For the People Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I am happy to join in this block of time in which Members are coming forward to talk about the For the People Act.
I thank Senator Merkley for being our leader and inspiration in many aspects of this and Chair Amy Klobuchar from the Rules Committee, who will have the honor of bringing this matter before our committee for debate and discussion.
Tomorrow is going to mark 11 weeks since we sat in this Chamber late into the night and debated the certification of the electoral college vote of the November 3 election. It was an experience none of us will ever forget.
Hours before we were told to rush out of this Chamber as quickly as possible because the insurrectionist mob was just a few feet away, we had been told they were going to keep this place safe for us. We were to sit at our chairs and gather our staffs along the walls. You will be safe. You will be just fine. Ten minutes later, they said: Run as fast as you can. It was an experience that none of us ever expected in the U.S. Capitol Building and one we will certainly never forget.
We had been rushed out of the Chamber as this mob attacked the Capitol in an effort to stop us from fulfilling our constitutional duty in recognizing Joe Biden as the President of the United States. If that were in a novel 20 years ago, I would have said: It is preposterous. It will never happen in America.
But I saw it. I lived it. Many of us did.
This mob had been fueled by weeks of lies, disinformation, and baseless allegations of fraudulent votes and a stolen election.
I couldn't get over that, yesterday, a lawyer named Sidney Powell, who was the big defender of the big lie, said: Do you mean people actually believed me? How could they possibly believe me?
Well, that is how far it has come. The preposterous statements being made by the pro-Trump forces about stealing the election now are so laughable that people are trying to escape legal liability by saying: Surely, you didn't take that seriously.
Well, an awful lot of people did across America, and many of them marched on this Capitol.
Despite this horrific attack on the Capitol and our democracy, some of our colleagues, to amplify these wild claims, they continue to object to the electoral vote count and claim that Congress needed to do more to assure voters that the 2020 election was legitimate.
A few of those colleagues even proposed a sham Commission to audit the election. They were relying on an 1876 precedent that was responsible for the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of the Jim Crow era, a precedent that established rank discrimination against African Americans for decades and invited brutal voter suppression efforts that sadly, amazingly, we are still fighting today.
Here is the reality: If those colleagues were serious about protecting democracy, they would be standing on the floor with us right now. They would have stayed in their seats when the electoral college vote was certified. They wouldn't have spent weeks challenging and questioning the legitimate results of an election that their chosen candidate actually lost, and they would be on the floor with us, as I said, in support of the For the People Act.
Anyone who truly believes that we need to strengthen the integrity of our elections and democratic process should be cosponsoring this bill.
The For the People Act ensures that all eligible Americans can cast a ballot without burdensome barriers that suppress the vote.
In 1890, there was established something called the Mississippi Plan. The Mississippi Plan was State legislation carefully crafted to make certain that African Americans didn't have the right to vote.
Other States looked at it carefully and said: This is the answer. Literacy tests, poll taxes, every obstacle they could dream of became part of the Mississippi Plan, with the express purpose of disenfranchising African Americans recently emancipated.
That plan, unfortunately, lived out its days for decades and performed as expected, suppressing the vote. Again, we face this kind of challenge.
The bill that we are talking about here invests in election infrastructure and provides State and local officials with the resources they need for safe and secure elections.
The bill reforms a broken campaign finance system that elevates the voices of wealthy donors today and special interests, and it strengthens and enhances ethics and transparency requirements.
I am proud to be here today because this bill also includes the Fair Elections Now Act. I have introduced this every year since 2007. And occasionally, just occasionally, I would get a Republican cosponsor.
The idea behind it is simple: public financing of campaigns, a voluntary, small-donor public financing system for Senate candidates who agree to raise small-dollar contributions, not big money.
The fair elections public financing system would elevate the views and interests of a diverse spectrum of Americans rather than just the wealthy.
I am lucky to have a House sponsor, John Sarbanes. His father and I served in the Senate together, and he really has done a remarkable job promoting the bill in the House.
We would pay for these campaigns, public financing, without spending a dime of taxpayers' dollars. It would be financed with assessments on wealthy bad actors and industry lawbreakers.
Voluntary, small-donor public financing of congressional campaigns would mean more candidates with more ideas and a Congress that works for more than just the top 1 percent in America.
I thank Senator Merkley for, once again, including this act in the bill, and, again, I thank Congressman Sarbanes for his leadership in the House.
The Fair Elections Now Act is just one of the many critical reforms in this bill that will empower voters and combat corruption.
After months of the former President and his allies undermining faith in our electoral system with their unjustified claims, we must take immediate, concrete steps to repair our battered democracy.
I urge all my colleagues to join in this mission and support the For the People Act.
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