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“REPEALING THE AUTHORIZATIONS FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAQ-- Continued” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the in the Senate section section on pages S982-S989 on March 28.
The State Department is responsibly for international relations with a budget of more than $50 billion. Tenure at the State Dept. is increasingly tenuous and it's seen as an extension of the President's will, ambitions and flaws.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
REPEALING THE AUTHORIZATIONS FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAQ--
Continued
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
Amendment No. 9
Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 9, and I ask that it be reported by number.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Texas [Mr. Cruz] proposes an amendment numbered 9.
The amendment is as follows:
(Purpose: To provide findings related to the President's constitutional authority to use military force to protect the United States and United
States interests)
On page 2, line 3, strike ``The Authorization'' and insert the following:
(a) Findings.--Congress makes the following findings:
(1) Article II of the United States Constitution empowers the President, as Commander-in-Chief, to direct the use of military force to protect the Nation from an attack or threat of imminent attack.
(2) This authority empowers the President to use force against forces of Iran, a state responsible for conducting and directing attacks against United States forces in the Middle East and to take actions for the purpose of ending Iran's escalation of attacks on, and threats to, United States interests.
(3) The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243; 116 Stat. 1498; 50 U.S.C. 1541 note) is not independently required to authorize the activities described in paragraphs (1) and (2).
(b) Repeal.--The Authorization
Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, there is no responsibility we have as Members of Congress more serious than protecting the men and women who defend this Nation. We are facing a national security crisis due to Joe Biden and his administration, which have repeatedly been unwilling to act against repeated hostilities from the nation of Iran. They have looked repeatedly for excuses to justify that inaction.
Now, I want to be clear. I am not where some Members of this body are who want to maintain this authorization for use of military force. I want to vote to repeal this authorization for use of military force. The Iraq war was a long time ago, and I believe the Iraq war was a mistake at the time it was fought. I would be enthusiastic about Congress reasserting its war-making and war-declaring power by repealing the AUMF.
But, at the same time, I don't want the repeal of the AUMF to be used as an excuse by the Biden administration to roll over and do nothing if and when Iran attacks and murders American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines in the Middle East. And this is not hypothetical.
Just last week, General Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the House that from January 2021 until last week, there were 78 attacks against American forces in the Middle East by Iranian-linked fighters--78. The Biden administration responded 3 times; 75 of them went unresponded. Tragically, but predictably, appeasement doesn't work.
On Thursday morning, the CENTCOM Commander was testifying in front of the House. Here on the floor of the Senate, we were debating this very issue of the AUMF and Iranian aggression. We now know that, at 6:30 in the morning eastern time on Thursday, Iran attacked U.S. forces, murdered a U.S. citizen--a U.S. contractor--and wounded six other Americans. That happened at 6:30 in the morning eastern time on Thursday.
The Presiding Officer didn't know that on Thursday. I didn't know that on Thursday. None of us knew that on Thursday. Why? Because the Biden administration kept it a secret for 12 hours because they didn't want to tell the Senate, while we were debating this issue, that an American had just been murdered by Iran. That is disgraceful. The Presiding Officer should be angry about it; I should be angry about it.
My amendment is very simple. My amendment restates that under article II of the Constitution, the President has the authority to defend U.S. troops and to respond to Iranian aggression.
The opponent of this bill, my friend Senator Kaine, will speak shortly. What he said to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was that the amendment is unnecessary; that article II already does that. Well, good. If it is unnecessary, then the Democrats ought to support my amendment and add it. Because I will tell you what it will get: If we add this amendment, I will vote yes on the AUMF repeal. If we don't add this amendment, I am a no.
Here is why: I don't want to give an excuse for the Biden administration, the next time Iran attacks, to do nothing. If it is unnecessary legally, it ought to be an easy give to say, ``Let's add it, to be clear, that if you attack U.S. forces, the President has the authority to respond,'' because I don't want the Biden administration using the repeal of the AUMF as an excuse for their weakness or as an excuse for their appeasement.
There are some in the political world who are in favor of unending wars. I am not one of them, but I am in favor of the United States defending our soldiers and sailors and airmen and marines.
Let me say this: I don't know if the amendment is going to get the votes or not to pass. I think we will get most of the Republicans, and I don't know if any Democrats will vote for it or not. But if this amendment is defeated and the Congress goes on to repeal the AUMF and Iran takes that as encouragement that the Biden administration will not retaliate, I believe the consequences will be lives lost. I believe we will be back on this floor with American soldiers and sailors and airmen and marines having lost their lives due to Iranian aggression because the Ayatollah believed the Biden administration would not respond. The Presiding Officer doesn't want to see that. I don't want to see that. I believe no Member of this body wants to see that.
If it is legally redundant, all the better to say: Let's send a message to the Ayatollah that if you attack American forces, the President--the Commander in Chief--has the authority to respond and defend American forces.
That is the No. 1 responsibility of every Member of this body.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the amendment.
The bill that is on the floor is the effort to repeal authorizations for war against Iraq that were passed by this body in 1991 and 2002. These are not Iran authorizations. Iran and Iraq are not the same nation. The wars against Iraq are over, and we need to repeal these.
This morning, in the Armed Services Committee, we heard from General Austin. He talked about his visit to Iraq. He was there when we were fighting against them as an adversary. Now they are a strategic partner in the region against nonstate terrorists and against Iranian aggression. They are an ally and a partner.
Senator Cruz's amendment does restate article II powers in part of the findings in a way that I don't find objectionable; but then in another part of the amendment, it goes on to authorize affirmative military action by the United States against the nation of Iran.
Iran is a bad actor and is getting worse--I don't disagree with that--but if what we need is a debate about a war authorization with Iran, we shouldn't do it on the basis of a 1-minute amendment offered on the floor of the Senate. That is how we got into this problem in the first place. The Iraq authorization in 2002 was considered in the Senate for 1 day, with no committee proceeding. There were five amendments in 1 day, and we went into a war that most would agree was one of the worst blunders strategically that this body has made. Let's not rush into a war authorization with Iran. If there needs to be military authorities to take offensive action against Iran, let's, at least, give it the dignity of a debate--a full debate--and not a 1-
minute amendment vote.
Finally, this amendment is opposed by groups all over the political spectrum, from Concerned Veterans for America to the Friends Committee on National Legislation to the American Legion, because they don't think we should be rushing into war. Iran and its challenging activity and aggression warrant some significant attention, not a 1-minute amendment vote on a bill that it is not related to.
I urge opposition to the amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, I respect my friend from Virginia, but he is mistaken. This amendment is not a new authorization for military force. It restates current law. The language in the finding is, word for word, the finding that President Trump put in place when he authorized the strike that took out General Soleimani.
After that strike against General Soleimani, I introduced an amendment on this floor to commend President Trump and the Armed Forces for taking out General Soleimani; and we voted on this, commending President Trump and our Armed Forces for taking out Soleimani. This is not breaking new ground. This is reiterating the proposition that the Commander in Chief has the authority to defend U.S. Armed Forces.
To my friend from Virginia, I would note, by the way, earlier last week, we voted on Senator Graham's amendment that would have been a new authorization for use of military force. Many Senators voted against it. This is a much narrower amendment. This says if Iran attacks U.S. troops, the Commander in Chief can defend those troops. That is current law, but it is important for Iran to hear. It is important for our troops to hear. It is important for the Biden administration to hear.
Nowhere in my friend from Virginia's remarks did he dispute that Iran has attacked the United States 78 times in the last 2\1/2\ years and that the Biden administration has responded only three times. We owe our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines to have their backs.
I urge support of this amendment.
Vote on Amendment No. 9
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to Cruz amendment No. 9.
Mr. CRUZ. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Coons), the Senator from California (Mrs. Feinstein), and the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fetterman) are necessarily absent.
Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell).
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 41, nays 55, as follows:
YEAS--41
Barrasso Blackburn Boozman Braun Britt Budd Capito Cassidy Cornyn Cotton Cramer Crapo Cruz Daines Ernst Fischer Graham Hagerty Hoeven Hyde-Smith Johnson Kennedy Lankford Lummis Manchin Marshall Mullin Ricketts Risch Romney Rosen Rounds Rubio Scott (FL) Scott (SC) Sinema Sullivan Thune Tillis Tuberville Wicker
NAYS--55
Baldwin Bennet Blumenthal Booker Brown Cantwell Cardin Carper Casey Collins Cortez Masto Duckworth Durbin Gillibrand Grassley Hassan Hawley Heinrich Hickenlooper Hirono Kaine Kelly King Klobuchar Lee Lujan Markey Menendez Merkley Moran Murkowski Murphy Murray Ossoff Padilla Paul Peters Reed Sanders Schatz Schmitt Schumer Shaheen Smith Stabenow Tester Van Hollen Vance Warner Warnock Warren Welch Whitehouse Wyden Young
NOT VOTING--4
Coons Feinstein Fetterman McConnell
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Welch). On this vote, the yeas are 41, the nays are 55.
Under the previous order requiring 60 votes for the adoption of this amendment, the amendment is not agreed to.
The amendment (No. 9) was rejected.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
Amendment No. 33
Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 33 and ask that it be reported by number.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment by number.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Alaska [Mr. Sullivan] proposes an amendment numbered 33.
The amendment is as follows:
(Purpose: To provide that nothing shall be construed to hinder the ability of the United States to respond rapidly and decisively to any attacks by Iran or its proxy forces)
Strike section 2 and insert the following:
SEC. 2. REPEAL OF AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE
AGAINST IRAQ RESOLUTION OF 2022.
The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243; 116 Stat. 1498; 50 U.S.C. 1541 note) is hereby repealed 30 days after the Director of National Intelligence certifies in an intelligence assessment to Congress that repeal will not degrade the effectiveness of United States- led deterrence against Iranian aggression.
SEC. 3. RULE OF CONSTRUCTION REGARDING ABILITY TO COUNTER
ATTACKS BY IRAN AND ITS PROXY FORCES.
Nothing in this Act shall be construed to restrict the ability of the United States to respond rapidly and decisively to threats by the Government of Iran or its proxy forces against United States facilities or persons, or those of United States allies and partners, as appropriate under the authorities provided to the President in Article II of the Constitution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there will now be 4 minutes of debate equally divided prior to a vote in relationship to Sullivan amendment No. 33.
The Senator from Alaska.
Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, Iranian proxies have attacked U.S. forces in the Middle East 80 times since President Biden took office. Deterrence is failing.
Many of us are deeply concerned that removing the 2002 AUMF will further erode American deterrence relative to Iran, further jeopardizing our troops in the region.
Why are we concerned about this?
First, the 2002 AUMF was, as recently as 2020, used to support the very justified killing of the Iranian Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani.
And, second, even as we are debating removing the 2002 AUMF right now, Iranian proxies have stepped up attacks on Americans.
My amendment is simple and prudent and common sense. It requires the DNI to certify that the removal of the 2002 AUMF will not undermine American deterrence against Iran. This is prudent, and it is due diligence.
Why wouldn't every U.S. Senator want to know whether the actions we are taking right now here in the Senate enhance or diminish deterrence against Iran, the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism?
Under my amendment, the DNI has 30 days to do this analysis, and 30 days should not be considered an inconvenience when American lives are literally at stake.
I urge all of my colleagues to support this prudent, commonsense amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I respect my Armed Services colleague from Alaska, but I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.
Iraq is not Iran. The bill that is on the floor is to repeal war authorizations voted on by this body against Iraq in 1991 and 2002. Iraq is not Iran.
The President of the United States has sent two messages to this body saying that the repeal of the Iraq war authorizations are necessary because Iraq is now a partner of the United States and that the repeal will neither jeopardize any current military operation, make the United States less safe, or take options away from the President to defend against Iranian aggression.
The certification has been given by the President. This is a bill that would ask one of his subordinates, who has been available to talk to any of us by phone in the 2 weeks this bill has been on the table--
it would basically say: OK, Mr. President, you said this, but we want to hear from one of your subordinates.
Avril Haines has been available to talk to any Member of this Senate in the 2 weeks this bill has been on the floor. The President has indicated this would not jeopardize our ability to defend against the activities of Iran-backed militias. We should not conflate Iraq, now a partner of the United States, with Iran, an adversary of the United States.
I urge a ``no'' vote.
Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, do I have any time left?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 20 seconds.
Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I am not conflating Iran and Iraq. Iran right now is the threat, and, again, I ask my colleagues--none of whom have an answer--why wouldn't we do the due diligence, 30 additional days, to ask the DNI if what we are doing on the Senate floor right now undermines American deterrence relative to Iran?
It is a simple request. It shows that we are acting to make sure we protect our troops in the region. And, again, 30 days is not a lot of time----
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. SULLIVAN. To make sure our troops in the region are safe and secure.
Vote on Amendment No. 33
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to amendment No. 33.
Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Coons), the Senator from California (Mrs. Feinstein), and the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fetterman) are necessarily absent.
Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell) and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).
The result was announced--yeas 38, nays 57, as follows:
YEAS--38
Barrasso Blackburn Boozman Britt Capito Collins Cornyn Cotton Cramer Crapo Cruz Ernst Fischer Graham Hagerty Hoeven Hyde-Smith Johnson Kennedy Lankford Lummis Manchin Mullin Murkowski Ricketts Risch Romney Rosen Rounds Rubio Scott (FL) Scott (SC) Sinema Sullivan Tester Thune Tuberville Wicker
NAYS--57
Baldwin Bennet Blumenthal Booker Braun Brown Budd Cantwell Cardin Carper Casey Cassidy Cortez Masto Daines Duckworth Durbin Gillibrand Grassley Hassan Hawley Heinrich Hickenlooper Hirono Kaine Kelly King Klobuchar Lee Lujan Markey Marshall Menendez Merkley Moran Murphy Murray Ossoff Padilla Paul Peters Reed Sanders Schatz Schmitt Schumer Shaheen Smith Stabenow Van Hollen Vance Warner Warnock Warren Welch Whitehouse Wyden Young
NOT VOTING--5
Coons Feinstein Fetterman McConnell Tillis
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 38, the nays are 57.
Under the previous order requiring 60 votes for the adoption of this amendment, the amendment is not agreed to.
The amendment (No. 33) was rejected.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.
Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, we hear from Democrats a lot these days about ``ending the Iraq war.'' Let's pause for a moment to remember the first time they ``ended the Iraq war.''
President Obama pulled American troops out of Iraq just over a decade ago. The ``dumb'' war, as Obama called it, was finally over--except it wasn't. It turns out those American troops had kept a lid on a lot of chaos. When they left, the bad guys came back with a vengeance. President Obama dismissed ISIS as the ``JV team'' of the terrorist world, but even he couldn't turn a blind eye when ISIS seized Fallujah just 2 years after our troops left Iraq, then Mosul a few months later, and then threatened to bring all of Iraq into their so-called caliphate.
So, ultimately, President Obama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and great ender of the Iraq war, had to start a new Iraq war not even 3 years after he had bugged out, although actually it was an Iraq-Syria war. Obama's retreat backfired so badly that he had to deploy our troops to two countries this time, not one. And guess which use-of-
force resolution President Obama cited to fight ISIS. The same one that President Trump relied on in 2020 to kill Iran's terrorist mastermind, Qasem Soleimani, which is the same resolution Democrats want to repeal today. All of which goes to show that this debate is not about Saddam Hussein; it is about whether the President--whether any President should have maximum authority to pursue America's enemies in Iraq and Syria.
The Democrats have argued that the 2002 resolution wasn't necessary to stop ISIS because the 2001 War on Terror use-of-force resolution also applied. That is true. But apparently President Obama didn't think the 2001 resolution was sufficient since he also invoked the 2002 resolution. I would welcome any Democrat to explain why the leader of their party was wrong.
Somewhat to my amusement, some Democrats and a few Republicans have contended, not to worry, the President can always rely on his Commander in Chief authority under article II of the Constitution to order military operations like the Soleimani strike. I agree. Yet these are the very same Senators who usually argue that article II authorizes only the most immediate and modest actions in self-defense. Everything else, they say, takes congressional approval. I will be curious to hear from them the next time a President relies primarily on his article II authority to take necessary action to defend America.
But enough with debating how many JAG lawyers can dance on the head of a pin. Let's ask a more important question. In the real world, will repealing these resolutions make America more safe or less safe? To which I answer, just look around the region.
Iran's proxies are trying to kill Americans every day, and that is hardly an exaggeration. Just last week, a suicide drone made by Iran killed an American contractor and wounded six other Americans in Syria. An Iranian rocket attack wounded another American after that. Meanwhile, ISIS still carries out dozens of massacres and suicide bombings every year. That is not to mention new terrorist groups who may be waiting in the wings, ready for their shot at the title as America retreats.
If we repeal these resolutions, will it make America more safe or less safe?
The answer to that question is obvious. Threats still originate in and emanate from Iraq, whether terrorist groups like ISIS or Iran's proxies. We should not lightly throw away additional authorities to target them.
Furthermore, we shouldn't give Joe Biden any more reason to avoid taking necessary action to protect America. President Biden is already in full flight from the Middle East. It was President Biden who ended the war in Afghanistan, just like President Obama ended the Iraq war. Now the Taliban rules in Kabul, harboring terrorists who threaten our country.
Iran killed an American last week because Joe Biden never acts until Iran kills an American. Since he became President, Iran has attacked American positions at least 83 times. Yet President Biden has only retaliated four times. Little wonder the ayatollahs think they can get away with it, as they have with that latest strike, because after we finally hit back last week, Iran struck our positions again, injuring yet another American. Yet Joe Biden, as of this moment, has not retaliated.
A couple months ago the administration also cited an obscure legalistic grounds for why President Biden didn't shoot down a Chinese spy balloon over the Aleutian Islands. The last thing this President needs is more encouragement from Congress to turn the other cheek.
Besides the message to the President, we should also consider the signal we send to our friends and enemies in the Middle East. President Biden has made matters worse through his shabby treatment of America's best friends. He has attacked the Netanyahu government over its domestic policies and funded its political opponents. He has attacked Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman and promised to turn the Kingdom into a ``pariah'' state.
If we send the message that we are abandoning our friends, we shouldn't be surprised if they begin to hedge their bets. Already, our allies are doing just that, turning to China as a new power broker. Just this month, Beijing brokered a deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran. It has encouraged the Saudis to trade oil in Chinese currency instead of dollars. China has also undertaken to build a secret port in the United Arab Emirates.
The trend is unmistakable. China looks like a rising power in the region, while America appears to be on the decline and on the way out. We can reinforce that impression today or not. Democrats can say that is not the message they intend, but what matters more is what our friends and foes hear. We will vote on it soon.
And it is not just China that is exploiting our weaknesses. Iran sees our retreat as a green light to dominate Iraq. Already it is manipulating in Iraq's politics and arming Shia militias. Iran just signed a border deal with Iraq to send more arms and cash to its proxies. Tehran's influence will only grow if ours recedes. We will vote on that soon too.
In short, repealing these resolutions will embolden terrorists, embolden Iran, and embolden China, while demoralizing our allies and making it harder to punish attacks on Americans. Do Senators really want to sign up for these consequences?
When another ISIS rears its head or Iran's proxies use Iraq's territory for safe haven, do Senators really want to be responsible for stripping our troops of these additional legal authorities?
I don't, and I won't. But if they do, let them say so plainly. Let them say that this academic exercise, which even they admit won't legally constrain any President, is worth these deadly real-world consequences.
Our men and women deserve that honest debate. After all, it is their lives depending on it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, this week, the Senate debates whether to end two authorizations of the use of military force against Iraq. Congress passed the first authorization in 1991 for the original Gulf war, a strategic and narrowly scoped campaign to liberate Kuwait and punish Saddam Hussein's unlawful aggression.
Congress passed the second one in 2002, paving the way for the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq and the biggest blunder in the history of American foreign policy.
We have spent far too little time on this floor considering the legacy of both wars, and I want to thank Senators Kaine and Senator Young for this long overdue debate about the constitutional responsibility of Congress in our foreign policy.
Most Americans, I think, would be surprised to learn that Congress has much of a role in foreign policy because for virtually my entire time in the Senate, there has been very little evidence that we have played one.
The Founders envisioned a very specific role for Congress, and it wasn't to micromanage foreign policy. They knew matters of war and peace required a level of coherence and action at odds with a legislative branch that, by design, often moves slowly and encourages disagreement and some would say sometimes even incoherence.
But if the Founders had a reason for giving the Executive broad flexibility to conduct war, they also had a reason for giving Congress sole power to declare war.
They wanted to make it hard to start a war, not easy. They knew that Presidents would often find war tempting as a means to amass power, run roughshod over our constitutional checks and balances. From their study of ancient times, they also understood the ways in which endless war threatened and undermined democracy.
Here is what James Madison wrote in 1795, just 6 years after ratification of the Constitution:
Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded. . . . No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continued warfare.
The Founders understood this because they studied history. They knew our history better than we know it ourselves, and they sought to apply its lessons to decisions in their time. For example, they read about how the 27-year war between Athens and Sparta corroded Athenian democracy from within by straining its economy, by feeding unrest, and creating a vacuum for strongmen who were peddling easy answers to difficult questions.
That is why they gave Congress--not the President--the sole power to declare war, but also to ratify treaties, confirm our military and diplomatic leaders, and approve our budget for national security. And they expected Congress to oversee foreign policy actively on behalf of the American people.
If we look back over the last 30 years--twice the length of time that the pages on this floor have even been alive. If you look at the last 30 years from when Congress first authorized the use of force against Iraq until today, what can we say about how Congress has lived up to its responsibility? Has Congress fulfilled the responsibility that the Framers gave it? I am afraid there is not very much that is good in that record.
For 30 years, I would argue, this body has been derelict in its responsibility, and it has come at a terrible time and with a terrible price--a terrible price. If we go back three decades to the early nineties, I had just started law school. The first President Bush was in the White House, and we were living in the early years of a post-
Cold War world. President Bush had inherited what he called a new world order following the collapse of the Soviet Union. We didn't really appreciate it at the time, but when the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States lost a fundamental organizing principle that had been with us, really, for decades.
The Cold War was not just a fight against the Soviets; it was a fight against tyranny. For Americans of my generation, the Cold War defined our foreign policy for good and for ill. It also defined us as a people and defined who we were not. It gave us purpose. It unified us. It made us deliberate about our role in the world.
The Presiding Officer may have read today--I did--a new poll from the University of Chicago where, for the first time, there is a vast minority of Americans who say patriotism is important to them; for the first time, there is a vast minority of Americans who say religion is important to them. You know, the vast majority of people are worried that they are not going to provide something better for the next generation, which is where I think a lot of that comes from.
But think about that change--that change--from when we were being raised to how people feel about it today. It is dramatic. I would say we can't give up. There is a lot of patriotic business for us to do, not just on the floor of the Senate but in America today. I would argue--and I will in a minute--there is as much for us to do now as when we were in the Cold War and we were having our fight with the Soviet Union.
Those principles of sort of engagement and disengagement, of agreement and disagreement, but a way of thinking about the world also had an important effect in terms of constraining our actions, limiting, to some extent, our behavior abroad and disciplining our politics at home.
In the fight against communism, we made more than our fair share of egregious mistakes, to be sure. Among them--the worst--the Vietnam war. But I would say, still, our foreign policy in those days and the values that underlay it in total, in sum, strengthened our democracy at home and advanced U.S. interests abroad--not perfectly but mostly.
The fall of the Berlin Wall disoriented us. Could America continue to lead the world without the moral and political organizing principle of an ideological foe? That was the question. One answer was to reject the question, to sort of assume it away; that to imagine that the triumph over Soviet communism meant that the liberal order--our democracy and capitalism--had prevailed. And there were people writing books about the end of history, if the Presiding Officer will remember, saying that is exactly what had happened.
When Saddam Hussein threatened that new world order by invading his neighbor Kuwait, the U.S. rallied the world to drive him out. In just 7 months, our military routed the Iraqi Army, liberated Kuwait, and effectively put Saddam Hussein in a box. George H.W. Bush showed restraint. The first President Bush showed restraint. No country in the world--no tyrant in the world--was more locked down by our no-fly zone than Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
We had built international support from all over the world for what George Bush had done. You think it wasn't a hard decision for him to say we could go into Baghdad--we could go in and get that terrible dictator--but he knew we didn't have an answer for the sectarian violence that would break out in the aftermath of toppling Saddam Hussein, so he showed restraint.
I think, at the time, our total and swift victory gave confidence to those who believed that our political project was done; that history had ended; that we had finally swept tyranny into the dustbin of history; and that all we had to do was clap our hands, sit back, and watch democracy spread.
Unfortunately, as is often the case in human events--as is always the case in human events--reality turned out to be far messier. That naive optimism ended when al-Qaida flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and crashed a plane in Pennsylvania, murdering 3,000 of our fellow Americans.
So the first decade of the 2000s was characterized by a single-minded focus on responding to the pain, to the shock, and to the tragedy of 9/
11.
All of this, I think, had an incredibly disorienting effect. Since those times, since those days, we have been fighting not a Cold War against a single rival power but a perpetual Global War on Terror that finds enemies everywhere and has led to catastrophic decisions; a perpetual war on terror that has terrorized us. And this endless war led Congress to cede vast authority to the President to wage that war, surrendering our constitutional responsibility to set the boundaries, to debate the wisdom, and oversee the use of lethal force in the name of the American people, which is one of the reasons that we were sent here in the first place.
In the first Gulf war, Congress's deference to the executive had no significant consequences because the first Bush administration actually had a coherent strategy based on limited and achievable objectives: liberate Kuwait, defeat the Iraqi Army, contain Saddam.
After 9/11, congressional deference cost the American people and our leadership in the world dearly.
In Afghanistan, what began as a limited mission to destroy al-Qaida metastasized into a 20-year campaign to transform the country into a liberal democracy, something Afghanistan would never become--certainly not over that time period and probably not in our own lives--and a cost of over 2,300 American servicemembers, nearly 4,000 contractors, and over 46,000 Afghan civilians.
In 2002, when the second President Bush came to Congress and misrepresented the threat of weapons of mass destruction--which Saddam had destroyed years before and which many of our allies and our own intelligence Agencies doubted that he had--when they claimed that Saddam's secular regime was somehow tied to al-Qaida, a terrorist group driven by religious fanaticism, when they said the war could pay for itself with Iraqi oil, conclude in months, not years, and that we could somehow turn a Nation whose sectarian rivalries Saddam had prevented from exploding through violence and oppression into yet another pluralistic democracy; most people in Congress went along for the ride--except, I should say, for a few of my colleagues still in this body, including Senator Durbin; Senator Murray; Senator Reed; Senator Stabenow; Senator Wyden; my former senior Senator Mark Udall, then a Member of the House--I say to the pages that are here: Mark their names into history books for the vote that they took. That was a courageous vote that they took. I believe the Presiding Officer's--he is not here--but I believe the Presiding Officer's predecessor, Chairman Leahy from the great State of Vermont, took that courageous vote as well.
Except for the handful of them and my colleague Mark Udall, then a Member of the House--except for them, almost no one here asked if there was even a strategy or what it was. They didn't ask how toppling a Sunni dictator in a Shia majority country would strengthen Iran. And I can assure you, they didn't ask what China was doing, as we committed ourselves to a second nation-building project in the Middle East.
And by acquiescing to the President, Congress essentially cut off the American people from the vital debate about the true cost and consequences of the war.
And in the end, the cost was terrible. The Iraq war killed over 4,600 American servicemembers and over 3,600 contractors. Over 50 times--50 times--more troops were killed or injured in the post-war insurgency than in the original march to Baghdad. The war killed 200,000 Iraqi civilians and displaced over 9 million people. It left the country in ruins and its identity in tatters.
Twenty years later, Iraqis are still trying to pick up the pieces. Since the war, corruption has stolen $150 billion of Iraq's wealth. That is over half of the country's entire GDP last year. Twenty years later, Iran is also in a stronger position than ever, seizing on the vacuum we created with proxies from Iraq to Syria to Lebanon to Yemen, threatening our troops in the region and vital allies like Israel.
China is cutting deals today. Having avoided those 20 years of bedlam, they are now showing up and making peace agreements between the Iranians and the Saudis, not having paid the price that we've paid. And 20 years later, America's global leadership and credibility have yet to recover as a result of the decisions that we made.
In the name of spreading freedom across the globe, we, instead, spread images of chaos and civil strife, of torture at Abu Ghraib, of waterboarding and black sites--all violations of the values that we claimed to serve; that I believe we do serve.
And to pay for it all, we borrowed $8 trillion from our children--$8 trillion--from the next generation of Americans.
In fact, we were so committed to not paying for that war, to not sacrificing the way our parents and grandparents did when they were engaged in wars, we were so committed to not bearing the burden that we cut taxes twice and borrowed another $10 trillion from our children to pay for those.
Imagine what we could have done for this country if we had spent that
$18 trillion here at home, the good-paying jobs we could have created, the 21st-century industries and infrastructure we could have built, the opportunities we could have created for the next generation of Americans. Instead, from their perspective, we would have been better off lighting that $18 trillion on fire.
I bring this up not to relitigate the past but to remind us of the profound cost to America and the world of giving Presidents a blank check in foreign policy, of shirking our constitutional responsibility, our duty to provide real oversight and hold the Executive accountable to our democratic values, to the rule of law, and to the voices and opinions of the American people.
We should acknowledge that there will be moments when doing so will be inconvenient for us in the short term. There are countries around the world that are not inconvenienced by the set of values we purport to live by. The fact that they are inconvenient doesn't mean they are not right.
As the Founders understood, there is always going to be a temptation to trade freedom for the illusion of security, to act instead of consult, to ignore our commitment to human rights and the rule of law for expediency, or to turn a blind eye to corruption or incompetence by a President of your own party--especially of your own party. But over the long term, our willingness to resist those temptations I think is what makes America different. It is what makes our foreign policy different at its best. It is what has made us a beacon to the world even if our light has flickered at times. It is why the world doesn't look to China or to Russia for moral leadership; it looks to us. Because American foreign policy at its best has never been about serving the whims of a tyrant or a party boss; it is about serving the American people and offering a better vision for humanity through the power of our example and our partnership with the world. And it is why we in Congress have to take our roles seriously in this democracy--we really do--to take our obligation to the American people just as seriously and not simply honor our constitutional balance of power in the breach but every single time.
So my hope is that this modest vote we are going to take is the beginning of a new commitment by Congress to fulfill our constitutional responsibility, to bring the American people back into this conversation about what our global leadership should look like in the 21st century, and to work in partnership with the President to define a new organizing principle for our leadership because we don't have another 30 years to wait, and the whole world is watching.
I, for one, know that--I think when we pick up the enduring values that reflect our foreign policy at its best, that reflect a sense of justice here at home as well, when we can stand for both freedom and for opportunity, which we have decade after decade after decade, there is a coalition of countries all around the world that would rather sign up to that vision than sign up to the tyranny that is on offer from other societies.
But we have to remember what the Founders told us. In our time, we have to exercise this responsibility that we have here in Congress, and we need to do the work faithfully that the American people sent us here to do.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Markey). The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Amendment No. 13
(Purpose: To establish a Joint Select Committee on Afghanistan to conduct a full investigation and compile a joint report on the United States withdrawal from Afghanistan.)
Mr. Scott of Florida. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 13 and ask that it be reported by number.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment by number.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Florida, [Mr. SCOTT], for himself and others, proposes an amendment numbered 13.
(The amendment is printed in the Record of March 21, 2023, under
``Text of Amendments.'')
Mr. SCOTT of Florida. In September 2021, President Biden's misguided and dangerous decisions in his botched withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan led to America's most stunning, unforced, and humiliating defeat in decades.
Due to President Biden's carelessness and failed leadership, 13 U.S. servicemembers were lost; billions of dollars of U.S. military equipment were left for the Taliban, and here is a picture of some of it; and hundreds of American citizens were stranded behind enemy lines.
The world is now a more dangerous place. Our enemies, like Russia, Communist China, and Iran, are emboldened, and the American people are rightfully furious.
We must have accountability, and the best way to do that is establishing a bipartisan, bicameral Joint Select Committee on Afghanistan--similar to the Iran-Contra committees--to conduct a full investigation and compile a thorough report on President Biden's tragically failed withdrawal from Afghanistan.
I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
Mr. YOUNG. Mr. President, I appreciate very much my colleague from Florida's continued focus on the need to fully account for what went wrong with the Biden administration's horribly botched withdrawal from Afghanistan; however, I regret that I must oppose his amendment because this is not the right venue for establishing a committee of this nature.
In the coming months, we are going to consider the annual National Defense Authorization Act, and important oversight issues such as the ones raised in the amendment by the gentleman from Florida should be debated within that context and that framework.
This legislative effort to remove outdated authorities that were put in place two decades ago for a war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq to prevent them from abuse in the future has to be kept, in my estimation, as clean as possible to enable them to be signed into law without further delay.
As I said before, by allowing these authorizations to live on long past their original purpose, Congress has forfeited the power to authorize military force to the executive branch.
I know my colleague from Florida cares deeply about oversight issues, as evidenced by this amendment, so I hope he and I can work together both to pass a clean repeal of these two outdated authorizations and then discuss robust oversight measures for Afghanistan within the confines of the NDAA process.
In closing, I would urge my colleagues to vote against this amendment in order to keep this bill a clean repeal of the 1991 and 2002 authorizations.
Vote on Amendment No. 13
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question now occurs on agreeing to amendment No. 13.
Mr. YOUNG. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays are ordered.
Mr. SCOTT of Florida. I ask unanimous consent that the vote begin now.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Coons), the Senator from California (Mrs. Feinstein), the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fetterman), and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) are necessarily absent.
Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell).
The result was announced--yeas 33, nays 62, as follows:
YEAS--33
Barrasso Blackburn Boozman Braun Britt Budd Capito Cramer Cruz Daines Ernst Fischer Graham Hagerty Hawley Hoeven Hyde-Smith Johnson Kennedy Lee Lummis Marshall Mullin Paul Rosen Rounds Rubio Schmitt Scott (FL) Scott (SC) Sullivan Tuberville Wicker
NAYS--62
Baldwin Bennet Blumenthal Booker Brown Cantwell Cardin Carper Casey Cassidy Collins Cornyn Cortez Masto Cotton Crapo Duckworth Durbin Gillibrand Grassley Hassan Heinrich Hickenlooper Hirono Kaine Kelly King Klobuchar Lankford Lujan Manchin Markey Menendez Merkley Moran Murkowski Murphy Murray Ossoff Padilla Peters Reed Ricketts Risch Romney Schatz Schumer Shaheen Sinema Smith Stabenow Tester Thune Tillis Van Hollen Vance Warner Warnock Warren Welch Whitehouse Wyden Young
NOT VOTING--5
Coons Feinstein Fetterman McConnell Sanders
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Warnock). On this vote, the yeas are 33, the nays are 62.
Under the previous order requiring 60 votes for the adoption of this amendment, the amendment is not agreed.
The amendment (No. 13) was rejected.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
Amendment No. 40
(Purpose: To establish the Office of the Special Inspector General for Ukraine Assistance.)
Mr. HAWLEY. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 40 and ask that it be reported by number.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The bill clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Missouri [Mr. Hawley], proposes an amendment numbered 40.
(The amendment is printed in today's Record under ``Text of Amendments.'')
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there will now be 4 minutes of debate, equally divided, prior to a vote in relation to Hawley amendment No. 40.
Mr. HAWLEY. Mr. President, this body has spent to date $113 billion on the war in Ukraine and counting. Yet we do not have any direct oversight of any of the money that is being spent.
My amendment is very simple. Let's create 1 government watchdog--not 2, not 3, not 20; 1 government watchdog--to oversee every cent that is spent on Ukraine and to report back to this Congress and to the American people as to how their hard-earned money is being spent.
Currently, there are dozens of reporting requirements. There are multiple bureaucrats who are involved.
Listen, we learned this the hard way in Afghanistan, where, after years of lack of oversight, billions of dollars wasted, and, tragically, many lives lost, this body finally created a special inspector general to oversee the Afghanistan effort and reporting requirements, to report back to the public on what we knew and were learning. That is what we should do in this case.
I urge a ``yes'' vote on this amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I don't have an objection to the notion that the funds we are spending together in Ukraine should have careful analysis. We know from past experience, if there is not that careful analysis done, there could be problems. This is not the bill to do it.
When we do war authorizations, we don't put other amendments on, no matter how good they might be, if they are extraneous to the war authorization. The 1991 and 2002 war authorizations did not include additional items, no matter how meritorious they might have been.
So while this idea is an idea that I think people can gravitate toward, I think this is the wrong bill, the wrong vehicle, to insert something about Ukraine into this repeal of the Iraq war authorizations.
We have not done a repeal for 52 years. The authorizations themselves were clean authorizations.
I would urge a ``no'' vote so that the repeal, when we vote on it tomorrow, will be a clean repeal. I would urge my colleagues to vote no.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
Mr. RISCH. Mr. President, very briefly, first of all, I want to compliment Senator Hawley for pursuing this route.
There isn't a person in this room, there isn't a person in America who doesn't want to see that every dollar spent for the taxpayers is looked after. In this particular instance, I am going to oppose this simply because there are already 64 ongoing or planned audits and reports on U.S. assistance to Ukraine.
This piece of legislation would require a quarterly schedule, and that actually reduces the number. For instance, USAID direct budgetary support comes every 2 months.
So this is being looked after, unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, where we are talking about enormous amounts of money--not that this isn't a large amount, but those were enormous, and the work in auditing was not very good. In this case, it is very good. We have been looking at it in the Intelligence Committee, and we have been looking at it in the Foreign Relations Committee and have found zero siphoning of U.S. dollars. So this really is an expenditure that is not necessary because it is being looked after already.
I would urge a ``no'' vote on this amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
Mr. HAWLEY. Mr. President, do I have any time left?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. You have 49 seconds.
Mr. HAWLEY. Mr. President, I would just say, in response to my friend's point about there being 60-plus reporting requirements already in place, that is part of the problem. When everybody is in charge, nobody is in charge.
Currently, the oversight requirements are spread across three different Agencies of the inspector general. The State Department, the Defense Department, and USAID each would have a little piece of this--
dozens of disparate requirements.
Let's unify it. We have done this before--one inspector general, one staff, one set of requirements. Make it public. Give the American people the accountability they deserve.
I urge a ``yes'' vote.
I yield the floor.
Vote on Amendment No. 40
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the amendment.
Mr. MENENDEZ: I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Coons), the Senator from California (Mrs. Feinstein), the Senator from Pennsylvania
(Mr. Fetterman), and the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Manchin) are necessarily absent.
Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell) and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville).
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 26, nays 68, as follows:
YEAS--26
Barrasso Blackburn Braun Britt Budd Cruz Daines Fischer Graham Hagerty Hawley Hoeven Johnson Lee Lummis Marshall Moran Ossoff Paul Schmitt Scott (FL) Scott (SC) Sinema Sullivan Tester Vance
NAYS--68
Baldwin Bennet Blumenthal Booker Boozman Brown Cantwell Capito Cardin Carper Casey Cassidy Collins Cornyn Cortez Masto Cotton Cramer Crapo Duckworth Durbin Ernst Gillibrand Grassley Hassan Heinrich Hickenlooper Hirono Hyde-Smith Kaine Kelly Kennedy King Klobuchar Lankford Lujan Markey Menendez Merkley Mullin Murkowski Murphy Murray Padilla Peters Reed Ricketts Risch Romney Rosen Rounds Rubio Sanders Schatz Schumer Shaheen Smith Stabenow Thune Tillis Van Hollen Warner Warnock Warren Welch Whitehouse Wicker Wyden Young
NOT VOTING--6
Coons Feinstein Fetterman Manchin McConnell Tuberville
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kelly). On this vote, the yeas are 26, the nays are 68.
Under the previous order requiring 60 votes for the adoption of this amendment, the amendment is not agreed to.
The amendment (No. 40) was rejected.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
____________________