SAVE AMERICA ACT

SAVE AMERICA ACT

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 52 (Saturday, March 21, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 52 (Saturday, March 21, 2026)] [Senate] [Pages S1484-S1493] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] SAVE AMERICA ACT Mr. LEE. Mr. President, we have had more discussion today on a number of topics. One of the topics that has commanded a lot of today's discussion is the bill that is now pending before the U.S. Senate, the SAVE America Act. There have been more assertions made on this bill today than there have been in the past. So I need to address each one of those points, particularly those that have not been refuted--or at least adequately refuted today--in connection with these debates. While it is difficult to know exactly where to begin, I am going to begin--before I refute these--just with a generalized statement up front that will facilitate my ability to refute. These scurrilous and false arguments that have been made against this bill--now, although some of these arguments have been mingled with truth, they are almost entirely false. They are built on lies. They are built on a blatant mischaracterization of the legislative text now pending before the Senate. They are based on a mischaracterization of the legal status quo and the effects of existing laws. [[Page S1485]] They are based on mischaracterizations of the Constitution. They are based on mischaracterizations of the individual motives of the lawmakers in this body--something that we are not supposed to call into question but that has been called into question on a number of occasions today. First, as to the general backdrop against which we are operating, we remember that the whole purpose of the SAVE America Act is to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. We remember the fact that the purpose of the SAVE America Act is to do this through a two-step mechanism--one that focuses on requiring proof of citizenship at the time of voter registration and another that requires photo ID at the time and place of voting. The whole reason that this law became necessary, that this bill, this legislative project came into existence about 2\1/2\ years ago, was that Congressman Chip Roy and I--Congressman Roy comes from Texas--he and I were talking, and, having been informed by some experts in this area, we pieced together a number of features--legal, factual, historical developments--that have converged into one, producing a massive gap in our election security. Remember that the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 has been interpreted by the Supreme Court in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona as prohibiting the States from doing any followup to verify, confirm, or refute someone's citizenship. Although Federal law does, in fact--as has been noted repeatedly today on the floor of the Senate--require that you be a U.S. citizen to vote in a Federal election, that doesn't enforce itself. In fact, that criminal prohibition against noncitizen voting in Federal elections has become more or less impossible to enforce because noncitizen voting is nearly impossible to detect under the status quo. Because of the Supreme Court's ruling in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona in 2013, the States can't ask for proof of citizenship for anyone who registers to vote at a DMV--through an NVRA form at a DMV while applying for a driver's license and simultaneously going through the process of registering to vote. Remember, all you have to do with an NVRA form at the DMV while you are applying for a driver's license is check one box saying: Yes, I would like to simultaneously register to vote. The only further act is to sign your name certifying that you are, in fact, eligible to vote. That is the end of the inquiry, and there can be no more inquiry, and that is part of what is causing so much of a problem. Decades ago, there were simply fewer noncitizens in the United States. In many instances, it was difficult to get a driver's license if you were a noncitizen--especially if you were an illegal immigrant--and that, too, has changed. We have now got 30 million-plus noncitizens in this country. We have 10- to 15 million illegal immigrants in this country, specifically illegal immigrants who arrived within that 4-year period between January 20, 2021--the day President Biden took office-- and January 20, 2025--the day President Trump became President for the second time. This veritable flood of illegal immigration--a mass-scale border invasion invited by the Biden administration, contrary to our laws--brought these circumstances about. So when you merge that with the fact that we have a lot of noncitizens here generally, coupled with the fact that it is impossible for the State to ask for any type of proof of citizenship for someone registering to vote at a DMV through an NVRA-supplied form, you have a recipe for disaster that we have never had previously in this country. All right. So as to the arguments, they are picking apart arguments with it. Now, these arguments, first of all, are themselves at odds with how the American people approach this. The American people understand that it is not that big of a deal--it is not the end of the world; it is certainly not Armageddon--to suggest that somebody ought to show who they are and that they have the right to do what they want to do, to establish that they are citizens when they register to vote, to establish on the day of voting at the polling location that they are the person indicated on the voter registration file. The American people overwhelmingly understand and accept the fact that this isn't that big of a deal. Sure, it might be an incremental burden for some, but it is not going to be a problem, and it is a problem that Americans are used to dealing with. You don't go to the bank or to the pharmacy or to the doctor's office or to a hospital, you don't apply for a hunting license or a fishing license, you don't buy a gun, you don't go through TSA and travel--you don't do any of these things and much, much more without being able to prove who you are and that you have the right to do the thing you are about to do. The same is true with the Oscars, the Grammys, the Emmys, the Super Bowl, and the Democratic National Convention. You cannot get into and participate in the Democratic National Convention unless you show up with voter ID and credentials. What else is like that? Oh, yes, I know: the U.S. Senate. You cannot come to the U.S. Senate, you can't cast a vote in the U.S. Senate, you certainly can't make it into this Chamber without ID and without credentials establishing that you have the right to be here as a Senator, the right to vote as a Senator, to make laws as a Senator. Every one of us has had to go through this over and over again--not just when we vote or do any of the other things that I mentioned, but when we register as candidates, we have to show who we are and that we are eligible to run for the U.S. Senate, that we meet the constitutional requirements for service in the U.S. Senate. We have to show our ID again when we vote. Then even after we win our elections--if we are so fortunate as those of us serving in this body have been--you still have to show up and produce an ID on a couple of different occasions. You have to show your ID and your birth certificate or a U.S. passport in order to establish your citizenship, just as you would with any other job. Remember, every American citizen who has any job as an employee in the United States of America has to establish their citizenship. They have to do that by either showing a U.S. passport that establishes citizenship or, alternatively, a birth certificate and a photo ID. So we have to do that here, just like any other government employee, any other private sector employee in America. But as Senators, we also have to show up with other documentation. In addition to showing that we are who we claim to be and that we are that person who claims to have been elected to the U.S. Senate in the most recent senatorial election, we also have to show up and have the benefit of an election certificate by our chief elections officer--the secretary of state or Lieutenant Governor in most States--to establish that we are eligible to participate here. So this is no different. And the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention as well. These are not unusual standards or requirements. So let's get onto these arguments. Over and over and over again, we heard this from both the senior Senator from Rhode Island and from the junior Senator from Rhode Island, among others, over the last few days. We are being told this would bring about a massive campaign of voter disenfranchisement. Let's remember what ``disenfranchisement'' means. In this context, it means you are taking people who can vote today and making it so that they can't vote tomorrow. This is an argument conceived in Hell by the Devil himself because it is just utterly false. There is not a scintilla of truth to this. You could try to breathe life into it by adding inference upon inference, taking different statements out of context; you would still be lying if you were making this argument because there is nothing about it that disenfranchises anyone. (Mrs. BRITT assumed the Chair.) If anything, what this would do is this would prevent the disenfranchisement of actual U.S. citizens by those who are not citizens of our country, by those who--whether through mistake or, more likely, fraud--may register to vote notwithstanding the fact that they are not eligible to do this. The modern left has become obsessed with what they consider victimless crimes. We hear about this from the [[Page S1486]] modern left all the time, and we have heard about that in this very Chamber this very day. They approach noncitizen voting as if it were such a minor thing not only in terms of the numbers, the frequency or infrequency with