reaction to our reporting that senate democrats are close to an agreement on updated voting rights legislation that can get the support of all 50 democrats. what do you want to see in this agreement? well, i m heartened by this news. i think we absolutely need some version of hr1 or hr4 and or both. hr4 is the john lewis vote rights act. but i d like to see our significant components of the legislation involved in whatever this compromised agreement is with restoring preclearanced measures for those states who have had a history of suppressing minority voters and others. i d like to see more campaign finance disclosures. i authored a provision with regard to encouraging student voting, which is unfortunately too low at too many college campuses and other places. i m hoping to see that in the final bill as well.
do you think that one of the outcomes, the unintended outcomes of what republicans have done is they will make it harder for their folks to vote too or do you fear that what they have done is going to be effective at shutting down the progress that s been think they effective? that s a great question. you know, i actually did a tweet not too long ago speaking about the one republican that, between these two bills, h.r. 4 as well as s.b. 1 in the texas house, the only republican that actually voted against the passage of s.b. 1, lyle larsen, he understands that. i recall i apologize. i recall when he actually sent us a letter specifically stating that there were elections officials in republican areas that were saying, hey, this brill is bad, and they were laying out the sections that
out achieve if the bill will pass in. first of all, it s great to see you. my heart has been broken for the last few days knowing that some of my colleagues decided it was best to give the republicans and the texas state house a quorum. while we did accomplish a lot, we did not accomplish enough, in my opinion to decide it was time to go back. some of those things we accomplished is that hr4 is a bill that had been filed over and over while john lewis was alive. sadly enough, it can never get passed. it got passed in the house. we started a movement in this country. we made it clear that voting rights is under attack. hey, who cares, who knows.
we re talking about is rereturned to states by states to have the right to decide election law. the whole idea of the civil rights movement was to get the federal government to stop states rights, including in voting rights. that s what the voting rights bill of 65 was about. that s why based on what they did, we now must make the senate carve around the filibuster and give us this senate bill which is hr4. if they can carve around the filibuster to confirm donald trump s nominees to the supreme court, what is more basic in a democracy than to have a carve out to protect people s right to vote particularly when they are being targeted by race. that would be seem to be pretty logical. the irony here is that a lot of the rules, the 24-hour voting and making it easier to vote was because of the pandemic.
well, first and foremost, maria, you can see it s not in law. the answer is, yes, we can. secondly, if we watch the states, georgia passed an election law that more people are registered to vote than any time before and difficult to ever cheat again. state after state where dem kravitz have left the state. that s where the difficulty lies. now we got them back to texas. we are going exactly what the constitution says, not to make this a national campaign but empower the states to where we are going. we are fighting every single day. we watch the democrats because they could not pass hr1, they are bringing hr4 now while thousands of americans are being held hostage in afghanistan. that s their priority because they know they will lose the election. nancy pelosi is only down to 4 votes and they want to spend another almost $5 trillion to bring the greater inflation. you know, president biden said he s going to bring us back.