Ranking Member Morelle Led House Democrats Debate Against H.R. 7008

Thank you Mr. Speaker, colleagues. What we are considering here today is a remarkable display of cynicism, even for this institution, even for this Republican leadership team. The American people are desperate for us to clean up the culture of corruption that pervades Washington. Americans see their elected leaders on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue enriching themselves, some to the tune of billions and billions of dollars, headline after headline. Members of Congress tipping off insiders to reap huge payouts from prediction markets. Members of Congress buying up private stocks just days before Pentagon announcements that will balloon their financial portfolios. What are Speaker Johnson and House Republicans doing about this? They're pretending, here on the floor today, to address the issue. They are pushing the so-called Stop Insider Trading Act, a name meant entirely to trick the American people. Because this bill, quite simply, is a sham. The bill allows members of the Congress to continue owning and trading stocks. That's right. The so-called Stop Insider Trading Act actually allows members of Congress to own and trade stocks. But even this half measure, or should I say quarter measure, goes too far for Republican leadership. How do we know? What's the tell? How do we know that the Republican posturing is all performative? That Republicans do not want a stock trading bill ban to become law? Because they've added a poison pill to this bill. They've added provisions that have absolutely nothing to do with stock trading, and everything to do with their obsession. Their obsession with the 2020 election. That's right. The Save America Act is back, yet again. The American people keep cutting the head off this bill, flooding phone lines to their members and senators, demanding we block this anti-voter bill. And so far, their voices are being heard. The resistance is working. But like the Hydra, these heads keep growing back. The Save Act. The Save Act again. The Save America Act. They've attached it to CRs, continuing resolutions. They attach it to a spending bill, funding the State Department and other completely unrelated agencies. The President tried to force it on the American people through illegal executive orders blocked by the courts. So now Republicans come limping back from a losing fight. Sometimes you should just stop. But let's acknowledge the reality of what we're doing here. Republicans have corrupted their so-called stock trading bill with a decaying piece of the Save America Act corpse. The bill we're considering today would force voters in America to surrender photocopies of their photo IDs in their mail ballot envelopes. This isn't just a voter ID bill. It's a bill to destroy vote by mail, something the President routinely rails against, despite the fact that the President routinely uses mail-in voting himself, the kind of double standard Americans have come to particularly enjoy from this President. A bill that would dispatch millions of American voters to Kinko's. Some of us are old enough to remember Kinko's. I guess it's now FedEx. Or Staples. Or the public library. To scan and print their IDs. To shove those IDs into their mail ballots, risking their constitutional right to a secret ballot if not packaged properly. To send their ID copies off to election offices in the hopes that the ballot will be counted. That the ballot won't be discarded on the counting room floor. Now you might ask, why would these ballots be at risk of being thrown out? Because the bill would explicitly exclude forms of voter ID that millions of Americans are accustomed to using today. You use your student ID. Ballot thrown out. Your concealed carry permit. Ballot thrown out. Your employer ID. Ballot thrown out. Your tribal ID without an expiration date on it. Comment on tribal IDs. You get the picture. Ballot thrown out. I could go on and on. Now you might, sitting at home watching this, think, I know Washington D.C. is a dysfunctional place, but they can't be that irrational, can they? Surely election officials and voters would have time to prepare for this seismic shift in American elections, right? Sorry to say, you'd be overestimating how much House Republicans care about voters. About election officials. About elections themselves. Because this bill would take effect in 90 days. When is 90 days from today? Well, October 20th, 2026. Two weeks before the midterm elections. That's right. Republicans are trying to force a massive change to American voting law, eradicating mail voting as we know it, right in the middle of the final month of an election. Two weeks before election day. By October 20th, state officials, we still have a system where the time, manner, and places of elections are run by state legislatures. Those state officials, state legislatures will have already mailed out millions of ballots to voters. Voters will have already returned some of these ballots. So what are election officials to do? Count the ballots cast with student IDs on October 19th and shred the ones that arrive after that on October 20th. Is that what they're going to do? Who's going to train election officials about what IDs to accept, what to do with mail ballots, missing photocopies, and when will they do it? There will be chaos. Complete shambles. This bill is plain absurdity, written in ink, printed in the congressional record. But lest we forget, the confusion is the point. Chaos is the point. Republicans know that they will lose in November. They know that people strongly, strongly object to their handling of the economy, the war in Iran, the immigration fiasco which has resulted in the death of American citizens. They know the verdict in November will not be kind to them and shouldn't be. So they have one hope at winning. Disruption, disarray, subversion. That's why they have redrawn congressional maps from coast to coast in the middle of this year, of this term, the middle of this decade. That's why they keep trying again and again to change the rules in the middle of the game. Now if they want to force states to make massive extreme last-minute changes just days before the midterm elections, states forced to retrain staff, reprint ballots, and ballot envelopes, and the process, with what time? With what money? Because you might ask, who's going to pay for all this? This is a seismic change. Not Washington, not House Republicans. They're too busy trying to pay for an unconscionable war in Iran, a war that has led to the tragic deaths of 18 American service members, in a war that no one asked for and certainly no Americans want. Republicans will send American taxpayer money to the Middle East but not to your local election office. They simply don't care about you. They don't care about the price of your gas, the price of your groceries, the sanctity of your ballot. They do not care. So again, who will pay for this? Sorry to break it to you, the viewers watching this, but you will. Your family, your town, your city, your county, your state, your local election administrator, Republican and Democrat, who are required to bear the burden of this change. This is an unfunded mandate, plain and simple. I remember hearing for years, my Republican friends, no unfunded mandates. This is the mother of all unfunded mandates. Two weeks before an election, costing tens of billions of dollars, you're going to get stuck with the bill. This is a fiat from a Washington awash in corruption, telling you how to run your elections. Because you know who else will pay for this? America's democracy. I say again, this bill is not about voter ID. It's about ending your ability to cast a free and fair ballot. For the sake of American elections, I strongly, strongly urge the House to reject this zombie bill. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I reserve the balance of my time.