Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. I rise to remind the Senate of two anniversaries that are happening this week. This week is the 75th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy. It is commonly known as D-Day. One hundred sixty- thousand-plus individuals crossed the English Channel by aircraft, by boat. They moved in every way possible, starting in the middle of the night and with the major invasion that was the largest naval invasion in the history of the world. They would have crossed into France--what was the beginning of the end of Nazi Germany.

The loss of lives of Americans and Allied forces was catastrophic as they pushed in. The boys, 18, 19, 20 years old, got on aircraft, got on ships, launched out into the water, knowing there was a tyrant on the other side who had to be stopped. It is entirely appropriate for the Nation to pause to remember D-Day, to know the freedom we have right now was protected by a generation that stood for that freedom. As the Nation looks toward Normandy a couple days from now, I think we should once again thank the ``greatest generation'' that guarded our freedom. 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment

Mr. President, today is also a 100-year anniversary, though. One hundred years ago today, June 4, 1919, the Senate voted to pass the right for women to vote. As a son of a pretty amazing mom and as the husband of a really remarkable lady and as the dad of two daughters who are both voters now--they cannot thank the ladies enough who started in the 1800s working toward a basic human dignity and right; that is, the right for people to vote. It is astounding to us as a nation to think that it took that long, all the way up until 1919, to have a vote in the Senate to allow women to vote. That vote--with 36 Republicans and 20 Democrats that day who voted on June 4, 1919--changed the direction of how we would vote and how we would cooperate together as a nation.

Now, we have a lot of other areas to fix, but that one was a big one, and my family is grateful for what was done in the past. People who come through the Rotunda of the Capitol often see a statue there that looks like it is not finished. It is a block of stone, and there are three ladies who are carved out of it, but a part of it is not carved. I often hear people say they don't understand that statue. That statue is Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucretia Mott, the three ladies who led the movement of ladies all over the country to just speak out and say ladies should have the right to vote. Those three ladies are carved into stone that is in our Rotunda, but what is interesting is, the statue is unfinished because the assumption was in the days ahead, there would be more ladies in the future who would step out and would lead a nation to make sure that we allow the rights of every single individual to be honored.

So, for the sake of my mom and my aunt, my grandmother, my wife, my daughters, and millions of ladies, we cannot thank those ladies enough for standing up for what was right at that time period. I think it is appropriate that we pause for just a moment in the Senate and remember June 4, 1919, 100 years later, and thank those ladies for standing up for the rights of ladies in their generation and the ladies in the generations to come.

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