This is not an official government website.
© 2026 PLEJ LC. All rights reserved.
Congressional Daily Record
This section captures a formal floor step rather than a policy debate. It mentions legislation such as Halting Ownership and Non-Ethical Stock Transactions (HONEST) Act, members such as Mike Lee.
Official title: Unanimous Consent Requests (Executive Session)
Issued
July 29, 2026
senate side of the record
People
3
Linked members mentioned in this section
Legislation
2
Bills and resolutions linked from this section
Committees
0
No linked committees in this section
Senate Holds
0
No hold activity linked here
Source Document
Connected Data
People mentioned
Source Control
Reader mode is for comprehension. The linked government PDF is the official published source.
Download official Senate Record PDFReturn to issue contextMr. LEE. Mr. President, I would like to address the Senate today regarding a bill that has been passed by the House of Representatives known as H.R. 7008. H.R. 7008 performs two badly needed functions to restore faith and integrity in our system of government: Firstly, it bans Members of Congress from using their unique access and knowledge to profit through stock market speculation; secondly, it requires something very simple, a voter ID.
you are there to pick up tickets to the theater, if you are picking up a prescription at the pharmacy, if you are going to the bank, if you are boarding an airplane—you are doing all kinds of things that are part of Americans' day-to-day experience where it matters whether you are who you claim to be, you have got to show an ID.
of the most fundamental rights that Americans have; that is, their right to vote.
vote. They offset your vote. If they are double voting, if they are voting when they are not allowed to vote because they are not a citizen or otherwise, if they do something foolish and they try to go and vote, they will be caught if they are asked to produce an ID at the balloting place.
So this bill accomplishes both of these things. And like I say, both of them would do a lot to restore faith, confidence, and integrity in our system of government.
legislation, this is a very straightforward requirement. When you show up to vote, you just have to show an ID, just like you do at the bank, just like you do at the pharmacy or the doctor's office or the bank or when boarding an airplane.
And if you vote by mail, then that is easy to accommodate. You just include a simple photocopy of your photo ID.
taken care of here, to make sure that there is not a single U.S. citizen that would be disadvantaged or unable to vote if we were to pass this.
to a photocopier and they want to vote by mail, well, we have taken that into consideration. The bill requires States
make a photocopy of their photo ID and send it in with their mail-in ballot if that is what they are using in their State.
Now, it is interesting. Right now the headquarters of the Democratic Party here in Washington, DC, displays a sign very prominently, and that sign makes clear that 100 percent of the visitors to the Democratic Party's headquarters have to show a photo ID when they enter.
attending the Democratic National Convention to enter the convention hall, much less participate as a voting member of the Democratic National Convention. You have to prove who you are, and you have to show that you have the right to be there and the right to participate.
people need to prove who they are to enter their convention hall or their party headquarters. We should have voters do the same thing.
want somebody showing up to their convention. I mean, good heavens, what if a Republican showed up to their Democratic National Convention and tried to skew the results of their convention by pretending to be a Democrat—a Democrat delegate no less. That wouldn't be fair.
delegates to present their convention credentials so that they can show that they are who they claim to be and that they have the right to participate at their own convention.
political idealogical spectrum in this country agree that this makes sense to do, specifically in the context—not just of needing to produce ID where it matters whether you are who you claim to be, but specifically in the context of voter ID, of having to produce identification at the moment you vote, at the place where you vote. Mr. President, 83 percent of American voters, in total, support voter ID, and that includes a whopping 71 percent of Democrat voters.
So this is neither Republican nor Democratic. This is neither liberal nor conservative. This is simply an American issue because we don't want anyone's right to vote to be taken away. We don't want anyone disenfranchised, and that is exactly what happens when you allow someone who is not whom they claim to be, who is not entitled to vote, to show up and cast a vote, and that is wrong. So today we have got a really good opportunity to address these two issues that Americans are deeply concerned about, and I hope we can take advantage of this opportunity.
like I say, it was just passed recently by the House of Representatives—it was bipartisan. You had Republicans overwhelmingly support it, but you also had a number of House Democrats voting with every House Republican in favor of this bill with the clean voter ID requirement attached.
and I just want to encourage my Democratic colleagues on this side of the Capitol right here in the U.S. Senate to follow the lead of the wise Democrats who joined every Republican to vote for this in the House of Representatives.
We need to get this done. We should get it done. We have the opportunity to get it done tonight, and we will be talking more about that in a moment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I want to commend my colleague Senator Lee and my colleagues Senator Ricketts, Senator Moreno. We are all on the floor to seek unanimous consent to a bill that actually just makes common sense.
think one thing that is important to underscore is it just passed the House. These are issues that are on the minds of the American people, and it passed the House in a bipartisan manner—a strong bipartisan manner. So I am hopeful that we can move that House bill on both of these issues that Senator Lee just talked about in a way tonight and get this bill to the President's desk.
As I mentioned, Mr. President, common sense. Senator Lee talked about the insider trading provisions. I think every American would agree that Members of Congress should be prohibited, as well as their spouses and children, from purchasing individual stocks while serving in office, particularly given that we have access to different kinds of information.
ago. I moved stocks into index funds to kind of get rid of this issue, from my perspective, personally.
Senator Ricketts has been the lead here in the U.S. Senate on this issue. I am actually a cosponsor of his bill that is very much focused on this commonsense approach to the issue of insider trading.
system. As Senator Lee pointed out, it makes sense. It is very, very common sense—simple in many ways—that if you are going to vote, you have to have a valid ID to do that.
provisional elements to this bill that accommodate States like mine that are very big, that have a dispersed population. So this bill includes those kind of accommodations. Eligible voters can access a provisional ballot. They can sign an affidavit attesting to their identity and citizenship if they don't have an ID.
element of making sure that American citizens vote in American elections. And I don't think that is some kind of radical idea. I think the vast, vast majority of Americans agree with this.
and I am hopeful that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle will agree with us, and let's pass this bill and send it to the President's desk.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
Mr. RICKETTS. Mr. President, integrity; integrity inspires confidence, and the reverse is true. If there is a perception of lack of integrity, it undermines confidence.
We have a problem here in the Congress: 80 percent of Americans believe that we do not do a good job of separating our financial interests from the insider information that we receive as part of our jobs. And because of this perception of lack of integrity, they don't think we are doing a good job. Our approval rating is 15 percent. Clearly, Americans are not trusting this institution on this issue.
integrity and, therefore, the confidence that Americans have in the U.S. Congress, and that is by passing H.R. 7008 that includes the Stop Insider Trading Act that was introduced in the House and passed, as my colleagues pointed out, with bipartisan support. I introduced the companion bill here in the Senate.
Well, why is this important? Because we have disclosure laws right now, but yet we have the problem that 80 percent of Americans think that we do a bad job of keeping our financial interests and our insider information separate.
stock trades of the former Speaker of the House, and it has become a legitimate trading strategy, as crazy as it sounds, because it is successful; it makes money.
Intelligence Committee sold about a million and a half dollars' worth of stock right before the stock market tanked because of COVID. Even the perception of using insider information to benefit yourself financially is undermining the confidence.
And the same could be said as well for the voter ID. Thirty-six States have voter ID. In my State of Nebraska, when I was Governor, we passed it and put it on the ballot. It passed overwhelmingly, 65 to 35, that Nebraskans wanted to have that voter ID as part of the process of elections to make sure they could trust in the integrity and have confidence.
Now, the insider trading act has real teeth to it. It says that you cannot buy stock, and if you own stock already when you come into the Congress, you can only sell it on 7 to 14 days' notice.
Why is this important? Well, to make sure that the market and anybody in the country can see that if you are going to sell your stock positions, they can all do it first. They get that information first so that if you have some sort of insider information, it is not insider anymore because the rest of the world knows.
out of turn without giving the proper notification, significant penalties: a minimum $2,000 fine or 10 percent of the transaction costs.
is a $100,000 fine—plus giving up all the profits that go along with it. That has the enforcement and the teeth that require Members of this body and Members of the House to take notice.
institution, restoring the confidence in this institution. And as was mentioned already, it passed bipartisan in the House. But the President has called on us to pass it and recently the Vice President when he was speaking to House Republicans.
Let's restore the faith in this institution. Let's make sure people know that we are not using our insider information to financially benefit ourselves.
Coming to Washington, DC, to serve our communities is a privilege. We do it for public service. It is not to be a profit center for people who are coming.
Mr. President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 7008, which was received from the House; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from California.
Mr. PADILLA. Reserving the right to object.
Mr. President, it is a shame that Senate Republicans seem particularly focused on scoring political points instead of passing real policies that can actually make a difference because, yes, all Americans—Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike—are rightly concerned about insider trading by government officials. But the bill before us cannot address these concerns because, just like as was the case on Monday—that is right, 48 hours ago—we were having the same discussion, the same debate. This measure contains two giant poison pills.
States, for that matter. But it exempts the President from the ban on stock trading, and I can list at least 21,000 reasons why we should not exempt the President from the ban on insider trading.
average of 85 trades per day—85. Does that sound like somebody that is singularly focused on bringing costs down for hard-working Americans? I don't think so.
As I also said on Monday, Donald Trump is clearly the “Trader in Chief.” So you cannot be serious about reining in public officials' stock trading if you present a bill that gives the biggest stock trader in Washington a free pass.
advanced notice. Well, on the surface, that seems very attractive, but let me tell you what is really going on. President Trump's social media company is publicly selling inside information about his market- changing statements before the public sees them to hedge funds and Wall Street for the low, low price of $100,000 a month.
for $100,000 a month. The average American earns less than that in a year. But the President isn't worried about them. He is focusing on profiting from his office.
about banning stock trading where it is happening the worst. And they are not about helping working Americans address the higher costs of gas and groceries and housing and healthcare.
So what is it that they do care about? Let's talk about the other big poison pill in this bill because the title of it seems like it is about insider trading—Stop Insider Trading Act—but the way it is before us includes the SAVE Act, a bill that we have debated for months and months and months on this floor. Republicans don't have the votes to pass it—a bill that would make it harder for eligible Americans to participate in our democracy.
because the Republican caucus isn't even united on this measure because the bill—it is not about voter fraud. The massive voter fraud they claim simply doesn't exist. There is no evidence of massive voter fraud across the country.
and seeks to cause chaos in an election cycle that is already underway—a midterm election, by the way, where Republicans are afraid of voters holding them accountable for failing to do anything about rising costs and increased corruption, let alone this unauthorized war with Iran.
How do we know that? Because the SAVE Act, as written, is far more restrictive than the voter ID laws that exist in the States that already have a voter ID law. The House Republican bill would go further and require a photocopy of your ID in your absentee or mail ballot. Now, that violates the fundamental premise of a secret ballot, which is a sacred right; and, therefore, it would undermine mail voting itself.
similar bill because he saw no benefit in it and that the measure would be a “significant burden” on voters. So that is truly the point of the bill: to make it harder for some people to vote.
Now, let's get back to the title of the bill: Stop Insider Trading. If we are genuine about doing that, then there is a bipartisan solution that is available to us today, a bipartisan solution on stock trading.
before the Senate for nearly a year. The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted it out on a bipartisan basis. Senator Hawley is the lead sponsor; Senator Moreno is a cosponsor, along with a number of Democrats—S. 1498, the Halting Ownership and Non-Ethical Stock Transactions, otherwise known as the HONEST Act. So let's pass that—or at least set up a vote on that measure.
Republicans and Democrats together—to hammer out a real solution and stop with these political games.
So, therefore, Mr. President, I ask that the Senator modify his request to instead proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 294, S. 1498; 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.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection to the modification?
The Senator from Ohio.
Mr. MORENO. Mr. President, so I think it is important to clear up a couple of things in no particular order. First of all, I did not cosponsor the HONEST Act. I was the cosponsor of the PELOSI Act, which was a tribute—an honor—to the Member of the House of Representatives that made grift on this job an absolute master class.
decades ago and has managed to build a $300 million net worth. Her Twitter account is one of the most followed accounts, as my colleague from Nebraska pointed out. So I was very proud to sponsor the PELOSI Act. In fact, it is extraordinarily similar to the exact same measure my colleague from Utah and my colleague from Nebraska have proposed, as has the Presiding Officer, my colleague from Ohio. So just to clear that up.
Then the next question was: Well, why would you not sponsor a bill called the HONEST Act? I mean—my God—how do you be anti-honest? Well, that bill basically bans the ownership of all
assets. You can't even own them. So if you have mutual funds, stocks, equities, investments, you have to get rid of all of that.
So, basically, that would be insane. There is no other way to look at that. The Democrats put that in place during a Homeland Security meeting which went something like this. We sat down to talk about the PELOSI Act, and they gave us 15 pages of amended documents and said: Hey, we are going to vote on this right now.
Of course, Republicans said: We are not going to vote for something we haven't read—because, again, that is insane. But it wasn't as insane as what is actually in that bill.
Now, let's go back to what we are really doing here tonight. We could pass this today. Tomorrow, the President of the United States could sign into law a ban on insider trading. This is a 100-percent zero issue. Sometimes we talk about 80-20 issues. There is not an American citizen—well, maybe Paul Pelosi—who would be against this.
commonsense. My colleague from Nebraska worked diligently on this. It is a great bill. It says if you own stocks when you get here, you can't buy more—so, therefore, you can't use the information—and you can't sell stocks without a 7-day notice period, which, in effect, eliminates any kind of advantage that you would have.
It is a very good bill. It applies to all Members of Congress. We should be able to get that done. We should be able to ban insider trading without Democrats blocking that vote.
could ask him; I want to be clear—he has asked for a vote at 60; is that correct?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Unanimous consent.
Mr. MORENO. Mr. President, so I would ask unanimous consent that we do that.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. No. You are objecting.
Mr. MORENO. I am objecting. Sorry. Well, let me—just continuing. So let's talk about voter ID really quickly.
on voter ID, and that is absolutely, absolutely, positively false. This is really important because you can't make accusations here that are false.
exact, in essence, voter ID bill, and it was 53 out of 53 Republicans that voted for that—53 out of 53. That is 100 percent of Republicans. If I did that math correctly, I believe that 53 out of 53 is 100 percent.
Where he is correct is that Democrats are united in their opposition. There wasn't a single Democrat that voted for a stand-alone voter ID bill. Tonight, we have the opportunity to do that—ban insider trading and get voter ID on the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard to the modification.
Is there an objection to the original request?
Mr. PADILLA. I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Nebraska.
Mr. RICKETTS. Mr. President, what we were just attempting to do was to pass it with unanimous consent. That means all 100 Senators agree that we can move forward on H.R. 7008, which includes the Stop Insider Trading Act and the voter ID. And as I mentioned in my opening remarks, it is about integrity. Integrity inspires confidence.
information from our financial interests, and therefore we have a 15 percent approval rating. It is the lack of confidence in what we are doing, about how we are handling this, that is creating those low ratings.
Insider Trading Act and the voter ID, to restore that integrity and, therefore, that confidence.
aisle don't wish to do that unanimously; that, for whatever reason, somebody objects going forward, as my colleague from California has. I offer an alternative that let's schedule a vote.
So, Mr. President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that at a time to be determined by the majority leader, in consultation with the Democratic leader, the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 7008 and vote on the passage of the bill at a 60-vote affirmative threshold; further, that if the bill is passed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection?
The Senator from California.
Mr. PADILLA. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, before I offer a good-faith counterproposal to my colleague from Nebraska, let me just clarify one item that my colleague from Ohio was seeming to correct—or attempting to correct, I should say, a measure that I was referencing.
So to folks watching at home, let me suggest: Don't take my word for it. Go to Congress.gov and look up S. 1498, and you will see that, indeed, Senator Moreno is a cosponsor. And if you read the measure itself, you will see that it does not ban mutual fund investments.
And with that true correction and clarification, Mr. President, let me ask that the Senator modify his request to, instead, at a time to be determined by the majority leader, in consultation with the Democratic leader, the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 294, S. 1498; that the committee-reported substitute amendment be agreed to and the Senate vote on passage of the bill at a 60-vote affirmative threshold; further, that if the bill is passed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection to the modification?
The Senator from Ohio.
Mr. MORENO. Mr. President, reserving my right to object, the bill that my colleague from Nebraska, my colleague from Ohio, and my colleague from Utah is proposing is a bill that has already passed the House of Representatives. It has massive bipartisan support. Lots of Democrats voted for that in the House. If we pass it, it can become law. Putting that bill on the floor at 60 is a very low-threshold ask.
floor is a bill that has neither gotten through any committee where it has been actually read by committee members. It is a bill that has not been presented to the House of Representatives, so they would have to take it up over there. It would, of course, be modified and come back. In other words, it is what I say—it is the DC two-step—or if you want to have a headline that says “I am for banning insider trading” knowing nothing will actually happen.
Nebraska worked diligently on is perfect, but it is a massive step in the right direction. This would get us to 99.9 percent of the way there on banning insider trading. It could happen tomorrow. It could happen tomorrow. And the voter ID law, which virtually all Americans support, could happen tomorrow.
that has been vetted, that has massive bipartisan support, versus a bill that, quite frankly, the person talking about it wasn't even on that committee, is not 100 percent sure what was in that bill, doesn't know the history of the bill. It wasn't a year ago; it was a few months ago. It is a smokescreen, and for that reason I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
Is there an objection to the original request?
Mr. PADILLA. Mr. President, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Utah.
Mr. LEE. 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.
Government as few and defined while describing those reserved to the States as numerous and indefinite.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
somebody else impersonating you, falsely claiming to be you, came in and withdrew all of your money. You don't want that.
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.
have to prove who we are. It is not an undue burden; it is a momentary detour from what we would otherwise be doing.
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?
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
not so very long ago indeed—spoke of little else other than their fear of foreign election interference.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
mandatory outlays or revenues; and it can't, among other things, have budgetary features that are merely incidental to policy changes.
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.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.