The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“MORNING BUSINESS” mentioning Patrick J. Leahy was published in the Senate section on pages S5923-S5924 on Aug. 5.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
Senators' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
MORNING BUSINESS
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VOTING RIGHTS
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, it is alarming to know that voter suppression, which we have worked for decades to overcome, is not a ghost from our past. Suppression efforts are resurfacing--and surging--
in State legislatures across the country. Voter roll purging, out-of-
the-way polling stations, and needless barriers to accessing the ballot box are underway and under consideration in jurisdictions across the country. It cannot stand.
Under the guise of election integrity, even in the wake of the most secure election in our Nation's history, proponents of these suppressive movements make no effort to hide their targets: African Americans, Latino Americans, college students, low-income voters, the list goes on.
Those who do not feel compelled to push against these voter suppression need a lesson in history. Thankfully, a July 27 column in the Washington Post by Norman Lear offers just that insight. Penned on the occasion of his 99th birthday, this decorated American war hero, one of our Nation's Greatest Generation, recalls the pain and betrayal felt by African-American war heroes who fought for democracy abroad, only to be excluded from it at home. He reminds us that it took decades of relentless activism to give millions of minority American voters and others a real voice by finally giving them a vote.
And most importantly, he urges all Americans to fight now to protect the right to vote, the very right that gives democracy its name. This is a call to action. Voting suppression cannot stand. From the For the People Act to my own bipartisan John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, named for another icon of the voting movement, this Senate has a real opportunity to stand for democracy. I will work in good faith with any member of the Senate, regardless of party, to find a path to passing and enacting that important bill bearing John Lewis's name. Efforts to restore the Voting Rights Act have always been bipartisan. There is no reason it shouldn't be bipartisan again now.
To echo Norman's words, the right to vote isn't about party or even politics. It is about our system of self-government and the notion that a government of, by, and for the people is worth protecting in a world where authoritarianism and tyranny are still forces we are reckoning with. I ask unanimous consent that Norman Lear's opinion piece, titled
``Norman Lear: As I begin my 100th year, I'm baffled that voting rights are still under attack,'' be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
As I Begin My 100th Year, I'm Baffled That Voting Rights Are Still
Under Attack
(By Norman Lear)
I woke up today at the start of my 100th year as a citizen of this beautiful, bewildering country. I am proud of the progress we've made in my first 99 years, and it breaks my heart to see it undermined by politicians more committed to their own power than the principles that should bind us together. Frankly, I am baffled and disturbed that 21st-century Americans must still struggle to protect their right to vote.
I am a patriot, and I will not surrender that word to those who play to our worst impulses rather than our highest ideals. When the United States entered World War II, I dropped out of college to fight fascism. I flew 52 missions with a crew in a B-17, dropping bombs 35 times. Unlike so many others, I returned from that war safely, to another 70-plus years of life, love, family, failure and triumph.
It's very likely that I owe my ass and all those decades of human experience to that Black and Brown squadron of Red Tail P-51 fighter pilots known as the Tuskegee airmen. When we saw their red tails coming to escort us, we all felt a bit safer.
Yet when these courageous men returned to the United States, they returned to racism, segregation and discrimination. Their heroism did not shield them from the indignities and violence of Jim Crow. I can only imagine the depth of the betrayal the airmen must have felt, but it did not prevent many of them from accomplishing great things.
I think often of the congresswoman Barbara Jordan. She will always be remembered for declaring during President Richard M. Nixon's impeachment hearings, ``My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total.'' Even now, it gives me chills to think of her saying that, as a Black woman, in the face of her own experiences of prejudice and her full knowledge of our history.
I believe Jordan's faith in the Constitution, like my continued faith in our country, was grounded in the faith, love and hope of all the people who have struggled for the past 230 years--including millions who rallied for racial justice this past year--to make the Constitution's promises real for all of us.
After we defeated fascism overseas, it took 20 more years to pass the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act at home. Now, headlines seem drawn from the past: States target Black voters with voter-suppression bills. Federal voting-rights laws blocked in the Senate by a filibuster. Racial and religious nationalism, nativism and authoritarianism are seemingly on the rise everywhere. It is deeply discouraging to this member of what has been called ``the Greatest Generation.''
But do you know who else was part of the Greatest Generation? Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer and Thurgood Marshall. And think of the greatness demonstrated by generations that followed us: Jordan, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis, and millions of not-famous people who risked everything to claim the right to vote.
To legislators getting between people and the ballot box, and to senators who are standing in the dishonorable tradition of those who filibustered civil rights legislation, I say this: You may pass some unjust laws. You may win elections by preventing or discouraging people from voting.
But you will not in the end defeat the democratic spirit, the spirit that animated the Tuskegee airmen to whom I owe my life, the spirit that powers millions of Americans who give of themselves to defend voting rights, protect our environment, preserve peaceful pluralism, defeat discrimination, and expand educational and economic opportunity.
The right to vote is foundational to addressing all these issues. It is at the heart of everything I have fought for in war and in peacetime.
To senators who are willing to sacrifice the right to vote to some outdated notion of bipartisanship and Senate tradition, I almost do not know what to say. On the scale of justice, this is not even a close call. Do what's right.
Protecting voting rights should not be today's struggle. But it is. And that means it is our struggle, yours and mine, for as long as we have breath and strength.
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