Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. PERDUE. Mr. President, I stand before this body today with a troubled heart, as most of us do, but that is not good enough. We have to kind of put away our own biases, our own prejudice. I am not talking about racial; I am talking about political.

Today we have an opportunity to do something, to start a process. Words are cheap in this body. I hear a lot of empty words. I hope not to add to that quantity today.

When I was a kid growing up in the Deep South, Martin Luther King wrote a letter from a jail cell in Birmingham to Black preachers in that community. He encouraged them to turn away from the violence that had such a potentially devastating impact and to seek reform peacefully; that in the long term, that was the better approach. My father had me read that letter. I gave a speech a couple years ago, and I quoted from that letter. It meant something to me as a young White man in the Deep South.

Almost 57 years ago, on the other end of the National Mall from where we stand today, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I believe, changed the world--certainly impacted millions of lives.

Standing before thousands of people, he shared his dream. He dreamed of a world where justice would prevail over prejudice. He dreamed of an America where everyone would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the depth of their character.

Since that day in 1963, a lot has changed in our country for the better. Unfortunately, Dr. King's vision of racial justice, harmony, and equality is yet to be fully realized. That is unacceptable.

This year, our country is seeing devastating tragedies taking place in our communities, but what we see on TV really is the tip of the iceberg, as a lot of my friends from those communities tell me. I believe them.

We need to make sure that the fundamental issue of fairness is upheld by all law enforcement agencies so everyone gets treated equally, fairly, period. The tragedies we have seen are unacceptable by any measure, and I don't think anybody in America thinks that what we have seen is right. Those who are responsible need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and we need to put a full stop to it right now. But that fight starts today, I believe, here in the U.S. Senate.

Like so many Americans, my wife Bonnie and I have spent a lot of time reflecting and praying for our country and our friends and our fellow Americans in the last many weeks. It is clear to us that we have more work to do to make justice for all become a reality for every American.

We are a nation of laws, but those laws have to be enforced fairly and equally. To truly be effective, the police need to have the confidence of the communities they serve, and in many cases today, that is just not the case. That trust and confidence must be earned, however. Clearly, there is much work to do on this front to build up mutual trust

I had a conversation with two grandmothers last week--well-educated, successful women of color, in positions of tremendous responsibility-- and we talked about how their perspective and my perspective differed and how we saw each other in this crisis. But the most telling thing in that conversation was how they told me their No. 1 concern was for their grandsons and how their grandsons would be treated by members of the police force in their communities. That is a tragedy, and we can do something about it.

This issue is personal to me. Growing up in middle Georgia in the 1960s, I have seen the devastation of racism, discrimination, a lack of equality, prejudice. As the son of two public school teachers, I saw how it weighed on my parents during that time. All they wanted was for every child to be treated equally, regardless of where they came from, what their name was, or the color of their skin.

Understand, I grew up in a military town, and we had people there from all over the world. So this wasn't an idle conversation; this was an objective they tried to live up to every single day. They wanted every child to have the same simple opportunity.

As superintendent of schools in our county, my father successfully integrated our school system--I remember that as a young kid--one of the first counties to do that in our State. They did it there without incident. It was a military town. We had people, again, from all over the world, and it was a joint effort. My dad did not do it because it was the easy thing to do, the convenient thing to do; he did it because it was the right thing to do.

In my own life, I have been blessed to have interacted with people from all over the world in my career. My hometown of Warner Robins is a military town. I went to school there, went to church there, and played ball there with people literally from all over the world. Later on, my wife Bonnie and I had the opportunity to live around the world in different places. This challenged our perspective in many ways. It helped us develop a deeper appreciation of how America's diversity is at once our greatest asset and, yes, sometimes our greatest challenge.

However, I also recognize that as a White man, my perspective is by definition very different from those of African Americans in my own community. We have these conversations all the time. I know I could never fully appreciate the pain and adversity many African Americans have faced in my lifetime and still face today. That is wrong. We can fix that starting today or at least start down that road again.

Yes, we have made a lot of progress--I can see that in my own lifetime--but that is no reason to ignore the situation today or to sit back and not do anything. However, as Dr. King said at the Lincoln Memorial, we will ``not be satisfied until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.''

Right now, the Senate has the opportunity to fight for justice for all. Today we will be voting to--it is a technicality, but it is a motion to proceed. This is nothing more than to just start on the bill.

I hear my Democratic colleagues talking about, well, it is not perfect; it is only 75 percent of the solution. Well, OK. Great. Let's start there. The purpose of a motion to proceed is to put a bill on the floor and actually debate it, have amendments. This bill is not perfect. It doesn't satisfy all the things I want to do. But it is a start. I plan to offer amendments. I am sure the Presiding Officer wants to offer amendments. We welcome amendments in this process. The majority leader has said we will have an open amendment process. What we want to do is offer up this as a starting point, not a final solution.

Today we will have the vote on whether to start actually working on the JUSTICE Act. Senator Tim Scott has led a small task force to come up with the starting point--a bill that we can actually put our hands on, read, and then start changing. I am proud to be a cosponsor. We have many cosponsors. I think that we will probably have a unanimous vote on that on the Republican side today. My prayer is that we will have many on the Democratic side say: Look, we understand it is not perfect. We want this. We want that.

Let's put in the work, and let's start working on this now. It should be a foregone conclusion that we get overwhelming bipartisan support to debate the bill. Let's make it a good law. If it is not to your satisfaction, fine. Let's debate it.

Some say: Well, we don't trust the majority leader.

You don't have to trust the majority leader. The rules of the Senate protect each individual Senator once we put the bill in play. But if we don't put the bill on the floor, nobody is protected--especially our constituents.

Unfortunately, many of my colleagues on the other side are attempting to shut down this debate before we even start. They say it doesn't go far enough. They call it a token. That is absurd. That is ridiculous. It is insulting, particularly to my good friend Tim Scott.

Look, none of us believes this bill is perfect or an end-all as it is. As I just said, we have differences on this side, but we are willing to put it on the floor. We have allowed the Democrats to do things like this where we went on the floor and tried to debate a bill to get it to where--if you don't like what we end up with, you can always vote it down at cloture. You don't have to even go to the final vote.

All we are pleading for today is a motion to proceed to allow this bill to go on the floor and be fully debated. It is simply a starting point for debate and true compromise. Isn't that what our job is? Isn't that what we are supposed to do?

I ask my Democratic colleagues this: What major bill has come before this body in perfect form at the very outset? I can't think of any. If you have issues with this bill, let's debate it and offer amendments. Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good, please.

On major issues like this, it is our duty to come together. It is our duty to find common ground. It is our duty to fight for what is right.

This bill offers meaningful solutions that will help build trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve. These are just ideas. It provides solutions that all of us can get behind right now.

In addition to modifying the rules concerning the use of force and providing body cams, this bill does several critical things to establish that trust and provide additional funding to help improve our police forces.

First, it incentivizes police recruiting to reflect the demographics of the communities they serve. How simple is that? This is a big step. If the police live in the communities they serve, if they reflect the demographics of that community, if they identify with the people of that community, it is a lot easier to develop trust and common ground

Second, this bill encourages deescalation training for law enforcement officers. This will help law enforcement develop the skills and techniques they need to prevent public interactions that lead to the violence we have seen of late.

Third, this bill creates a database that helps our communities root out those who do not serve the public even though they are enforcing law.

The bottom line is that the bill increases funding for law enforcement. It doesn't defend law enforcement or eliminate the police force.

These solutions we are offering up as a starting point today are meaningful. They will restore the confidence of our communities and hold accountable police officers who abuse their positions or who are poorly trained.

Most of us who truly want change also understand that eliminating police forces is not the answer, as some suggest. Our police forces are to serve and protect our communities--all of our communities--and there needs to be change before they can be successful in that.

We have proven in the past that we can come together to fight for what is right. We did when we provided permanent funding for our HBCUs, our historically Black colleges and universities. We did it when we created opportunity zones in hundreds of communities of color around the country, many of them economically challenged. In 2018, when we passed the bipartisan criminal justice reform bill--the biggest one in the last 50 years--that was true progress. We did it. We can do it again today, but first we have to put this bill on the floor. We have to start the debate. We have to pass this motion to proceed, or--guess what--no debate will happen. They will talk to their base, Republicans will talk to our base, and nothing will happen. A pox on all of us if we let that happen.

If Democrats shut down this bill today, it will demonstrate a lack of sincerity, in my opinion, to at least engage in finding solutions. This is no different from the immigration conversation we had just a couple years ago. When the President of the United States, Donald Trump, offered up a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million DACA recipients and we couldn't even get a debate going with the other side--they turned it down out of hand because it was President Trump's suggestion.

All of us need to remember that while we look different, we might talk differently, we certainly may think differently, we really are one Nation under God.

Our diversity is our strength. It makes us different. It makes us stronger. It makes us the leader of the world in our current time. What unites us is far greater than what divides us.

Let's work on this bill today and start building a more perfect union for every American. Let's vote yes on this motion to proceed.

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