Speeches
Senator Lee’s Floor Remarks on S. 5021: The “Highway and Transportation Funding Act of 2014”
Jul 29, 2014
We are here today because our federal highway policy status quo is not working. And it hasn’t been for a long time.
This is the sixth time American taxpayers have been asked to bail out the Highway Trust Fund since 2008. None of those patches – $52 billion worth of bailouts in seven years – fixed the problem. And neither will the $10.8 billion authorized by the bill before us today. It will buy us only a few months before we are right back where we are now.
Protecting the First Freedom guaranteed in the First Amendment
Jul 16, 2014
The most extraordinary feature of the bill before us today is the incongruity between its title and its content.
The title—the “Protect Women’s Health from Corporate Interference Act”—is clear and straightforward. It suggests the bill is aimed at the important and worthy goal of protecting women’s health.
But the text of the legislation plainly demonstrates that the true objective of the bill is to circumscribe Americans’ religious liberties within the narrow confines of the Democratic Party’s partisan agenda and the whims of politicians and bureaucrats.
Building a Majority for a Conservative Reform Agenda
Jun 19, 2014
Our ultimate goal is to enact conservative policies that restore the proper role of government, reenergize our economy, and create the conditions in which all Americans have a fair chance to pursue happiness—and find it.
Senator Lee’s Floor Remarks on the Nomination of Sylvia Burwell to Secretary of HHS
May 23, 2014
The Senate is in the process of considering one of the most important presidential nominations of Barack Obama’s second term. Sylvia Burwell, the current Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), was nominated by President Obama to replace Kathleen Sebelius as the next Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). It is now the Senate’s responsibility to review Ms. Burwell’s candidacy and then vote to confirm or reject the President’s nomination.
Criminal Law and the Administrative State: Defining and Enforcing Regulatory Crimes
May 14, 2014
In an influential law review article, the late Professor Bill Stuntz noted the academic consensus lamenting criminal law’s constantly expanding breadth. Professor Stuntz wrote that virtually all scholarship in the field “consistently argues that existing criminal liability rules are too broad and ought to be narrowed.” But, Professor Stuntz continued ominously,
