Date: 2016-04-20
Speaker: JACKSON LEE (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. let me thank the gentlewoman from New Jersey. who has led these Special Orders for communicating to the American people. and the gentlewoman from Chicago. Illinois. who has a history and record of reform. I thank the Congresswoman for her very wellstated challenge in a message and effort. Let me also thank those hundreds who have seen the inside of a Washington. D.C.. jail. They have done so in the name of those who cannot speak for themselvesthe millions of Americans who sit languishing because decisions are made against them and not for them. Unfortunately. big money. inertia. and the Congress not doing its job has taken the dominant place in American history. Hundreds of Democracy Spring protestors were arrested on Capitol Hill. We heard them repeatedly over the last week. Having had the experience of standing before the Sudanese embassy. standing in a fight for immigration reform myself. as well participating by way of fight and registering people to vote in the deep South in the aftermath of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. I think that protest and petition is a right of the American peoplepeaceful protest and petitionand I want to applaud those who sacrificed or stood their ground protesting the inertia of this Congress and the help that is needed by millions of Americans. Democracy Spring should be an agenda that all of us can support. It is. in fact. one that speaks to the question of how we are going to treat the least of those and how we are going to do what is right for the American people. There is no doubt. I think. if you were to ask one of our leading fighters in one of the States with the most draconian voter right laws. Reverend William Barber. who will be on the Hill tomorrow. he will know firsthand what voter suppression is all about. Clearly. it is an indictment of the undermining of the Bill of Rights. due process under the Fifth Amendment. and equal protection under the law. There are examples of voter ID laws where thousands are barred from voting. Maybe mistakenly the States did not realize that they did not have the offices. like Texas in over 80 counties. where individuals were supposed to get their voter ID. or in Alabama. where the Governor closed offices where people were to get their voter ID. or in other States. of course. where other reasons have been put forththe stopping of early vote or the lessening of early vote by North Carolina. and. of course. the voter ID law. After section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was eviscerated. destroyed. in the Shelby case by the United States Supreme Court. despite having the right to have a disagreement with methey are the Supreme Courtthey were absolutely wrong. As Justice Ginsburg said: For you would not stop using polio vaccine because you have not seen polio in the United States in any large way for a very long time. That is what we stand here on the floor today to talk about. That there is a need for a reckoning in this country that those who are part of Democracy Spring are standing up for. That is to ensure the restoration of the Voting Rights Act that is fair. Mr. Speaker. I believe the Voting Rights Act protects all of our rights to vote. irrespective of color. It does not respect color. It only indicates that if you have been barred from voting unfairly. then we have the rightthe Federal Government. the Department of Justiceto review that. Lo and behold. section 5 saved money. millions of dollars. in fact. My own State has used millions of dollars. millions of tax dollars. to pursue and fight the Voting Rights Act. when in actuality the Voting Rights Act saves money. If a jurisdiction like. for example. Pasadena. Texas. which redid their city council structure that eliminated Hispanics from being able to even win in that cityif they had been able to have their particular process reviewed and found that it is in violation of the Voting Rights Act and unconstitutional to one vote. one person. then they may not have foolishly constructed that scheme and done one that maybe all parties could work together on. I believe in that. I have done some wonderful things with bipartisan friends. Republicans and Democrats. working on important issues. Criminal justice happens to be one of them. But that did not happen. So now section 2 becomes the arm of the way of trying to solve these problems. and. of course. in doing so. we have lost our way. Let me say that I was here when President Bush signed into law the 1965 reauthorization. the 1965 Voting Rights Act. worked on it extensively and submitted amendments. Happily. it was voted for with a large margin by a bipartisan Congress 980 in the United States Senate. and a big celebration in the White House celebrating the signing of the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act with section 5 after 15.000 pages of testimony. Why cant we do that? The American people deserve that kind of response. Democracy Spring. you are right. let us reauthorize the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That draws me as well to the issue of the Supreme Court Justice and to recognize that constitutionally we are in a no mans land. No mans land is that we have taken the Constitution and. unfortunately. we burned it. The Senate has the responsibility of advice and consent. and it has a responsibility to address the question of the missing Supreme Court Justice. Justice Scalia was grounded in conservatism. All of us respected that. We disagreed on many occasions. but Justice Scalia wrote opinions that everybody agreed with. When it was a majority court. when there were others who had previously disagreed on other matters. they agreed. That is the way the Supreme Court works. but if you block from even a consideration or a meeting or a hearing. then you are literally tearing up the Constitution. ripping it up. and burning it up. Democracy Spring were willing to go to jail because they believe that is wrong. and I join them and stand with them in their protests and their petition. Now. let me step away for just a momentmy colleague and I will get backbut I must say that I am. again. mourning the loss of those in my district who lost their lives through this terrible storm over these last couple of days. We expect rain to continue. I wanted to just make sure that. as I indicated yesterday when I was in my district. we are praying for their families. As Members of the United States Congress. I am hoping that we will find a way to work with places like New Orleans and Houston. Texas. who are 50 feet below sea level. that we are not just getting a hurricane. People understand hurricanes. they understand tornados. and they understand earthquakes. They dont understand just plain rain that comes up to 20 inches or more and you are literally under water. as we were in the spring of 2015 and now we are again. Homes destroyed of the most vulnerable of my constituents. those who are most impoverished. I cite this because I am in the midst of discussing that we should be doing our job. One of those issues is to look at the cost and the relationship to lives lost. to doing an infrastructure system. a retention system. and other systems that have been represented as being helpful. trying to work with various constituencies so they dont have to go through that again. Dying in ones car in an underpass. dying in ones car. cant get out. we had at least four people. We are up to eight. As I said. no one would understand it. It is not a flaring hurricane: Oh. you had a terrible hurricane. we understand it. Tornado. Oh. you had an earthquake. like the tragedy in Ecuador and Japan. We offer our sympathy to them. They dont understand just rain that causes loss of lifetruck drivers. a young mother. a mechanical engineer. What are the horrors of dying in your car. drowning. and you are thinking someone is coming? You are using your cell phone. you think you see lights. and no one is showing up. I am burdened by this. I wanted to acknowledge them and offer my sympathy. and hope that tomorrow I will again come to the floor for a moment of silence. Let me step back to this because it ties in that we have to do our job here in Congress. All of us in our districts have had instances where the Congress failure or the Federal Governments failure probably has impacted in some way some terrible loss of life. As I continue. we need a Supreme Court Justice. we need the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act. and. as I just indicated. we need an infrastructure bill. We passed one. but we need one that gets into the weeds of these questions dealing with flooding and the loss of life and the loss of property that we have. Finally. let me say this since I was here during this. and I use the Constitution in a way that. I think. is very. very important. I had a bill that I introduced that said a corporation is not a person. Citizens United is premised on that fact. The decision came down from the United States Supreme Court 5 years ago. That decision was the opening of the door of the dominance of big money over politics. and politics and policy has grown. seemingly without restraint and with dire consequences for representative selfgovernment. "A functioning democracy requires a government responsive to the people" we call ourselves the "peoples House" "-considered as political equals. where we each have a say in the public policy decisions that affect our lives. It is profoundly antidemocratic for anyone to be able to purchase political power and when a small elite makes up a donor class that is able to shape our government and our public policy." I offer that as an article written by Liz Kennedy on January 15. 2015: "Top Five Ways Citizens United Harms Democracy and Top Five Ways Were Fighting to Take Democracy Back." She goes on to talk about how big money allows the wealthy elite few to overpower other voices. That sounds very familiar in the fight against gun violence and in the inability to get any gun legislation passed whether it has to do with gun storage bills that I have. whether it has to do with protecting our children. whether it has to do with background checks or with immunity that has been given to gun manufacturers and keeping away people like the Sandy Hook families or. maybe. families out of Chicago. where my colleague has been working so hard. Congresswoman KELLY. "Secret political spending exploded after Citizens United because the disclosure requirements relied on by the Court do not yet exist." No. 3: "The purported independence of outside spending is often a farce. allowing for evasion of contribution limits and disclosure requirements." She goes on to cite that big money in politics distorts representation and makes one group bigger than the other group. Then No. 5: "The Supreme Courts decisions have distorted the Constitution by preventing commonsense rules to protect representative selfgovernment." Might I say that that deals with the gun legislation as well. I think I will close with the simple words that we must do our jobs. We need to do our jobs. One of the reasons that we are in Court on the DACA and DAPA is that Congress did not do its job. and the President has the constitutional authority that says to take care. which means that that President. whoever he is. does have prosecutorial authority and discretion on how laws should be enforced. i.e.. the immigration laws. The President is absolutely right. I do not know how the Supreme Court is going to rule. I would ask that they be very attentive to doing this in a constitutional manner. which means they have the ability to look at the Take Care Clause. That may not work. but they have the ability to look at standing. and I would make the argument that none of the States have been injured. because. as for all of the things that they are arguing aboutdrivers licenses and otherwisethey dont have to do anything. The President is saying that these individuals will not be deported because they are not dangerous. He is not saying that States need to provide them with benefits. and they should not. by interpretation. suggest that he is dictating to them unfunded mandates of items that he has not asked. That is not in his executive order. It does not say what benefits they are supposed to get. In essence. in the Presidents doing his work. unfortunately. he is now being penalized for helping and following the Constitution. We have a Presidential campaign going on. and the one thing that I can be proud of is that the candidates who are now running in the Democratic primary have made it very clear of their opposition to big money in politics. of their opposition to Citizens United. and of their willingness to fight against it. In particular. I want to quote from the Boston Globe on thenSecretary Clinton: "She took a mostly handsoff approach to Wall Street regulation." She stayed away from it. She is not immersed in big money. which is a plus for all of us. She understands the peoples voice must be heard and realizes that we must do something with Citizens United. I have joined in cosponsoring a constitutional amendment to change it. but in whatever way that we can move forward to change it. the voices of the people must speak. Public finance is a reputable and reasonable way to run Presidential campaigns and to run all of our campaigns. but until it is done. it is important for us to listen to the voices of the people and to make sure that. however big money comes in. it does not carry this Housethis body and the other bodyon its back. marching towards legislation that will not help the American people. Democracy Spring was a movement of quality and dignity. and I am here today to thank them for their willingness to peacefully petition and protest. Over the years and decades. America has seen those protests peacefully leading to. as Dr. King might say. a promised land in which all of us can enjoy the benefits of what America truly stands for.