Natural Resources Management Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, our colleagues on the Judiciary Committee are meeting to advance a number of judicial nominees and the President's choice for Attorney General here to the Senate floor.

In Bill Barr, President Trump has nominated a tried-and-true public servant and a proven professional to lead the men and women of the Department of Justice.

Testifying before the committee last month, Mr. Barr expressed his unwavering commitment to the rule of law, the Constitution, and the American people.

My colleagues don't have to take his word for it. Having served as Attorney General once before, Mr. Barr's qualifications and job performance speak for themselves.

In 1991, this body saw fit to confirm him to head DOJ by a voice vote. That was the third time he had earned Senate confirmation without opposition. On both sides of the aisle, Senators were vocal in their praise for the ``independent voice'' of an ``honorable guy,'' William Barr.

Today, the job description remains exactly the same as it was years ago, and before us is a nominee who remains eminently well qualified to discharge these duties. The Senate needs to act quickly to put Bill Barr back to work at the Justice Department. I hope and expect he will be confirmed next week. Natural Resources Management Act

Today, the Senate officially turned to the Natural Resources Management Act, a broad bipartisan package of 100-plus distinct land bills with importance to nearly every Member of this body. I am certainly one of them.

This comprehensive legislation includes two initiatives I introduced with my House colleagues Andy Barr and Hal Rogers. They will incorporate two Civil War sites in Kentucky as part of the National Park System, Camp Nelson and Mill Springs Battlefield. By designating these two sites as national monuments, we will ensure that their rich history will be preserved for the education and service of future generations.

Camp Nelson was established in 1863 in Jessamine County. It would become arguably Kentucky's top recruiting station and training facility for the Union's African-American soldiers. In later years, those seeking freedom from slavery fled to the camp. This historic site helped expedite the destruction of slavery in Kentucky.

My other proposal would protect Mills Springs Battlefield, the site of an 1862 battle that historians remember as the Union's first significant victory in the West, and one of its earliest major victories in the whole Civil War.

Preserving these sites isn't the only way Kentucky will benefit from this sweeping lands package. The bill will help historically Black colleges and universities like Kentucky State University preserve their distinguished contributions to our communities; it extends the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail into Kentucky; and it bolsters our critical efforts to combat invasive species like the dangerous Asian carp that clog up Western Kentucky waterways. These are just examples in my home State.

Across the whole country, communities will benefit from more flexibility for economic development, more commonsense approaches to conservation, and more access to our country's Federal lands. It is no wonder that nearly 300 expert groups and advocacy organizations publicly support the contents of this bill, from economic development organizations to natural resources nonprofits to cultural organizations and prominent historians.

Chairman Murkowski and all of our colleagues on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee deserve credit for getting us to this point. Senators Gardner and Daines have been particularly effective advocates for this legislation. I look forward to passing it soon. Elections

Madam President, on one final matter, in the days since House Democrats began arguing for a massive takeover of America's elections, we have heard a lot of dramatic claims about the state of American democracy.

Speaker Pelosi has denounced ``devious vote-suppression schemes.'' The Democrats' response to the State of the Union on Tuesday night warned of ``threats to democracy'' and ``efforts to undermine our right to vote.''

If you listened only to Democrats, you might actually think there is a widespread voting crisis in this country. If you took Democrats' rhetoric at face value, you certainly wouldn't guess that 2018 saw the highest midterm turnout rate in half a century or that 2016 hit an all- time record for Presidential ballots cast and the third highest Presidential turnout rate in 50 years. If you believed the Democrats' rhetoric, you would be shocked--shocked--to see the freedom, openness, and availability of the electoral franchise across the country in the year 2019.

Let's start with voter registration. Current Federal law provides all Americans the option to register to vote when they apply for an identification card at their local DMV. In many cases, registering is as simple as checking a box on a completed form. If that is not enough, voter registration is available at Agencies that provide social services or disability services. It is available in places like military recruitment centers, post offices, hunting and fishing license offices, and courthouses. Voter registration is even available online in many places, and in places where it isn't, detailed instructions are available to anyone who goes looking.

You will find voter registration drives on college campuses, in high schools, or outside the subways or train stations. You will find them at church and other civic organizations. You will find voter registration drives while you are walking down the street, visiting a grocery store, or many other public places. Heck, many campaigns and advocacy groups will come door to door to register voters.

So what about once voters are registered? To hear these Democrats tell it, all of the polling places across America are staffed-- staffed--by malevolent people who set out to deny the franchise to as many of their neighbors as possible.

But beneath the rhetoric, the procedures they are trying to attack actually could not be more reasonable.

We are talking about things like making sure voters are in the right precinct or even the right county so that they have the opportunity to vote for their local leaders--things like requiring any form of identification to verify that voters are who they claim to be, things like making sure there is enough time between voter registration and election day for officials to verify what district and precinct voters live in or that they are eligible to vote in that State in the first place.

These are simple, commonsense practices. They have worked just fine in communities across the country, in areas overseen by Democratic elected officials and Republican elected officials alike. But now-- now--Democrats have decided these standard processes are so unfair or so immoral that the Federal Government must snatch the reins away from the people and their local representatives. Now Washington Democrats have decided we need them--them--to determine how we elect our leaders.

Once again, the plain facts disprove all of the hyperventilating. After last year's election, the Pew Research Center surveyed Americans about their voting experience, asking: How do you feel about voting?

Ninety-two percent said their voting experience was easy--92 percent--easy. Only 1 percent of voters found their experience ``very difficult.'' One percent? That could be the result of practically any inconvenience: full parking lots maybe, long lines, bad traffic, a forgotten ID. You name it. But more than 9 of 10 voters indicated they had no trouble whatsoever, so it is more than a little suspicious--more than a little suspicious--that Washington Democrats are trying to invent crises to justify a huge power grab for themselves.

This fact-free rhetoric is being used to push legislation that would override the decisions of Americans' democratically chosen local leaders and replace them with one-size-fits-all prescriptions authored by a small handful of politicians, like Speaker Pelosi, Congressman Sarbanes, and a few others whom the vast majority of Americans do not elect and have no way to hold accountable. These prescriptions largely seem designed to help Democrats and their DC attorneys contest rules after election day. I call this 500-plus-page doorstop the Democratic Politician Protection Act for a reason.

Let me be abundantly clear. Every eligible American voter should be completely free to exercise their right to vote at every opportunity and cast a ballot, period. There is no question about that. Every single valid vote should be counted. Opposing the Democratic Politician Protection Act is not opposing those basic tenets.

But the way to honor these basic propositions is to let States and localities take simple, necessary steps to protect our elections and ensure that valid votes are not diluted; to have procedures in place to make sure that voters are casting ballots in the right places; to make sure that the American people are the ones who determine how we elect our leaders.

The real threat to American democracy is staring us in the face-- right in the face: an invented crisis, inaccurate rhetoric, all to justify an unprecedented intrusion by Washington, DC, Democrats into the way States run their elections.

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Mr. McCONNELL. 14 during today's session of the Senate.

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