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Floor Speech

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Ms. LUMMIS. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the basic duty we all took an oath to carry out--and whether we are living up to it.

The U.S. Senate was never designed to be easy. It was designed to be deliberate, to force people who disagree to sit in the same room and work something out anyway. That only works if everyone here still believes in the underlying premise that we were sent to govern no matter who is the President. The goal is not to defeat the other side for its own sake but to do the hard, unglamourous work of running this country together, in good faith, even when we would rather not.

Americans did not send Republicans and Democrats to Washington expecting us to agree on everything. In fact, my constituents would be very concerned if we did. They sent us here expecting us to take the job seriously. That means engaging with the substance in front of us, debating it, amending it, fighting for it on the merits, rather than reflexively blocking whatever comes to the floor simply because of who sits in the White House.

Last week, this Chamber fell short. There is a real difference between principled opposition and blind obstruction, and the American people can tell which one they are watching. Opposing a policy because you believe it is wrong for the country is exactly what this institution is built for. Opposing something simply because you dislike the President and you are trying to jam him when there is international conflict is something else entirely, and it corrodes the very system we are sworn to protect.

I was very troubled to watch every Senate Democrat vote against even beginning the debate on the National Defense Authorization Act, a bill that has, historically, enjoyed strong bipartisan backing.

Now, I am not suggesting Members can't or shouldn't oppose the NDAA when they have genuine concerns; that is a legitimate part of the process. Voting no is often the easy move around here, and I have done it myself when I thought it was warranted. But this looked less like principled opposition and more like reflexive obstruction, a decision to block the process itself rather than engage with the substance of an important bill.

I also think of the SAVE America Act when I say this because it is a case in point. Here is a bill built around a premise that 83 percent of the American people--Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike-- already agree on, that only citizens should decide American elections and that voters should be able to prove who they are when they cast a ballot. This is not fringe. This is not one party's obsession. It is about as close to consensus as the American people get on anything these days.

And yet it cannot get a real hearing on the merits in this Chamber-- not a real debate, just a wall. That is not principled opposition. That is the process itself being blocked on a question the country has largely answered.

Good faith is not a partisan virtue. It doesn't belong to one side of the aisle or the other. It is the minimum the American people are owed by everyone who serves here. They are watching to see whether we can still disagree honestly, argue our positions openly and persuasively, and still find a way to get the Nation's business done. When we can't, when the obstruction becomes the default setting instead of the exception, we are not defending the Constitution. We are quietly letting it fail.

We are stewards of something bigger than any one bill or any one election cycle. We are stewards of a system that only survives if the people who serve in it still believe in doing the work, in doing the right thing, in doing what the Constitution outlines is our duty to the American people. That is what Americans expect of us. It is time we start living up to it every single day, not just when it is politically convenient.

(Mr. ROUNDS assumed the chair.)

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