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Floor Speech

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Ms. ROSEN. Mr. President, I rise today to express my strong opposition to the SAVE America Act.

Let me be clear right off the bat: I believe in protecting the integrity of our elections. I believe our elections should be, and are, safe and secure. And I believe we must always make sure there is no meddling in our elections.

Every eligible American deserves to have their voice heard at the ballot box, and they deserve to have confidence in our democratic system.

So this is not a Democrat or Republican value. Free and fair elections are the foundation of the United States of America, and protecting these free and fair elections should be something every elected official should support, but that is not what this bill is really about. It is not what this bill is really about.

The hyperpartisan so-called SAVE America Act, it isn't about making our elections any safer. It is not even about keeping our elections free and fair. It is quite the opposite. This bill is about making it harder--making it harder--for eligible Americans to vote and shrinking the size of our electorate to benefit Republicans.

This bill would impose strict restrictions on Americans' ability to vote--restrictions so severe that a woman who gets married and changes her last name could be barred from voting because her last name doesn't match her birth certificate. Think about that. You take your husband's name. Now you can't vote because your current last name doesn't match your birth certificate.

You know, you see Donald Trump and Washington Republicans, they are so, so afraid of being held accountable for their actions and their jobs and what they are doing that they are trying anything that they can possibly do to prevent people from voting in order to increase their odds in this year's midterm elections.

They know their actions to raise gas prices, cut your healthcare, increase costs with illegal tariffs--groceries up, rent up, utilities up--they are not popular with the American people, and that is why Trump first tried to rig congressional maps in red States like Texas and Missouri to give Republicans an advantage.

And when that didn't work, Washington Republicans--well, they decided to push a hyperpartisan bill. You heard me right. Instead of working to improve your lives, to improve lives of Americans by lowering costs at the kitchen table, by expanding access to healthcare, and face the voters on the merits of their work, they would just rather restrict the electorate. In other words, they just want to stop people from voting and at a time when families are struggling--they are struggling to make ends meet--when people are being squeezed by rising prices at the grocery store, now at the gas pump going higher and higher every day and, well, at the doctor's office, if you still have insurance.

Washington Republicans have chosen to focus all of their efforts-- every single one of them--on preventing people from voting. Washington Republicans are not lowering your costs. They are not helping working families get ahead. Instead, they are making it harder for Americans to exercise their constitutional right to vote.

So let's not kid ourselves here. Washington Republicans are using this totally unnecessary and harmful bill, well, as a distraction, a distraction from the fact that families are struggling to keep up with the rising costs of their lives, a distraction from the fact that gas prices are going up every single day, a distraction that groceries are more expensive, and they are going up every single day, along with the price of gas.

It is a distraction from the fact that too many Americans are just worried about how they are going to afford their healthcare and their medication and what tough choices they may have to make in order to make ends meet.

These are the things that really keep people up at night, and these are the things that the Senate should be focused on. And so Trump and Washington Republicans have done absolutely nothing to lower the price of your groceries or your gas and nothing to make sure that your healthcare is more affordable. Washington Republicans simply don't care about your monthly bills going up and up. Instead, we are debating a bill that does absolutely nothing to make life more affordable for anyone.

So what should we be doing? We should be working together to protect against real threats to our elections like foreign interference, voter intimidation, and making sure that every legal vote is counted, not creating new obstacles for Americans who are simply trying to exercise their constitutional right to vote.

We should be working together to address real threats and the real challenges that American families are facing today. It is taking care of your family, kids going to school, rent, groceries, utilities, opportunity.

We should be working together to address those financial pressures that families are under to come up with the good solutions, good policies that will actually make a real difference for people in their lives at their kitchen table, and that is really what we have been elected to do.

And so we owe it to the voters to do that, and we also owe it to the voters to protect their right to vote in future elections.

So, to be clear, I will not support policies that make it harder for eligible Americans to vote. So I urge my colleagues to reject the SAVE America Act and get back to focusing on what actually matters to the American people: lowering everyday costs, making life more affordable and a good future more attainable.

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