Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, let me, first of all, thank my colleague and friend the Senator from New Jersey who, I think, has brought us a fresh voice, has incredible energy, and is somebody who has a history of working extraordinarily well on national security issues.

I agree with virtually everything he just said in that this is a bit of a distraction. I think part of the reason it is a distraction is that, at the end of the day, this President has frankly refused to acknowledge that the American people's will in 2020 was not to rehire him. He cannot accept the legitimate outcome of the 2020 election. Despite officials from his own administration calling the 2020 election the most secure in American history, the President continues to promote unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud, and that is after investigations from multiple courts and the States' attorneys general and election officials from both parties strongly declaring that there was no evidence to support allegations of substantial fraud. Simply put, the 2020 election was certified, litigated, and affirmed.

Tomorrow, we are going to hear from some of the intelligence officials as our committee takes on the worldwide threat assessment where, unfortunately, senior intelligence officials seem to be still focusing on relitigating the 2020 election rather than making us safe for 2026 and 2028 because the truth is, after all of these years, the President and his allies haven't been able to find any evidence of legitimate voter fraud in past elections. As a matter of fact, there have been studies ad nauseam that show millions and hundreds of millions of votes and that the number of people who were undocumented and voted by mistake were in the single digits.

Now, they are looking forward to the effort that is on the floor right now toward suppressing and wrongfully influencing future elections through this so-called SAVE America Act.

Again, I know the Presiding Officer and my friend from Wisconsin and others are going to say I am going to go over the top, so let me just use the President's own words. The Presiding Officer comes from Utah, which has a proud history of States' rights and local control, but in the President's own words, he wants Republicans to ``take over'' election administration, going so far as to say Republicans ought to nationalize the voting. If there were ever an ``Alice in Wonderland up is down and down is up,'' that is what is happening.

Again, I don't know if this comment led to her firing, but before he fired her, the President's DHS Secretary Kristi Noem pushed for the passage of the SAVE America Act while stating that her goal was to have the right people voting so we can elect the right leaders. I mean, this sounds like it comes out of some dystopian novel or 1930s advocacy. I just don't get it. We all know that the strength of our democracy depends on voter participation and access to the ballot box. I have been doing this, I guess, long enough that I remember when things like ``motor voter'' and ``let's make it easier to register'' were all bipartisan.

Unfortunately, contrary to the name the SAVE America Act, this legislation undermines the very foundations that it claims to protect. This bill would impose sweeping requirements that would make it extremely difficult for eligible voters to participate in our democracy. New voters, married women, and servicemembers would face additional hurdles when registering to vote. That is because, under the SAVE America Act, Americans who have voted for years and have had no question about their citizenship would have to go back and provide documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in Federal elections.

Let me say, at the front end, that I support voter ID. We have voter ID in Virginia. I don't think you should be able to vote without showing a legitimate ID, but under this bill, that so-called reasonable policy would put in place requirements that are so stringent that it would mean if you don't have access to the right documentation, like a passport, you wouldn't be able to vote for the President of the United States.

The truth is, according to the U.S. State Department, only half of all Americans possess a passport. That means, if this bill passes, half of all American citizens would not be able to provide one of the primary acceptable forms of documentation that would be required to vote under the SAVE Act.

Additionally, under this bill, States would be barred from accepting online and mail-in voter registrations unless the applicant also presented proof of citizenship in person. So this is somebody who made the choice to change their name who is now 85 years old and who has to go back and find a birth certificate or get a passport and has to show up in person to kind of get registered again, even though she has been voting for the last 50 years with no question about her citizenship.

This effectively, frankly, guts the online and mail-in voter registration processes that are available across many States, which creates, I think, an unnecessary burden for all voters, particularly rural voters, senior citizens, and individuals with disabilities disproportionately.

I see my friend from California here. It has been States in the West, whether it is Oregon or California or Utah, that have used these tools to get more people involved. In fact, these efforts don't make our elections more secure. All this does is disenfranchise millions of eligible voters.

My view is that the goal of the SAVE Act is more about cutting out voters and suppressing the vote than it is about saving anything going forward. We are having this debate, and we are going to probably go through lots of procedural antics that most folks won't understand. I just wish that my Republican colleagues would come back to what I think we should be spending all of our time on. If we are going to spend all night, let's focus on funding the TSA, FEMA, CISA, and the Coast Guard.

Frankly, I believe we need to fund all of the folks at the Customs and Border Patrol who aren't assigned to interior immigration enforcement. So, last week, Senator Murray and Senate Democrats attempted to say: Hey, we have got to debate about ICE, and we have got to debate about some of the CBP people who are doing domestic enforcement. If we can't come to an agreement there, let's fight over that, but let's not make sure that we hold all of these other folks hostage.

Unfortunately, my Republican colleagues blocked five separate bills that were offered by Senate Democrats that would have fully funded all of the components of DHS. I think about our hard-working TSA officers who, thank goodness, got a paycheck on March 12--a partial paycheck--but now, they are going unpaid.

The amazing thing is that this is kind of a crisis that doesn't need to be a crisis. The fact is, last July, my Republican colleagues voted to give the Department of Homeland Security a slush fund worth nearly $170 billion. Of that funding, $75 billion was a blank check to ICE, providing the Agency with a budget larger than of most global militaries. I actually think the ICE budget is now bigger than the French military's, and I know it is bigger than the FBI's budget. You know, the truth is that $75 billion could actually fund ICE for the next 7 years without any additional appropriations.

I am here today because I and my Democratic colleagues are fighting to ensure that all the funding that is used for immigration enforcement will no longer be used in inappropriate ways. I think even most of my Republican colleagues have acknowledged that what happened in Minneapolis kind of went off the rails in that we were seeing ICE agents literally abuse and brutalize Americans and disrespect basic human dignity.

The unfortunate thing is, under this administration, ICE has been turned frankly into kind of a secret police that I believe has waged enormous violence against Americans. I know in my State, that of the daily quota of people they have to pick up, 80 to 85 percent have never violated any other law other than coming into the country and most of them are going through an amnesty process that was set up. You know, we have seen the images of ICE ripping apart families and arresting moms as they drop off kids to daycare. As a matter of fact, I know that I tried to do some oversight, which is part of my job, and it took a lot of hoops to get through to even do that oversight.

I believe, because of these actions, all of our citizens are less safe. So we have got to make meaningful reforms to ICE which I don't think are outrageous, like requiring body cameras, making sure that immigration enforcement officers show their faces and identify themselves, and making sure there is proper training and upholding traditional use-of-force standards. These are the same requirements that my local law enforcement has to deal with every day and has had to for years. These aren't new. These are commonsense, basic accountability measures that, as I said, our State and local police abide by because that is how you keep communities safe.

Unfortunately, so far, the White House doesn't seem to see it that way. They continue to drag their feet on negotiations at the expense, frankly, of the TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard, and Customs and Border Patrol--not the folks doing interior enforcement--who are not getting paid. That doesn't make any sense.

As a matter of fact, we have even seen tools where, in the last shutdown, the administration didn't decide to cut off Global Entry or TSA PreCheck because those are actually funded by separate fees, but suddenly, they decided to amp up the political pressure and close off those programs. Now, thank goodness, because of pressure from the public, the Trump administration has reversed course and restarted the Global Entry program, but it should have never been suspended in the first place. We have got to get these folks paid. Take yes for an answer. Take yes for an answer.

As I pointed out earlier, with $75 billion for ICE, it is not going to stop. We have got to get the reforms in place. So let's keep the negotiations going. We ought to get them done. I am going to make sure that the TSA agents at Dulles, at National, and at airports across my Commonwealth get their paychecks.

As a State on the ocean, I want to make sure that the Coast Guard gets their paychecks. We have been hit hard by Hurricane Helene, and I want to make sure FEMA gets funded. And CISA--the Cybersecurity Agency, which is one of the things that guards against foreign malign influence--has been decimated by this administration. As we go into an election season where I extraordinarily fear foreign interference, close to 50 percent of the personnel have been cut or eliminated.

So we can do better. We must do better.

We can debate the SAVE Act, which I think is, again, about voter disenfranchisement, not voter safety or integrity, but I do think, while we debate this, why not go ahead and take yes for an answer and fund all of the other components of DHS so those folks who help protect us day in and day out get their paychecks?

Let's reopen these critical Agencies. Let's acknowledge that ICE has a $75 billion slush fund that we could complain about as Democrats-- Democrats do--but it is the law of the land. They have the resources. In the meantime, why hold up the pay of these Americans who are doing so many things to keep us safe? I think those folks deserve better. I think we all deserve better.

I guess I am a little old-fashioned. I actually think, back to the subject at hand, you know, our elections are better if more people participate. I am welcome to having more folks participate--citizens participate. Citizens participate. Unfortunately, this SAVE Act cuts back on a whole lot of Americans that will be disenfranchised simply because, oh my gosh, they did the radical thing of changing their name when they got married; or, oh my gosh, they were willing to join our military; or, oh my gosh, they are aged and they don't want to spend 150 bucks to get a passport.

Our country deserves better.

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