US CONGRESS · SITTING

Mike Lee

Senator for Utah · Republican · United States

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

“997) to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to conform to the intent of the Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998, as set forth in the joint explanatory statement of the committee of conference accompanying Conference Report 105-599, that the National Taxpayer Advocate be able to hire and consult counsel as app…”
Senate28 September 2026Source ↗

“I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Tuesday, September 29; that following the prayer and Pledge of Allegiance, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the da…”
Senate28 September 2026Source ↗

“Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the en bloc consideration of the following resolutions which are at the desk: S. Res. 914, S. Res. 915, and S. Res. 916. There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the resolutions en bloc. Mr. LEE.”
Senate28 September 2026Source ↗

“Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the provisions of S. Res. 913. There being no objection, as a further mark of respect to the late Nancy Kassebaum, former Senator from Kansas, the Senate, at 10:57 p.m., adjourned until Tuesday, September 29, 2026, at 10 a.m.”
Senate28 September 2026Source ↗

“There being no objection, the committee was discharged, and the Senate proceeded to consider the bill. Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.”
Senate28 September 2026Source ↗

“I ask unanimous consent that the committee-reported substitute amendment be agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.”
Senate28 September 2026Source ↗

The complete record

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“Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Thursday, July 30; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, morning business be closed, and the Senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of Executive Calendar No. 6, S. Res.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“818) recognizing the importance of trademarks in the economy and the role of trademarks in protecting consumer safety by designating the month of July as ``National Anti-Counterfeiting and Consumer Education and Awareness Month''. There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the resolution. Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 818, which is at the desk.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate resume legislative session and be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“We can't pretend this isn't here. This will not disappear simply because we leave. The cavalry is not coming. We are the cavalry. There are no house elves who will come and fix our election security problems. So let's get this done. And for the love of all that is sacred and holy, let's not go on a 6-week recess with all of this undone. The American people deserve better.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“You could bypass the need for cloture with budget reconciliation, but it has to be budgetary, and it has to meet a whole bunch of requirements. It has to be budgetary, which means it needs to manage changes in mandatory outlays or revenues; and it can't, among other things, have budgetary features that are merely incidental to policy changes. But there are ways that we could capture some of the benefits of the SAVE America Act through reconciliation. But my point is just to say there are multiple ways of skinning this cat. I don't care nearly as much which way to skin it. I would personally prefer to bring it up on the floor and debate it until it passes. I think that is the cleanest way of doing it. But I am not a purist on that. I don't insist it be my way or the highway. I am just saying we do have to do it.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“We should be debating it for weeks on end, if necessary, cutting into weekends and long-scheduled recess time, if necessary, making clear we are going to keep debating it until it passes, and making clear that the minute those filibustering it fail to show up and continue to speak, we will call the question, and we will pass it with a simple majority. We could do that. We should do that. It takes time, yes. But time is on our side. We have got weeks in which to do this. We should do that. Now, if we don't want to do that, there are other mechanisms available to us. We could continue to attach it to other must-pass vehicles. We could also push something in the form of budget reconciliation. Now, that is a little trickier.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“If you can't break a filibuster and you don't have 60 votes to bring debate to a close using cloture, you can put legislation on the floor, and you can debate it, and you can require any Senator wishing to filibuster to continue to show up and continue to speak to prolong debate. The filibuster is about speaking; it is about debating; it is not about perpetually forestalling the passing of legislation until you have 60 votes for it. Passage in this Chamber, with rare exceptions not relevant here, is set at a simple majority, at 51 votes. And if the Vice President is with you, you can do it at 50 votes. The Vice President supplies the tie-breaking vote of 51, and then it is passed. We could do that. We should be putting this measure on the Senate floor.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“Now, I know it takes 60 votes to invoke cloture, but, you know, long before there even was a cloture rule--there has only been a cloture rule for 109 years. Before that time, we still had the filibuster, just no cloture. Remember, a cloture vote is just one way of breaking the filibuster. If a supermajority of Senators--under the current rule, three-fifths, 60 votes in the Senate--if 60 Senators want to force debate to come to a close even if some Senators want to continue debating, then the Senate can do so, but that is not the exclusive means by which you can break a filibuster. Other techniques are available--techniques that were available for nearly 150 years before the first cloture rule was even adopted in 1917.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“The House elves aren't going to show up and do our work for us if we retreat into the sunset for 6 weeks. We have to do this. We had an opportunity tonight to make a meaningful dent in our election security problem. And it is tragic that the Democrats chose not to let this reasonable measure pass into law--a measure that 71 percent of their voters and 83 percent of all American voters support. They can't handle it--apparently because they benefit too much when people vote illegally. Shame on them for taking that position, but shame on us if we leave before the job is done. Lastly, far too much gets said around here about, Oh, we can't do X, Y, or Z because we don't have 60 votes. I get that that is said. That cannot become our anthem. That is an absurd suggestion.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“I later learned that it was installed when they built this wing of the Capitol in the late 1850s. That was their source of water. They had a pipe in there. The custodial staff at the time used it to get water so that they could clean the floors. I didn't know that at the time. As we were walking around, my 10-year-old daughter Eliza asked me: Dad, what is that door for? Not knowing how to answer, I just said the first thing that came to mind. I said: Well, that is for the House elves. The House elves live in there. Of course, there are no House elves here, but sometimes, we act as if we are relying on the House elves to not only clean the Capitol but also clean up the messes that we make and that we leave undealt with, unaddressed legislatively while we are gone. The cavalry is not coming. We are the cavalry.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“So when the government remains unfunded and we have no idea how we are going to secure an election system that, quite frankly, is recklessly, criminally insecure--we have no business leaving this Chamber for 6 weeks when we have no idea how we are going to take care of any of that. These problems are not going to solve themselves while we are gone. I remember 15 years ago when I was first sworn in. I was younger then. I had a full head of hair. I was only 39 years old. I was the youngest Member of the Senate when I got sworn in. Right after I got sworn in, we were walking one evening around the Capitol. I was showing it to my family. My daughter Eliza was 10 years old at the time. She pointed to one of the little doors out in the hallway just outside the Senate Chamber. It is a door that is maybe 18 inches tall at the most.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“I know it is a tradition that has its roots back to long before the advent of modern air-conditioning and to a time when Washington, DC--you know, it is typically not the most pleasant weather in Washington, and this Chamber, I am sure, became suffocatingly hot and muggy, so for a long time, we had that August recess. Well, we have air-conditioning now. We can handle it. It is true we frequently do take a recess in August, but it is not written in stone anywhere, it is not written in law anywhere that we have to do that. I would be fine doing that if we had gotten our work done. I would be fine doing that if we knew how our government was going to be funded past September 30. Right now, we have no idea.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“They don't want a government that has been chosen with significant foreign influence in our elections. There was a time when the Democrats in this august Chamber--a time not so very long ago indeed--spoke of little else other than their fear of foreign election interference. If we don't face the real challenge as to foreign election interference right now, as long as we are not passing the SAVE America Act or its key components, it would appear that those who are against this are just fine now with foreign election interference. The American people shouldn't be because, again, it is not free.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“Who benefits from people being able to show up and claim to be someone they are not or from someone showing up who is not entitled to vote because they are not a U.S. citizen? Who benefits from that? I can tell you it is not Republicans. Why? Well, you don't see a single Republican politician making the ridiculous, absurd arguments against voter ID and citizenship verification that these guys are making. Who benefits from illegal voting? Their words seem to suggest that they are benefiting. This issue isn't going away. The SAVE America Act isn't going away. Voter ID requirement demands aren't going away. I will be back. I will be back day after day, week after week, until this passes because the American people deserve to go to bed every night knowing that their government is run by people they themselves elected, not foreign nationals.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“A few months ago when we had the SAVE America Act on the floor for, I don't know, 10 blessed days--should have been longer, but it was on the floor for about 10 days. During that time, I was on the floor a lot responding to arguments that they made, and I think I heard every single argument they made. The overwhelming majority of them--and I mean probably 95-plus percent of the arguments they made against the SAVE America Act-- weren't even against the voter ID provisions of the SAVE America Act. Overwhelmingly, they were instead about the proof of citizenship issue. In fact, many of them, Democratic Senator after Democratic Senator, intimated one way or another that they are OK with voter ID requirements. So why are they opposing it? You have to ask yourself that question. In Latin, there is a word for this: ``Cui bono?'' Who benefits?”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“We have had Democratic politician after Democratic politician part from their own Democratic voter base, which overwhelmingly supports voter ID, time and time and time again, showing up and saying: Oh, we don't want voter ID. Why? Now, they actually say this: We believe this would shut out a lot of our voters. What? Is that an admission that a lot of their voters aren't who they claim to be? that a lot of their voters perhaps aren't U.S. citizens and aren't eligible to vote? This ought to be concerning to everyone. It ought to be concerning especially to Democrat voters, especially in States that have elected a Democrat Senator who is now opposing any and every sort of voter ID requirement.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“We saw tonight my friend and colleague, the distinguished Senator from California, contorting himself into a pretzel trying to explain why it is we can't pass this bill. To be clear, his objection, as far I can tell, didn't relate nearly as much to anything else in the bill other than the voter ID provision. That is the concern. The question is, Why is it that when 70 percent of Democrat voters and 83, 84 percent of all voters, Democrat and Republican combined--why is it that my Democrat colleagues are so adamantly opposed to this? Why do they care? Why do they want the status quo? I am always reluctant to speak on someone else's behalf because what they say--No. 1, I don't have the ability to read minds, but sometimes, what they say can give us an indication.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“We don't allow people to board aircraft without a photo ID, and the reason is there are all kinds of things that can happen in the sky that are dangerous, and you don't want to make it too easy for somebody claiming to be who they are not to board an aircraft and then carry out, you know, crimes of one sort or another--acts of terrorism, perhaps. These are just a couple examples of the myriad instances in which we have to prove who we are. It is not an undue burden; it is a momentary detour from what we would otherwise be doing. Most of the time, most people, when they show up to vote, already have their wallet with them, and in their wallet, they presumably have a driver's license or another form of government-issued photo ID, so why not require them to show that?”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“Americans intuitively understand that whatever mild inconvenience might accompany having to provide documentation for who you are, when most of the time, that can be done with a simple card like a driver's license, for example, a passport, something like that, something showing who you are that is issued by the government--we have come to accept as a society that that is just sort of the cost of living in our country. That is part of what it takes because if we didn't do that, the alternative would be bad. You don't want to show up to your bank one day and discover that somebody else impersonating you, falsely claiming to be you, came in and withdrew all of your money. You don't want that.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“This one should be a no-brainer. For the American people, it is a no-brainer. Democratic voters--71 percent favor voter ID requirements. When you add Republicans--so Democrat voters and Republican voters combined--you take it up to 83, 84 percent. If you poll Republican voters alone, we are talking in the mid- to high-90 percentile range for people who support voter ID requirements. The reason for this is simple. This is obvious. It is intuitive. It is just as we have to prove who we are everywhere else we go where who you are matters and whether you are who you claim to be can make a big difference.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“Under article I, sections 4 and 5, this legislation that we have been discussing this evening, H.R. 7008, deals with a couple of core powers that Congress has, one of them involving the regulation of behavior and activities on the part of Members of Congress, Members of the House and the Senate. In the second instance, you have the regulation of the casting of ballots for Federal elections--for elections for Federal office, elections for the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. We certainly have authority to act in both of those two areas. There is not a lot of dispute--in other words, there is a lot of bipartisan consensus over the fact that it is time to restrict stock buying and selling on the part of Members of Congress. It is stunning, however, that the voter ID component of H.R. 7008 is at all controversial.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“There are a few other powers, but the lion's share of it can be found somewhere in that list of relatively limited authorities that I just described. We venture sometimes too far afield from those powers, and that is one of the reasons why a lot of things come up. My point in reciting all this is that in all the debates we see, which probably range further than they should, we see some things that are weighty and some things that are more on the trivial side. Just to cite one random hypothetical, one minute, you could see something debated and maybe passed on this floor recognizing, I don't know, National Sofa Care Week or something like that that goes by sort of with a yawn, and then the next moment, we will be debating something more weighty, something more significant and more definitely relevant to the U.S. Government's powers.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“So we are going to be talking about this for a little while tonight, and I just want to encourage my Democratic colleagues on this side of the Capitol right here in the U.S. Senate to follow the lead of the wise Democrats who joined every Republican to vote for this in the House of Representatives. We need to get this done. We should get it done. We have the opportunity to get it done tonight, and we will be talking more about that in a moment.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“We don't want anyone disenfranchised, and that is exactly what happens when you allow someone who is not whom they claim to be, who is not entitled to vote, to show up and cast a vote, and that is wrong. So today we have got a really good opportunity to address these two issues that Americans are deeply concerned about, and I hope we can take advantage of this opportunity. Now, the vote on the House of Representatives' side of this bill-- like I say, it was just passed recently by the House of Representatives--it was bipartisan. You had Republicans overwhelmingly support it, but you also had a number of House Democrats voting with every House Republican in favor of this bill with the clean voter ID requirement attached.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“Americans at every corner of our country and at every point along the political idealogical spectrum in this country agree that this makes sense to do, specifically in the context--not just of needing to produce ID where it matters whether you are who you claim to be, but specifically in the context of voter ID, of having to produce identification at the moment you vote, at the place where you vote. Mr. President, 83 percent of American voters, in total, support voter ID, and that includes a whopping 71 percent of Democrat voters. So this is neither Republican nor Democratic. This is neither liberal nor conservative. This is simply an American issue because we don't want anyone's right to vote to be taken away.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“So far be it from us to second guess the Democratic Party in deciding people need to prove who they are to enter their convention hall or their party headquarters. We should have voters do the same thing. And Democrats are smart in doing that because, after all, they don't want somebody showing up to their convention. I mean, good heavens, what if a Republican showed up to their Democratic National Convention and tried to skew the results of their convention by pretending to be a Democrat--a Democrat delegate no less. That wouldn't be fair. So they are absolutely right to require photo ID and to require delegates to present their convention credentials so that they can show that they are who they claim to be and that they have the right to participate at their own convention.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“When you show up to vote, you just have to show an ID, just like you do at the bank, just like you do at the pharmacy or the doctor's office or the bank or when boarding an airplane. And if you vote by mail, then that is easy to accommodate. You just include a simple photocopy of your photo ID. Now, we have gone to great lengths to make sure that everyone is taken care of here, to make sure that there is not a single U.S. citizen that would be disadvantaged or unable to vote if we were to pass this. So for those who, let's say, for whatever reason, don't have access to a photocopier and they want to vote by mail, well, we have taken that into consideration.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“We should require nothing less when it comes to the exercise of one of the most fundamental rights that Americans have; that is, their right to vote. You see, when someone else votes in your place, they displace your vote. They offset your vote. If they are double voting, if they are voting when they are not allowed to vote because they are not a citizen or otherwise, if they do something foolish and they try to go and vote, they will be caught if they are asked to produce an ID at the balloting place. So this bill accomplishes both of these things. And like I say, both of them would do a lot to restore faith, confidence, and integrity in our system of government. Dealing specifically with the voter ID requirement in this legislation, this is a very straightforward requirement.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“Mr. President, I would like to address the Senate today regarding a bill that has been passed by the House of Representatives known as H.R. 7008. H.R. 7008 performs two badly needed functions to restore faith and integrity in our system of government: Firstly, it bans Members of Congress from using their unique access and knowledge to profit through stock market speculation; secondly, it requires something very simple, a voter ID. You have got to show an ID when you pick up something at will call if you are there to pick up tickets to the theater, if you are picking up a prescription at the pharmacy, if you are going to the bank, if you are boarding an airplane--you are doing all kinds of things that are part of Americans' day-to-day experience where it matters whether you are who you claim to be, you have got to show an ID.”
Senate29 July 2026Source ↗
“It is not too late for us to get this done, nor is it too much for us to ask the American people to do that which they have to do every single day--sometimes many times in the same day--to show that they are who they claim to be. Our right to vote, our most sacred incident of U.S. citizenship, requires nothing less. ____________________”
Senate20 July 2026Source ↗
“It certainly is possible. And I wonder--I mean, we will have a separate conversation off the floor. I am trying to wonder which words in Spanish they uttered. I am trying to imagine them saying something like: Has this guy lost his mind? After he moved to the United States when he was 8 years old, he has now adopted the ways of North America and he has lost it. Perhaps there is something about the tropical climate of Colombia that causes them to make more sense there, but perhaps you have lost your sense now that you have moved to Ohio? Perhaps the rationale?”
Senate20 July 2026Source ↗
“They wouldn't make that case if they were committed to the rule of law, and yet they have made the case. We have heard them do it. Some of them, on the floor of the U.S. Senate, have said: These are our voters. I don't know whether that was a Freudian slip, but I have heard it made several times where they say: These are our voters who would be at stake here--and then they go on about disenfranchisement. This disenfranchises no one unless it is a noncitizen who is illegally voting based on a fraudulent voter registration.”
Senate20 July 2026Source ↗
“There is a justification. The justification goes something like this: Those people who might be purged from this because they are noncitizens and therefore not legally registered to vote are our voters, meaning Democrat voters.”
Senate20 July 2026Source ↗
“Yes. As Cicero once said on the floor of the Roman Senate: If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice--actually, that wasn't Cicero; it was Rush in the song ``Freewill.'' But the point was made: When you are aware of something and you do nothing about it, that, by itself, is a decision. They have identified that this is an issue. And by suggesting that we move forward while doing nothing about it, that--there is an inexorable, inescapable conclusion that one derives from that, which is: They are just fine with this form of cheating. They are just fine with the very real possibility that up to 278,000 noncitizens, in those 4 States alone that we mentioned--to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands in other States that might be registered to vote illegally-- that those guys are going to vote. They are just fine with that.”
Senate20 July 2026Source ↗
“I think that is right. There is a part of me that is now tempted to seek to pass by unanimous consent at least that portion of the SAVE America Act that consists of a voter ID law because they themselves have said, over and over again, that they have got no problems with voter ID laws until, of course, they do have a problem with them.”
Senate20 July 2026Source ↗
“They wanted to pass their own voter ID law. Now, theirs is a little different than ours. Theirs is a little bit more permissive. They allow all sorts of other things, like--depending on how you read it, you could argue that a library card without your picture on it would even suffice under this. I wouldn't draw it quite like that, but the point is they were going to do something to require voter ID. Even though we might draw the boundaries a little bit differently than they do--and we, in fact, do in ours--they were doing the very same thing that they are now condemning us for doing because, if the SAVE America Act is commandeering a State issue on the part of the Federal Government, then so, too, was the For the People Act. If it is wrong to have--and if it is disenfranchisement to require--voter ID, then theirs does that, too.”
Senate20 July 2026Source ↗
“Whether you call it hypocrisy and inconsistency or something else, it can't be reconciled with what they themselves have done. Now, I have got a copy right here of a significant portion of that bill, the bill offered up by the Senate Democrats in 2021 during the 117th Congress--the so-called For the People Act. I mean, what is not to like if you are for the people? And if you are against that, apparently, you are against the people. Maybe we should have thought of that when we named the SAVE America Act. But, regardless, that horse is out of the barn. This is a part of that bill, and it is the specific part of the bill in subtitle 1, section 1709 that requires voter ID. You see, the Democrats themselves had their own voter ID act, their own voter ID legislation. This is not State legislation; this is right here in this Chamber.”
Senate20 July 2026Source ↗
“If we fail to do so, neither history nor today's voters will smile upon us. I am now happy to turn the time over to my friend and colleague, the distinguished Senator from Ohio.”
Senate20 July 2026Source ↗
“They know that this is not about Republicans. It is not about Democrats. This isn't about the last election or the one before that. No, this one is about the next election and every election that comes after that. It is about the future. It is about whether the American people can stand and look at our election systems and have the confidence they need when they lawfully cast their ballots. They need to be able to stand with a degree of confidence that their ballot, their vote won't be canceled by fraud, diluted by ineligible voting, or jeopardized by a system that Washington spent years insisting was beyond reasonable debate when, in fact, it was not. American elections belong to American citizens. The SAVE America Act would make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. We must pass the SAVE America Act.”
Senate20 July 2026Source ↗
“If Democrats want to filibuster this bill, let them stand and speak like actual Senators actually filibustering because that is what filibustering is. If they don't show up to do that, then we call the question, we call the vote, and we do so with a simple majority because that is what our rules allow us to do with votes when they don't filibuster. But you can't have the benefit of filibustering if you are not willing to filibuster. Let them, as they are filibustering, explain why they are insisting that proving citizenship is somehow unreasonable in elections that are reserved for U.S. citizens. Let them explain why showing voter ID is simply too much to ask even though Americans show that they are comfortable showing ID in countless everyday interactions. The American people are watching, and they should be.”
Senate20 July 2026Source ↗
“This is the last week, absent some change in the respective Chambers' meeting schedules, the last legislative week until mid-September, which will take us to just--what is that?--6 weeks before the November election? That is unacceptable. We don't have a lack of time; we have a lack of spine. Don't ever confuse lack of time with lack of spine because they are two very different things. If we truly lack time, that would be one thing. We have time. We are just choosing not to use it. We are choosing to use it differently and, I would add, very poorly if we don't take this up. Take it up now and stay on the bill until it darn well passes. The Senate should stay here tomorrow, this weekend, next week, through weekends and long-scheduled recesses--as long as it takes. If opponents want to block it, let them do it in public.”
Senate20 July 2026Source ↗
“To whatever degree we do not have time, it is because we are choosing not to give it the time that it needs, that it deserves, that it requires. And shame on all of us for betraying our oath to the Constitution and our own commitment to our own voters. We are expected to look out for them, to defend them, to respect them enough. We have to give a crap--just enough of a crap in order to tell our voters, to say: We are not going to allow your vote to be offset by someone who is voting illegally. That is the least we can do. After this week, under the current schedule, the House and the Senate won't both simultaneously be back into session in the Capitol until-- wait for it--September 14. Mid-September.”
Senate20 July 2026Source ↗
“For that matter, now that it has become abundantly clear that we have identified 278,000 noncitizen voter registrations just in those four States alone--California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York--I challenge those who are not yet on board with the SAVE America Act to come up with something else that will fix the problem because it is no longer an excuse--it is no longer acceptable to simply ignore it. We know too much now. We can't ignore this problem. If you don't like the way we have written this, tell us what your alternative is, but doing nothing is not an option. So, look, we have been told meanwhile that there simply isn't enough time to debate SAVE America Act until it passes. Sorry. We would love to, but we can't. I am sorry, this falls on deaf ears. This is absurd.”
Senate20 July 2026Source ↗
“But, really, our slavish devotion to the zombie filibuster is not about the zombie filibuster or any kind of filibuster at all; it is slavish devotion to the truncated, predictable, light-duty legislative workweek. It is that coupled with the cloture standard that has created the modern zombie filibuster mess in which our Democrat colleagues were able to keep the Department of Homeland Security at least partially defunded for months and months out of the year. Now they want to use the same trick to make sure that our elections are not secure. Shame on them. Shame on all of them. Shame on anyone who is trying to do that.”
Senate20 July 2026Source ↗
“Budget reconciliation has the obvious advantage in that there is no cloture in the context of budget reconciliation, but it has to be budgetary, meaning it has to bring about changes to mandatory outlays or to revenues. Well, the SAVE America Act itself as a whole is properly perceived as a policy bill, not a budgetary one. There are features, there are elements of the SAVE America Act that are themselves arguably budgetary or at least could be made such in a budget reconciliation vehicle, and I look forward to working on that as well. One way or another, we have to get this done. The American people are asking us to act. The President has asked us to act. The only thing standing in the way of this bill passing is the Senate and specifically our slavish devotion to the zombie filibuster.”
Senate20 July 2026Source ↗
“What we should do every time that happens, just as it happened yesterday--or last week when we tried to get on the Defense Authorization Act--Democrats didn't vote for it, so we couldn't get the 60 votes on it. We should have continued trying to debate it and announced that we would stay on it until we could get the 60. But regardless, even if you don't do that with a large bill like the National Defense Authorization Act, you should do it with a small, simple, overwhelmingly popular bill like the SAVE America Act. It would work. It would work. But we have to do the hard work to do it. All right. So we have talked about attaching it to a spending bill or a defense authorization bill or some other must-pass vehicle. Another option under consideration involves budget reconciliation.”
Senate20 July 2026Source ↗
“Another would be to attach it, as the House of Representatives has done, to the National Defense Authorization Act. When we received the National Defense Authorization Act that was passed by the House of Representatives last week, the Senate refused to bring it up. They refused to bring up even the Senate committee- processed version. They refused to give what we call front-end cloture or cloture on the motion to proceed. See, this illustrates the problem I am pointing to. We are now into, what, our third, fourth instance of prominent pieces of legislation this year that have been unable to pass. Remember how the Department of Homeland Security was at least partially defunded for many months out of this fiscal year? The same thing happened there--we couldn't get the 60 votes, so we kept punting it.”
Senate20 July 2026Source ↗
“There are several instances--including when you are proposing a constitutional amendment, you are ratifying a treaty, trying to overcome a Presidential veto, for example--where a two-thirds supermajority is required. Otherwise, it is a simple majority. And that continues to be the case under the Senate rules today. It is just that we think of the 60-vote cloture standard as synonymous with the threshold needed to pass. It is not. The reason we talk about this, the reason I contrast what I call the real filibuster, the talking filibuster, against the zombie filibuster is that in the case of the zombie filibuster, nobody even has to work for it.”
Senate20 July 2026Source ↗
“Unless you can count to 60 on day one of a bill's consideration, you consider it failed. It is not just that it doesn't amplify it; it doesn't further the purpose of the filibuster. It undermines its very purpose. Rather than protecting robust debate, that renders debate obsolete. Shame on us if we can't see that. Shame on us if we don't take the steps necessary to extricate ourselves from the sharp, clinging talons of the so-called zombie filibuster--the name I have assigned for the use of the 60-vote cloture standard as a de facto 60-vote passage standard, which it is not, which it was never meant to be, which, if it were, it would arguably run afoul of the Constitution because the Constitution makes clear--when you are setting a supermajority threshold as the minimum standard, it makes clear where that is.”
Senate20 July 2026Source ↗

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