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tv   US Senate  CSPAN  September 21, 2016 10:00am-12:01pm EDT

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a not-for-profit entity providing health insurance along the style of medicare? oh, senator mcconnell was pretty critical of that this morning. he hasn't asked most americans what they think about medicare. he should. many of them thank god that we have it. but for health insurance -- many of them it mernts health insurance when they didn't have it. now many have health care after they retired, health care that is really quality care and affordable. so putting that out as a public option to be considered by those who were signing up for health insurance would let them shop, let them compete. that, to me, is consistent with what we want to achieve when it comes to health care in this country. so we listen time and again to these attacks and critiques of the affordable care act. we have yet to see -- we have yet to see the republican
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alternative. the only alternative they suggest is going back to the bad ol' days when health insurance cost too much, when health insurance discriminated against people with preexisting conditions, when health insurance was a gamble as to whether you'd have it from one year to the next. there are ways to improve the affordable care act. i won't come here and argue. i'll be the last to say it's perfect as written. but in order to improve it, we need bipartisan cooperation, which we don't have. on the republican side of the aisle, 60 or 70 votes to abolish it. not one vote to step up and try to improve it, which i would be happy to join in on a bipartisan basis. that's what the american people expect of us. the last point i would like to make on the issue of health care is to bring to the record of the united states senate a meeting we had yesterday on medical research. this is a good-news story -- and there aren't a lot of them on capitol hill -- but we moved
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forward on a bipartisan basis to make substantial increases in the medical budgets of the national institutes of health. this is the premier medical research facility for the world and we are lucky enough to have it right here in the washington area. dr. francis collins heads it up. he told me if i can get 5% increase in medical research, we can make dramatic advancements. i took him up on that and i enlisted a joint effort, first with patty murray, my colleague from the state of washington, who is in a key position on the appropriations committee and the authorizing committee in the area of medical research and is totally committed to the effort, and on the republican side senator blunt of missouri and senator alexander of tennessee. then senator lindsey graham joined me. here are some things you may not know about medical research. thrches a briefing yesterday on diabetes. i didn't realize until i walked
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in that briefing that one-third of the annual expenditure for medicare is for the treatment of diabetes. one-third of it. in addition to that, 20% of the annual expenditure for medicare is for alzheimer's. so for two diseases -- diabetes and alzheimer's -- more than 50% of our medicare budget is being spent each year. if we could develop new drugs, new treatments, new apreaches that deal -- new approaches that deal with diabetes and alzheimer's, it would not only spare people from the suffering they're going through and for the need for medical care, it would greatly help our medicare program to be more solvent for years 0 come. is medical research a good investment? i think i.t. the best investment -- i think it's the best investment. remember not too long ago when we were talking about people making their last trek down to plains, georgia, in the hopes they would see former president jimmy carter for the last time
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because of his cancer diagnosis? and then do you remember when president jimmy carter held a press conference and said, i'm cancer free? it was because of the development of drugs and treatments that have given him back his life. for many americans, it is the same story every day. we may do a lot of things wrong in washington. let's not get medical research wrong. let's get it right. let's make it bipartisan. let's invest in it. i can't think of a better investment for future generations in this country. mr. president, i yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:
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quorum call:
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quorum call:
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mr. whitehouse: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: mr. president, are we prpbtsly in a quorum call? -- present any a quorum call? the presiding officer: the senate is in a quorum call. mr. whitehouse: may i ask unanimous consent this the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. white house thank you very much -- mr. whitehouse: thank you very much. and i'd now ask unanimous consent to speak up, to say, 17 minutes as if in morning
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business. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: good. thank you. i'm here for the 147th time in my series of speeches your honoring the senate -- urging the senate to both wake up to the consequences of climate change and throes the motives of the -- and also to the motives of the outside forces that lull the senate into persistent sinambulism. outside of this chamber, every major scientific society, every wione of my colleagues' home ste universities that i know of, all of america's national labs, our military and professional labs, all agree on the science of climate change and broadly support responsible climate action. there may be uncertainty about exactly what year sea level rise will hit what flood mark, for instance, but on the basic idea
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that climate change is causing seas to rise and floods to come, it's gave over. nasa reported august 2016 was the warmest august in 136 years of record keeping. august tied july as the hottest month the world has seen in the 136 years we've been measuring. more notable, august marked the 11th record-setting month in a row in nasa's data set. why, in the face of all of that, does this chamber slumber? thank the dark influence of the fossil fuel industry. for years, big oil and its allies funded outright denial of man-made climate change. the union of concerned scientists issued this report
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last year, "climate deception dossiers, internal fossil fuel industry memos reveal decades of corporate disinformation." the report documents how the big polluters contributed to front organizations and paid scientists to put out junk science, contradicting what real peer-reviewed science and even the industry's own experts knew -- knew -- about how burning fossil fuels affects the environment. take exxonmobil, for example. according to the company's own documents as recently as 2015, exxonmobil was still funding organizations that promote climate science disinformation, including the american legislative exchange council, which peddled legislation to
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state legislatures, that included a finding that human-induced global warming "may lead to possibly beneficial climatic changes." the hoover institute argued that climate data since 1880 supports the conclusion that it would take as long as 500 years to reach a four-degree centigrade of global warming. the manhattan institute of policy research said the science is not settled, not by a long shot. the so-called national black chamber of commerce, whose c.e.o. has claimed there has been no global warming detected for the last 18 years -- tell that to nasa. and let's not forget the pacific legal foundation where a senior attorney attacked e.p.a.'s authority to even regulate co2, in part because it is a
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ubiquitous natural substance essential to life on earth. all of those pronouncements by exxon-backed organizations, as reports in both inside climate news and "the los angeles times" have confirmed, run counter to what real scientists know. yet according to the public affairs guy at exxonmobil, the company has supported mainstream climate science for decades. frankly, we made the call, their p.r. guy said, that we need to back away from supporting the groups that were undercutting the actual risk of climate change. well, that doesn't actually seem to be true. exxonmobil's campaign of falsehoods has the attention of several attorney generals, and in today's newspaper, it reveals that it also has the attention of the securities and exchange commission. their questions are not unreasonablable. does exxonmobil actively
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advancing the notion that its productproducts have little or o effect on the ernl's environment while at the same time suppressing its own internal research on the affects of carbon pollution deceive consumers into buying exxonmobil products based on false claims? is the company misleading its investors about its developable oil reserves and long-term prospects in a climate-changed world? it breaks the law to knowingly mislead consumers and shareholders about something material, and climate change is certainly material to exxonmobil. as senator warren and i recently wrote in th "the washington pos" investigations by state attorney generals are making exxonmobil nervous, and their republican friends in congress are riding to the rescue. house science, sparkes and
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technology chairman lamar smith and his fellow republicans have issued subpoenas demanding that the attorney generals fork over all materials relating to their investigations. i ask the congressional research service and as far as they could find, no committee has ever subpoenaed documents in an on-going state a.g. investigation. setting aside the federalism problem of congress going after states in a sovereign state function, if they tried this stuff with our federal attorney general, they'd be rebuffed. the committee subpoenas also targeted eight organizations including the union of concerned scientists and the rockefeller family fund and greenpeace ordering hem to turn over their internal organizations relating to what the chairman describes as "coordinate the efforts to
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deprive exxonmobil of its first amendment rights." take a moment to absorb that. state attorney generals are investigating whether a fraud has been committed, something state a.g.'s do every day, as rhode island's a.g., that's what i did. sometimes we'd uncover fraud and sometimes not. ultimately, if the evidence warranted it, and if the attorney general pursued the case to trial, the question of fraud would be resolved in open court. instead of praising the state a.g.'s for doing their jobs within our system of checks and balances, congressional republicans have leapt in to obstruct the investigation before any evidence becomes public. so far both the subpoenaed attorney generals and the eight organizations have refused to comply with those subpoenas.
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i say, good for them. if the committee moves to enforce its subpoenas, the matter will then come before a judge. if that happens, i hope those attorney generals will question whether the committee subpoenas reflect a legitimate governmental effort or are issued on behalf of a private party. indeed, the very private party which is the subject of those attorney general investigations. the law is clear that a legislative committee may pursue even an unworthy legislative purpose, but it is not clear that a legislative committee can lend itself to a private party. let the court determine whether the house committee is acting as the defacto agent of exo exxonm.
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what might that court consider? well, first, this is a committee whose chairman has received nearly $685,000 in campaign contributions since 1989 from the oil and gas industry. the remaining committee majority received over $2.9 million in campaign contributions. i expect that's admissible evidence. what else might the court consider? well, the committee asserts exxonmobil has a first amendment right here that it needs to step in to protect. interestingly, the shoe has been on the other foot. when an attorney general of virginia was tormenting a climate scientist. indeed tormenting him so badly that the university of virginia took that attorney general all the way to the virginia supreme court to make him stop. the committee took no interest in that.
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theirs is a first amendment concern that only surfaces when the fossil fuel industry is the subject of investigation. what else might the court consider. well, how about that the entire first amendment argument that the committee makes is a crock. ken kimmel, the president of the union of concerned scientists noted that the committee makes no allegation that the union of concerned scientists violated any laws or regulations and the claim that providing information to attorneys general infringes on exxonmobil's rights is nonsense, end quote. mr. kimmel is right. it is well established law that there is a clear line between fraud and first amendment protected speech. the dean of the yale law school has published an article explaining this which i'd like to ask unanimous consent to append to my remarks. the presiding officer: without
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objection. mr. whitehouse: as the attorney general of new york correctly states, fraud is not protected by the first amendment. a number of high profile legal scholars sent a letter last week to chairman smith condemning the subpoenas as misguided. the letter argues that the subpoenas are invalid and constitutionally impermissible. it turns out, according to these scholars, that the first amendment actually works the other way. quoting them here, "the subpoenas and the threat of future sanctions themselves threaten the first amendment ," wrote these scholars, directly ini can'ting the rights to speak, and petition state officials without interference from congress -- end quote. i ask unanimous consent to enter into the record a couple of the legal scholar's letter to chairman smith. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: the rhode island attorney general and ten of his colleagues have urged chairman smith to withdraw the subpoenas. your interference in our
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colleagues' work, they wrote, ignores a vital consideration under our constitutional system of dual sovereignty. the preservation of comity between the federal government and the states -- end quote. i ask unanimous consent to enter into the record a copy of the attorney general's letter to chairman smith. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: mr. president, congressional investigations and hearings have a unique ability to focus a nation's attention and to bring facts of public importance to light. these subpoenas, however, appear intended to impede lawful state investigations. they do not advance the first amendment. they trample on it. senator warren and i offered a suggestion to the house committee in our "washington post" piece. if this committee is so concerned about the first amendment rights of exxonmobil, call a hearing invite exxonmobil
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executives to testify and give them the opportunity to speak freely. what better way to protect a person's right to speak freely than to give that person a forum to speak freely right here in congress. they can come in, say whatever they want to say, and answer questions. i know i would love to hear what they have to say. i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from louisiana. a senator: mr. president, today i rise to honor two of my longest serving staff members who have been tremendous team leaders in our office. david doss, my state director
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and nicole hebert my deputy state director. they're both sadly departing the senate later this month but to start exciting new careers. mr. vitter: nicole started with our team when i was first running for the u.s. senate in 2004. nicole is a lafayette native and a native of the acade anna region or cajun country. that was a key battleground in our election in 2004 in part because we're running against a local cajun candidate in our junk balance primary who is supported about i my predecessor who is also from acadiana. with nicole's help, we shocked the entire state that year winning with over 50% of the vote in the primary foregoing the need for any runoff and winning acadiana against a cajun candidate. nicole was a big, important part
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of that victory. nicole and her husband tommy and nicole's parents lynn and joey durrel were all incredibly helpful then and ever since then helping me navigate the region and have always made me as a guy from southeast louisiana feel right at home in that important part of the state. nicole and tommy and lynn have all been on my staff at one point or another, and all of them were just great at helping me loosen up, take off my tie, relax, also great at helping explain the biewd grow and tibbedeux jokes everybody was laughing so hard at that i could barely even understand them. in acadiana politics you're nobody unless you're invited to a supper posted by somebody named tray or something like that i can't even count how many of those informal suppers i've enjoyed and been to with nicole
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and her family. and i'll tell you, i've experienced some of the best food in the world at those great events, crawfish pie, atoufet and alligator sauce. and of course all the festivals in acadiana. i've been on so many pickup trucks and fire trucks, including an infamous one that broke down in the mud at all of those acadiana festivals, the rice festival and sugar festival and frog festival, crawfish festival, the fun list goes on and on. even though it's technically work, i certainly enjoyed all that time with nicole and the heberhebert family and found myf with a stomach cramp when i left the region not because i ate or drank too much although that happened, too, but because i was always laughing so hard in their
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company. nicole and tommy and their parents and their two girls hanna and meredith who i've really enjoyed watching grow up have all been a huge part of our vitter family life. we count them as dear friends and we certainly will keep up with them through the rest of our lives. david doss, our state director was one of my earliest hires when i was first elected to the u.s. house. he is my state director and before that served as my district director in the u.s. house. i know all of our colleagues here can attest to the fact that having a great state director really on top of things really managing the state offices properly is a key element of success in any senate office. state directors on the front line -- are on the front line of
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everything. they always have to know what's on constituents' minds, what's happening around the state. and david has proven one of the great state directors in the country. we've dealt with more than our share of disasters in louisiana, and there's no one else i'd have guiding our office through all that than david. following katrina, he organized a mobile office or a state -- so that state staff could get around to impacted areas. that continued following other disasters. after the b.p. oil spill, david organized an incredibly effective and efficient case work operation to help assist people with those important claims. david does it all. he's never been above any task from seeing case work all the way through to the best possible outcome to answering phones, sorting through mail when necessary, even to helping drive me and get me around the state.
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david manages our seven state offices which, by the way, is more than any other senator from our state has ever had. we have an office in the seven biggest metropolitan locations around the state so that's no easy task for him to manage. he has to coordinate our staff's driving schedules from new orleans to lake charles to shreveport to monroe, all that in the same day sometimes to get me to every parish, every congress for town hall meetings, a pledge i made when i first ran for the senate in 2004. others have chosen to fly on private jets to get around the state. but david always organized for us to drive each leg of each journey to save taxpayer dollars and so we can see what's really happening on the ground in every parish of our great state.
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sometimes david would be doing that driving himself. there was one time, of course, when we had to take away david's driving privileges for a while after he backed into a street sign with me in the car, but don't worry. no injuries except possibly to david's pride for a while. other than that minor accident, i would describe david's leadership of our state staff as really steady, a great leading, guiding influence, always a steady hand, always has an open line of communication, always listens well, always leads with that reassuring and steady hand. there are very few community meetings or ribbon cuttings or luncheons or events all around our state where we don't have our state staff in attendance, and david has really helped build and run that well oiled
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state staff machine, that well oiled constituent service machine. and related to that, i've often said that the most fulfilling part of my career are the relationships and friendships winnie have built including with our great staff. we often consider staff an extension of our family. that's absolutely true for david and his wife anne mary and their daughters julie and jennifer. we wish them all the best as they start an exciting part of their lives. i want to thank nicole and david for their wonderful service to louisiana, for their friendship. we fish them all the best again as they start new parts of their careers. they're great individuals. they're great team leaders. they're also great representatives of a wonderful state staff. i mentioned before we have seven
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offices around louisiana. each office has a really strong sprens in -- strong presence in their regions and their communities. i think our state staff in that presence has created the gold standard for constituent service in part because of david and nicole's leadership but we've also built a really great team without exception in all seven of those offices. to me success in congress is not measured by how many bills or amendments you introduce or you pass but how many people you help and impact in a positive way. and our staff has countless success stories through their important case work, really important case work which actually sometimes changes people's lives in a major way for the better. it's because of this gold standard that our great state
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staff has developed that we decided to memorialize what we've collected as best practices in terms of constituent service. we're putting that into a guidebook related to constituent service, and i'll be sending that guidebook to all of the major candidates who are running to fill this senate seat. in the guidebook, we'll go through those -- that best practices on constituent casework, on helping people and organizations in the state navigate the federal process applying for grants and the like. on the important need of being open and accessible, how a senate office can do that effectively and on maintaining constant lines of communications with our fellow louisiana citizens. all of those best practices, good ideas will be going in this guidebook that will be available
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to my successor. so again, i want to thank david and nicole and our entire state staff team for their years of dedicated service and success serving, really going above and beyond serving the people of louisiana. mr. president, i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from nebraska. mrs. fischer: thank you, mr. president. i rise today to call attention to a very troubling issue, and we hear about it often. sadly, there is a lack of leadership from the executive branch with regard to it. mr. president, i'm talking about the state of the american economy. many families across nebraska and across our nation are worried whether hardworking parents trying to make ends meet or grandparents who are
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concerned about their grandchildren's future, there is no shortage of anxiety. as many of my colleagues have pointed out, the economy is just not recovering quickly enough. in fact, we are slogging through the slowest economic recovery since the 1960's. by way of reference, in 1961, kennedy was president. a gallon of gas cost 31 cents. and roy oberson was in the billboard's top five. in every economic recovery since that time, the american economy grew at an average of 3.7% per year. since 2009, however, this growth has averaged a mere 2.1% per year, and this year it's slowed to just 1%. last quarter, the economy grew
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by a pitiful 1.2%. again, things are not getting better quickly enough. there are some real obstacles before us. the share of americans in the work force has fallen below 63%. that is nearly 3 percentage points below where we were when the recovery began. another concern is the growing number of expensive and burdensome regulations. rule making under the obama administration, it has skyrocketed. federal regulations cost an estimated $1.9 trillion per year. that's more than $15,000 for each american household. these figures are worrisome. and here's one that should truly be frightening for us.
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at the same time we've seen our national debt reach a staggering $19.5 trillion. just last year, the united states spent $223 billion or 6% of the federal budget to pay interest on that national debt. and this year, the nonpartisan congressional budget office estimates that our deficit will be $590 billion. this means that we're going to be spending almost $600 billion more than we take in. if we don't change course, mr. president, the c.b.o. estimates that these deficits are going to skyrocket over the next decade, reaching $1 trillion in 2024, and they will only continue to grow from
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there. these numbers paint us a very dark picture, but i do have some good news. there is still time for us to change course. in fact, this body has taken several good steps. since taking office, i have worked with my colleagues to reduce some wasteful spending and some burdensome regulations. in 2015, i introduced the grants oversight and new efficiency or the gone act. this bill which was signed into law in january will save millions of dollars by closing expired grant accounts and increasing oversight over the federal grant program. i've also introduced and pushed for votes on several waste waste-cutting amendments during the appropriations process, including one to wind down an outdated and ineffective
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stimulus air program. so these are good steps. and here are a few others. we passed a highway bill which will provide much-needed certainty for states, businesses, families and the traveling public, and by prioritizing our infrastructure, we're investing in our economy's ability to grow. in the same vein, as you know, mr. president, last week we passed the water resources development act, and this is another key infrastructure bill that will enable our economy to grow by modernizing our courts and our waterways. so we do have tools available for us to meet these fiscal challenges. but you know, we have to exercise restraint, and we have to exercise that restraint among ourselves. the appropriations process is a critical way for us to do this. it is the only way that our
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citizens can truly hold their elected representatives accountable for this spending. it allows the american people to see the true priorities of their elected representatives. one last point before i close. reducing the national debt does not mean that we stop investigates -- stop investing. it simply forces us to make smarter choices. some things we need to prioritize, and we know what those are. we need to keep our families and our communities safe. we must invest in infrastructure to promote commerce and grow this economy. we must reduce wasteful spending and prioritize prudent spending. we must reduce the national
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debt. we must get government out of the way so opportunities can be created for our families and for our young people. but we have to be responsible stewards of taxpayer money. we must make those responsible choices. mr. president, i believe that our very best days as a nation are before us, and that's because of my unwavering faith in the fundamental goodness, tenacity and creativity of the american people. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. i would suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:
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quorum call:
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quorum call:
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mr. murphy: on behalf of senator paul -- the presiding officer: the
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senate is in a quorum call. mr. murphy: i ask that we dispense with the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. murphy: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, on behalf of senator paul and pursuant to the arms export control act of 1976, i move to discharge the foreign relations committee from further consideration of s.j. res. 39 relating to the disapproval of the proposed foreign military sale to the government of saudi arabia. the presiding officer: the motion is now pending. under the previous order, there will be three hours of debate on the motion divided between proponents and opponents, with the senator from kentucky controlling 30 minutes of proponent time and the senator from connecticut controlling 15 minutes of proponent time. mr. murphy: mr. president, i would ask unanimous consent that the time during quorum calls on the motion be equally divided between the appropriates and the opponents. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. murphy: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, i'm going to speak briefly in support of the
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resolution. senator lee, cosponsor of this resolution is on the floor who will speak after i do. let me say at the outset, mr. president, that i believe in a strong u.s. global presence. i believe that the united states is at its best when it is a global leader. we can and we should be a force for good and for peace in the world. and i also believe, quite frankly, that peace comes through strength. i don't apologize for the size of our military budget, nor do i think it would be wise for this congress to give up this country's massive military edge over every global adversary and friend. having the world's biggest, baddest military, it seeps us safe, and it frankly keeps a lot of our friends safe as well. my last stipulation before i talk about the resolution would be this -- i also believe that there are times when you use
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that military power. there are times when war or military action is just. if you want to provide safe harbor for terrorists that plan a massive attack against this country like the taliban and afghanistan, then you can expect a visit from the u.s. army. but increasingly, we all have to reconcile with the fact that there are more and more limitations on the effectiveness of u.s. military power. today our adversaries and our enemies, they practice something we call asymmetric warfare, which means they concede our conventional military advantage and they use other means and methods to exert power and project strength. china does it through economic aid. russia does it through bribery and the extension of its natural resources to its neighbors. isil does it through terror and through the perversion of religion. and yet, this country and this congress continues to believe that most conflicts around the
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globe can be solved with just a little bit more american military hardware. and so that's what brings us today to talk about this arms sale to saudi arabia, particularly in the context of the ongoing conflict inside yemen. a civil war inside yemen that the united states has become a participant in. this is a picture from war-ravaged yemen, an ongoing humanitarian disaster. we don't have the full extent of the numbers, but there have already been thousands and thousands of civilians killed. and if you talk to yemenis, they will tell you that this is perceived inside yemen as not a saudi-led bombing campaign, which it's broadly advertised in the newspapers, but as a u.s. bombing campaign or at best a u.s.-saudi bombing campaign. there is a u.s. imprint on every
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civilian death inside yemen which is radicalizing the people of this country against the united states. why is this? well, it's because while the conflict inside yemen started as a civil war, the houthis overrunning the government inside sanna, the saudis in a coalition of other gulf states have entered the conflict largely through air operations to try to push the houthis back, and they have asked for our assistance which we have given, and we have given it in substantial means and methods. we provide the bombs, we provide the refueling planes, we provide the intelligence. there really is no way that this bombing campaign could happen without u.s. participation. the united states is at war in yemen today. the united states is at war in yemen today, and this congress has not debated that engagement. this congress has not debated that war. yet another unauthorized
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military engagement overseas. but the scope of this disaster for the purposes of u.s. national security interests is not just the radicalization of the yemeni people against the united states, it's not just the thousands of people that have been killed but the fact that this war has given, has given ground an opportunity for al qaeda and isis to grow, grow by leaps and bounds. let's be honest. our first responsibility here is to protect this country from attack, and the most likely arm of al qaeda that would have the means or the inclination to attack the united states is the branch that exists inside yemen. their recruitment has grown by multiples over the course of this conflict. for a period of time, aqap was able to use this conflict to grab control of a major port city inside yemen, which radically changed the ability of
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aqap to recruit and to grow their capacity to do harm outside of yemen because they had control of resources and taxation inside this city. and you would think that if the united states was providing all of these resources to the saudi-led coalition that some of them would be used to try to push back on isis's growth or aqap's growth inside yemen, but the exact opposite has happened. none of the saudi bombs are dropping on aqap. they are all dropping on houthi targets and civilian targets. and so we are arming the saudis to fight an enemy, the houthis, which we have not declared war against, and the saudis are not using those weapons to fight our sworn enemy that we have declared war against, al qaeda. and so the civilian casualties mount, isis and al qaeda grow, and yet this is the first time
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that we have had the opportunity to discuss the wisdom of this engagement. we have begged the saudis to change their conduct. we've asked them to target al qaeda, to the extent that al qaeda is shrinking a bit, it's not because the saudis have targeted them. it's because other players in the region, the amiratis have targeted them. we have begged them to stop bombing civilians, and yet in a 7246 -- 72-hour period earlier this summer, the saudi coalition bombed another doctors without borders facility, its school and the hospital next door. we give them targets to stay away from because they are key parts of roots to bring humanitarian relief into a country that is ravaged by famine, and they still hit those targets even after we have told them to stay away. we have begged the saudis to change their behavior inside this war and they haven't listened. but it's not the only time they
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haven't listened. if you're serious about stopping the flow of extremist recruiting across the globe, then you have to be serious about the very real fact that the wabahist branch of islam that's spread around the world by saudi arabia and the allies is part of the program. in 1956, there were 244patrosist, in pack sanl. today there are over 24,000. these schools are all over the globe, mosques are spreading all across the world and don't get me wrong. these schools and these mosques, they by and large don't teach violence directly. they aren't the minor leagues for al qaeda or isis but they do teach a version of islam that leads very nicely into an antishiite, antiwestern militancy. we begged the saudis to stop
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setting up these conservative wahabi operations in parts of the middle east, in the balkans, in indonesia. again, they haven't listened. just take the example of kosovo. kosovo ten years ago would have never been a natural place that isis would have gone to recruit people into the fight inside syria, but today it's one of their hot beds of recruitment. it is not a coincidence that during that same period of time, the saudis and wahabhis spent millions of dollars trying to convert muslims to their brand of religion, a brand of religion that says -- that the crew sides never ended, that your obligation as a true muslim is to find a way to fight back against any brand of the religion that doesn't match ours. so for those of you that are going to vote for this arms sale, that are essentially going to endorse the current state of our relationship with saudi
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arabia and our gulf state allies just ask yourself if we can really defeat terrorism, if we remain silent on this brand of islam that feeds into extremism, how can you say you're serious about strangling isil when the textbooks that are produced inside saudi arabia are the very same textbooks that are handed out to recruit suicide bombers. if we really want to cut off extremism at its source, then we can't keep closing our eyes to the money that flows out of saudi arabia and the gulf states into this conservative salafist missionary movement around the world. and this arm sale is relevant for both of these questions, changing the war inside yemen and sending a message that this export of the building blocks of extremism cannot continue. why? because the main part of this arms sale is a replacement of battle damaged tanks, tanks that were likely in part damaged in
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the conduct of this war. and it represents a piece of a very long rampup of arms sales into saudi arabia. the numbers are pretty staggering. this administration has sold about six to eight times the number of arms to saudi arabia that the last administration did. and the saudis do listen, they do pay attention to what we say here. they don't like the fact that there are democrats and republicans critiquing this relationship. they don't like the fact there will be votes against this arms sale. even if it doesn't become law which is -- the president can veto, this can be impactful on both of the questions, the conduct of war in yemen and the conduct of the export of wahhabism around the globe. let me make this case, that rejecting this arms sale or voting against this arms sale, it's not going to end. it's not going to even permanently damage our relationship with saudi arabia.
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we are ally. we'll continue to are allies. our common bond was forged during the cold war when american and saudi leaders found common ground in the fight against communism. the saudis helped ensure that the russians never got a meaningful foot hoold in the middle east and this unofficial day tants that exists between the sunni nations and israel, our closest ally in the regions is in part a product of saudi listen led diplomacy. there have been many high profile examples in the fight against isis notwithstanding these chris tykes ndz more generally our partnership with sawed labor there is an important bridge to the islamic community, a testament to the fact that we can seek cooperation and engagement with governments in the middle east and people worldwide which is a direct rebuttal to this idea that the terrorist spread that we are at war with islam. this is not an either/or question but we are strategic
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allies which is different than being a values-based alliance. that means when our strategic goals occasionally depart from one another, then we shouldn't be obligated to continue our cooperation on that particular front. the saudis guiding foreign policy goal is to gain regional supremacy over iran. we certainly prefer a middle east with more saudi friends than iranian friends. there should be no doubt about that but our guiding foreign policy goal in that region is not for the saudis for win the proodenning proxy war with iran. it's to protect our country from ie dak by terrorist groups that are metastasizing in syria and iraq. today our participation in the war inside yemen is making us more vulnerable by attack from aqap or isis, not less vulnerable. our bombs and our intelligence and our spotters and our refueling planes, they are certainly helping the saudis project power in the region but it is fueling an arms race
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between shiite and sunni nations that has no logical end other than mutual intrux, -- distrucks, increasing chaos and more ungovernable space for groups that want to attack the united states. said another way, is this really the right moment for the united states to be sending record numbers of arms into the middle east? do we have any evidence from past conflicts in afghanistan or the iran/iraq war that more service weapons end up in less rather than more blood sheed, abbreviated rather than an elongated war. it's time for the united states to press pause on our arms sales to saudi arabia. let's make sure the war in yemen doesn't continue to spiral downward jeopardizing u.s. national security interests. let's press the saudis to get serious about spending more time as firefighters and less time as arsonists in the global fight against terrorism. let's ask ourselves whether we are comfortable with the united states getting slowly,
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predictably, and all too quietly dragged into yet another war in the middle east. what will it take for this country to learn our lesson? i thank the president and the body for the time. and i would yield back. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from minnesota. a senator: thank you, mr. president. i want to start by thanking senator murphy and senator paul and senator lee for their leadership on this very important issue. since the saudi-led coalition started its bombing campaign in yemen in 2015, there's been an average of 13 civilian casualties each day. mr. franken: that's according to the united nations office of the high commissioner for human rights. mr. president, this means that
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thousands of civilians have been killed or wounded in the u.s.-backed war in yemen. this is unacceptable. people all across this country have been outraged at how the saudis have conducted this war and believe that the u.s. should not acquiesce or support such conduct. mr. president, over the last decade, the united states has sold the saudis over $is00 -- $100 billion in arms. the united states has also supported the saudi-led coalition with air-to-air refueling, intelligence sharing, military advisory assistance. that kind of support should not go along with acceptance of saudi disregard for innocent human lives, innocent civilian human lives.
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the legislation we will be voting on later today is a disapproval resolution regarding a $1.15 billion arm sale and the very fact that we are voting on it today sends a very important message to the kingdom of saudi arabia, that we are watching your actions closely, and that the united states is not going to turn a blind eye to the indiscriminate killing of men, women, and children. again i would like to thank senators murphy and paul and lee for their leadership and i urge my colleagues to support this important piece of legislation. thank you, mr. president. i would yield the floor. senator mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from utah.
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mr. lee: mr. president, i rise today to lend my support and urge my colleagues to lend theirs. the senate joint resolution 39 offered by my friend, senator rand paul of kentucky. the purpose of this particular resolution is to reconsider the billion dollar arms sale between the united states and saudi arabia that was negotiated by the two governments earlier this year. under u.s. law, any arms approved by the state department will go into effect within 30 days. after that deal has been finalized, absent packag passaga resolution of disapproval from preventing it from taking effect. and that's exactly what senator paul's resolution aims to do. if passed by the senate and the house, the resolution would raise formal objections to the
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sale of $1.15 billion worth of weapons and military equipment to the saudi arabian government. mr. president, you'll notice that there are senators from both sides of the aisle working to pass this resolution of disapproval. supporting it in speeches and voting on it hopefully later today. it was introduced by a fellow republican, and i'm proud to join three of my democratic colleagues as original cosponsors, senator chris murphy from connecticut, from whom we heard just moments ago, senator al franken of minnesota, from whom we heard after we heard from senator murphy, and senator martin heinrich of new mexico. some might call us strangebedfellows, two conservative republicans and three liberal democrats, working together to achieve the same goal. but this observation, of course, misses the point entirely. each one of us may have his own
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unique justification for supporting this resolution, but there's nothing strange about that. it simply proves that there are many reasons to consider and to reconsider this deal with saudi arabia. one of those reasons and the basis for my support of senator paul's resolution is that there is no conclusive evidence that the saudi arms deal will in fact advance the strategic and security interests of the united states. in fact, there is evidence that points in the opposite direction. we know that saudi arabia is heavily involved in the civil war that is raging at this moment in yemen, a conflict that has left a humanitarian crisis of staggering proportions in its wake. and continues to do so. and weigh know the saudi military will use the equipment included in this deal, this very
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deal -- everything from machine guns to grenade launchers to armored vehicles and tanks -- to increase its own engagement in that seemingly intractable conflict. but what we don't know is exactly how america's involvement in the civil war in yemen serves our national security interests, protects the american people. i have no problem in principle with the united states approving the sale of weapons and military equipment to foreign governments where it's in our interest to do so, and i'm senior will you not category -- and i'm certainly not categorically opposed to selling arms to the saudi government. saudi arabia has long been an american ally in a very volatile region of the world and i believe strengthening that alliance should be a priority for our foreign and military policy in the middle east. but the fact that saudi arabia
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is an ally, an ally with whom we have a track record of selling arnlings is not in and of itself a sufficient reason to endorse this particular deal. it's not a reason why this deal should move through, should take effect without so much as a whimper from members of congress who might feel the need to raise possible concerns, concerns that relate to our own national security. yes, we want our allies to be strong. and, yes, we want our allies to be capable of defending themselves. and, yes, sometimes this means that we should offer them assistance in times of need. but the first and most fundamental responsibility of the united states government is not to satisfy the requests of

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