-9999

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. HASSAN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Arizona for his remarks just now, for his patriotism and his leadership.

Today, we mark the anniversary of the January 6 attack on our Capitol, on our law enforcement officers, and on our democracy itself.

You have heard my colleagues recount the horrors of that day. Let me be clear: I, too, was in this Chamber as the events unfolded, and what happened on January 6, 2021, was in fact horrible, brutal, frightening, violent, and in some terrible cases lethal.

To all members of law enforcement who responded that day and to their families--but especially to the Capitol Police--thank you. We are grateful to you. We cannot repay what we owe you, but you are in our hearts today. 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence

Mr. President, I come to the floor today because I find myself not only thinking about January 6 but thinking about another anniversary that we marked this week--250 years since the start of 1776, the year of American independence.

It was 250 years ago yesterday that New Hampshire adopted its State constitution after declaring its independence at a meeting in Exeter, a town where my husband and I raised our two children.

This year, there will be no shortage of celebrations of the anniversary of our independence, but it will be up to us--today's citizens of the United States--to decide as a country if these celebrations will represent an empty pageant or a renewal of principle. Because in this moment, a moment when our country is led by a government high on lawlessness and extremism, ambivalent toward freedom, inclined toward authoritarianism, the principles that our Nation was founded on in 1776 feel far more distant than even 250 years.

While the attack on the Capitol may have happened 5 years ago, President Trump's current, constant lawlessness makes every day feel like January 6. So today, it is worth asking: What does January 6 mean for the spirit of 1776? What does it mean for a nation built on self- evident truths that we have a President who continues to tell the lie-- the fantasy--that the 2020 election was stolen? What does it mean to be a country where just powers are derived from the consent of the governed when we have a President who has sought to overturn the voices and votes of the people in a bid to stay in power?

Now, our Founders maintained that we are endowed with certain inalienable rights, but we have a President who routinely attacks the right to due process and freedom of speech, who has sought to use the heavy hand of government to banish critics from the airwaves.

We declared independence, in the words of Jefferson, because we didn't wish to be ruled by a King who ``cut off our trade'' and imposed ``taxes on us without our consent.''

But today we have a President unilaterally declaring costly trade wars on our allies and imposing hefty taxes on his citizens, a President who withholds the people's tax money already appropriated by Congress based on his latest whim. The power of the purse is now the power of the President because the majority in this body refuses to stand up to him.

Our Founders didn't draft a Constitution in order to build a more perfect Union only to one day have a President who rejects his responsibility and sworn oath to uphold it, and our Founders didn't create two other branches of government--a legislature and a judiciary--merely for a wayward Executive to ignore them.

Our Founders wanted the legislative and judicial branches to be checks on the Presidency, but this President seems to think that the clear rules set out in the Constitution are merely a suggestion box.

Surely, as patriots risked their lives, treasure, and sacred honor to establish a breathtaking experiment in self-government, they didn't intend to allow a President to use the long and hallowed arm of justice to target political foes, to ignore laws passed by the people's representatives, or to pardon violent criminals who tried to overthrow our democracy in his name.

There is nothing remotely patriotic, remotely decent about pardoning violent criminals who stormed our Capitol and assaulted police officers.

Can anyone in the administration look the families of the officers in their eyes and explain why such a pardon could possibly be justified?

Of course not.

But then again, this administration doesn't think it should have to. And make no mistake: The pardons may have voided the criminal convictions, but the wounds to the officers remain, as does the attack on our democracy.

When we talk about democracy, it is easy for it to feel merely like an abstract principle. But my dad, a World War II veteran, stressed to me, even as a kid, that freedom and democracy made a real difference in people's lives. Democracy is, in short, the best way to solve problems without violence, with the votes of citizens instead of the voices of a violent mob.

Look no further back than over the course of this last year, and you will see why democracy matters. Despite promising to bring down costs, the President has instead made life less affordable. He has taken away people's healthcare, launched costly trade wars on our allies abroad while making everything more expensive at home, and has spent his days flattering himself, putting his name on buildings and constructing monuments in his own honor.

Are we really surprised that a man who tried to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election does not care about solving the problems that his constituents--the American people--face? If the President didn't think he was accountable to the people's will when he lost the election in 2020, why should we expect him to care about the priorities they want him to address after an election?

Democracy, of course, is about holding leaders accountable when they fail to make people's lives better, and this President disdains democracy because he simply can't deliver.

We are blessed to live in a great country, and we can't forget how unlikely our independence was. In 1776, we subsisted on gasps of hope, our plan little better than a prayer for recurring miracles--not just in Philadelphia but, later, on the icy currents of the Delaware, in the snows of Valley Forge, by the sea in Yorktown.

Mr. President, 1776 was a time when, in the words of Thomas Paine, ``nothing but hope and virtue could survive.''

Surely we didn't survive the hardships of our birth to, only 250 years later, allow the way of the despot and the way of the mob to become the way of the future. Surely we did not build a new nation conceived in liberty only for its Capitol to one day be stormed by a mob at the behest of a President because he refused to acknowledge the basic right of every American to vote him out of office, to be free to disagree with him and reject him.

When the Declaration of Independence was signed, John Adams wrote in a letter that, hundreds of years from now, people will celebrate the day with what he called ``pomp and parade,'' but he also added that it will ``cost us to maintain this declaration.''

So we have a choice to make as a country. On this 250th anniversary of the year of our independence, we have to decide whether we wish to be governed by the spirit of January 6 or the spirit of 1776.

What is this spirit of 1776? It is the belief in government of, by, and for the people, not of, by, and for any one leader.

Here, no leader is above the law, nor are they above the people whom they serve. Look around this city. Our great monuments here were built by grateful citizens to honor others. They weren't built by greedy leaders to honor themselves.

The spirit of 1776 knows that lawlessness and extremism don't melt away on their own and must be rejected, even when it means standing up to a President or to one's own party. Political courage can be hard; regaining a freedom lost even harder.

And above all else, here in the United States of America, we know that we are not subjects to be ruled; we are citizens to be heard. This is America. This is where freedom rings. And perhaps these sound like lofty principles. Well, I am from the ``Live Free Or Die'' State.

In New Hampshire, we know that principles like freedom matter. We know that they matter because people gave their lives for these principles, and they died for these principles in the hope that the rest of us might live by them. So that is why on this January 6, I am choosing to embrace this spirit of 1776, and I hope that freedom-loving Americans of all political stripes do too.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source