Joseph D. Morelle

Mr. Speaker, Procedure · 9 wordsI yield myself such time as I may consume.Procedure Mr. Speaker, Positioning · 39 wordswhat we are considering here today is a remarkable display of cynicism, even for this institution, even for this Republican leadership team. The American people are desperate for us to clean up the culture of corruption that pervades Washington.Positioning Claims · 23 wordsAmericans see their elected leaders on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue enriching themselves, some to the tune of billions and billions of dollars. Procedure · 3 wordsHeadline after headline: ProcedureClaims · 32 wordsMembers of Congress tipping off insiders to reap huge payouts from prediction markets, and Members of Congress buying up private stocks just days before Pentagon announcements that will balloon their financial portfolios. Positioning · 22 wordsWhat are Speaker Johnson and House Republicans doing about this? They are pretending here on the floor today to address the issue.Positioning Claims · 18 wordsThey are pushing the so-called Stop Insider Trading Act, a name meant entirely to trick the American people. Positioning · 7 wordsThis bill, quite simply, is a sham.Positioning Claims · 13 wordsThe bill allows Members of the Congress to continue owning and trading stocks.¹ Procedure · 3 wordsThat is right.Procedure Claims · 17 wordsThe so- called Stop Insider Trading Act actually allows Members of Congress to own and trade stocks. Positioning · 47 wordsEven this half measure--or should I say quarter measure--goes too far for Republican leadership. How do we know? What is the tell? How do we know that the Republican posturing is all performative and that Republicans do not want a stock trading bill ban to become law?Positioning Claims · 75 wordsThey have added a poison pill to this bill. They have added provisions that have absolutely nothing to do with stock trading and everything to do with their obsession with the 2020 election.² That is right, the SAVE America Act is back, ³yet again. The American people keep cutting the head off this bill, flooding phone lines of their Members and Senators, demanding we block this anti-voter bill. So far, their voices are being heard. Reasoning · 4 wordsThe resistance is working. Positioning · 8 wordsLike the Hydra, these heads keep growing back: PositioningClaims · 53 wordsthe SAVE Act, the SAVE Act again, the SAVE America Act. They have attached it to CRs, continuing resolutions.⁴ They attach it to a spending bill, funding the State Department and other completely unrelated agencies.⁵ The President tried to force it on the American people through illegal executive orders blocked by the courts.⁶ Positioning · 9 wordsNow, Republicans come limping back from a losing fight.Positioning Aside · 5 wordsSometimes you should just stop.Aside Procedure · 10 wordsLet’s acknowledge the reality of what we are doing here: ProcedureUnearned certaintyPositioning · 18 wordsRepublicans have corrupted their so-called stock trading bill with a decaying piece of the SAVE America Act corpse.Positioning Claims · 23 wordsThe bill we are considering today would force voters in America to surrender photocopies of their photo IDs in their mail ballot envelopes.⁷ Procedure · 7 wordsThis isn’t just a voter ID bill.Procedure Claims · 127 wordsIt is a bill to destroy vote by mail, something the President routinely rails against, despite the fact that the President routinely uses mail-in voting himself, the kind of double standard Americans have come to particularly enjoy from this President. It is a bill that would dispatch millions of American voters to Kinko’s--some of us are old enough to remember Kinko’s; I guess it is now FedEx--or Staples or the public library to scan and print their IDs, to shove those IDs into their mail ballots, risking their constitutional right to a secret ballot if not packaged properly, to send their ID copies off to election offices in the hopes that the ballot will be counted, that the ballot won’t be discarded on the counting room floor. Reasoning · 14 wordsSome might ask why these ballots would be at risk of being thrown out. Claims · 67 wordsIt is because the bill would explicitly exclude forms of voter ID that millions of Americans are accustomed to using today.⁸ You use your student ID, your ballot will be thrown out.⁹ Your concealed carry permit: Ballot thrown out. Your employer ID: Ballot thrown out. Your Tribal ID without an expiration date on it, ¹⁰which is common on Tribal IDs, you get the picture: Ballot thrown out. Procedure · 6 wordsI could go on and on.Procedure Aside · 43 wordsThose sitting at home watching this might think they know that Washington, D.C., is a dysfunctional place, but they can’t be that irrational, can they? Surely, election officials and voters would have time to prepare for this seismic shift in American elections, right?Aside Claims · 130 wordsSorry to say, they would be overestimating how much House Republicans care about voters, about election officials, about elections themselves because this bill would take effect in 90 days.¹¹ When is 90 days from today? Well, it is October 20, 2026, 2 weeks before the midterm elections.¹² That is right, Republicans are trying to force a massive change to American voting law--eradicating mail voting as we know it--right in the middle of the final month of an election, 2 weeks before election day. We still have a system where the time, manner, and places of elections are run by State legislatures, State officials. By October 20, those State officials, State legislatures, will have already mailed out millions of ballots to voters. Voters will have already returned some of these ballots. Reasoning · 61 wordsWhat are election officials to do? Count the ballots cast with student IDs on October 19 and shred the ones that arrive after that, on October 20? Is that what they are going to do? Who is going to train election officials about what IDs to accept, what to do with mail ballots missing photocopies, and when will they do it? Claims · 6 wordsThere will be chaos, complete shambles.Unearned certainty Positioning · 32 wordsThis bill is plain absurdity, written in ink printed in the Congressional Record. Lest we forget, confusion is the point, chaos is the point. Republicans know that they will lose in November.PositioningUnearned certainty Claims · 30 wordsThey know that people strongly, strongly object to their handling of the economy, the war in Iran, Off pointand the immigration fiasco, which has resulted in the death of American citizens. Positioning · 24 wordsThey know the verdict in November will not be kind to them and shouldn’t be, so they have one hope at winning--disruption, disarray, subversion.Positioning Claims · 26 wordsThat is why they have redrawn congressional maps from coast to coast in the middle of this year, of this term, the middle of this decade.¹³Off point Positioning · 19 wordsThat is why they keep trying again and again to change the rules in the middle of the game.Positioning Claims · 35 wordsIf they want to force States to make massive, extreme, last-minute changes just days before the midterm elections--States forced to retrain staffs, reprint ballots and ballot envelopes, and the process-- with what time, what money? Reasoning · 11 wordsSome might ask who is going to pay for all this. Positioning · 5 wordsThis is a seismic change.Positioning Claims · 45 wordsIt won’t be Washington, not House Republicans. They are too busy trying to pay for an unconscionable war in Iran, a war that has led to the tragic deaths of 18 American servicemembers, a war that no one asked for and certainly no Americans want.¹⁴Off point Positioning · 45 wordsRepublicans will send American taxpayer money to the Middle East but not to local election offices. They simply don’t care about them. They don’t care about the price of their gas, the price of their groceries, the sanctity of their ballot.Off point They do not care.Positioning Reasoning · 8 wordsAgain, I ask, who will pay for this? Procedure · 9 wordsSorry to break it to the viewers watching this, ProcedureClaims · 72 wordsbut they will. Their family, town, city, county, State, local election administrator, Republican and Democrat, are required to bear the burden of this change. This is an unfunded mandate, plain and simple. I remember hearing for years from my Republican friends: no unfunded mandates. This is the mother of all unfunded mandates, 2 weeks before an election, costing tens of billions of dollars. They are going to get stuck with the bill. Positioning · 17 wordsThis is a fiat from a Washington awash in corruption telling Americans how to run their elections.Positioning Reasoning · 9 wordsDo you know who else will pay for this? Positioning · 26 wordsAmerica’s democracy. I say again, this bill is not about voter ID. It is about ending a voter’s ability to cast a free and fair ballot.Positioning The ask · 17 wordsFor the sake of American elections, I strongly, strongly urge the House to reject this zombie bill. Mr. Speaker, Procedure · 7 wordsI reserve the balance of my time.Procedure