Mike Lee

“The Senate just passed three bills, and I am glad. One bill lets the government keep collecting drilling fees so it can review energy permits faster. The other two bills make a national park in Arizona and give local land to an Arizona county.”

“Madam President, earlier today, I joined Senators Capito, Heinrich, and Whitehouse in introducing comprehensive, bipartisan permitting reform. That agreement is the product of many, many months of negotiations and years of work to address a problem Congress has talked about for far too long: It takes too much time and too much money to build things in this country, and that problem is becoming more urgent by the day. America’s energy needs are growing rapidly. We need more energy, and we need it now. That means producing more energy. It means building more infrastructure, and it means making sure that Federal Agencies responsible for reviewing permits actually have the resources to process those permits in a timely manner. Madam President, that brings me to the first bill that I just asked the Senate to consider today and that we just passed through the Senate today, the License to Drill Act. The Bureau of Land Management currently charges a processing fee for each new application for a permit to drill on Federal lands. Those fees help fund the people and resources that process those permits, but that authority expires tonight at 12 midnight. The License to Drill Act extends it through fiscal year 2037 and directs those fees to the Bureau of Land Management Permit Processing Improvement Fund. The idea is straightforward: The money collected from permit applications should help process permit applications. That is, after all, how we keep things moving. That is how we get a lot of these things done. So if we expect American energy producers to navigate the Federal permitting process, as they must and as we must expect them to do, the Federal Government should have the capacity to give them that answer. The bill we just passed advances the ball in precisely that direction. Look, permits should not simply disappear into some bureaucratic black hole. As we confront rapidly growing energy demand--the likes of which we haven’t seen in a long time and the stakes for which are unbelievably high--unnecessary delays in bringing new American energy production online carry real consequences. This bill, also, did not appear on the floor out of nowhere. It went through the committee process. The Energy and Natural Resources Committee in the Senate, which I chair, examined it and advanced it unanimously. The same is true of the two other measures that I just brought before the Senate and passed this evening. H.R. 6380, the Chiricahua National Park Act, would redesignate Arizona’s Chiricahua National Monument as Chiricahua National Park. The legislation has already passed the House. It was considered by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and it was favorably advanced by the committee. With this, this bill is on its way to the President’s desk for signature. H.R. 837 conveys the Pleasant Valley Ranger District Administrative Site in Arizona to Gila County. That legislation has also passed the House and gone through the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. In its having now passed the Senate, it will be on its way to the President’s desk for signature. These measures all have certain things in common. They have been examined, they have gone through the committee process, and they are prepared now for the Senate to act, which the Senate has now done, for which I am very grateful. That work has been done here. In a moment, when we are working on a much larger task--on the large and intimidating but also incredibly important task of comprehensively reforming America’s permitting system--this is a commonsense set of proposals deserving to pass today. I am so grateful that they have passed. I am grateful to my colleagues on the committee and to my Senate colleagues for helping to make that happen. I yield the floor.”

“I ask the Senate to pass these bills together right now without any debate.”

“I further ask that the bills be considered read a third time and passed and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate, all en bloc.”

“I am asking the Senate to take up this bill right now.”

“Madam President, as if in legislative session and not withstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 6380 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.”

“I ask that the Senate end work for the day to honor the late former Senator Nancy Kassebaum.”

“Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the provisions of S. Res. 913. There being no objection, as a further mark of respect to the late Nancy Kassebaum, former Senator from Kansas, the Senate, at 10:57 p.m., adjourned until Tuesday, September 29, 2026, at 10 a.m.”

“I am asking the Senate to set our schedule for Tuesday, September 29. We will start at 10 a.m., break for our lunch meetings, and hold a vote at 2:15 p.m.”

“I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Tuesday, September 29; that following the prayer and Pledge of Allegiance, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day and the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each; further, that the Senate recess from 12:30 to 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly conference meetings; finally, if Senator Baldwin or her designee makes a motion to proceed to Calendar No. 456, S.J. Res. 197, the Senate vote on the motion at 2:15 p.m.”

“I ask the Senate to take up these three resolutions together.”

“Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the en bloc consideration of the following resolutions which are at the desk: S. Res. 914, S. Res. 915, and S. Res. 916. There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the resolutions en bloc.”

“I ask the Senate to approve the changes to this bill and pass it right now.”

“I ask unanimous consent that the committee-reported substitute amendment be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.”

“I ask the Senate to approve the changes to this bill and pass it right now without debate.”

“I ask unanimous consent that the committee-reported substitute amendment be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.”

“I ask the Senate to approve the changes to this bill and pass it right now.”

“Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the committee- reported substitute amendment be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.”

“I am asking the Senate to take up this bill to stop making pennies right away.”

“Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 10167 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.”

“I support this bill requiring photo ID to vote in federal elections, and I object to replacing it with a bill about tariffs. Almost all Americans support voter ID, and people use photo IDs every day. Democrats keep making excuses to stop it, and now they say it is too close to the election. I want to know if they would vote for this bill if it took effect after this November.”

“Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I appreciate the insight offered by my friend and colleague, the distinguished senior Senator of the State of California. He is someone I enjoy working with on multiple committees. He is a brilliant scholar and statesman, and I appreciate his arguments today. Now, I want to point out what we didn’t hear in his argument. At no point do we have any effort to address the merits of this legislation, the merits of voter ID laws. Instead, what we have heard from Senate Democrats so far this year on this issue has been: This isn’t necessary. We don’t need it. It is needless as voter fraud doesn’t happen. That has, of course, been proven very much false in recent months. Then they moved on to arguments like: Well, requiring voter ID laws would harm rural Americans or urban Americans. And then one day it is: It will harm older Americans. Another day, it is younger Americans. At times, they called them racist or sexist, which is odd because arguing that women are less likely to have and be able to produce a photo ID or that members of this or that race are able to do that doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t comport with our common experience, with our common understanding. People of all races, people of both sexes, people in rural America and urban America and suburban America and everything in between, they have photo IDs because in this day and age, you have to have photo IDs. That is what they have been arguing so far this year. Now, today, what we did hear, most of what we just heard from my friend and colleague, one of the U.S. Senate’s most gifted minds, was: Well, it is too late--too late. You can’t change the rules midstream because early voting has already happened. Well, this is convenient after they have argued over and over and over again: We don’t need this and it is wrong and it is racist and it is sexist. Now, the argument has shifted to: Well, it is too late. Sorry. You lose. So they have secured the delay and gotten us now to the point where we are just weeks before the election. Early voting is already commencing in certain parts of the country. And now the argument is: Sorry. Too late. So I would love to find out from my colleague from California, does this mean he would be willing to accept this legislation, to pass it, to pass it today, right now, if only we included a delayed implementation clause such that the effective date would occur at some point after this November’s midterm election? I would love to know that, and I am hoping, at the conclusion of my brief remarks now, that he will tell us that. Then he moves on and asks the question: What is really going on, having never made any argument against the merits of this legislation. He makes it about time, and then he moves on and tries to attribute ill motives to me, to Senator Husted, to Senate Republicans, and to the Trump administration for supporting this; ill motives founded on sowing fear, uncertainty, and doubt, creating chaos in the elections, dogs and cats living out in the streets, a scene right out of the Book of Revelation. This doesn’t make any sense, especially given that we could remedy that if only he would agree to just a simple delayed implementation measure. And even if we didn’t, what is the worst case scenario if we passed this right now and the House of Representatives passed it tomorrow with an immediate effective date? The worst thing that can happen is that people show up on election day and they are asked to pull out a document that they produce several times a month; in many cases, several times a week; or, in some cases, several times each day every day. It is not that big of a deal; in fact, our election security depends on it and, frankly, should require it. Finally, then my friend and colleague the distinguished Senator from California tries yet again to distract attention away from this knowing, understanding perhaps, that this is supported by 83-84 percent of all Americans--Democrat, Independent, and everything in between. And it seems it is almost right out of ``Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,’’ where they are confronting an enemy, and not knowing what else to do, they say: Look, it is the Goodyear Blimp. And while the guy they are arguing with turns to look for the Goodyear Blimp, which is not, in fact, there, they run in the other direction. He then tries to make it about tariffs and asks that instead of this, we consider and we pass this bill S. 5390, which I saw for the first time only minutes ago, that has absolutely nothing to do with anything addressed by this legislation I am trying to pass here today, nothing to do with election security. Fine, let’s talk about tariffs on another occasion, but that is not what we are talking about here. This is a distraction. It is a distraction away from something that the American people expect and demand us to do something about. So for these reasons, I cannot, I will not, I must not agree to those terms that we are just going to set this aside and move on to and pass this tariff bill that has nothing to do with election security. On that basis, I object and hope that my friend and colleague will tell us whether he is willing to agree to this legislation with delayed implementation mechanisms.”

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“I am asking to print this Government Accountability Office decision in the official record.”

“Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following decision from the Government Accountability Office be printed in the Record. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:”

“I ask that the Senate end work for the day and meet again tomorrow morning.”

“Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order. There being no objection, the Senate, at 9:05 p.m., adjourned until Thursday, July 30, 2026, at 10 a.m.”

“I am setting the Senate's schedule for Thursday. We will meet at 10 a.m. to work on a resolution to consider several government nominees together. We will pause to vote on other business at 11:30 a.m., and then vote on the resolution at 1:45 p.m.”

“Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Thursday, July 30; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, morning business be closed, and the Senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of Executive Calendar No. 6, S. Res. 817, with no amendments or motions in relation to the executive resolution in order; further, that notwithstanding rule XXII, Senator Murray or her designee be authorized to return the Senate to legislative session for the purpose of making a motion to proceed to Calendar No. 533, S.J. Res. 199, and the Senate vote on the motion to proceed at 11:30 a.m.; further, that if Senator Gillibrand or her designee makes a motion to discharge S.J. Res. 181, while the Senate is in legislative session, the Senate vote on the motion to discharge immediately following disposition of S.J. Res. 199, and the Senate resume executive session; further, that at 1:45 p.m., the Senate vote on adoption of the resolution; finally, if S. Res. 817 is adopted, that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the Senate resume legislative session.”

“I ask the Senate to pass this resolution right now without debate.”

“Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.”

“I want the Senate to pass this bill and stay in session until we do. Most Americans agree we should stop members of Congress from trading stocks and require photo ID to vote. Democrats blocked it tonight, but we should not take a six-week break until our elections are secure.”

“Mr. President, we see a lot of debates around here on a lot of different topics--too many topics, in my view, given the fact that the Federal Government is a government enterprise with narrow responsibilities. In Federalist 45, James Madison described the powers of the Federal Government as few and defined while describing those reserved to the States as numerous and indefinite. We are in charge of national defense, weights and measures, trademarks, copyrights and patents, regulating trade or commerce between the States with foreign nations and with Tribes, bankruptcy laws, intellectual property laws, coastal roads, declaring war, granting letters of marque and reprisal, serving as the sole sovereign lawmaking authority for what we now call the District of Columbia, the city where we stand today. That is about it. There are a few other powers, but the lion’s share of it can be found somewhere in that list of relatively limited authorities that I just described. We venture sometimes too far afield from those powers, and that is one of the reasons why a lot of things come up. My point in reciting all this is that in all the debates we see, which probably range further than they should, we see some things that are weighty and some things that are more on the trivial side. Just to cite one random hypothetical, one minute, you could see something debated and maybe passed on this floor recognizing, I don’t know, National Sofa Care Week or something like that that goes by sort of with a yawn, and then the next moment, we will be debating something more weighty, something more significant and more definitely relevant to the U.S. Government’s powers. Under article I, sections 4 and 5, this legislation that we have been discussing this evening, H.R. 7008, deals with a couple of core powers that Congress has, one of them involving the regulation of behavior and activities on the part of Members of Congress, Members of the House and the Senate. In the second instance, you have the regulation of the casting of ballots for Federal elections--for elections for Federal office, elections for the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. We certainly have authority to act in both of those two areas. There is not a lot of dispute--in other words, there is a lot of bipartisan consensus over the fact that it is time to restrict stock buying and selling on the part of Members of Congress. It is stunning, however, that the voter ID component of H.R. 7008 is at all controversial. This one should be a no-brainer. For the American people, it is a no-brainer. Democratic voters--71 percent favor voter ID requirements. When you add Republicans--so Democrat voters and Republican voters combined--you take it up to 83, 84 percent. If you poll Republican voters alone, we are talking in the mid- to high-90 percentile range for people who support voter ID requirements. The reason for this is simple. This is obvious. It is intuitive. It is just as we have to prove who we are everywhere else we go where who you are matters and whether you are who you claim to be can make a big difference. Americans intuitively understand that whatever mild inconvenience might accompany having to provide documentation for who you are, when most of the time, that can be done with a simple card like a driver’s license, for example, a passport, something like that, something showing who you are that is issued by the government--we have come to accept as a society that that is just sort of the cost of living in our country. That is part of what it takes because if we didn’t do that, the alternative would be bad. You don’t want to show up to your bank one day and discover that somebody else impersonating you, falsely claiming to be you, came in and withdrew all of your money. You don’t want that. We don’t allow people to board aircraft without a photo ID, and the reason is there are all kinds of things that can happen in the sky that are dangerous, and you don’t want to make it too easy for somebody claiming to be who they are not to board an aircraft and then carry out, you know, crimes of one sort or another--acts of terrorism, perhaps. These are just a couple examples of the myriad instances in which we have to prove who we are. It is not an undue burden; it is a momentary detour from what we would otherwise be doing. Most of the time, most people, when they show up to vote, already have their wallet with them, and in their wallet, they presumably have a driver’s license or another form of government-issued photo ID, so why not require them to show that? We saw tonight my friend and colleague, the distinguished Senator from California, contorting himself into a pretzel trying to explain why it is we can’t pass this bill. To be clear, his objection, as far I can tell, didn’t relate nearly as much to anything else in the bill other than the voter ID provision. That is the concern. The question is, Why is it that when 70 percent of Democrat voters and 83, 84 percent of all voters, Democrat and Republican combined--why is it that my Democrat colleagues are so adamantly opposed to this? Why do they care? Why do they want the status quo? I am always reluctant to speak on someone else’s behalf because what they say--No. 1, I don’t have the ability to read minds, but sometimes, what they say can give us an indication. We have had Democratic politician after Democratic politician part from their own Democratic voter base, which overwhelmingly supports voter ID, time and time and time again, showing up and saying: Oh, we don’t want voter ID. Why? Now, they actually say this: We believe this would shut out a lot of our voters. What? Is that an admission that a lot of their voters aren’t who they claim to be? that a lot of their voters perhaps aren’t U.S. citizens and aren’t eligible to vote? This ought to be concerning to everyone. It ought to be concerning especially to Democrat voters, especially in States that have elected a Democrat Senator who is now opposing any and every sort of voter ID requirement. A few months ago when we had the SAVE America Act on the floor for, I don’t know, 10 blessed days--should have been longer, but it was on the floor for about 10 days. During that time, I was on the floor a lot responding to arguments that they made, and I think I heard every single argument they made. The overwhelming majority of them--and I mean probably 95-plus percent of the arguments they made against the SAVE America Act-- weren’t even against the voter ID provisions of the SAVE America Act. Overwhelmingly, they were instead about the proof of citizenship issue. In fact, many of them, Democratic Senator after Democratic Senator, intimated one way or another that they are OK with voter ID requirements. So why are they opposing it? You have to ask yourself that question. In Latin, there is a word for this: ``Cui bono?’’ Who benefits? Who benefits from people being able to show up and claim to be someone they are not or from someone showing up who is not entitled to vote because they are not a U.S. citizen? Who benefits from that? I can tell you it is not Republicans. Why? Well, you don’t see a single Republican politician making the ridiculous, absurd arguments against voter ID and citizenship verification that these guys are making. Who benefits from illegal voting? Their words seem to suggest that they are benefiting. This issue isn’t going away. The SAVE America Act isn’t going away. Voter ID requirement demands aren’t going away. I will be back. I will be back day after day, week after week, until this passes because the American people deserve to go to bed every night knowing that their government is run by people they themselves elected, not foreign nationals. They don’t want a government that has been chosen with significant foreign influence in our elections. There was a time when the Democrats in this august Chamber--a time not so very long ago indeed--spoke of little else other than their fear of foreign election interference. If we don’t face the real challenge as to foreign election interference right now, as long as we are not passing the SAVE America Act or its key components, it would appear that those who are against this are just fine now with foreign election interference. The American people shouldn’t be because, again, it is not free. When somebody else votes who is not who they claim to be, when somebody else votes claiming to be a citizen and they are not a citizen, it robs hard-working Americans, actual American citizens, of their most sacred, their most fundamental right: their right to vote. No. No. We can’t look the other way, nor do we, in my view, have any business taking a 6-week recess until such time as we have done everything humanly possible to get these reforms put into law. The American people deserve better than this. Most of them don’t have that luxury of doing that. Now, I know it is a time-honored Senate tradition. I know it is a tradition that has its roots back to long before the advent of modern air-conditioning and to a time when Washington, DC--you know, it is typically not the most pleasant weather in Washington, and this Chamber, I am sure, became suffocatingly hot and muggy, so for a long time, we had that August recess. Well, we have air-conditioning now. We can handle it. It is true we frequently do take a recess in August, but it is not written in stone anywhere, it is not written in law anywhere that we have to do that. I would be fine doing that if we had gotten our work done. I would be fine doing that if we knew how our government was going to be funded past September 30. Right now, we have no idea. So when the government remains unfunded and we have no idea how we are going to secure an election system that, quite frankly, is recklessly, criminally insecure--we have no business leaving this Chamber for 6 weeks when we have no idea how we are going to take care of any of that. These problems are not going to solve themselves while we are gone. I remember 15 years ago when I was first sworn in. I was younger then. I had a full head of hair. I was only 39 years old. I was the youngest Member of the Senate when I got sworn in. Right after I got sworn in, we were walking one evening around the Capitol. I was showing it to my family. My daughter Eliza was 10 years old at the time. She pointed to one of the little doors out in the hallway just outside the Senate Chamber. It is a door that is maybe 18 inches tall at the most. I later learned that it was installed when they built this wing of the Capitol in the late 1850s. That was their source of water. They had a pipe in there. The custodial staff at the time used it to get water so that they could clean the floors. I didn’t know that at the time. As we were walking around, my 10-year-old daughter Eliza asked me: Dad, what is that door for? Not knowing how to answer, I just said the first thing that came to mind. I said: Well, that is for the House elves. The House elves live in there. Of course, there are no House elves here, but sometimes, we act as if we are relying on the House elves to not only clean the Capitol but also clean up the messes that we make and that we leave undealt with, unaddressed legislatively while we are gone. The cavalry is not coming. We are the cavalry. The House elves aren’t going to show up and do our work for us if we retreat into the sunset for 6 weeks. We have to do this. We had an opportunity tonight to make a meaningful dent in our election security problem. And it is tragic that the Democrats chose not to let this reasonable measure pass into law--a measure that 71 percent of their voters and 83 percent of all American voters support. They can’t handle it--apparently because they benefit too much when people vote illegally. Shame on them for taking that position, but shame on us if we leave before the job is done. Lastly, far too much gets said around here about, Oh, we can’t do X, Y, or Z because we don’t have 60 votes. I get that that is said. That cannot become our anthem. That is an absurd suggestion. Now, I know it takes 60 votes to invoke cloture, but, you know, long before there even was a cloture rule--there has only been a cloture rule for 109 years. Before that time, we still had the filibuster, just no cloture. Remember, a cloture vote is just one way of breaking the filibuster. If a supermajority of Senators--under the current rule, three-fifths, 60 votes in the Senate--if 60 Senators want to force debate to come to a close even if some Senators want to continue debating, then the Senate can do so, but that is not the exclusive means by which you can break a filibuster. Other techniques are available--techniques that were available for nearly 150 years before the first cloture rule was even adopted in 1917. If you can’t break a filibuster and you don’t have 60 votes to bring debate to a close using cloture, you can put legislation on the floor, and you can debate it, and you can require any Senator wishing to filibuster to continue to show up and continue to speak to prolong debate. The filibuster is about speaking; it is about debating; it is not about perpetually forestalling the passing of legislation until you have 60 votes for it. Passage in this Chamber, with rare exceptions not relevant here, is set at a simple majority, at 51 votes. And if the Vice President is with you, you can do it at 50 votes. The Vice President supplies the tie-breaking vote of 51, and then it is passed. We could do that. We should be putting this measure on the Senate floor. We should be debating it for weeks on end, if necessary, cutting into weekends and long-scheduled recess time, if necessary, making clear we are going to keep debating it until it passes, and making clear that the minute those filibustering it fail to show up and continue to speak, we will call the question, and we will pass it with a simple majority. We could do that. We should do that. It takes time, yes. But time is on our side. We have got weeks in which to do this. We should do that. Now, if we don’t want to do that, there are other mechanisms available to us. We could continue to attach it to other must-pass vehicles. We could also push something in the form of budget reconciliation. Now, that is a little trickier. You could bypass the need for cloture with budget reconciliation, but it has to be budgetary, and it has to meet a whole bunch of requirements. It has to be budgetary, which means it needs to manage changes in mandatory outlays or revenues; and it can’t, among other things, have budgetary features that are merely incidental to policy changes. But there are ways that we could capture some of the benefits of the SAVE America Act through reconciliation. But my point is just to say there are multiple ways of skinning this cat. I don’t care nearly as much which way to skin it. I would personally prefer to bring it up on the floor and debate it until it passes. I think that is the cleanest way of doing it. But I am not a purist on that. I don’t insist it be my way or the highway. I am just saying we do have to do it. We can’t pretend this isn’t here. This will not disappear simply because we leave. The cavalry is not coming. We are the cavalry. There are no house elves who will come and fix our election security problems. So let’s get this done. And for the love of all that is sacred and holy, let’s not go on a 6-week recess with all of this undone. The American people deserve better.”

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“Senators have to prove who they are and that they are citizens to serve and vote here. Voters should have to do the same thing. We should require people to show an ID to vote.”

“Mr. President, just a brief comment as we wrap up our conversation for this evening. Moments ago, we heard my friend and colleague, the Senator from Ohio, talk about identifying--the need for people to identify themselves. He talked about the fact that he, on one recent occasion, started looking for his photo ID and couldn’t find it. And yet he has one. Even as he stands here today, he has got a pin on his lapel. That pin signifies that he is a U.S. Senator. So that, by itself, identifies who he is. Long before he got here, he had to prove that he was a U.S. citizen and that he was otherwise eligible to run for the U.S. Senate. When he ran for the Senate in the State of Ohio, he had to provide that documentation to the elections personnel there. He had to show up the day he voted and prove who he was. He has had to prove who he was even since he has been elected. He had to produce an election certificate from his State’s chief elections authority before he could come here. Then when he started here, he had to produce an ID, as every employee has to provide to the new employer, whatever, starting a new job. And he had to prove to the satisfaction of the Secretary of the Senate that he is, in fact, the same Bernie Moreno who was elected to the U.S. Senate from the State of Ohio. You have to go through all those steps before you get to wear one of these pins. And without being able to wear one of these pins and be sworn in, you can’t vote here. And the people who vote for you in most States represented by most Senators--including most Democrat Senators--have also had to show who they are. It is not too late for us to get this done, nor is it too much for us to ask the American people to do that which they have to do every single day--sometimes many times in the same day--to show that they are who they claim to be. Our right to vote, our most sacred incident of U.S. citizenship, requires nothing less.”

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