Angus King

I wanted to ask Mr. Chapple to convey my congratulations to the first Director of the National Park Service in five years.

We have a real problem with staffing in the National Parks.

So that is a technology that ought to be very useful in this situation.

My recollection is--and we have passed this bill, as we both have recognized, every year for the past 60 years, including over the last 4 or 5 years--in the last several years, there weren't that many amendments. There were a few, and it…

What my legislation will do is simply say, 'We want you to do a study of what the impact will be on domestic prices.'

If exports were limited to a surplus, then it would not affect domestic prices, but it has to be affecting domestic prices and it is getting serious now.

We are racing blindly into a future and cutting off our most significant economic advantage vis-a-vis the rest of the world, particularly China.

There is one law that this Congress cannot repeal--the law of supply and demand.

I think often politicians, and particularly presidents, get blamed for gas prices which, in fact, fluctuate substantially as we know based upon oil prices and fluctuations in the market, rarely from executive action.

We are exporting our principal advantage in the world economy. We are literally subsidizing Chinese manufacturing by sending them our natural gas.

We are squandering an advantage right now because of uncontrolled exports of natural gas.

We need to protect against interference in the counting of ballots.

Congress and our--actually the drafters of our Constitution anticipated that the Congress would have a role in making or altering the laws of elections.

We need to empower voters to challenge efforts in states to make sure that they are not undermining election results.

I want to make it clear here and now on the record that I, for one, would be very willing and able to enter into constructive discussions with my Republican colleagues on what they would like in the bill.

It is entirely within the authority of Congress, Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution does in fact begin by saying Legislature shall enact voting regulations.

The American people--it would be a great thing for the American people to see Congress working in a bipartisan way to deal with elections.

We are trying to set a floor, a national floor for protecting the right to vote and protecting the integrity of the voting system.

I also invite my Republican colleagues to work with us on these commonsense solutions.

We need both sides to come to the table, and I think the example of what happened in Kentucky... is a terrific example for us to follow.

Let's get rid of this idea that there is no role for Congress or the Federal Government in election laws.

I think what you said is very important because what you said is consistent with everything I have read and heard about voter fraud across the country, and that is it is isolated.

The reason those threats are being made is that people are being told something that is untrue, that a, there was massive fraud, and b, that election officials were in on the fraud.

Part of the problem is we have converted political--political opponents into enemies and everything is a war.

You can get 41 votes out of the current Senate, which was enough to block any legislation. And if you take the states that those 41 senators represent, add all the population together, you get 24 percent of the American people. So, the…