world, and we chose--President Trump chose--to take us to war against Iran.

The recent polling of Americans shows that, by an 18-percentage-point margin, the Americans polled actually think President Trump is focused on the wrong thing, that instead of focusing on the cost of living, instead of focusing on growing our economy, instead of focusing on making American manufacturing and innovation strong again, he is focusing on the war in Iran, and that, here in the Senate of the United States, we are focused on a bill that will take away the chance to vote for millions of Americans.

In 2024, 48 million Americans voted by mail. Vote by mail has been the law for decades in several of our Western States. It is secure. It has been shown to be resistant to fraud, and it is a longstanding tradition in majority Democrat States. If the SAVE Act were to become law, vote by mail would end. Seventy million American women would be disenfranchised by this law, including my wife and my mother, because their birth certificates and their current names on their passports and their driver's licenses are not the same. Like millions and millions of American women, they changed their names upon getting married. This law would require them to go through an expensive and complex process to restore their right to vote.

Last, the mandated sharing of every State's voter rolls with the Department of Homeland Security and for them to run them through some DOGE algorithm and throw off the voter rolls of millions and millions of Americans is a solution in search of a problem. The Heritage Foundation looked at the last 20 years of voting and found virtually no examples of those who are not here legally voting in American elections.

That handful of examples is what is being demanded that we pass today, that we focus today on a bill that we know would disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans. I think it is a profound misdirection of the time and energy of this body. When the No. 1 issue that I am hearing about from Delawareans is why are we at war in Iran, I don't really have an answer. In classified briefings I have attended recently with my colleagues on the Foreign Relations Committee, the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, and the full Senate, I haven't gotten a better answer in those classified briefings than we have gotten in public.

The military is focused on a few fairly clearly defined objectives, but the President and his so-called Secretary of War keep throwing out other goals, other objectives: regime change, ending any possibility in the future of any nuclear enrichment by Iran, and stopping Iran's ability to project power influence in the region.

Our core challenge is that President Trump has offered a maximum goal: Overthrow the regime of a large and populous country that has, yes, a brutal and murderous regime that has suppressed its own people and spread terrorism throughout the region but that is very powerfully ensconced. They are bombing them day after day after day. Unfortunately, what the Iranians are showing is that, when we have pushed them to the wall and said that we intend to overthrow your regime, they are unleashing everything they have got.

I think President Trump learned the wrong lesson from killing Qasem Soleimani, who was the general in charge of the IRGC in his first term--General Soleimani, an evil man, whose passing I would not grieve for a moment and who had the blood of Americans on his hands. When previous Presidents considered taking him out, they were cautioned that Iran would strike back. It would use its cyber capabilities and its global terrorism network. It would close the Strait of Hormuz. It would go after Americans.

Trump took that bold action, and Iran did not respond in those ways. We waited, but despite threats to carry out terrorist attacks against Americans, we did not see Iran respond with full force.

Then, last summer, President Trump ordered Operation Midnight Hammer--something that had been funded, practiced, and developed over many Presidencies, over decades. Massive bombs were dropped on Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities--at Natanz, at Isfahan, at Fordow--that were designed underground to have the capability to resist any but the most massive attack. Again, when weighing the possibility of using military force to deny Iran the possibility of having a nuclear bomb, previous Presidents were cautioned that Iran would use everything they had. They would close the Strait of Hormuz. They would carry out cyber attacks. They would carry out terrorist attacks in the United States, and they largely didn't.

What is the difference?

In those two previous attacks, President Trump and the Secretary of War never said that our goal was regime change. This time, they did.

So, when the leaders of this administration--when this President-- says they are surprised that Iran is attacking all of our partners and allies in the gulf, surprised that Iran is launching drones at American Embassies, surprised that Iran is using its naval mines, its light, fast, cheap, effective drones to close the Strait of Hormuz, how could they possibly be surprised?

This has been prepared for by folks in the Pentagon for many, many years. In every intelligence briefing I have had on Iran over my 15 years here, they have said that they have three tools: their ballistic missiles and drones, their capability as an aggressive cyber force, and a global network of dispersed terrorists who are capable of inflicting pain on civilian populations. When we came short of an all-out assault on the regime, they deescalated. We negotiated, and we were able to step back from the brink of full-on regional war.

But, in this war, our President did not seek the approval of this Chamber. He did not fully brief the American people. He posted a midnight Truth Social video that had been recorded in his West Palm Beach resort. He did not address the American people. He did not address the American Congress. Instead, he launched into a war with our ally Israel that he said was about regime change. What he has succeeded in doing is killing an aging, cancer-ridden ayatollah and replacing him with a 30-year-younger, more conservative, likely to be more aggressive and repressive ayatollah.

They are showing us the lessons of Vietnam, of Iraq, and of our own Revolution. Two hundred fifty years ago, a small, hardy band of American patriots took on the world's greatest military power. Over the course of that long war, the Americans showed we didn't have to win any battle. In fact, we lost almost every major battle, but we kept melding back into the woods, reappearing, and imposing costs on the British and their Hessian mercenaries. All we had to do was not lose, and we survived.

In our war in South Vietnam, in a war in the region against North Vietnamese forces, we dropped huge amounts of munitions from the air. We enjoyed massive air superiority and technical superiority, and all the North Vietnamese had to do was not lose, meld into the jungle, avoid ever engaging with us in a major conflagration where we could win. And in the end, exhausted, we left.

I could give a summary of what happened in Iraq, but it is largely the same. We have been tempted to believe that our massive technological superiority, our ability to deliver weapons and armaments with great precision at huge volume will inevitably win the war in Iran, when, in fact, with their back against the wall, this hateful, murderous regime of the mullahs and ayatollahs in Tehran is perfectly capable of suppressing their own people and of using their thousands of drones to keep plinking away at Dubai, Qatar, Oman, and Saudi Arabia, at our Embassies, hurting our families, and taking the lives of our soldiers.

Folks, in my view, the costs are just too high. We have lost 13 brave American soldiers so far. We have had chaos and dislocation at our Embassies and consulates that were not adequately prepared to be evacuated.

We have seen the cost of gas, fertilizer, and natural gas and oil skyrocket, all of which could have been dealt with more responsibly through better planning.

Last, when you are going into a fight, you want as many allies as possible by your side. President George W. Bush made the case to the United Nations, to the Congress, and to our allies and assembled a coalition.

Today, when President Trump acts surprised that Iran is closing the Strait of Hormuz, he is desperately, at the last minute, calling up and haranguing leaders of our long-trusted and closest allies. And, surprise, because they weren't involved in the runup to this war, many have demurred.

Then Trump commits again what I think is a horrible offense against our NATO allies. He said yesterday: NATO has never stood by us. I knew all along we couldn't count on NATO.

Well, it was earlier this year that I led a bipartisan delegation to Denmark at exactly the time that our President was threatening to extract Greenland from Denmark either by force or by the use of tariffs against our closest NATO partners. And during that fight, President Trump said: We never asked NATO for a thing, and they never did a thing for us. And Senator Tillis and I and our delegation went and laid a memorial wreath at the site where Danes remember the 52 Danish soldiers who died serving alongside Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It is not true that NATO has never come to our defense and NATO has done nothing for us. In fact, only once has the NATO Mutual Defense Treaty been invoked, after 9/11, by our NATO allies at our request for our defense.

And nearly a third of the combat casualties of the very long and violent war in Afghanistan were NATO troops.

So, Mr. President, rather than distracting the American people with this flawed bill designed to accomplish voter suppression, I think you might want to go back to the history books because it is recent history, and we all lived through it.

We have been blessed by the strongest alliance in human history, and our NATO allies last year stepped up and offered tens of billions more for their defense and ours. They have stood by us.

And had you done your job and planned for this war appropriately and consulted with Congress and the American people and engaged our allies, you would be in a very different place than you are today, a place today where our costs are rising and our creditability is sinking--not a great place for the American people.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source