Political Quotes

“I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me and thank her so much for bringing this issue before the American people. For several weeks now, we have all heard discussions about various aspects of H.R. 1 and H.R. 4. Now, H.R. 4, as all of us know, has not yet passed the Congress and is now before the Senate. But I wanted to bring two issues to the forefront here this evening. The first one has to do with the so-called preclearance that we just heard a discussion on. I am serving in the Congress today in large part because of the preclearance in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But preclearance came into being because of some targeted legislation, legislation targeted toward those States that had a history of discriminating. Therefore, because all the States did not have that kind of a history, we had to go out and develop a record to show that this is the reason these particular States are being targeted. All or parts of seven States were initially covered and, of course, we all know what happened in Shelby County v. Holder. The 1965 Voting Rights Act was virtually gutted because the formula of section 4 is no longer operative. Therefore, section 5 has really been neutralized, which is the preclearance. Here is something I want to bring to the attention of the American people, and that is this: If you were to only pass preclearance as it relates to a history of discrimination, we will miss what is happening in the country today.…”