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Floor Speech
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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, at a time when our country faces unprecedented crises, the U.S. Senate has spent an entire week debating a problem that essentially does not exist.
The goal of the SAVE Act, which is on the floor right now, is to make certain that noncitizens do not vote in American elections. I don't know that anyone disagrees with that. The good news is that noncitizens do not vote in American elections. Study after study has shown that the number of undocumented immigrants voting in American elections is virtually nonexistent. We are debating a problem that does not exist.
The conservative Heritage Foundation found that over a recent 24-year period--24 years--there have been a grand total of 77 confirmed instances of undocumented immigrants voting in the United States--24 years with 77 undocumented immigrants voting. Hundreds of millions of people voted in a 24-year period, and there were 77 instances of noncitizens voting. That is according to the conservative Heritage Foundation.
What about individual States that have looked at this issue? What have they found?
Well, the State of Utah found that, of the State's 2.1 million registered voters, in 2025 and in 2026, a grand total--all right, here we go--a grand total of 1 noncitizen registered to vote in that State, and that individual never cast a ballot--2.1 million registered voters in Utah and 1 noncitizen registered to vote.
In 2024, Idaho reviewed its 1 million registered voters and found 36 possible noncitizens registered to vote.
In 2024, Georgia--the State of Georgia--audited its 8.2 million registered voters and found 20 noncitizens registered to vote.
Overall, not only are there a tiny number of people undocumented who are registered to vote, but most of those citizens have never even voted. They just registered to vote for whatever reason and were properly removed from the voter rolls.
Let us be clear: Federal law already prohibits noncitizens from voting in Federal elections, and no State--not one of our 50 States-- allows noncitizens to vote in State elections; but if this legislation were to be passed, it would create a whole lot more problems than it would solve.
Under this bill, every American would be required to have a passport or a birth certificate in order to register to vote. Now, what is wrong with that? Well, as many as 69 million married women have last names that do not match their birth certificates and would need to provide additional documentation proving their name changes in order to register to vote. Further, an estimated 4 million Americans have had their birth certificates or other necessary documents stolen or destroyed.
If you are watching this out there, just think: Do you have a birth certificate? How are you going to get a birth certificate? How many weeks or months will it take? How much does it cost? You will have to go through all of the bureaucracy to get your birth certificate.
Even worse, do you have a passport? Well, half of Americans--146 million people--don't have a valid passport. Those who would need a passport to vote under this bill would have to spend $130 to renew a passport or $165 for a new one. By the way, you are going to have to wait up to 6 weeks to get it.
So make no mistake about it, this legislation is nothing more than a modern-day poll tax that would deprive millions of low-income and working-class Americans from being able to vote.
So what is this bill really about? Well, the good news is President Trump has told us what it is about. Trump has said that, if this legislation were signed into law, Republicans would ``never lose a race . . . For 50 years, we won't lose a race.''
Well, my understanding of election reform would be to make sure that the United States makes it possible for more people to participate in the political process and makes sure that we have one of the highest levels of voter participation rather than one of the lower rates of voter turnout in the world. In other words, we want to strengthen our democracy, not throw millions of people off the voting rolls so, to quote President Trump, Republicans would never lose a race.
Instead of spending a week on a nonexistent problem, maybe it is time we started to focus on some of the enormous crises facing our country, and let me just take a moment to mention a few. Trump Administration
Mr. President, never before in American history have so few individuals had so much wealth and so much power. During the Gilded Age in this country, with Rockefeller and Carnegie, you had a handful of people who had enormous wealth and enormous power--nothing--nothing-- compared to what exists today. Today, we have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had in the history of this country.
Do you think that might be an issue that we should be talking about? Do you think we might be suggesting that there is something wrong when the top 1 percent in America now owns more wealth than the bottom 93 percent? Do you think we might be talking about making some changes in an economic system in which 60 percent of our people today are living paycheck to paycheck and families are struggling to feed their kids? to pay for healthcare? to pay for rent? to pay for childcare? to pay for the basic necessities of life?
There are 60 percent of our people who are living paycheck to paycheck, and one guy--Elon Musk--owns more wealth than the bottom 53 percent of American households. Do you think maybe that might be an issue that we should be talking about?
But one of the reasons we don't talk about that issue and many other vital issues that impact working families is the reality that Congress today is much more concerned about protecting the needs of its campaign contributors--the billionaires who are putting an unprecedented amount of money into the political process--rather than representing the needs of working families throughout America. It is no great secret. As a result of this disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision, the billionaires in this country--Democrats but more Republicans--are putting huge amounts of money into the political process, and Congress is quickly becoming a corporately owned entity.
Maybe we might want to talk about how we get rid of Big Money in politics and create a democracy in which every person has one vote, not where billionaires can spend unlimited amounts of money to elect candidates who represent their interests.
I should tell you that one way I believe that we begin to tackle the massive level of income and wealth inequality that exists is by imposing a wealth tax on the 938 billionaires in America who are worth some $8.2 trillion. Legislation that I have proposed--the wealth tax on billionaires--would not impact anybody in America who is not a billionaire, but over a 10-year period, this legislation would raise $4.4 trillion strictly from the people on top--the one-tenth of 1 percent minuscule number of people who are doing unbelievably well.
And what would we use that $4.4 trillion for? Well, let me just briefly tell you.
For a start, in the first year, at a time when working-class families are struggling to put food on the table and pay their rent, this legislation would provide every man, woman, and child in the country in a household making $150,000 or less a $3,000 direct payment, $12,000 for a family of four.
So at a time when the billionaires have never had it so good, when many of them are paying virtually nothing in taxes, we are going to demand that they start paying their fair share so that working-class, low-income families can get some help--$3,000 for every man, woman, and child in families of less than $150,000.
This legislation would end homelessness in America and address the affordable housing crisis by building 7 million units of low-income and affordable homes and apartments. Twenty million households in America should not be forced to spend half of their limited incomes on housing. We should not have 800,000 people sleeping out on the streets. Instead of giving tax breaks to billionaires, we should be building low-income and affordable housing.
This bill would expand Medicare. In Vermont and all over this country, you have got elderly people who can't afford dental care, can't afford hearing aids, can't afford vision care. This legislation would expand Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing.
In the last poll that I saw on that, only 90 percent of the American people supported it. Maybe, we may want to pass it.
This legislation would provide universal childcare in America and make sure that no one in our country pays more than 7 percent of their limited income on childcare.
At a time when school districts in Vermont and around the country are having a hard time attracting good teachers because the pay scale is much too low, we would make sure that no teacher in America earns less than $60,000 a year.
This legislation would also make sure that seniors and people with disabilities receive the home healthcare they need through Medicaid.
And, by the way, this legislation would prevent 15 million Americans from losing healthcare by repealing Trump's $1.1 trillion cut to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act.
And we do all of that just by asking the very wealthiest people in this country, the fewer than 1,000 billionaires, to pay 5 percent of their wealth in taxes.
And you know, after that, I know people--editorial writers--all over America are very worried about what happens to poor Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos and Mr. Zuckerberg. The good news is they will still have enough money with their hundreds of billions of dollars left to feed their families. I don't want anybody to think that the Musk family or the Bezos family will go hungry. We leave them with hundreds of billions of dollars. AI
Mr. President, the other thing that we have got to do, instead of dealing with nonexistent problems like the SAVE Act, we have got to address the threat of artificial intelligence and robotics. And surprise, surprise, our very same friends--Mr. Musk, Mr. Bezos, Mr. Zuckerberg, Mr. Ellison, Mr. Thiel, and others--are pouring huge amounts of money into AI and robotics.
Left unchecked, these technologies will bring about a massive transformation of American economic, political, and social life. That is what we are talking about. And that transformation of American life--economic, political, social--is being pushed by a handful of multi-multibillionaires, and it is time for the U.S. Congress to say: Slow it down.
And it is not only what it will do to throwing millions of workers off of their jobs, hooking children to artificial intelligence. I have talked to a number of scientists who believe that we are not talking about science fiction anymore in the sense that if AI continues to develop and become smarter than humans, the truth is AI may become independent of human control and threaten the very existence of humanity.
Now, I know that the future of humanity and the existence of whether or not we survive is not quite as important as legislation dealing with a nonexistent problem like undocumented people voting. But maybe, just maybe, we might want to spend a few minutes determining whether or not we should slow down AI so that humanity survives, so that tens of millions of people do not lose their jobs, so that kids do not lose their mental health by becoming addicted to AI, et cetera.
So the bottom line is, there are enormous issues facing this country. It is no great secret that the American people increasingly understand that the work of this Congress, right now, is to protect the 1 percent and wealthy campaign contributors, and maybe it is time we started worrying about working families and ordinary families.
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