The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“NO HATE Act (Executive Calendar)” mentioning Richard Blumenthal was published in the Senate section on pages S1607-S1608 on March 17.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
Senators' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
NO HATE Act
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, we are working today in the shadow of a truly hideous, horrific series of murders that occurred yesterday in Atlanta, GA, and I want to start by expressing my sympathies to the families that are affected, families of innocent women who were gunned down heinously by a murderer there. Eight lives were taken by that gunman, six of them Asian women.
There is an active, ongoing investigation, and I have no intention of prejudging the outcome. Justice must be done, and I have confidence in the law enforcement authorities of Atlanta that they will assure that justice is done.
So we don't know for sure what the gunman's motivation was, but we know eight of the women were Asian, and we know for sure that this horrific shooting rampage is only the latest egregious incident in a sickening, despicable trend of anti-Asian-American, or AAPI, violence that has terrorized the Asian-American community over recent months.
And we know many of these incidents were, in fact, hate crimes motivated by bias, bigotry, and prejudice. Now, hate-motivated violence, as Attorney Garland said at his confirmation hearing, ``tear[s] at the fabric of our society . . . make[s] our citizens worried about walking [on] the streets and exercising even the most normal rights.''
And he is absolutely correct. It tears at our society. It degrades our trust in each other and in the fairness of America and the survivability of values and rights that are central to our democracy.
The increase in violence against Asian Americans must end, and we all know it. We all say it, but we must do it. In Congress, we must do everything in our power to provide law enforcement and prosecutors with the resources and the tools they need to overcome it, to successfully fight it, which they can do. And they need the will and determination to wield the tools and resources that we give them because they have to not only investigate, as they will this gunman, but also to effectively prosecute and assure just punishment.
We don't know for sure the motivation. We have evidence. And we can't say for sure how many hate crimes there have been against Asian Americans or others in our great country, but we have a pretty good idea where it all came from.
The rise in anti-Asian-American violence started with the previous administration, who failed to address and manage the COVID-19 pandemic, and rather than listen to the scientists and work to stop its spread, it sought to scapegoat a part of our country. It sought to scapegoat Asian Americans with xenophobic and hate-filled rhetoric.
Words have consequences. We all say it. We all know it. And we must denounce the words that spur and spew hatred and cause or contribute to hate crimes. Hate crimes are a growing scourge. The numbers are surging, whether it is against Asian Americans, Muslim Americans, Jewish Americans, Black Americans. When it is against Americans, it is against America. Words do have consequences.
Stop AAPI Hate, which tracks violence and harassment against the AAPI community, Asian Americans, received more than 1,100 reports of COVID-
related harassment, discrimination, and assault in its first two operational weeks last March. And now it has recorded more than 3,800 incidents since the start of the pandemic--3,800 incidents of harassment, discrimination, and sometimes physical assault--spurred and encouraged and condoned by public officials who used that hate-filled rhetoric to cover their own failures in dealing with the pandemic.
As the investigators and prosecutors go forward, we will learn more, and we need to let them do their jobs. But that doesn't mean we should remain silent, nor does it give us an excuse to be inert. We need to denounce that kind of rhetoric. We need to take action.
I have proposed a measure called the NO HATE Act, which would provide more training for investigators and more resources for hotlines because these hate crimes are typically and repeatedly unreported, and it would provide more incentives for reporting and new penalties--or encourage the imposition of penalties--that truly fit the crime.
Hate crimes are corrosive to our social fabric. They corrupt the pillars of our society, and their effect is unmistakable.
They traumatize and terrorize the communities that are their targets--in this case, Asian Americans, who have become more and more fearful as these incidents have multiplied. We all have a part to do in stopping this scourge. And we know that it is rampant, in part, because of the White supremacists and domestic terrorism and violent extremism that showed its ugly face in this Chamber earlier this year. It showed its brutal, cruel force in this building.
It is the same virus and cancer that is metastasizing in this country today. And its visible forms are the assaults, harassment, and discrimination that may well have been reflected in those murders yesterday.
I hope the NO HATE Act passes, but it won't be for a while. I hope we can take other action, but it will take time. And in the meantime, we can all take it as a moral imperative as our duty to denounce--not condoned by our silence--these groups and their extremist ideologies in White supremacists that perpetuate and expand the virus and cancer of hate crimes and hatred. Hate speech--fighting words--incitement in our society.
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