Save America Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CASSIDY. Madam President, protecting the integrity of elections is a constitutional principle. That is why I am a proud cosponsor of the SAVE America Act requiring a photo ID when someone goes to vote.

Now, Americans have to show a photo ID or proof of citizenship on a weekly basis--sometimes on a daily basis. The Presiding Officer and I both fly regularly to Washington, DC, and then back home. You have got to show who you are. You open a bank account, you show a photo ID. You cash a check, you show a photo ID. We mentioned boarding a plane.

To require doing the same thing when you go to polls to vote in a Federal election is merely common sense. It is also not new. It is already a requirement in many States.

The SAVE America Act does not make it harder to vote; it ensures that only American citizens vote in American elections, and that is constitutional.

By the way, this is incredibly popular with the American people. Madam President, 71 percent of Democrats and 95 percent of Republicans agree you should have to show a photo ID when you go to vote, so why hasn't it passed? Why isn't it popular in Congress? Because Senate Democrats are dead set on pleasing, appeasing a small leftwing base of the 16 percent of the American people who oppose, so they come up with reasons not to pass the SAVE America Act, but these concerns have been addressed.

As an example, what about people who have lost their documents and cannot prove citizenship? Well, the legislation says that if you are a citizen and you have lost your documents, or never had them, you can go to a State election official, swear to the details of your birth date and location or naturalization details, and register to vote. We have that option in Louisiana. That alternative process is built into the SAVE America Act so lack of documentation is not an issue.

But rather than accepting that, Senate Democrats ignore the solution and get back to work finding another reason to oppose it, ignoring the fact that 70 percent of their party wants the SAVE America Act passed into law.

We should be here to serve the will of the American people, and folks are asking for the assurance of a secure election. The SAVE America Act helps get that done. We should pass it.

Now, some have said we need to go to a talking filibuster in order to get this done. I have supported the talking filibuster since my first day as a Senator in 2015, drawing inspiration from ``Mr. Smith Goes to Washington''--watching that movie when I was a child and seeing just kind of that, wow, when somebody gets up here and talks for 36 hours and everybody else is inconvenienced, somehow you come to a solution faster. I support using it now to pass the SAVE America Act to restore trust in our elections and carry out the will of the people.

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