Schumer says there is a ‘rot at the center’ of the Republican Party

While making a speech to advance the For the People Act in the Senate on Tuesday, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said there is a “rot at the center of the modern Republican Party” over efforts to restrict voting after former President Donald Trump’s “big lie” of voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Video Transcript

CHUCK SCHUMER: Mr. President, Act 77 was passed in 2019 by the Pennsylvania State legislature, when Republicans held the majority in both houses. Among other voting reforms, the bill provided for no excuse absentee voting and extended registration deadlines. At the time, Republicans in the state legislature were operating under the assumption that mail-in voting would boost participation among seniors who tend to lean Republican. Every single Republican state Senator voted for the bill.

In the state house, 105 Pennsylvania Republicans voted for the bill and two voted no. That was 2019. Fast forward one year later, Donald Trump, fresh off a resounding loss in the 2020 presidential election, cried foul and lied, lied that the election was stolen from him like a petulant child. One of his favorite bugaboos, as we all know, was mail in voting. So, over a little after-- a little over a year, after 132 Pennsylvania Republicans voted for Act 77 with only two against, they introduced a bill to, you guessed it, repeal Act 77, a law that Republicans passed while they were in the majority just a year before.

Mr. President, there is a rot, a rot at the center of the modern Republican Party. Donald Trump's big lie has spread like a cancer and threatens to envelop one of America's major political parties. Even worse, it has poisoned our democracy, eroded faith in our elections, which is so detrimental to the future faith people need to have in this democracy. And, of course, it became the match that lit a wildfire of Republican voter suppression laws sweeping across the country.

Because of one man's lie, Republicans are now doing the dastardly act of taking away voting from millions of Americans, millions of Americans, making it much harder for them to vote and many, many, many will not.