Standing Up for Our Democracy

Remarks on the Senate Floor Ahead of For the People Act Vote.

This is the moment that we are challenged in ways that we’ve never been challenged before.

Five months ago, Madam President, a violent mob stormed this floor. Five months ago, trying to stop the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next. And they took us out of this room, and they took us to one of the Senate office buildings.

And I was watching the televisions as I was there and all I could think about was, what’s the rest of the world thinking about when our Capitol is being stormed? By a violent mob of our own citizens. By a violent mob of our own citizens.

And not just what our adversaries are thinking, not what is Russia thinking, what is China using with this footage, what are the Iranians going to do with this footage, but what are people like my mom and her parents who were Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust, and after making it through one of the worst moments in human history, were able to rebuild their shattered lives in this country. In the United States of America.

And to think about similarly situated people all over the planet for whom this is the greatest hope still for freedom and for liberty for democracy itself.

That’s what’s at stake, at least as far as I’m concerned, in this debate. And I know the president understands this well and I hope others understand this well, that even before January 6, our democracy was under attack. It was under attack as a result of gerrymandering.

It was under attack because of the way special interests control the agenda on this floor and down the hall. It was under attack because of voter suppression, that nobody in the 21st century imagined we’d ever see in our country again. Not to mention the fact of Citizens United, which unleashed the floodgate of money of billionaires to control our political system.

This is an effort to separate the American people from their exercise in self government. It’s an effort to destroy the American people’s confidence in their exercise in self government. And making it harder for people to vote is a huge piece of this puzzle.

Now this isn’t the first time in our history that we’ve been confronted by this kind of stuff. I’ve said before, and it’s absolutely true, that you go back to the founding of this country, it’s a story of, on the one hand, the highest ideals that had ever been written down by human beings, and the worst instincts that have ever been conjured by human beings. In our case, that was enslaving other human beings.

And our history is a story of that battle between those highest ideals, and those worst instincts. And every single time, Americans have stepped up and they found a way to make our country more democratic, more fair and more free, small “d” democratic.

And that’s what we have to do again. That’s our job now, because today, in ways that were unimaginable to me when I was in college, except when I read it in the history books, anti-democratic forces are stronger than any time since Jim Crow. And it’s true. That’s a fact. What I was reading about in the 1980s about laws that had been fought against in the 1960s, they’re back in 2020. If you think I’m exaggerating, here are some examples.

In Georgia, bills to undermine nonpartisan election officials so that politicians can overturn outcomes they don’t like. In Arizona, the same kind of thing, a partisan election audit.

In Florida, a bill to restrict vote by mail. State legislators attempting to give themselves the power to toss out an election, as I said, that they don’t like. These are laws, all across the country, there are 250 or so, of these laws that are being passed. And by the way, not a single one of those is being passed with a democratic vote, a vote from a Democrat. In 250 legislators and you know what else doesn’t exist in any one of those legislators? The filibuster does not exist in any one of those legislatures.

We need to stand up for our democracy. And that’s why we need to pass the For the People Act. The bill includes common sense reforms that are broadly supported by the American people.

I know we know these reforms work, because they’ve worked in Colorado, where we’ve banned gerrymandering. We have automatic voter registration, we have early voting, we have vote by mail, we have increased election security. This is all non partisan, this is all common sense. This was done by, this wasn’t done by Democrats, it was done by Republicans and Democrats, working together. What’s the result? We have the second highest voter turnout rate in the country, 72%.

I’m so sick and tired of saying that. I want us to be number one so that I don’t have to hear from Senator Klobuchar how Minnesota is number one. I come here, I say we’re number two. That’s not good enough. We need to be number one.

But if we had this across the country, the agenda in Washington would look more like what the American people actually sent us here to do. So this isn’t just about voting rights, although that’s very very important. It’s not just about elections, that’s very important.

But we could finally probably create universal health care in this country; improve our schools; make sure that we had an economy that when it grew, it grew for everybody, not just the top 10%; we would probably stop spending our time cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans when our unemployment, our income inequality, has never been higher.

Although, now that I mentioned that, I realized, because of the president’s leadership, and President Biden’s leadership, we’ve actually already started to do that because we cut taxes now for the vast majority of Americans, because of the work that they’ve led.

We can change the destiny of America. That’s what we could do. And that’s what this exercise and self government is about. We can show that we can compete with the communist government in China, and send a signal to people like my grandparents, all across the world, that American democracy is stronger than ever, and that they should trust it, they can count it, and maybe get a piece of it for themselves.

That we remain a beacon of freedom and self government. And that we remain committed, not to our worst instincts, but to our highest ideals. I’d encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this legislation.

And with that I thank my colleague from North Carolina for his indulgence and Madam President, thank you very much for yours as well. I yield the floor.