Unanimous Consent Requests

Floor Speech

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Mr. PETERS. Mr. President, I am just so disappointed that the UC request from my colleague from New Mexico was rejected--was objected to--by Republicans here on the floor of the Senate.

The fact that we are here trying to fix a terrible wrong that occurred last week is simply outrageous. While Senate Democrats were fighting to lower healthcare costs and trying to provide some financial relief for families who are seeing their costs skyrocket across the board, the Senate Republicans snuck in--and this is literally true-- they snuck in, in the dark of night, a provision, at the last minute, that would allow them to basically line their pockets.

This provision would allow a very select group of Republican Senators--let's be clear. This is to seek at least a half million dollars. It could go into the millions of dollars.

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Mr. PETERS. Very good.

This is what happened. Let's be clear. What the law does is that a group of folks can get over half a million dollars for records that were obtained. They were obtained as part of a legitimate criminal investigation.

It is unconscionable, at a time when families across the country are feeling the squeeze and struggling to make ends meet, that such a self- serving, retroactive provision was included in legislation to fund the government.

Let's be clear. No citizen of the United States gets this. No House Member gets this. This is just about Senators.

It has all the appearances, certainly, of a cash grab. And if the American taxpayers who are going to have to foot this bill--let's be clear. No Senator should get special treatment or a special payday for legally obtained records. I want to stress that part. These records were obtained through a standard legal process as part of a legitimate criminal investigation related to January 6, involving authorized subpoenas of those Senators' potential involvement.

I have heard this described as partisan, political targeting. But unlike the bogus investigations President Trump has ordered into his political enemies, this whole situation arose from President Trump's own efforts to overturn a free and fair Presidential election. During the Department of Justice's investigation into this crime, the Special Counsel petitioned the court for a subpoena for those records, and the court approved it.

Mr. President, you know that is the law. That is the process. You go and get a subpoena. You have to go before a court. You have to present evidence, and the court looks at that evidence and then makes a decision. And the court approved it.

It is completely legal because it was relevant to their investigation of the President's attempt to overturn election results and to stay in power illegally. We can't forget that. We can't whitewash that. We cannot let attempts to spin this into some sort of partisan targeting against certain individuals.

First off, it sets a very dangerous precedent that could chill any effort to conduct legitimate investigations of criminal wrongdoing by Members of this body or anywhere else down the line. We surely should not put the American people in the position of being, basically, a slush fund for a few individuals interested in making a whole lot of money and having the taxpayers foot the bill.

I want to give my colleagues the benefit of the doubt about how this provision was put into the bill. Today, they had a chance to do the right thing. They had a chance to repeal it and say: Yes, this is bad. That is the way we ensure that no Senator gets special treatment, and we can get back to doing the work to better serve our constituents.

So I hope we can fix this wrong. Our friends across the Capitol here, in the House, voted unanimously--every Republican and every Member of the Democratic caucus. We came together.

Do you want to see bipartisanship in Washington? Everybody says: Gosh, I wish this body could come together in a bipartisan way.

We saw it in the House today. They said that this provision is terrible. They said it was outrageous, and they said it was a cash grab--and they did it unanimously. We could have done it unanimously here today. We could have fixed this.

Again, I don't know how it got in there. I am sure there was nothing nefarious. I am not saying there was anything nefarious. But it got in there. It clearly is wrong. Anybody who looks at the face of it knows it is wrong. That is why the House voted unanimously, and that is why I hope at some point we can do the right thing and fix this.

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