WATCH KLOBUCHAR FLOOR SPEECH HERE
WASHINGTON – Today on the Senate Floor, U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) delivered the closing remarks calling for her colleagues to vote in favor of forming a bipartisan commission to investigate the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
Full transcript of remarks below and video available online HERE and for download HERE.
Mr. President, as Chair of the Rules Committee, I implore my colleagues to vote for this commission. On January 6th, we all walked over that broken glass. We all saw the spray paint on the walls. We all stood huddled together in shelters. And most of us, most of us, the vast majority of us, Democrats and Republicans, voted to uphold our democracy that night, late into the evening. But it doesn’t end there. I give to you the words of slain Officer Brian Sicknick’s mother -- an ordinary woman who never has been involved in politics, now forced to do extraordinary things and lobby members of this body to simply get to the truth. She said this, “Not having a January 6th commission to look into exactly what occurred is a slap in the faces of all the officers who did their jobs that day.” For months, national security experts have called for a bipartisan commission. Yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security, former secretaries from the Bush and Obama administrations, Chertoff, Ridge, Napolitano, Johnson all called for this commission. This commission is modeled exactly after the gold standard of investigations and recommendations: the 9/11 commission. It is modeled in the words of how the staff is chosen. It is modeled in the words of getting to the bottom of something and getting something done. But yet, so many of our colleagues sadly on the other side of the aisle are refusing to move on this. Colleagues -- we owe it to the heroic Capitol Police, to the first responders, to the staff members who sat in closets for hours and hours and hours, to the police officer who is called the N word 15 times and then sat in the Rotunda and looked at another officer and said, “Is this America?” We owe it to them, that put themselves in harm's way to protect the Capitol and the sacred democratic process. Inaction is not an option and no, the report that we are doing that I’m so proud of with Senator Peters and Senator Portman and Senator Blunt, which will come out shortly, that is about an immediate response and bills we have to pass and things we have to do and mistakes that were made. It's an important report and we’re proud of our work. But it is no substitute for a 9/11 style commission. And I implore our colleagues to vote with us to get this done. I yield the floor.
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