Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) tore into Democrats’ federal election reform bill Monday night, calling it “the single most dangerous piece of legislation before the United States Congress.”
“This is a massive Democratic power grab,” Cruz told Fox News’ “Hannity,” “and it’s because the number one priority of Joe Biden, of Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi is to stay in power for 100 years and to steal the rights of the voters to vote them out.”
The Senate Rules Committee is scheduled to meet Tuesday to consider the bill, formally known as the For the People Act of 2021. Cruz, a member of the committee, said he would introduce “46 amendments that I’m gonna force Democrats to vote on, one after the other after the other.”
Democrats say the legislation is needed to override state election laws like the one passed in Georgia earlier this year, which tightened ID requirements and expanded early voting. The measure, which passed the House along party lines, stands little chance in the Senate due to the 60-vote legislative filibuster.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), another member of the Rules Committee, tweeted Monday that the legislation “is not about voting rights. It’s about letting Washington Democrats control the terms of political debate and all 50 states’ election laws.”
Cruz went further Monday night, telling host Sean Hannity that the bill, which he described as “welfare for politicians,” would “register millions of illegal aliens [and] would register millions of criminals to vote because Democrats believe, and I think quite reasonably, that millions of illegal aliens and millions of criminals are likely to vote Democratic.”
The Texas senator added that the bill would turn the Federal Election Commission “into a partisan weapon to find, to prosecute, to sue Republicans,” making it “an attack dog” for Schumer, who claimed last month that the For the People Act “could very well cause the Senate to evolve.”
Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have come out against scrapping the legislative filibuster, though Cruz warned both could “cave under Chuck Schumer’s pressure” to reverse that stance.
“Tax increases we can undo in two years or four years,” he said. “Changing the rules fundamentally is designed to rig the system for a century to come, and with every breath in my body I want to fight against it.”