bill i say principles in this bill that are similar to those that i have, i believe that the senator from kansas is first and foremost a patriot. he is a patriot before he is a republican, i have seen him lay aside his party concerns, on many occasions. i believe sincerely and genuinely that he s prepared to do it again now. and i intend to participate not only with the senator from kansas but with other members who see a problem in this country and are prepared, urgently, to work to try to solve it. i yield the floor. senator from new york. may i just express my gratitude for those noble words. thank you. to have the capacity to change the course of this debate, i hope they will do that. and joining us now is former
bill that really emboldened and empower these partisan poll watchers in a very scary way. you combine that with the fact that this law was carried in the state of texas. so have this fear that a number of people that were involved in the insurrection, because 20 people from texas decided to go and participate in the insurrection, then showing up at the polls in a threatening manner, intimidating manner, and saying that they are poll watchers, untrained poll watchers. and there is nothing that says, hey, you ve got to give me 50 feet, as the song says. the two have to back up. there is nothing that talks about how close that poll watchers can be to this person. and we ve heard these recordings of these groups that say, we re gonna have to go down there to where the fraud is occurring. talking about going into the urban centers and intimidating black and brown voters. that is a huge problem.
clinton health care bill was being debated on the senate floor with finance committee each moynahan as the floor manager of the bill and me with a front row seat on the senate floor beside the chairman, we had those luncheon gatherings with senators like the one president biden attended today. the president never attended those luncheons then, but often sent high ranking representatives from the white house, the official who joined us that day told us that the message of the day on the senate floor should be, demonized oil. nothing about the policy in bobbed oils republican health care bill that was competing with the clinton health care bill on the senate floor, just demonized doyle. the white house was understandably frustrated that the clinton health care bill was stuck in the predictably slow motion of the senate floor where it would a few weeks later, eventually, die. from that frustration came the message of the day from the
have a proposal, the president has will listen to that. we ll look at the proposal, look at the priorities they have for a country, and basically look at how we re gonna pay for it. and if there are tasks adjustments being made with i think we should start paying for stuff. everything? but is this a red line for you? there are no red lines. no red lines. that is all you re ever listening for, that s all you want to know at this stage of legislation. does anyone out there have a red line that this legislation crosses and that person can t support it? no redlines means joe manchin is on board with this bill. yes, he s gonna want to see the details, sure, they all want to see the details. but he is on board. senator manchin had previously indicated that he didn t want this bill to go much above two trillion dollars while bernie sanders insisted that it should be in the six trillion dollar range. and now they have both compromised to get to this point.
and as of tonight, not a single democrat has laid down a red line that will prevent this bill from passing. senator sanders framed this bill s place in history this way. i would say the most consequential piece of legislation being proposed since the great depression and fdr. it is complicated, it is difficult, but i believe that it is with the american people want. and i hope very much that if we all see if we are successful, people will say that this is the moment where we restored faith in our government, that it can work for people, not just the wealthy. i find it easy to describe the process that we are seeing here, but it is difficult to prescribe. the degree of legislative difficulty, and what you are watching tonight, and the precision required, we have never seen anything like this before. we have never seen a giant presidential program being