Jeff Merkley, OR
“The earlier bill does not actually ban lawmakers from owning individual stocks, and its rules on blind trusts are fake. It also includes voter ID rules meant to stop women and Native Americans from voting. I want the Senate to pass my ethics bill instead, which truly stops corruption and protects voting rights.”
“Madam President, I wish my colleague had actually got a bunch of things right, but he got a bunch of things wrong. I don’t know what propaganda he was reading, from what source that wants to continue the corruption. But he said that the bill that came earlier today said you could not hold stocks. It actually allows you to hold those individual stocks. It allows the corruption to continue. And yet, he is saying: Oh, I voted for this great bill because it bans holding of stocks. But he is wrong. There is a reason this was done. It was to allow a vote in the House, a vote in the House that pretended to address the issue, rather than addressing the issue. And we have had a bill virtually parallel to this bill come through committee. It has been worked on in committee. Many of these elements and nuances--great. Fine. Let’s continue that conversation. But don’t come to this floor and misrepresent the bill that you voted on earlier tonight as having banned the holding of stocks because it allows it. And second, blind trusts. They are called bogus blind trusts. As one Member of this body said to me: I meet every quarter with the guy who runs my blind trust. You want another example? Who runs a blind trust for the President of the United States? His family runs it. His son is involved in running his blind trust. Are you kidding me? Everyone understands blind trusts are not blind. So bring a bill that doesn’t have bogus blind trusts. It has an extensive exemption for small businesses, and yet we heard a lot of conversation about small businesses. And then voter ID. Can’t we be honest about the voter ID strategy? It was written to disenfranchise--fancy word for block citizens from voting that Republicans don’t want to vote. The President put forward an Executive order that said: You have to submit your voter roll to the President’s team, they will decide who votes, and send the list back to you. And then they went and got an ethics act--not an ethics act--SAVE Act--the SAVE Act. What did the SAVE Act say? The same thing. The President gets to decide who votes. That didn’t pass here. And it didn’t even have a majority support here, let alone supermajority support. So, the President did another Executive order. And under this order, the President would strike down--his team would strike down people that look suspect to them. What are we talking about? We are talking about 64 million American women whose last names do not match their birth certificate. Your name doesn’t match your birth certificate, you can’t vote. And the President could strike this down right before the election, making it impossible for people to proceed to get reauthorized to vote. And they couldn’t even get reauthorized to vote, reregistered to vote, using their birth certificate. Wow. And they didn’t want Native Americans to vote, so they put in a provision that said any ID that doesn’t have an expiration date is excluded. Well, you know, you are not a Tribal member year by year or month by month, my friends. You are a Tribal member for life. They don’t have expiration dates. They knew that, and they put it in to stop Native Americans from voting. Why? Why do you want to stop women from voting? Because they vote more on the blue side of the aisle. Why do they write those ID requirements to stop Tribal members from voting? Because they vote more on the ``D’’ side of the aisle. People have called this Jim Crow 2.0. What are they talking about? After the Civil War, we had a national consensus, we were going to protect people’s right to vote. And in the South, you had a lot of States that had a majority of Black citizens. To this very Chamber, 2 U.S. Senators were elected from Mississippi; 14 Members of the House were elected from the South that were Black Americans. And then reconstruction ended in a horrific deal that was struck and the result was almost a century of blocking Black Americans from voting. And that is what the President wants to do. Not specifically Black Americans, not the same way, but any group that votes predominantly on the blue side of the aisle. Now, we actually had a bill, and it was called the Freedom to Vote Act. It had ID in it, but it wasn’t ID designed in a partisan fashion. So I say to my good colleagues: How about you actually come forward with a version of ID that isn’t designed for partisan advantage? That would honor the vision of the Constitution. That was what was in the Freedom to Vote Act. And the President wants to attack vote-by-mail. And why is that? Vote-by-mail is the highest integrity system in the land, bar none. Why is that? Because on election day, it is easy to manipulate the election. Here is what you do: You change the location of the precinct voting from the previous year so people go to the wrong place; you proceed to put out false information about the location; you put out the wrong date for voting; you put out text messages--and this has been done-- saying ``sorry you missed the election last week, hope you will vote next year’’ when the election is actually coming up the next Tuesday; you put in machines that don’t work; you put in staff members that don’t work; you perceive to create 8-hour lines like they created in the urban areas of Georgia--recent history. That manipulation can’t be done in vote-by-mail. That is why the President hates vote-by-mail, because it stops the rigging of American elections on election day. And it has this very powerful form of voter ID called a signature. The same thing we use to verify checks and so many other transactions in life. Same signature we use on our marriage certificates. Same signature we use on financial transactions. And if the signature doesn’t match, it gets challenged, and a voter has a chance to cure it. My point here is that the bill that came before this Chamber earlier today was designed to rig the November election--my colleagues know that--and it allowed the corruption in stockholding to continue. That is why we are creating and putting forward a real bill with real ethics tonight.”
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Speech in the House
Respect 97 of 100
This statement targeted a person rather than their actions or views: “that is what the President wants to do”.
See full analysis
Madam President, I wish my colleague had actually got a bunch of things right, but he got a bunch of things wrong. I don’t know what propaganda he was reading, from what source that wants to continue the corruption. But he said that the bill that came earlier today said you could not hold stocks. It actually allows you to hold those individual stocks. It allows the corruption to continue. And yet, he is saying: Oh, I voted for this great bill because it bans holding of stocks. But he is wrong. There is a reason this was done. It was to allow a vote in the House, a vote in the House that pretended to address the issue, rather than addressing the issue. And we have had a bill virtually parallel to this bill come through committee. It has been worked on in committee. Many of these elements and nuances--great. Fine. Let’s continue that conversation. But don’t come to this floor and misrepresent the bill that you voted on earlier tonight as having banned the holding of stocks because it allows it. And second, blind trusts. They are called bogus blind trusts. As one Member of this body said to me: I meet every quarter with the guy who runs my blind trust. You want another example? Who runs a blind trust for the President of the United States? His family runs it. His son is involved in running his blind trust. Are you kidding me? Everyone understands blind trusts are not blind. So bring a bill that doesn’t have bogus blind trusts. It has an extensive exemption for small businesses, and yet we heard a lot of conversation about small businesses. And then voter ID. Can’t we be honest about the voter ID strategy? It was written to disenfranchise--fancy word for block citizens from voting that Republicans don’t want to vote. The President put forward an Executive order that said: You have to submit your voter roll to the President’s team, they will decide who votes, and send the list back to you. And then they went and got an ethics act--not an ethics act--SAVE Act--the SAVE Act. What did the SAVE Act say? The same thing. The President gets to decide who votes. That didn’t pass here. And it didn’t even have a majority support here, let alone supermajority support. So, the President did another Executive order. And under this order, the President would strike down--his team would strike down people that look suspect to them. What are we talking about? We are talking about 64 million American women whose last names do not match their birth certificate. Your name doesn’t match your birth certificate, you can’t vote. And the President could strike this down right before the election, making it impossible for people to proceed to get reauthorized to vote. And they couldn’t even get reauthorized to vote, reregistered to vote, using their birth certificate. Wow. And they didn’t want Native Americans to vote, so they put in a provision that said any ID that doesn’t have an expiration date is excluded. Well, you know, you are not a Tribal member year by year or month by month, my friends. You are a Tribal member for life. They don’t have expiration dates. They knew that, and they put it in to stop Native Americans from voting. Why? Why do you want to stop women from voting? Because they vote more on the blue side of the aisle. Why do they write those ID requirements to stop Tribal members from voting? Because they vote more on the ``D’’ side of the aisle. People have called this Jim Crow 2.0. What are they talking about? After the Civil War, we had a national consensus, we were going to protect people’s right to vote. And in the South, you had a lot of States that had a majority of Black citizens. To this very Chamber, 2 U.S. Senators were elected from Mississippi; 14 Members of the House were elected from the South that were Black Americans. And then reconstruction ended in a horrific deal that was struck and the result was almost a century of blocking Black Americans from voting. And that is what the President wants to do. Not specifically Black Americans, not the same way, but any group that votes predominantly on the blue side of the aisle. Now, we actually had a bill, and it was called the Freedom to Vote Act. It had ID in it, but it wasn’t ID designed in a partisan fashion. So I say to my good colleagues: How about you actually come forward with a version of ID that isn’t designed for partisan advantage? That would honor the vision of the Constitution. That was what was in the Freedom to Vote Act. And the President wants to attack vote-by-mail. And why is that? Vote-by-mail is the highest integrity system in the land, bar none. Why is that? Because on election day, it is easy to manipulate the election. Here is what you do: You change the location of the precinct voting from the previous year so people go to the wrong place; you proceed to put out false information about the location; you put out the wrong date for voting; you put out text messages--and this has been done-- saying ``sorry you missed the election last week, hope you will vote next year’’ when the election is actually coming up the next Tuesday; you put in machines that don’t work; you put in staff members that don’t work; you perceive to create 8-hour lines like they created in the urban areas of Georgia--recent history. That manipulation can’t be done in vote-by-mail. That is why the President hates vote-by-mail, because it stops the rigging of American elections on election day. And it has this very powerful form of voter ID called a signature. The same thing we use to verify checks and so many other transactions in life. Same signature we use on our marriage certificates. Same signature we use on financial transactions. And if the signature doesn’t match, it gets challenged, and a voter has a chance to cure it. My point here is that the bill that came before this Chamber earlier today was designed to rig the November election--my colleagues know that--and it allowed the corruption in stockholding to continue. That is why we are creating and putting forward a real bill with real ethics tonight.
