For the People Act of 2021

Floor Speech

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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, we are less than 100 days into the Biden administration, and already we can identify a pattern in how they are building their policy initiatives, interacting with Congress, and marketing their ideas to the American people. In every example, the governing rule can be boiled down to ``what you see isn't what you are going to get.''

So far, in this 117th Congress, every single major policy proposal that DC Democrats have forced into the spotlight has been based on a false premise. They have intentionally misled the American people and are now catering to the increasingly radical leftwing that gets further out of step with the rest of this country each and every passing day.

Consider last month's absurd $1.9 trillion spending package. The Democrats billed this as ``the American Rescue Plan'' and ``COVID relief,'' but only 9 percent--9 percent--of the total package pricetag went for testing, vaccinations, and healthcare jobs. The rest they used on a massive blue State bailout and blatant redistribution of wealth.

It is the same story with this month's $2.25 trillion spending package. They have done their best to pass this off as an ``infrastructure plan,'' but even if you add up every single line item that is dedicated to roads, bridges, highways, interstates, ports, waterways, airports, broadband, and the power grid, only a little over one-third of that plan will pay for actual infrastructure projects. The rest--the rest--of that $2.25 trillion is just another slush fund for union activism, climate change auditors, and Green New Deal fantasies.

S. 1, the so-called ``voting rights'' bill that my colleagues across the aisle have spoken so passionately about, completes the trifecta of bait-and-switch bills, advertised as one thing but that would accomplish something completely different.

Now, S. 1 isn't as much a taxpayer-dollar grab as it is a nearly unprecedented policy power grab that offers solutions in search of problems. It ignores the promises of federalism. It disregards the constitutional directive affording States--affording the States--power over their own elections.

It requires the use of ballot casting technology and voter registration systems that don't even exist yet, but I think you can bet that some politically connected companies will make a whole bunch of money coming to the market with this technology.

It would dismantle voter ID laws and prevent local, meaningful cleanup of voter rolls. Your local election commission wouldn't be able to purge their rolls of individuals who have died or moved away. We know that this leads you to a recipe for fraud.

Speaking of fraud, it would force States to allow ballot harvesting. That is right; it would mandate that they allow ballot harvesting. Everyone has heard of the perils that exist with ballot harvesting. It would mandate donor disclosure, opening private citizens up to harassment and violent attacks. It would upend the mechanics of local elections for officials and voters alike and cause chaos and confusion in every precinct in this country.

So why in the world would Democrats even try to pitch this mess as something that would protect voting rights? By all accounts, it would increase the likelihood for fraud and confusion. Well, I think that they are doing it for the same reason they slapped a ``COVID'' label on a $1.9 trillion wish list and an ``infrastructure'' label on a $2.25 trillion wish list. They know that if the American people caught on to all that they are doing, they would never win another election.

Now, think about that--if you know your policies are so unpopular with the American people that you have to cloak them behind different words, different phrases, words that the meaning of the word is evolving because they don't stand up to scrutiny in the light of day. And that is what is happening.

You know, it isn't just false advertising. It is not a falsehood. It is not misrepresentation. It is not an inaccuracy. It is not an accidental lie. This is an intentional lie. They are perpetrating this lie on behalf of a radical leftist minority of Americans whose ideas are so destructive that they wouldn't withstand 10 minutes of good, solid, robust, respectful bipartisan debate on this Senate floor.

Nothing about S. 1 will serve the best interests of the American people, and my Republican colleagues and I aren't the only ones who see the problems with it. Tennesseeans are worried about this, too, because, in Tennessee, we did the work to clean up our voter rolls and implement fair voter ID laws. We cut down on fraud and increased faith in the electoral process.

This is how it is supposed to work. We do not need Federal intervention to protect the vote. So no wonder my Democratic colleagues chose to use the full weight of the Senate Judiciary Committee to scare the American people into believing they live in ``Jim Crow America.'' Throughout the course of last week's hearing, which they called ``Jim Crow 2021: The Latest Assault on the Right to Vote,'' they weaponized the pernicious lens of critical race theory against Georgia legislators and the thousands of election officials and volunteers who work year- round to bring as many eligible voters to the polls as possible.

Everyone should exercise their right to vote. We should protect one person, one vote. We should encourage people in our local communities to cast their ballot. But my friends across the aisle, they are desperate, and they are desperate to distract from what S. 1 would actually do, so desperate to distract from what it would actually do that they are willing to project the evil hatred behind slavery, segregation, and race-based violence, projecting that onto people whose only goal is to protect the vote from criminals who would seek to defraud it and make certain that individuals are registered to vote, that they vote, and that legal votes are counted and those improperly cast are not.

Now, my friends across the aisle have an invalid premise, and they should all pause and question their motives. The American people should be worried about what is happening in this Chamber when no one is looking. They should feel outrage at an administration that deliberately tries to manipulate them into supporting destructive, wasteful, and dangerous legislation.

I think these bait-and-switch tactics are going to backfire. I think the scare tactics are going to backfire because instead of being scared into submission, which is the agenda of the left, the American people are going to be scared into action.

Based on the contents of H.R. 1 and S. 1, I guess that they are more familiar with the ins and outs of their neighborhood polling places than DC Democrats could ever expect to be.

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