[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 70 (Wednesday, April 26, 2023)] [Senate] [Pages S1370-S1377] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Date: 2023-04-26
Chamber: SENATE
Mr. VAN HOLLEN: let me thank my colleague from Connecticut for his words in support of the Equal Rights Amendment and for his fight for justice. Let me also thank my colleague, my Maryland partner and friend Senator Cardin, for teaming up with Senator Murkowski to push for passage of this legislation year after year. It is long overdue that we take this up and that we pass it in the U.S. Senate. If you look at our history during the darkest of times and against the longest of odds, Americans from all backgrounds have stood together to insist that America live up to its promise--the promise of equality, the promise of equal rights for all. In fact, if you think about the story of America, it really is the story of the struggle to make good on that fundamental promise to ensure that every individual receives equal dignity.  We talk about how we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that is true. There are not more rights for men and not supposed to be more rights for any particular group. It is supposed to be about equal dignity, and equal dignity should include equal treatment under the law. In their fight for voting rights, our Nation's suffragettes faced unjust arrest. They faced persecution. They faced resistance from a nation that was not yet willing to fulfill that full promise when it came to voting rights. Despite it all, through protests, through demands, through arrests, the suffragettes prevailed and made sure that we passed the 19th Amendment, at least fulfilling the right to vote for women. But we have a lot of unfinished business. It is not just all men who are created equal; it is all people who are created equal. We have accomplished that when it comes to the ballot box. Although, as we in this body know, we also have a long way to go to make sure that that is made real in practice on the ground. That is why we have been fighting to pass voting rights legislation. But we also need to make sure that, when it comes to women's rights, we enshrine it in the highest law of the land in order to give the rhetoric legal teeth and legal backing. Alice Paul, who really is the founder of the movement for the Equal Rights Amendment, knew that a century ago when she said:  I never doubted that equal rights was the right direction. Most reforms, most problems are complicated. But to me, there is nothing complicated about ordinary equality.  There is great truth in the simplicity of that statement, and that is what equal rights is all about. It is not a lot of words, but they are the rightly chosen words:  Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.  That is it; a simple statement but a powerful statement because it is a true statement if we really want to live up to our full promise. That is why the overwhelming majority of the American people support it. Seventy-five percent of our fellow Americans support the ERA. Thirty-eight States have ratified it, enough to make the ERA our 28th Amendment. Yet 100 years after the proposed amendment was first introduced to Congress, despite this broad support and the ratification of a necessary number of States, we have not yet made that part of our Constitution. The results are painfully clear every day. My colleagues have talked about some of them: the persistent pay gap, which disadvantages not only women but also the families that they support. Recent rulings by the Supreme Court on reproductive rights have shown that the lack of an explicit protection against gender discrimination puts women's fundamental rights at risk and on the chopping block. So this is the moment to finally get this done. I, again, want to thank Senator Cardin and Senator Murkowski for their efforts to move forward on this. I want to thank the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. As I close, I do want to say a few words about my friend and colleague from Maryland's long-term fight for this and applaud him for over a decade of working to make sure that we get the ERA across the finish line. It has been one very important aspect--in fact, the cornerstone of many of his efforts here in the United States--but it is a reflection of his fights for civil rights, for women's rights, for racial rights, and for human rights around the world. I want to thank him for his persistence on this and so many issues that call upon us to be what we say we are as Americans--people who believe in the equal dignity of every individual and the rights of every individual. I want to thank my colleague. I want to thank him for teaming up with Senator Murkowski from Alaska and thank her for her efforts. I said at the beginning that we have been defined as an American story by our struggle to make good on that original promise, the idea of equal rights. Many people have tried to interpret it in different ways, but I think we all understand, at the end of the day, the North Star is equal rights. It means equal rights for everybody, not just equal rights for some people over here, because that is not equal rights. That is as simple as what brings us here to the floor. I want to thank my colleague, again, from Maryland for keeping this fight going. I really hope my Republican colleagues will take this moment, despite what we expect, to enshrine that simple proposition into the Constitution of the United States. I yield the floor.