Proposing an Amendment to the Constitution of the United States Relating to Contributions and Expenditures Intended to Affect Elections

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, when I was home last month, I heard a lot from Missourians, for really the first time over and over: What about all of the bills the House has passed that the Senate has not taken up? What about funding the government? My good friend from Michigan just mentioned the five things she would like to get done before we get to the end of the year. I think everybody on the other side of the aisle knows those five things, for various reasons, will not happen this year.

But what are we not doing? We are less than a month away from the beginning of a new spending year. We have not voted on a single one of the appropriations bills. There is no budget. The fundamental work of the government is not going on while we continue to debate the same things over and over because there are some people who think there is a good title to the bill or a good headline: The five things we want to get done.

Equal pay. Who is not for equal pay? The law requires equal pay. In fact, when the President signed the Lilly Ledbetter Act, he said: This solves the problem. Well, suddenly, it does not solve the problem because we want to get that title back out there again where we can talk about the title.

Access to college. I am the first person in my family to ever graduate from college. I had the chance to be a university president. I believe people's lives are affected by the right kind of education after high school. Nobody is opposed to access to college. We ought to be talking about that. But we ought to be talking about that in a way that can produce the right kind of result.

When the people of Missouri are saying: You are not getting the work of the country done, that is clearly right--just the fundamental things that need to get done, and here we are back in Washington, reminded by our friends on the other side that really we are here to just hold votes we have already had. Not a single thing was mentioned in the preceding remarks that we have not voted on already and not a single thing was mentioned in the preceding remarks that has any chance of passing both the House and the Senate and, frankly, has no chance of advancing in either the House or the Senate. But here we take these critical 2 weeks--the government is unfunded, no budget to talk about, with work not being done--to talk about these things.

Right now, the joint resolution we are on--with all the critical challenges we have not solved, we are talking about changing the Constitution. The only person in the Senate who can decide what bill comes to the floor is the majority leader, and the majority leader has brought a joint resolution to the floor, an amendment to the Constitution, an amendment that would take 67 votes in the Senate to pass, an amendment that has 45 sponsors, all from the other side--not very close to 67. Nobody believes this is going to happen.

To amend the Constitution, two-thirds of the Senate has to agree. That will not happen. Two-thirds of the House has to agree. That will not happen. Two-thirds of the States have to approve the amendment. That will not happen. More importantly, it should not happen. We are talking about amending the Constitution of the United States when there is no chance of doing it. So the only thing we are surely talking about is just trying to score some kind of last-minute election-year points. But if people are paying attention, the points that will be scored will be scored by those defending the Bill of Rights and those defending the Constitution.

What is being proposed here would have a chilling effect on the First Amendment, which says "Congress shall make no law ..... abridging [among other things] the freedom of speech.'' We are thinking, for the first time ever, we would amend the Bill of Rights? Now, nobody really thinks we are going to do that so apparently everybody thinks, as long as it is just a show vote, it does not matter. But if you can take these freedoms today and decide they are worth bandying around as a show vote, I suppose you could take them tomorrow and actually think about taking these freedoms away.

The Constitution would not have become the Constitution of the United States without the promise of the Bill of Rights. The Founders got a lot of things right. They did not get everything right. But one of the things they got right was the Bill of Rights. One thing that the States demanded when the Constitution was shown to them was: We can do that, but we are not going to do that unless we are promised that these fundamental rights that make us who we are and have the potential to make us more than we are--that these fundamental rights are guaranteed. We have never amended the Bill of Rights. So suddenly 45 Members of the Senate--with no enthusiasm for this anywhere else that I can find in the country--45 Members of the Senate have decided that for the first time ever we would amend the Bill of Rights.

Now, what does the Bill of Rights give us? It gives us freedom of religion--the first right. There will be another debate, I assume, late in the next 2 weeks to once again talk about how important is that right of conscience, that the Constitution in the Bill of Rights guarantees--the very first freedom it gives us is the freedom to believe what we believe. In fact, President Jefferson said in the decade after the Constitution was written that of all the rights, that is the one we should hold most dear: the freedom to hold our beliefs and not let the government decide how you conduct yourself in ways that violate your faith beliefs.

But right after that comes--what we are talking about--freedom of speech, the second of all those freedoms. There may be people here not at all offended by the fact that we can just bandy that around with no chance we are going to change this amendment. It is not like there are 67 cosponsors of this amendment.

I find it offensive we would talk about this as if it is a freedom so easily discussed and so easily utilized for political reasons that we just bring it up here a few weeks before the election and talk about it, even though there is no chance it could possibly be changed at this point and shouldn't be changed in the future.

The right of conscience, the freedom of speech, the freedom of press, the right to peaceably assemble, the right to petition the government--those are the five freedoms given in the First Amendment to the Constitution, and here we are talking about them as if they are nothing more than political talking points. They are who we are as a nation.

The chilling effect this discussion has on the First Amendment is concerning. I suppose part of it is to convince people: You don't want to participate in the system because you are going to be criticized if you participate in the system.

One of the great rights we have as Americans is the right to criticize those who are participating and, if we do participate, the right that others have to criticize us. This is an effort that if it occurred would certainly be a great thing for the current occupants of public office because you begin to write the rules in a way that makes it harder for those who don't hold public office to challenge those who do. No one likes being criticized, but in our country it is a fundamental part of who we are.

The Constitution wouldn't have been agreed to without the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights, as I said before, hasn't been changed. The freedom of the press is one of those rights, but it is not the only one. This amendment would go a long way toward making the press the only way people get their information and news. The press--the media generally--has a guaranteed right to do what they do, but individuals have a guaranteed right to say what they want to say, to participate as the courts and the Constitution allow in this great debate we call America.

To see that dealt with in this way--I actually wonder what people would think if they thought this was going to happen. Nobody believes this is going to happen because it is not going to happen. We are taking the people's time. We are taking the time given to us by the Constitution and the people to do the people's work, to instead talk about things that shouldn't happen, to talk about things that will not happen.

To suggest there is a real debate going on in Washington, when this is exactly what people are tired of--people in Washington not doing their job and trying to convince the people whom Washington should be working for that somehow great debates are going on, when all we are doing is getting ready for the next election, I am tired of that. I think most citizens of our country are tired of it.

For those who want to defend the Constitution, count me on their side.

I yield the floor.

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