[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 54 (Tuesday, March 28, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2023-S2027]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Order for Recess
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate recess from
12:30 p.m. until 2:15 p.m. today for the weekly conference meetings.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BLUNT. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise to speak on the nomination of Judge
Neil Gorsuch to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
It is important to reflect for a moment on how we have reached this
moment. It has been more than a year since the untimely passing of
Justice Antonin Scalia in February of 2016. Under article II, section 2
of the U.S. Constitution, President Barack Obama had a duty to make a
nomination to fill that vacant seat. He met that obligation by
nominating Chief Judge Merrick Garland in March of 2016.
Yet the leader of the Senate Republicans, Majority Leader McConnell,
announced that, for the first time in the 230-year history of the
Senate, he would refuse the President's nominee, Judge Garland, a
hearing and a vote. Senator McConnell further said that he would refuse
to even meet with Judge Garland. It was a transparent political
decision made by the Republican leader in the hopes that a Republican
would be elected President and fill the vacancy. It was part of a
broader Republican political strategy to influence, if not capture, the
judicial branch of government on every level of the court system.
Not only did the Senate Republicans keep a Supreme Court seat vacant
for over a year, they turned the Senate's Executive Calendar into a
nomination obituary column for 30 other judicial nominees who had been
reported out of the Judiciary Committee with bipartisan support. They
were hoping a Republican President would fill all of those seats, and
they were prepared to leave them vacant for a year or more to achieve
that end.
What kind of nominees were they hoping for? Nominees who had been
blessed by special interests, by big business, and by Republican
advocacy organizations.
It was last year that then-Candidate Donald Trump released a list of
21 potential Supreme Court candidates who were handpicked by two
Republican advocacy groups--the Federalist Society and the Heritage
Foundation. I am not speculating on the fact that they were chosen by
those two groups, as President Trump publicly thanked the groups for
giving him a list of names with which to fill the vacancies on the
Supreme Court. It was unprecedented for anyone, including a candidate
for President, to outsource the judicial selection process to special
interest
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groups, but President Trump did it. True to his word to these special
interest groups, he nominated one of the names on the list--Judge Neil
Gorsuch.
The first telephone call Judge Gorsuch received about his nomination
was not from the White House; it was from the Federalist Society, which
was one of these Republican advocacy groups. Eventually, Judge Gorsuch
made it to the interview stage with President Trump's inner circle. He
met with Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus, and President Trump himself.
Those men each took the measure of Judge Gorsuch and gave him their
approval to serve for a lifetime appointment on the highest Court in
the land. President Trump, who had announced numerous litmus tests for
judicial nominations, appeared very satisfied with Neil Gorsuch as his
nominee.
The President's Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus, even said: ``Neil
Gorsuch . . . represents the type of judge that has the vision of
Donald Trump.''
There was certainly no political subtlety in that evaluation.
After Judge Gorsuch's nomination was announced, a dark money machine
shifted into gear. A national campaign, which cost at least $10
million, was launched to support the Gorsuch nomination. Because it is
dark money, there is no disclosure about who is bankrolling this
effort, but it is a safe bet that the suppliers of dark money have at
least a passing interest in cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Despite this unprecedented and unsettling process that led to Judge
Gorsuch's nomination, the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee
gave Judge Gorsuch a courtesy that Republicans denied to Judge
Garland--a hearing and a vote. Why? Because Senate Democrats take the
Constitution seriously. We do not turn our backs on the constitutional
responsibility of advice and consent, even though that is exactly what
our Republican colleagues did when it came to Merrick Garland.
Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee met for 4 days to consider
the Gorsuch nomination. In leading up to the hearing, I made it clear
on the Senate floor that I thought that Judge Gorsuch had a burden to
bear at that hearing.
On February 2, I said here on the floor that Judge Gorsuch needed to
demonstrate that he would be a nominee who would uphold and defend the
Constitution for the benefit of everyone, not just for the advantage of
a privileged few who happened to engineer his nomination.
I also said that Judge Gorsuch needed to be forthright with the
American people about his record and his views. I made it clear that
avoiding answers to critical questions was unacceptable.
I said that he needed to demonstrate that he would be an independent
check on President Trump and every President and that he was prepared
to disappoint the President and the rightwing groups that handpicked
him if the Constitution and the law required it.
Judge Gorsuch was given a full and fair hearing. He was given every
opportunity to explain his judicial record and his views and to meet
the expectations I laid out for him. I came away from this hearing
firmly convinced that I must oppose the nomination of Neil Gorsuch.
Here are the reasons:
Judge Gorsuch favors corporations and elites over the rights and
voices of Americans, often using selective textualism to advance his
agenda. Judge Gorsuch's hearing reinforced my fear that he would lean
toward corporations and special interest elites at the expense of
American workers and families.
Big business and special interests have found a friend under the
Roberts Supreme Court. I noted at the hearing a study by the
Constitutional Accountability Center that found that under Chief
Justice John Roberts the Supreme Court has ruled for positions that
have been advocated by the Chamber of Commerce 69 percent of the time.
I am concerned, based on a review of his record, that Judge Gorsuch
is likely to increase the pro-business leanings of the Roberts Court.
In a series of decisions--and I have read many of them--involving
workers' rights, discrimination claims, consumer rights, and access to
the courts, Judge Gorsuch has, time and again, favored corporations. He
has often substituted his own judgment for those of the agencies that
are tasked with protecting the workers.
No case was more egregious than the TransAm Trucking case, which was
brought up repeatedly at the hearing. The facts are pretty well known
by now. In January, Alphonse Maddin, a truck driver from Detroit, was
stuck on the side of Interstate 88 in my home State of Illinois, and it
was 14 degrees below zero outside. The brakes on his trailer were
frozen. After waiting for a repair truck for several hours without his
having any heat in the cab of his truck, Alphonse Maddin's body was
starting to go numb. He called the trucking company one more time. They
said: You have two options--stay in that truck or drag that frozen
trailer down the interstate highway.
Both of those options were a risk to health and safety and common
sense. So, instead, Al Maddin unhitched the broken-down trailer and
drove to a gas station to fuel up and get warm and then returned to the
disabled trailer. For this, the company fired him, and that firing
blackballed him from ever working as a truck driver again.
Al Maddin came by my office and explained what he did. He had heard
that there was some Federal agency that might consider what he had
considered to be an unfair firing, so he went down to the agency and
took out a ballpoint pen and filled out the complaint in longhand
without the advice of counsel or any help. He was shocked when he won.
The case went further on appeal. Seven different judges heard Al
Maddin's case. Six of them agreed that what had happened to him was
unfair and unlawful. The only judge who found for the trucking company
was Neil Gorsuch.
Judge Gorsuch's dissent claimed that he was merely looking at the
plain text of the law and the dictionary's definition and that was why
Al Maddin had been fired. But the Tenth Circuit majority said that Neil
Gorsuch was cherry-picking one dictionary's definition to come to his
conclusion. Other dictionaries and the law's purpose of protecting
health and safety had been ignored by Judge Gorsuch.
Republican nominees like Judge Gorsuch often claim they are using the
supposedly neutral philosophies of originalism and textualism to guide
their decision making, but Al Maddin's case shows how Judge Gorsuch
used a selective choice of text to advance a pro-business agenda at the
expense of this American worker.
There are many other cases in Judge Gorsuch's record that demonstrate
this trend, leading the Associated Press to say that Gorsuch's workers'
rights opinions are ``often sympathetic but coldly pragmatic, and
they're usually in the employer's favor.''
Take a look at the Hobby Lobby case. In that case, Judge Gorsuch
expanded the idea that a corporation--a business--is a person. Why? He
wanted to permit a for-profit corporation to impose its owners'
personal religious beliefs on more than 13,000 employees who worked at
that corporation and to limit their access to healthcare under
insurance policies.
In finding for the corporation, Judge Gorsuch barely acknowledged
that this decision burdened these thousands of employees and their
personally constitutionally protected religious beliefs and choices.
Judge Gorsuch also has a troubling record when it comes to protecting
the rights of Americans with disabilities and those who are victims of
discrimination. It was quite a scene when, last week, in the midst of
our hearing on Judge Gorsuch, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous
ruling that rejected a standard that had been created by Judge Gorsuch.
I am sure that has never happened in history. This standard, which
Judge Gorsuch had promoted for a case in which he wrote the majority
opinion, weakened protections for students with disabilities under the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
In 2008, Judge Gorsuch wrote in the Luke P. case that, under the
IDEA, schools need only to provide educational benefits to students
with disabilities that are merely more than de minimis.
At issue was the legal responsibility of a school district to provide
educational opportunities for a child with
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disabilities. In this case, Luke was a boy from Colorado who had
suffered from severe autism. With the assistance and support of his
teachers, Luke had made significant progress in school--in kindergarten
and first grade. Then, when his family moved to a new home, he had to
change school districts. At his new school, Luke began to lose the
skills he had gained. His behavior was worse.
After unsuccessful attempts to address these concerns, Luke's parents
decided that they ``could not in good conscience continue to expose
their son, Luke, to this environment that was so detrimental to his
educational and behavioral development.'' They decided to enroll Luke
in a residential school that was dedicated to the education of children
with his type of autism spectrum disorder.
A due process hearing officer, a Colorado State administrative law
judge, and a Federal district court all found that the school district
had failed to provide the education that was guaranteed to Luke under
the Federal law of IDEA and that it was, therefore, required to
reimburse the cost of the private residential school placement that
Luke needed.
His parents were desperate to give Luke a chance in life, but then
Judge Gorsuch ruled against them. In so doing, he created a new, lower
standard for school districts in the process.
I asked Judge Gorsuch about this. He claimed he was just following
the law and precedent, but as I pointed out at the hearing, that was
not accurate. A legal analysis showed that Judge Gorsuch was the first
judge in that circuit to add the word ``merely'' to the standard.
Luke P.'s father, Jeff, testified at the hearing and said that Judge
Gorsuch's ``subtle wordcraft'' had the effect of ``further restricting
an already restricted precedent with, unfortunately, my son in the
bull's-eye of that decision.''
What did Chief Justice John Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court say of
the Gorsuch standard? Here is what he said: ``When all is said and
done, a student offered an educational program providing `merely more
than de minimis' progress [Gorsuch's words] from year to year can
hardly be said to have been offered an education at all.''
The Supreme Court sent a strong message when they released this
opinion in the midst of Judge Gorsuch's hearing. The Court unanimously
said that the Judge Gorsuch standard was inconsistent with the law. On
this issue, Judge Gorsuch, the nominee, is somewhere to the right even
of Justice Clarence Thomas. This case is not an outlier. In fact, an
analysis of his disability decisions shows that Judge Gorsuch has ruled
against disabled students in 8 out of 10 IDEA cases.
There was also a consistent pattern of Judge Gorsuch's record on
discrimination and retaliation involving employers. Bloomberg BNA
analyzed this record and found that he ruled for employers 8 out of 12
times.
For example, he ruled against a sex discrimination claim brought by a
UPS saleswoman; a disability discrimination claim that was brought by a
college professor; an age discrimination claim that was brought by two
maintenance workers; a race discrimination claim that was brought by an
African-American grocery store employee who was called a ``monkey'' by
his supervisor; a gender and disability discrimination claim that was
brought by a female county accountant with multiple sclerosis; and a
discrimination claim that was brought by a transgender woman who sought
to use the restroom of her gender identity.
The case of Grace Hwang was particularly troubling to me. Ms. Hwang
had been a college professor for 15 years. Then she was diagnosed with
cancer. She needed a bone marrow transplant, so they gave her 6 months
of sick leave. As it was about to expire, they told her to return to
the classroom. Just at this same time, a flu epidemic was sweeping
across the campus. Ms. Hwang asked to extend her leave and work from
home so she wouldn't get infected. She felt especially vulnerable,
having just had a bone marrow transplant.
The university denied her request and terminated her employment
because she asked to be protected from this flu epidemic. Judge Gorsuch
authored an opinion upholding the dismissal of Ms. Hwang's disability
discrimination complaint.
Judge Gorsuch would not let a jury consider the reasonableness of her
request. Instead, he wrote that six months' leave was ``more than
sufficient'' and wrote that the purpose of disability law is ``not to
turn employers into safety net providers for those who cannot work.''
Grace Hwang's children said that Judge Gorsuch's opinion ``removed
the human element from the equation. It did not bring justice.''
Also, during the hearing, Judge Gorsuch refused to distance himself
from the extreme and bigoted views of one of his college professors and
his dissertation supervisor, Professor John Finnis, a man whom he has
publicly praised.
Overall, Judge Gorsuch's record raised serious concerns about what
his confirmation would mean for the vulnerable and the victimized.
We also came to learn that Judge Gorsuch was an aggressive defender
of Executive power when he worked at the Justice Department during the
Bush administration. In June 2004, after the terrible Abu Ghraib
torture scandal, I offered the first legislation to ban cruel and
inhuman treatment of detainees. This legislation ultimately became the
McCain torture amendment, which, despite a veto threat by President
Bush, passed this Senate in 2005 by an overwhelming 90-to-9 vote.
But Judge Gorsuch advocated that the President should issue a
statement claiming that the McCain amendment was ``essentially
codifying'' torture techniques like waterboarding. This is despite
overwhelming evidence from Senator McCain and others in Congress that
this amendment was intended to do the exact opposite by outlawing
cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
Judge Gorsuch testified that he was simply an attorney working for a
client, but Gorsuch's email correspondence revealed that he was viewed
as a ``true loyalist'' to the Republican administration. And this is a
client that the judge actively lobbied to serve, even though their
troubled record on torture was already a matter of public record.
These documents from Gorsuch's tenure at the Department of Justice,
which were not available during his earlier confirmation hearing for
the Tenth Circuit, provide a revealing look at his beliefs on Executive
power. They raise deeply troubling questions about what Judge Gorsuch
would do if he is called upon to stand up to this President or any
President who claims the power to ignore laws that protect fundamental
human rights.
For the majority of questions from Democratic Senators at his
hearing, Judge Gorsuch failed to meaningfully respond. He had a
standard set of evasions and nonanswers that he used whenever he was
asked about fundamental legal principles and landmark cases. It didn't
take long before this Senator, and many others, could finish his
sentences before he started.
In ducking these critical questions, Judge Gorsuch ended up saying
nothing to assuage my concerns about Reince Priebus's pronouncement
that Judge Gorsuch ``has the vision of Donald Trump.''
The Supreme Court must serve as an independent check on President
Trump, not a rubberstamp. But Judge Gorsuch wouldn't even comment on
the original meaning of the Constitution's emoluments clause,
apparently for fear of possibly implicating the President who nominated
him.
Judge Gorsuch might not be the first nominee to avoid answering
questions about his views, but he went further than others. As a
result, members of the committee can look only to his judicial record
and his work for the Justice Department to decide their vote for this
lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court.
His record on the bench and his record at the Justice Department make
it clear that Judge Gorsuch is not the right person to serve in the
highest Court in the land. We all want judges to follow the law and
apply the facts fairly, but it is naive to believe that this is some
kind of robotic exercise. Every judge brings some values to the court.
In close cases, those values can tip the meaning of the law or even the
facts before the court. One key purpose of these hearings is to provide
reassurance that the nominee's values are in
[[Page S2026]]
the American mainstream. I did not find this assurance in Judge
Gorsuch's testimony last week, and I certainly didn't find it in his
record. He received a fair hearing, but he did not earn my vote.
Because Republicans control the Senate, we can expect Judge Gorsuch
to be reported out of the Judiciary Committee next week and then to
receive a vote on the Senate floor. But no one should be surprised that
Judge Gorsuch will need to meet the threshold of 60 Senate votes in
order to be confirmed.
Majority Leader McConnell has made clear time and again that 60 votes
is the standard for matters of controversy in this Senate. I will cite
a few of the leader's more memorable quotes.
On December 2, 2007, Senator McConnell said: ``I think we can
stipulate once again for the umpteenth time that matters that have any
level of controversy about it in the Senate will require 60 votes.''
On October 28, 2009, Senator McConnell said: ``Well, it's fairly
routine around the Senate that controversial matters require 60
votes.''
Then again, on July 17, 2007, Senator McConnell said: ``Sixty votes
in the Senate? As common as gambling in Casablanca.''
Sixty votes is a threshold that Supreme Court nominees have met for
the past quarter century. If a Supreme Court nominee cannot garner 60
votes in the Senate, then the President should put forward a new
nominee.
We are at a unique moment in history. The President has already fired
an Attorney General and had his unconstitutional Executive actions
blocked by many Federal courts. The President, in the first few weeks,
has also launched unprecedented attacks on the integrity of the Federal
judiciary. And now the Federal Bureau of Investigation has confirmed it
is investigating Russian involvement in his election.
A new bombshell is revealed almost every day.
In this context, the Senate cannot simply rubberstamp a lifetime
Supreme Court appointment for the President. Neil Gorsuch is the man
Donald Trump urgently wants on the Supreme Court. That should give many
Americans pause. It certainly gives pause to me.
I cannot support the nomination of Neil Gorsuch. I will vote no when
his nomination comes before the Judiciary Committee next week, I will
vote no on cloture, and I will oppose his nomination on the Senate
floor.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
Mr. LEE. Mr. President, the most solemn and serious and consequential
act that the United States can undertake at any moment is to make the
decision to send Americans into war. From time to time, war may be an
unfortunate decision but a necessary decision--a necessary and
potentially tragic function of any republic. And it might be
necessitated by the need to safeguard the rights and the freedoms of
the government's own citizens from foreign states--from those who would
harm us. Yet we should enter into those wars and enter into any
alliances that could lead to war only after utmost deliberation and
strategic consideration, focusing specifically on the well-being of the
American citizens--those people whom we are sworn to protect, those
people whose safety is at stake whenever we go to war.
That is why, for the past several months, I have asked that the
Senate have a rollcall vote on the measure to ratify Montenegro's
accession to the North Atlantic Treaty, and that is why I will be
casting my vote against expanding NATO later today.
Of course, treaties and alliances with other countries can be
beneficial; there is no question about that. But the Founders of this
country understood that their seriousness needs also to be considered--
that the seriousness of a treaty needs to be taken into account in the
same way that you have to consider very carefully the seriousness of
going to war, and for the very same reasons. That is why both of these
powers--the power to make and ratify treaties and the power to declare
and execute war--are given not to one single branch of the Federal
Government, but rather they are shared by the legislative and executive
branches acting together. In addition to this, treaty ratification
requires not just a majority vote, but a two-thirds supermajority vote
within the Senate.
The United States should enter into treaties and alliances with
foreign nations that will enhance the ability of American citizens to
exercise their rights and freedoms and to safeguard those same people.
At the heart of the NATO alliance is the article 5 guarantee for
collective defense, stating, in essence, that an attack against any one
NATO ally will be perceived and responded to as an attack against all.
This means that the United States is obligated by treaty to make war
because of an attack on an ally, and those allies are obligated to us
for the same purpose and to the same extent. This, of course, is a very
significant agreement. It is one that we should never take lightly. It
is never one that we should just assume into existence any time we have
a decision to make.
Simply put, I don't see how the accession of Montenegro--a country
with a population smaller than most congressional districts and a
military smaller than the police force of the District of Columbia--is
beneficial enough that we should share an agreement for collective
defense. Montenegro becoming a member of NATO is certainly attractive
to European countries because it makes the United States the security
guarantor of yet another country in a region prone to instability and
ethnic unrest, but that doesn't automatically make it of interest to
the American people. It doesn't automatically mean that the benefits
outweigh any risks to the American people by bringing this country into
NATO.
On the other hand, I believe the risks could outweigh the benefits to
the detriment of the American people and result in more of our
servicemembers being deployed overseas and at risk. The resolution of
ratification on which the Senate is voting states that ``an attack
against Montenegro, or its destabilization arising from external
subversion, would threaten the security of Europe and jeopardize United
States national security interests.''
This makes NATO responsible not only for external security but for
combating destabilization in a historically volatile part of the world.
Undertaking obligations like this only increases the likelihood of
Americans being placed in harm's way, of our brave young service men
and women having to go into a potential field of battle.
Further, expanding NATO does not address some of the systemic
problems that U.S. administrations from both sides of the aisle have
long pressed to their European counterparts: the failure of many NATO
countries to meet decades-old defense spending obligations and the
increasingly concerning behavior of some NATO members.
For example, several weeks ago it was announced that American
military personnel are now being used in northern Syria for the purpose
of preventing infighting between one of our NATO allies--Turkey--and
our Kurdish allies in the coalition against ISIS. This was followed in
short order by a diplomatic crisis between Turkey and the Netherlands--
both NATO allies--in which the Turkish President accused the Dutch
Government of fascism. European Commission President Jean-Claude
Juncker in February rejected calls from the Trump administration, which
were similar to pleas from the Obama administration, for European
countries to increase their own defense spending in fulfillment of
their existing obligations through NATO.
Addressing such issues is much more vital to the future of NATO and
American interests in Europe than further rounds of expansion.
Finally, some of my colleagues have argued that we should move
forward with Montenegro's accession into NATO because the Russians
oppose it, just as the Russians have opposed all previous rounds of
expansion. This is not the basis for a sound foreign policy. While the
United States should not let another country have a veto over our
national security decisions, it would be equally unwise for the United
States simply to engage in certain actions just because geopolitical
adversaries might oppose them. Such reactionary statecraft contradicts
the ideals of prudence and practicality that our Founders hoped would
guide our foreign policy.
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On a more practical level, it still doesn't mean that we should just
be willing to put our Armed Forces in a position where our brave young
men and women might have to go into harm's way as a result of the fact
that a geopolitical adversary takes the opposite viewpoint.
Further, elected officials should not have their patriotism or
loyalty to country questioned because of their understandable concerns
about national security, treaty obligations, and war. There are many
thoughtful leaders and policy experts who have legitimate concerns--
both, about Russia's behavior and about the direction of NATO--and who
support meaningful pressure against Russia through economic and
diplomatic means, as well as the modernization of our strategic
deterrent and missile defense systems.
This vote, of course, is likely to pass and Montenegro will become
the newest member of NATO this year. It is my sincere hope that the
country will be a constructive force in addressing the operational and
mission problems that I have described and that the Trump
administration will press for needed reforms. But I also hope that
American diplomatic leaders and Congress will work to identify and act
on the security interests most relevant to the American people and
think more strategically about our alliances and treaty partners in the
future.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about
the importance of the Senate's vote to ratify the accession of
Montenegro into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO. I am
confident we will see an overwhelming, bipartisan majority of our
colleagues here in the Senate support Montenegro's effort to join NATO.
This is in Montenegro's interest, it is in Europe's interest, and it is
in the national security interest of the United States.
NATO is the most successful security alliance in history, and it is
essential to the stability, freedom, and prosperity that Europe enjoys
and that the United States has enjoyed, and, really, to that stability
that has existed since after World War II. NATO has provided the
security and stability for the freedoms we enjoy and the prosperity.
Montenegro's accession to NATO will help the alliance become more
resilient, and it will deter Russian aggression on Europe's eastern
flank, which is why the alliance invited Montenegro to become its 29th
member last year.
I agree that Montenegro is a small country, but it is geopolitically
important. Its membership in NATO will complete the alliance's control
of the Adriatic coastline, and that will strengthen NATO's southern
border.
Since its independence from Serbia 10 years ago, Montenegro has
pursued inclusion in Euro-Atlantic institutions, and it has been a good
partner to NATO. For example, Montenegro has contributed ably to the
mission in Afghanistan, which is the only time article 5 of NATO has
been invoked. It was after the attacks of 9/11 on the United States,
and our response was to go into Afghanistan. Montenegro joined us,
along with our other NATO allies in this effort. Montenegro also
imposed sanctions on Russia for its aggression in Ukraine.
Montenegro's accession to NATO is also critically important for the
wider Balkan region, which faces increasing Russian influence and
interference. After all, remember that the two major wars of the last
century, World Wars I and II, started in the Balkans. We need to do
everything we can to maintain stability there. This is one of the
things that I believe Montenegro's accession to NATO will help us do.
We saw the increasing Russian influence and the increasing effort to
destabilize the Balkans last year in Montenegro's fall elections.
Since those elections, Montenegrin authorities have arrested several
people in connection with a coup attempt and a plot to assassinate
Montenegro's Prime Minister. There is indisputable evidence that ties
both violent plots back to Russia, which was trying to eliminate a
high-profile supporter of Montenegro's accession to NATO and install,
instead, a pro-Kremlin political party there. Montenegrin police are
still working with international authorities to locate the suspected
Russian masterminds of these efforts.
But when the bipartisan codel from the Senate and House, led by
Senators McCain and Whitehouse, went to the Munich Security Conference
in February, we had a chance to meet with Montenegro's Prime Minister
Djukanovic. He told us in very vivid detail about the efforts to
assassinate him and about Russia's efforts to install instead a pro-
Russian government. Do we really think that Mr. Putin, who desires
nothing more than to weaken the NATO alliance, would work so hard to
disrupt Montenegro's inclusion in NATO if he didn't think it would
strengthen the alliance?
Approving Montenegro's accession to NATO would signal support for
Montenegro's independence and sovereignty and for their continued
efforts to move towards the West and away from Russia. It would also
demonstrate our solidarity with countries like Montenegro that Vladimir
Putin is trying to bully, especially in light of our own recent
experience with Russian meddling in our Presidential election. Now is a
critically important time to send Russia the message that we will not
tolerate this behavior. Last fall, a bipartisan group of diplomats,
national security experts, and former administration officials sent a
letter to Congress urging quick action on Montenegro's accession.
Earlier this month, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson wrote a letter
to Senator McConnell and Senator Schumer detailing the reasons
Montenegro's accession to NATO is in our interest and urging that we
schedule a prompt floor vote on the accession. Virtually all NATO
members have already formally blessed Montenegro's inclusion in the
alliance. So it is just the United States that hasn't taken this
important step forward.
The case for the Senate to support Montenegro's NATO accession is
overwhelming. That is why it is so frustrating that it has taken so
long. With Senator Johnson, I cochaired the Foreign Relations Committee
hearing on this subject back in September of last year. In December and
again in January, the Foreign Relations Committee approved Montenegro's
accession protocol, and efforts were made to secure the necessary
agreement for the full Senate to do the same. These efforts have been
blocked by just a few Senators, despite the overwhelming bipartisan
support for approval.
I am glad that Montenegro's accession is finally getting the vote in
the Senate that it deserves. The United States has long stood for
freedom and democracy in Europe, and I urge my Senate colleagues to
stand strong for freedom and democracy now by voting to approve
Montenegro's accession to NATO.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cruz). The Senator from South Dakota.