Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2013

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Madam Chairman, I think you, and probably all of us in the body are noticing a theme here on many of these limitation amendments. Being someone that comes from Arizona, there's a reason we've been actually applauding many of these amendments.

We feel, as a State--and now I'm realizing many other States have the same issue--we're at battle with our own Justice Department. How many times has Arizona now been sued by this Justice Department? This became one of those occasions where we understand Texas and other States are now being sued by the Justice Department because of voter ID laws.

I'm tired of this, and I think the American people are tired of there being this battle between the Federal Government suing our States and costing the residents, the citizens of these States, these litigation costs.

How do you stand up and create limitation? This became our opportunity to tell the Justice Department, No, go after bad guys and stop suing our State. If there is a bad act requiring an ID to vote in a State, fine. You still have private rights of action.

I had a staffer in the back telling me this story. I hope I don't screw this up too much. But apparently a couple of weeks ago, there was a young man who walked into a polling place and was able to get General Holder's--our Attorney General's--ballot by just saying, Hi, I'm Eric Holder. I'm here to vote.

Does anyone understand how absurdly ironic this is, when considering you can't go in and visit the Attorney General in his office without a photo ID? I can't go visit him in his office, but I can walk in and get his ballot?

If you believe in the sanctity of the voting box, if you want the American people to believe in your election and be willing to accept when there are changes of power, which happens all the time, you've got to also have that faith, the faith that those elections were clean and proper, but also that those who were supposed to vote were the ones who were allowed to vote. Madam Chairman, that's why I stand here and offer this amendment.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source