Political Quotes

“Mr. President, first, I thank my colleagues who have gathered here on the floor to help pass and urge the passage of this very important piece of legislation, the For the People Act. Our Constitution begins with three words that ring in the minds of each and every American, ``We the People.'' Seventy-six years after those words were written, President Lincoln resolved, in 1863, that those who had lost their lives on the battlefield at Gettysburg ``shall not have died in vain and that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth.'' One hundred two years after Gettysburg, our beloved former colleague, Congressman John Lewis--then a civil rights activist and leader-- together with nonviolent marchers, was beaten bloody by Alabama State Troopers in 1965 as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge while demanding voting rights. Later that year in 1965, Congress acted and did pass the Voting Rights Act, and it was reauthorized regularly thereafter, most recently in 2006 by a vote of 90 to 0 here in the U.S. Senate and 390 to 33 in the House, where I served at that time. Then, in 2013, in the case of Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court, in a notorious 5-to-4 decision, stripped away a key enforcement provision from the Voting Rights Act: the requirement that the Department of Justice approve changes to voting rights laws in States that had histories of discriminating against African-American voters and others in their past laws.…”