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Floor Speech

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Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I want to commend my colleague Senator Lee and my colleagues Senator Ricketts, Senator Moreno. We are all on the floor to seek unanimous consent to a bill that actually just makes common sense.

Senator Lee talked about the different provisions of the bill, but I think one thing that is important to underscore is it just passed the House. These are issues that are on the minds of the American people, and it passed the House in a bipartisan manner--a strong bipartisan manner. So I am hopeful that we can move that House bill on both of these issues that Senator Lee just talked about in a way tonight and get this bill to the President's desk.

As I mentioned, Mr. President, common sense. Senator Lee talked about the insider trading provisions. I think every American would agree that Members of Congress should be prohibited, as well as their spouses and children, from purchasing individual stocks while serving in office, particularly given that we have access to different kinds of information.

You know, this has been something that I have done a number of years ago. I moved stocks into index funds to kind of get rid of this issue, from my perspective, personally.

Senator Ricketts has been the lead here in the U.S. Senate on this issue. I am actually a cosponsor of his bill that is very much focused on this commonsense approach to the issue of insider trading.

And then we need to go to the issue of integrity of our election system. As Senator Lee pointed out, it makes sense. It is very, very common sense--simple in many ways--that if you are going to vote, you have to have a valid ID to do that.

Now, this bill mandates that requirement, but it has a lot of provisional elements to this bill that accommodate States like mine that are very big, that have a dispersed population. So this bill includes those kind of accommodations. Eligible voters can access a provisional ballot. They can sign an affidavit attesting to their identity and citizenship if they don't have an ID.

There are many ways in which this bill accommodates the important element of making sure that American citizens vote in American elections. And I don't think that is some kind of radical idea. I think the vast, vast majority of Americans agree with this.

So I want to thank my colleagues for their leadership on this issue, and I am hopeful that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle will agree with us, and let's pass this bill and send it to the President's desk.

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