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Floor Speech

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Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, with me today is Mr. Matt Turner, one of my colleagues from my office. S. 1383

Mr. President, I would like to talk for a few minutes about the SAVE Act. I am a cosponsor. I support it unconditionally.

The SAVE Act, as you well know, is really pretty simple. It is about our sanctity of voting in America. It says, if you want to register to vote in America, you have to prove that you are a citizen of America. And once you are registered, it says, when you are voting in a Federal election, in all instances, you have to prove you are who you say you are in order to vote--very simple.

Now, there are other provisions that may or may not be added by amendment, but those are the guts of the SAVE Act.

Many--I hope not all, but many--of my Democratic friends in the Senate are opposed to the SAVE Act. They say that we are setting our time on fire here in the Senate; we are just wasting the Senate's time; we are wasting precious floor time.

Many of my Democratic friends say that we should read the law, that the law provides very clearly--and has since God was a baby--that, in order to vote in America, you have to be a citizen of America.

My friends on the other side of the aisle have come up with this deep and weird theory that somehow this legislation punishes women in America because some women--not all, but some women--take their spouse's name when they get married, and that somehow will--as if the women of America are not smart enough to figure it out--that that somehow will impede their ability to register to vote and vote. I don't get that part, but I hear my colleagues.

My Democratic friends say that this bill is unnecessary, but it is also going to cost money, and that what we are doing in proposing it is taking--we are wasting taxpayer money; we are taking a Great Dane-sized whiz down the leg of every taxpayer in America. And I could go on. I hear them.

My Democratic friends have no claim to a high horse--let me just say that. We wouldn't be here today, passing this legislation, if some of my Democratic friends had stood up to the Biden administration.

But I want to make it clear: I hear my colleagues. I think they are wrong, but they are entitled to their opinion.

Now, let me explain what this bill is really all about. I am not going to talk about the details of the bill. I think enough people have done that and much more eloquently than I probably could.

I want to tell you what this bill is about. It is about people trusting elections in America, and it is about immigration. Immigration

Now, I happen to believe--and I think most Americans agree--that the United States of America is star-spangled awesome. I think this country is the greatest country in all of human history. I think the whole world knows it.

When did you last hear of somebody trying to sneak into China? The whole world wants to come to America. I consider that to be a compliment. And we have a way of welcoming them to America. It is called legal immigration.

Is our legal immigration system a model of efficiency? No. We need to make some changes. And maybe, hopefully, someday, we will. But it works, and I will tell you why it works. Over a million of our world's neighbors every year become American citizens--Nigerian doctors, Romanian plumbers--over a million Americans. More than any other country, we welcome them to become American citizens.

Now, the opposite of legal immigration is illegal immigration. Illegal immigration is illegal--duh. We have laws against it. If you don't like them, you should change them.

Our immigration statutes are not some second-tier laws that you can violate without consequence. They are the law, and I support their enforcement, and so do the vast majority of Americans.

Now, how you enforce them matters. Our immigration laws should be enforced respecting human dignity. Our immigration laws should be enforced in accordance with due process. Our immigration laws should be enforced in accordance with equal protection and with the standards of reasonable suspicion clearly set forth in--I think it was 1969--a Supreme Court case called Terry v. Ohio.

We should follow the law in enforcing our immigration law. You have the right to protest. You don't have the right to protest violently. In fact, as I have said before, violence undermines the morality that the protesters say their movement is based upon. That is not an original idea. Dr. King knew that. Gandhi knew that. Mandela knew that.

Violence is also dangerous. You can get hurt, and it has been my experience that most cops--and members of ICE are cops--most cops will leave you alone unless you do illegal stuff. Their job is to enforce the law. So protest all you want to, but don't do it violently. It is not going to end well.

Now, some have suggested that the American people are xenophobic and that they are racist when it comes to immigration. These people suggest that vetting people at the border is racist.

I think it is prudent, and I think most Americans think it is prudent. Let me see if I can explain why.

I read this somewhere once. Most Americans look at the southern border like they look at the front door of their home. Most Americans lock their front door at night. Why do they do that? They don't lock their front door at night because they hate everybody on the outside. They lock their front door at night because they love the people on the inside. They lock their front door because they want to know who is coming into and out of their home.

That is the way people look at the southern border. They don't hate everybody that wants to come into America. In fact, we welcome a million of them. But they want to know who they are. They want folks properly vetted. That is why we have immigration laws.

(Mr. MORENO assumed the Chair.)

Now, you remember a few minutes ago I said my Democratic colleagues had no claim to a high horse. Let me explain why. When President Biden was President--and, by the way, I wish him well in retirement. I hope he is doing well. He has had some illnesses--cancer. I wish him well in his retirement and in his health.

But when President Biden was President, either he or some of his advisers who had authority on his behalf admitted into our country millions of folks illegally, from all over the world. We don't know how many--8 million, 12 million. Some people say 30 million. I don't know how many. But President Biden--it was like the ``Price Is Right": Come on down. You don't have to follow our immigration laws; just come on in.

Now, I don't really know who was running President Biden's immigration program; I really don't. But I know this. They were one or two things. They were either so incompetent you wouldn't put them in charge of a ham sandwich or they believed in open borders. I think they believed in open borders. And many of my Democratic colleagues who knew better, they did not say a word. And as a result, we have millions of people in our country. We don't know who they are, but we know they are in our country illegally.

And a lot of Americans are opposed to that. It is one of the reasons, I think, that Vice President Harris lost the election. Why do Americans--most Americans--oppose that? Well, first, as I told you, most Americans believe in the rule of law. They understand that illegal immigration is illegal. Most Americans think it is prudent--not racist, it is prudent--to vet people at the border. Most Americans understand that if you want to come to our country legally, we have a process and that it is unfair to people who have been waiting patiently in the line to be properly vetted to allow anybody who can get across the border to jump the line. Most people in America understand that viscerally.

And many Americans--let's just put it on the table. Let's just put it down here where the goats can get it. Most Americans--nope. Strike that. Many Americans believe that this was a plot and that it was intentional by President Biden and some of my friends to admit people illegally into America so that perhaps at some point these folks would be indebted to the Democrats and would vote for them.

I am not saying that is true, but you have been smoking a doobie if you don't think that a lot of Americans don't believe that. They believe this was intentional. Again, I am not saying it is true.

And when we point it out, many members of the press go catatonic and foam at the mouth and say: You can't say that. But they are living in la-la land. A lot of Americans believe that. And a lot of Americans believe, whether it is accurate or not, that these folks vote--today-- and that they undermine the sanctity of our elections.

So that is what the SAVE Act is about. It is about trying to get the American people to trust our elections every year in light of the fact that President Biden and his team, with the concurrence of many of my colleagues in this Chamber, admitted millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of people into our country illegally.

I am not saying they were all bad people. I think many of the folks who came into our country were economic migrants; they just wanted a better life. That is why we have legal immigration. Not all of them were Cinderella. There were a lot of criminals. There were a lot of murderers. There were a lot of sex traffickers. There were a lot of drug dealers. There were. We are trying to catch them now.

But I guess the larger point is, we don't know who the hell they were because, once again, ``Price Is Right": Come on down. And so that is what this bill is meant to do. It is meant to say to the American people: Look, we in Congress hear you. We want you to trust our elections.

My personal feeling about getting people to trust our elections--I think if we did two things--I am supporting this bill, but I think we ought to do two things: No. 1, have a rule that says you have to prove you are who you say you are in order to vote. And I guess I would add to that, in order to register to vote. And No. 2, we need to go back to having an election day, not an election month--because when it takes longer than just an election day, people think the worst.

But the SAVE Act would help as well to restoring trust in the American system because, you know what, our democracy can't stand if people don't believe in the sanctity of folks that we put in charge to administer that democracy.

Now, let me say one last thing. I am in the minority on this. The majority of my colleagues on the Republican side--and, I feel very confident, on my Democratic side--the majority of my colleagues don't agree with me on this, but sometimes--not always, but sometimes the majority just means all the fools are on the same side. Sometimes someone in the minority can be right. That is why we have a Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights is not for the high school quarterback or the prom queen. The Bill of Rights is for the people who see the world a different way, and they have the right to do that.

So I am in the minority on this. I don't know how this bill is going to turn out. I can't predict the future. I have to wait for it like everybody else. But if the SAVE Act doesn't pass--and we are serious about passing it, and I think we are; I know the Presiding Officer is-- we need to try to pass this legislation through reconciliation.

Now, the Presiding Officer knows how reconciliation works. It means we can pass this bill with 50 Republican votes and the Vice President to break the tie. That is how we passed the One Big Beautiful Bill. I would hope to get some of my Democratic friends to support us, but we don't have to have them. It is harder than I describe because, as the Presiding Officer knows, there are parameters on reconciliation. Anything you propose through reconciliation has to be paid for. We can find the money to pay for it. And anything you pass through reconciliation has to conform with the contours of the Budget Control Act. We call that giving a provision a Byrd bath. And our Parliamentarian decides what passes muster under the Budget Control Act and what doesn't.

Now, we have a lot of smart lawyers in the U.S. Senate. Every single one of them thinks they are ``Oliver Wendell Scalia.'' But we have a lot of other smart lawyers in America. Here is what I am getting at. We have yet to try going to these smart lawyers--some in the Senate and some, believe it or not, not in the Senate--and saying: Craft us a SAVE Act that will pass muster under the Budget Control Act and can be blessed by the Parliamentarian.

And some of my colleagues--those ``Oliver Wendell Scalia'' types-- they say: Kennedy, you will never be able to do that. They don't know. I have been here 10 years. I have seen things pass muster, survive a Byrd bath, that I didn't think had a hope in hell; and I have seen provisions pass the Parliamentarian's judgment under a Byrd bath that I thought--I mean, I have seen them not pass that I thought were slam dunks. You don't know until you try, and we haven't tried.

And if this bill is as important as everybody says it is--and I think it is because we are not just talking about voting; we are talking about the confidence, the trust of the American people in our elections. If this bill is as important as we say it is, we should try it through reconciliation.

I haven't convinced Senator Thune of that. I haven't convinced all of my colleagues on either side of the aisle. But I plan on continuing to chase them like they stole Thanksgiving and Christmas put together.

I appreciate the Presiding Officer listening to my explanation of what the SAVE Act--did I mention I support the SAVE Act? Did I mention I am a cosponsor of the SAVE Act? I just wanted to clear that up--and the real reason that we are here today. I am done.

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