The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“ELECTIONS” mentioning Rick Scott was published in the Senate section on pages S4539-S4540 on June 15.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
Senators' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
ELECTIONS
Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about the need for integrity in our elections.
As I stand here, you know, prices are rising at the pump, and prices are rising at the grocery store. Inflation is the highest it has been basically since the financial crisis 13 years ago.
The number of unfilled jobs is at a record high for our Nation. Small businesses, certainly in my home State in Wyoming and all across the country, have ``help wanted'' signs up; they can't find workers. Some are worried they may have to shut down forever.
We also have a crisis at the southern border. There is a lot happening in America today. Half a million illegal immigrants have crossed our border since Joe Biden took the oath of office to become President of the United States. Now, these are just the illegal immigrants whom we know about.
Since Joe Biden became President, we have seized over 3,200 pounds of fentanyl at our southern border. That is enough fentanyl to kill every man, woman, and child living in America today. That is just one category of drugs, and these are the drugs that we know about. Just imagine what has come into the country that we don't know about.
Yet, despite the critics and the crisis--President Biden has created a crisis, and Democrats, certainly in this body, refuse to raise a finger to bring the crisis to an end. Instead, it seems that the Democrats are focused on only one thing and one thing alone, and that is seizing more power.
We are told Democrats are going to bring a bill to the floor next week on election takeover in America. Now, the majority leader already knows that this bill cannot pass the U.S. Senate. It will not pass because he doesn't even have the support for the votes in his own caucus, and that is because the bill is radical, it is extreme, it is dangerous, and it is scary. It is actually a Federal takeover of elections in America.
Under the Constitution, the times, places, and manner of holding elections is generally up to the States. This bill would flip the constitutional order and flip it upside down and put Congress and Washington in charge of elections, not each of our individual States. It would effectively repeal the election laws in all 50 States.
This Democratic takeover attempt is over 800 pages in length, over 800 pages of mandates. Every page of the bill has one thing in common: makes it easier to cheat. Makes it easier to cheat in elections.
For example, the bill would register people to vote automatically, whether they wanted to be registered or not. Automatic registration. Take everyone they have in databases throughout a State and sign them up.
Now, under this bill, anyone who interacted with a State government would then be registered to vote. Well, this includes a lot of people who aren't legally entitled to vote because they are not U.S. citizens. So these are obviously people who would not be eligible to vote. Doesn't matter to Democrats--register them anyway. Maybe it is just a coincidence that Democrats opened our border before pushing this election takeover, where everybody in a database in a State is registered to vote. Maybe it is not a coincidence.
The bill also endorses something called ballot harvesting. That is where paid political operatives can go door to door and collect hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of ballots--other people's ballots--and then they get to decide which ballots they are going to turn in. No supervision. No accountability. None. These activists could destroy, tamper, or lose ballots. These activists could do just that. No one would ever know.
Additionally, the bill would force taxpayers to pay for political campaigns. For every small political donation, taxpayers would pay and kick in an additional $6--$6 kicked in by the taxpayers for every $1 of small-dollar donations raised. Much of it is raised online. This is an invitation to money laundering. Activists could spread out donations to get free taxpayer money.
One of my colleagues in the Senate on the Republican side of the aisle looked at this and said: ``Gee.'' Based on fundraising that he has done online, he would be entitled to a check from the government for $30 million. Taxpayers don't want to put that kind of taxpayer dollar behind any candidate, whether they are Republican or Democrat.
Democrats sit here and they claim they want less money in politics. Yet every several years--every 2 years, they outspend the Republicans. Now they want taxpayers to add to the money they are spending. Well, political activists have plenty of money already. They don't need additional taxpayer dollars.
Finally, this bill would ban voter ID. That means when you go to vote and you ask for a ballot--this is what voter ID is. You go to vote, you ask for a ballot, and you have to show an identification card that proves you are who you say you are. Democrats have been trying to eliminate that one for a long, long time. Democrats claim that asking for identification is racist.
The idea that people can't get an ID is absurd. It is condescending. ID is required to check into a hotel. It is required to order a beer at a bar. It is required to buy a pack of cigarettes. It is required to get on an airplane--any airline in America. Voting is a lot more important than any of these things. It is the foundation of our entire system of government. We ought to make it safe, and we ought to make it secure.
During the committee process, Democrats had a chance to fix the bill. Senator Hyde-Smith from Mississippi said that she would like to take a look at this bill and use the campaign funding instead to help rural hospitals, instead of this matching money of 6 to 1 to candidates. Oh, no. Democrats didn't want any part of that. They want the money.
Senator Fischer and Senator Hagerty said that we should delay the date the bill would go into effect. That would prevent a conflict of interest for the Democrats who vote for it, because, in a sense, the Democrats who vote for it would be getting the money themselves. Democrats said: No. No. We want the money.
Senator Hyde-Smith and Senator Cruz also tried to remove this ban on voter ID from the bill. Democrats said: Nope. People can show up, say whoever they want to say they are, and get a ballot.
Democrats deny the existence of voter fraud. They claim no irregularities ever happen--not in their elections. So then why are they trying to repeal or eliminate or take over every State voting law in the country?
Truth is, there is a problem with our elections today. Yet the Democratic bill would make these problems even worse.
A majority of the public says they don't want future elections to look like the last one--special situation, a pandemic. They don't want future elections to look like the last one. The American people want security, and they want integrity. We want to trust that our elections are fair.
That is why I have joined Senator Scott of Florida, Senator Hyde-
Smith, and Senator Lummis to introduce a bill specifically to give people more confidence in our elections. It is called the Save Democracy Act. Our bill bans vote harvesting. It bans automatic registration. It requires at least a Social Security number to register to vote.
Under our bill, States can't just send out ballots in the mail based on old information. People could still vote by mail, as they do in my home State of Wyoming; they would just need to request a ballot. They wouldn't get a ballot automatically in the mail; they would have to request a ballot so that we know their information is up-to-date. These are the kind of commonsense protections that our elections need. Our bill makes it actually harder to cheat, not easier. The Democrat's bill makes it easier to cheat.
At a time like this, when prices are too high, hiring is too low, the U.S. Senate has important work to do, the things that we hear about when we go home on weekends: What does it cost for gas? What does it cost for groceries? What does it cost to fill up your car?
The American people want us to work on these bread-and-butter issues that affect their daily lives. They don't want this partisan power grab that is going to be voted on in the Senate next week. They also don't want the Senate wasting time on bills that cannot pass.
It is time for the Democrats and the Democratic leader to focus on what the American people are asking us to focus on: bring down inflation, stop paying people more to not work than they would make if they were working, secure our southern border, and leave our elections alone. That is what I hear at home, and I know that many of the Members are hearing the exact same thing as we work here to focus on what should be the future of a better, more prosperous America, not a one-
sided America, with a domination of elections based on a law to make it easier to cheat.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
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