WASHINGTON – Today U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) again offered his bill to make Juneteenth a federal holiday on the Senate floor, before it was blocked by another Senator. He tried to call up and pass this bill last week, also, but it was blocked. Excerpts from Sen. Cornyn’s floor speech today are below, and you can watch video here.
“We previously had offered this unanimous consent request and my friend from Wisconsin has his reasons for objecting… and so I’m coming to the floor to reoffer it.”
“If we don’t remember our history, we will not learn from our mistakes. We will commit those mistakes over, and over, and over again. The tragic and brutal killing of George Floyd earlier this year has shone a light on the injustices that still exist in our society.”
“One way we could attempt to make a small step toward that reconciliation and continue to remind ourselves on an annual basis of how far we’ve come but how far we still have to go, it would be to take up this bill, pass it, and get it to the President’s desk.”