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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I am glad I got to catch a few of the tail-end remarks of my colleague from Illinois. I didn't realize what this debate was truly all about, but he made that clear.
This is all about public financing of elections, according to him, because anybody contributing any of their hard-earned money to support a candidate whom they happen to believe in or someone espousing or advocating for the principles they believe in--there is something inherently wrong with that according to the distinguished majority whip, the Senator from Illinois, because to him the only answer is let's take your money and use that to finance an election perhaps to benefit a candidate who doesn't agree with anything you believe in. Is that what this is all about, public financing of elections?
He said something else I don't think I ever heard anybody have the audacity to say before. He said voter fraud doesn't exist. I am sure in Chicago they have had a few instances of voter fraud. We have unfortunately had some in Texas, some that resulted in the nomination of Lyndon Johnson to be Democratic nominee for President of the United States in box 13 in Duvall County, TX, and there have been a number of other instances investigated and found cases of voter fraud that have been found to exist.
What is the problem with issuing or requiring somebody to have a photo ID to vote? In Texas to get a voter ID, for which the Attorney General has sued the State of Texas, saying somehow it is discriminatory to require somebody to have a voter ID to prove they are who they say they are so they can then cast their vote, even though it takes a photo ID to get into the Department of Justice--you cannot go see Eric Holder or anybody at the Department of Justice unless you have a photo ID. Oh, by the way, you cannot buy tobacco products, you cannot buy alcohol, you cannot fly on an airplane without a photo ID, and if for some reason you don't have one in the State of Texas, well, you get one for free. How does that possibly burden the right to vote?
It is no surprise that 70 percent of the respondents in most of the polling I have seen--Independents, Democrats, and Republicans alike--say they think voter ID is a good idea, because what does it do? It protects the integrity of the ballots for people who are qualified to vote and doesn't permit illegal votes to dilute those votes.
We spent the last several weeks back home meeting with our constituents. I know some people like to call it recess. I know it doesn't feel like recess, at least not in the elementary school sense of the word, because most of the time this is a period during which we get to travel our States and interact with our constituents and do something we need to do more of, which is to listen to what they have to say and what their concerns are, and I did that in Texas.
My constituents did not say the most important thing we can do is pass a constitutional amendment gutting the First Amendment, the right to free speech. That didn't come up one time.
What did come up were their concerns about the economy, about the access to health care, about immigration, about the challenges imposed by radical Islamic terrorists and the Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. All of those came up. Not a single time did my constituents say: We want you to go back to Washington, DC, and vote to gut the First Amendment right to free speech. At this time of high unemployment and stagnant wages, with the labor participation rate at historic lows--that is, the percentage of people actually in the workforce looking for jobs is at a historic low--and millions of Americans concerned about losing their health insurance or facing higher deductibles or premiums, with a crisis on the southwest border which has not gone away with this wave of unaccompanied minor children coming across from Central America, with terrorists on the march in the Middle East, with Russian military forces continuing a full-blown invasion of Ukraine, despite all that, the majority leader in his wisdom has decided to bring up this amendment because he thinks the most urgent order of business is to replace the current First Amendment which has stood the test of time for lo all these many years since our country's founding and replace it with one that empowers incumbent politicians to control who has access to the resources in order to get their message out.
Now everyone is entitled to their priorities, but it is painfully clear the majority leader's priorities have everything to do with November 4, the coming midterm elections, so it is all politics all the time, no matter what. I am embarrassed, frankly, to confront my constituents when they say: What are you going to be doing when you return to Washington, DC? Are you going to be dealing with jobs or the energy sector--which is a very bright spot in our economy--or what are we going to do to make sure the millennials--the young adults--can actually find jobs so they can pay down their college loans and so they can get to work? What are you going to do to keep the promises the President made on health care; that if you like what you have you can keep it, the premiums for a family of four are going to go down by $2,500, and you can keep your doctor if you like your doctor--what are you going to do to make sure those promises are kept?
Instead of dealing with all of those very important issues, it is embarrassing for me to tell my constituents that, look, the majority leader is the one who controls the agenda in this Senate. He is the traffic cop, and an individual Senator--and certainly not one in the minority--doesn't have any ability to control the agenda of the U.S. Senate.
So this is all Senator Reid's choice as the majority leader, and he claims this proposed constitutional amendment is all about getting so-called dark money out of the political system. In reality, if that was all this was about, we might have a good debate and a vote. But in reality what he is concerned about is opposition--political support that is going to make it more likely that Republicans regain the majority of the Senate and Democrats become a member of the minority. That is what is motivating this vote. In reality what this amendment would do would be to undermine some of our most cherished, most fundamental, and most important liberties.
If this proposed amendment ever becomes law, State and Federal lawmakers would suddenly have vast new powers to regulate or even criminalize political speech. So to state the blindingly obvious, the Founding Fathers proposed and readopted the First Amendment precisely because they saw how dangerous it was to let politicians restrict the exercise of free speech. The Founders understood that without the First Amendment we could end up with a never-ending cycle of elected officials shrinking the boundaries of permissible speech. A political system such as that would be totally incompatible with the principles and values of a free society. Yet that is exactly the type of political system we would have if this constitutional amendment being proposed ever were to take effect.
I heard the majority whip saying this isn't about political speech, this is just about the money, but that argument quickly falls apart.
For starters, my colleagues amendment would allow Congress to restrict freedom of assembly and freedom of petition as well, both of which are essential to safeguarding political speech. While the amendment might not give Congress the power to curtail freedom of the press per se, it would give Congress the power to curtail political speech by individuals and activists, which begs the question: Why should the political speech of newspapers and magazines be any different from the political speech of you and me? Why should theirs be carved out and unrestricted in terms of the financial resources that could advance those points of view in newspapers and magazines? Yet our ability to communicate about the things we care about the most would be restricted by limiting the amount of money we could spend to advocate those points of view.
After all, when newspapers publish editorials about public policy, they are trying to persuade politicians and other elected officials to adopt a given position, and that is an important part of our system.
I ask unanimous consent for an additional 3 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. King). Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. CORNYN. Newspapers are trying to persuade voters all the time to elect a given candidate because they endorse those candidates.
I remember when I ran for my first public office as a district judge in Bexar County, San Antonio, TX, one of the most important things I sought was the endorsement of the editorial board of the local newspaper. I knew that even if nobody knew anything else about me, if the newspaper editorial board thought I was a credible candidate, that might help in my election.
Neither Federal nor State lawmakers should have the power to decide what type of political speech is permissible. Free speech is free speech. The solution to speech is more speech, not less speech.
For 225 years the First Amendment has served as the guarantor of American democracy. It was designed to protect all speech, not just speech we happen to agree with or that supports our particular point of view. A recent Supreme Court decision put it this way: "There is no more basic right to our democracy than the right to participate in electing political leaders.''
Unfortunately, this amendment would undermine that right, and it would roll back perhaps the most elemental freedom of our founding document by creating a system in which vital, indispensable liberty would be contingent on the ever-shifting tides of partisan politics. These efforts should not only be not supported, they should be repudiated firmly, loudly, and unapologetically, nothing less than the very bedrock of American democracy is at stake.
As I close, I wish to add that the Founders wisely put the process by which the Constitution can be amended in our Constitution. Two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate must vote for a constitutional resolution and then it goes to the States where three-quarters of the States must ratify this constitutional amendment. I can tell you that there is no doubt in my mind that this would ever happen with this amendment.
Why is the majority leader bringing this up now, less than 60 days before the midterm elections? Perhaps it is to motivate his own political base in the hope that will mitigate some of the losses in the November 4 election. But it certainly cannot be without any hope or pipedream that it would ever become the law of the land, and for the reasons I have stated it should not.
I yield the floor.
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