[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 64 (Thursday, April 19, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2293-S2296]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Venezuela

  Madam President, I understand that the headlines are dominated by 
events in the Middle East and by the geopolitical and economic and 
trade conflict between the United States and China, but I do want to 
take a moment to talk about something that I have been speaking about 
on the floor of the Senate for the better part of 4\1/2\ years. It is 
one that I know that Director Pompeo knows well, as we have talked 
about it extensively, and that is the growing catastrophe that is 
Venezuela.
  To begin, I want to say clearly that we should care about it simply 
because that catastrophe has become a threat to the United States and 
to the region.
  What do I mean by that?
  First, the regime in control, Nicolas Maduro's, is a state sponsor of 
drug trafficking. It is very simple. What I mean by that is this: Drug 
trafficking networks enjoy the protection of the Venezuelan Government. 
In fact, one of the concessions--literally, one of the contracts--that 
the Maduro regime gives its cronies and loyalists is drug trafficking 
networks.
  A drug trafficker who wants to move coca out through Colombia, into 
Venezuela, and then into the Caribbean or Europe will find the right 
general or the right individual in the Maduro government, and that 
individual will ensure that his plane is not shot down and that, in 
fact, the military and the government organisms of the Government of 
Venezuela--of the Government of Maduro--protect him, facilitate him. 
The people who are supposed to be stopping him are helping him. It is a 
racket. It resembles organized crime. That is what Maduro does.

  We have seen an incredible surge in coca production in Colombia to 
historic levels over the last couple of years, and it is headed here, 
to a nation that is already struggling with an opioid crisis. We are 
about to be flooded with cheap cocaine once again, and a significant 
amount of it will be trafficked into this country with the aid, the 
assistance, and the support of the dictator in Venezuela. That is a 
threat to the United States and to the region.
  No. 2, he is a threat to the United States and to the region because 
he has triggered a migratory crisis that is destabilizing all of 
Venezuela's neighbors, primarily Colombia, which each day is absorbing 
tens of thousands of people fleeing starvation and rampant disease, 
unlike anything we have ever seen, absent a natural disaster in this 
hemisphere. It is destabilizing countries that are already struggling.
  Colombia is already struggling to try to deal with drug trafficking 
groups that are, in many parts of that country, more powerful than the 
government in some areas and the demobilization of the FARC and another 
terrorist group called the ELN. We have invested, along with our 
Colombian partners, millions and millions of American taxpayer dollars 
to help Colombia, which, just a decade and a half ago, was on the verge 
of being a failed state. We helped them to succeed. They are among our 
best allies in the world and, certainly, if not our best, one of the 
best, top-of-the-list allies in the Western Hemisphere. They are being 
destabilized because they are absorbing tens of thousands of migrants a 
day who are fleeing not just political oppression but starvation.
  Healthcare experts are telling us that children in Venezuela will not 
fully develop physically to their full potential because they are 
malnourished today. Infants, newborns are dying in cribs and in 
hospitals because of a lack of medicine and because of a lack of food. 
These are images that we are used to seeing in other parts of the 
world, and it breaks our hearts when it happens somewhere else. This is 
happening in our hemisphere, and it is all man-made in one of the 
richest countries in the hemisphere--the most oil-rich country on the 
planet that just a few years ago was one of the most prosperous 
economies in the entire region.
  People are starving, and they are starving because of a man-made 
crisis. The Maduro regime uses food as a weapon. No. 1, one of the 
other concessions it gives the cronies around Maduro is that if they 
are loyalists, he puts them in charge of food distribution. What does 
that mean? That means you can siphon the food into the black market 
where you can make an exorbitant profit. You obviously are going to 
take some for yourself so that your family gets to eat.
  Then they have the sick process where, in order for you to get food 
from the government, you have to show up with your government-issued ID 
in Venezuela. They know who the government supporters are, and they 
know who isn't. They know who turns out to vote, and they know who 
doesn't. It is a fraudulent election, by the way, because ultimately 
they will manipulate it as they have done before. So imagine that they 
know you didn't vote for them. They know how you voted because they 
monitor the machines. If you support the government, you get food, and 
if you don't, you don't get food. That is why he doesn't want food 
coming in.
  The third is that we are engaged in what, I believe, is global 
competition or a battle between authoritarianism and democracy. There 
is a rise in the threat of authoritarianism in Turkey, in the 
Philippines, obviously in China and Russia, and in this hemisphere it 
is Venezuela. Venezuela is openly attacking the regional democratic 
order. They have basically canceled their Constitution. They have tried 
to replace the democratically elected national assembly. They have 
removed the legitimate judiciary branch and replaced it with loyalists 
of their own.
  Fourth, there is a growing body of evidence that the Maduro regime 
provides a platform for the enemies of the security of the United 
States, including Russia and Hezbollah.
  The spillover effects are undermining our efforts and the efforts of 
our regional partners to promote democracy, human rights, and stability 
in our own backyard in our hemisphere. That was apparent last week at 
the Summit of the Americas, where a growing number of countries--
Argentina, Brazil, Peru--are making incredible strides and continue to 
build upon the democratic structures they have in place. The Peruvian 
President recently had to resign after a previous President resigned 
because the rule of law is working. In Brazil, it is the same thing. 
They are going to have elections this year in Mexico, in Brazil, in 
Colombia. These will be legitimate elections. They may elect someone 
who agrees with us 50 percent of the time, and they may elect someone 
who agrees with us 90 percent of the time, but they will elect someone. 
Yet, in stark contrast to that, is basically a coup d'etat that has 
occurred in Venezuela, where a small group of people have canceled the 
democratic order or at least they have tried to.
  In all of this, there is great news; that is, for the first time in 
recent memory, the democracies of the region have come together to act 
on this. It began with the so-called Lima Group, which is a collection 
of countries that make up the overwhelming majority of the economic 
power and the population size of the hemisphere. They have long banded 
together to criticize the democratic order. We are not even officially

[[Page S2294]]

a member of it, but they have been supportive of the moves made by this 
administration to target Maduro.
  Well, last week at the summit, all the members of the Lima Group, 
plus two--the Bahamas and the Government of the United States--issued a 
joint statement rejecting the sham Presidential vote on May 20 in favor 
of free elections and strongly urging the Venezuelan dictatorship to 
release all political prisoners. The problem, as I met with members of 
civil society and the legitimate elected representatives in the 
National Assembly of Venezuela, is that we have reached an inflection 
point now. Statements, letters, communiques are fine, but the time to 
act is now because people are dying. They are starving to death. The 
humanitarian crisis alone compels us to take action.
  The question posed to me is: Well, what can we do? Some of the 
traditional ideas that people roll out there are additional sanctions. 
Sure, but there is more that can be done, and I want to quickly 
highlight what I hope will be the three things that happen.
  The first is--well, let's decide first on a forum. The ideal forum to 
deal with this is a multilateral organization created specifically for 
the purpose of defending democracy in the Western hemisphere. That is 
called the Organization of American States. It is a group of 34 
nations, and it was designed to deal exactly with this. Sadly, there is 
a small--and I mean a very small minority--of some of the smallest 
countries in the OAS, particularly in the Caribbean, that frankly have 
been bribed and/or compromised from voting against the Maduro regime 
because either they continue to receive cheap oil in dwindling amounts 
or their leaders in this government or the previous one basically stole 
the money and the oil, and now the Venezuelans know it, and they are 
going to release it publicly if these guys break from them. A small 
number of these countries representing less than 10 or 15 percent--
maybe even less than 10 percent--of the population of the region have 
banded together to prevent the OAS from expelling Venezuela, a 
dictatorship, from the OAS, an organization of democracies. I don't 
think we should give up on the OAS. We should continue to try for the 
OAS to be the forum for the plan I am about to outline. But if that 
doesn't work, then there has to be an alternative, and the alternative 
should be the Lima Group, plus at least one--the United States. What I 
hope will happen is that the Lima Group will meet before or shortly 
after the May election and that it will be a meeting of Treasury 
Ministers, Foreign Ministers or both, which is why we need a Secretary 
of State to be there, to chart a regional approach on a way forward to 
Venezuela.

  Here is what I believe that regional approach should be. No. 1 is 
that we must collectively announce that we are going to continue to 
increase in a multilateral way the pressure on the Maduro regime, and 
the way we should do that is by coordinating these national-level 
sanctions that target criminal elements of the Maduro regime--target 
these drug traffickers, target the people who are trafficking in the 
food and controlling the food distribution for their own purposes, 
target the shell companies they are using to make money, store their 
money, and hide their money. If all of these nations did that, 
encompassing the U.S. financial sector--the Brazilian, the Colombian, 
the Panamanian banking sectors, which will be critical in this--it 
would provide increasing pressure on that regime and on Maduro's 
loyalists to break. The goal is to maximize the pain felt by these 
corrupt, oppressive, and illegitimate government officials.
  The second thing we need to do is address the humanitarian crisis, 
which is spiraling out of control. As I have said already, three to 
four million Venezuelans have fled their country to escape starvation, 
deprivation, violence. Neighboring states are bearing disproportional 
burdens, and they need help in doing so. I think we need to continue to 
provide that assistance.
  Ultimately, the answer to Venezuela's future is not outside of 
Venezuela, but it is inside of it. That is why it is my hope that the 
priority of this new group--the Lima Group, plus at least one, the 
United States--would be to open up a humanitarian corridor that allows 
food and medicine to go inside Venezuela, and it can be distributed by 
a nongovernmental organization. Put the Catholic Church in charge or 
the Red Cross. It can't be the Maduro government; they will steal it. 
In fact, they will not even allow it. The Maduro regime will not allow 
humanitarian aid to come in because, one, they would lose the leverage 
of using food and medicine against their people and, two, they would 
have to acknowledge they have a crisis. We must do all we can to force 
that avenue to open so that we can deliver food and medicine to the 
people who are dying and starving. They are dying of simple diseases 
for a lack of basic medicine.
  It is critical to let the people of Venezuela know that food, 
medicine, and international aid are ready to be delivered to their 
country by putting up pictures of the trucks and the warehouses showing 
that all of this food and all of these medicines are ready to come in, 
and the only thing standing in the way is the corrupt, evil government 
that today has empowered itself in their nation.
  The third thing we need to be doing as part of this plan is preparing 
to help rebuild a free and democratic Venezuela after Maduro leaves 
power. The third goal I hope this gathering will reach is a consensus 
and an agreement that we will set up the equivalent of a Marshall Plan 
for Venezuela that includes investment from the Inter-American 
Development Bank and significant contributions from the United States 
and our partners to help rebuild the disaster and the catastrophe that 
the Maduro regime will leave behind.
  We also need to help empower legitimate institutions. When we talk 
about the Venezuelan opposition, what we need to understand is that 
these are not rebels in a mountain; these are the National Assembly 
elected by their people. It would be as if a parallel Senate were 
created and we were no longer paid salaries, had staff, often no longer 
allowed to meet, and our laws were no longer given the force of law. 
That is what has happened, but the National Assembly is there. We need 
to support them. We need to make clear they are the legitimate 
representatives of the Venezuelan people--the only leaders in that 
government today, along with some of the Governors who were 
legitimately elected under the Venezuelan Constitution. They are having 
a problem, by the way. When they show up at our Embassy in Venezuela, 
they are being denied visas to travel abroad. At a minimum, we should 
be granting them visas to travel abroad, recognizing them as fellow 
Parliamentarians who have a right to speak on behalf of the people of 
Venezuela.
  The other thing we need to do is cooperate with the real equivalent 
of a Supreme Court--many of whom are now in exile but who continue to 
meet. That is their credible and legitimate judicial system, and we 
should be cooperating with them and helping them. They have all sorts 
of information about corruption that implicates Venezuelan activities 
in the United States.
  I will close with this. The dictatorship in Venezuela knows and the 
people who surround Nicholas Maduro know they are on borrowed time. It 
is our obligation to expedite that, not through a military 
intervention, not through simple unilateral sanctions--which I support, 
and we are prepared to continue to do--but ideally through an 
international, multinational, regional effort in which the United 
States is a partner with our allies in the region. We should continue 
to pressure the regime with sanctions, to deliver humanitarian aid 
inside and outside of Venezuela, and to create the mechanisms to 
rebuild that country's institutions and its economy. This is an 
opportunity for regional leadership.
  At a time when democracy and authoritarianism are in conflict all 
over the world, this is an opportunity to deliver a decisive blow to 
authoritarianism in our hemisphere. It cannot happen with America 
alone, but it cannot happen without American leadership. This is the 
plan I hope we will pursue. This is the method I hope we will use, but 
to do it we need a strong leader at the Department of State to be a 
catalyst for all of this. This is why I urge my colleagues to rally and 
support doing something about Venezuela, and one of the best ways we 
can do that right now is to confirm Mike Pompeo as the next Secretary 
of State.

[[Page S2295]]

  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sullivan). The Senator from Hawaii.
  Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, NASA is a science agency. Its mission is 
to advance science, technology, aeronautics, and space exploration and 
enhance knowledge, education, innovation, economic vitality, and 
stewardship of the mission. That is the mission. That is why past NASA 
Administrators have been accomplished leaders in the fields of 
government, aviation, and science.
  The NASA Administrator in President Obama's administration was 
Charles Bolden. He has a master of science degree. He was an astronaut 
and commanding general in the U.S. Air Force. President George W. Bush 
had two Administrators during his Presidency. Michael Griffin was a 
physicist and aerospace engineer who helped to design missile defense 
technology satellites early in his career. Sean O'Keefe was an engineer 
in the Navy who worked on nuclear submarines. Before leading NASA, he 
served as Deputy Director of OMB, Secretary of the Navy, and 
Comptroller for the Department of Defense. Daniel Golden was a 
mechanical engineer who previously had been a vice president at a space 
and technology company. He was nominated by President George H.W. Bush 
and also served under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. 
Richard Truly served as vice admiral in the Navy before he became the 
first former astronaut to head the space agency under George H.W. Bush.
  The reason we are having a robust debate about Mr. James Bridenstine 
to lead NASA is that this is the first time in history we have someone 
without similar qualifications to run such an important agency.
   Jim Bridenstine, the nominee we are considering, served as a Navy 
pilot, and I thank him for his service, but that does not qualify him 
to run NASA. Just because you know how to fly a plane does not mean you 
have the skills and experience to lead the Federal Government's space 
agency.
  I am not alone in that opinion. A NASA consultant wrote that Mr. 
Bridenstine does not have ``significant knowledge and experience with 
how NASA works'' or ``deep technical knowledge in aerospace systems.''
  There are a lot of things a NASA Administrator has to do. Most of it 
is governed by law, and I expect anybody who is confirmed will follow 
the law, but the most solemn and serious responsibility that the NASA 
Administrator has is final launch authority. A launch is a culmination 
of work by thousands of people over many years. If something goes 
wrong, we could lose a payload that is worth millions of dollars or is, 
in fact, irreplaceable. People could die. That is why this job requires 
someone with good judgment and an understanding of all of the elements 
that go into a space launch. That is why we have always had NASA 
administrators who have demonstrable expertise in these fields. It is 
downright dangerous to have someone without this expertise with this 
kind of authority. Frankly, it is even more frightening to have a 
leader who has made a career out of ignoring scientific expertise.
  James Bridenstine is a climate denier with no scientific background 
who has made a career out of ignoring science. Now I also don't have a 
scientific background, but I defer to scientists. I rely on the 
scientific consensus, and the scientific consensus is not what Mr. 
Bridenstine says, which is that it is sort of difficult to tell how 
much climate change is attributable to human activity. The scientific 
consensus is that climate change is caused primarily by human activity, 
and  Jim Bridenstine doesn't say that is true, and that is terrifying. 
Forget our views for the moment about what kind of energy picture we 
think America should pursue. This is about whether you are going to 
rely upon people who actually know things or you are going to rely upon 
your own politics and ideology. When you have final launch authority, 
you better rely on science.
  During his confirmation hearing, Mr. Bridenstine testified that he 
did not know about the scientific consensus on climate change. He 
suggested there were other contributing factors that played more of a 
role, but the fact is this. Almost every climate scientist--97 percent 
of all climate scientists, to be exact--have concluded that humans are 
the primary cause of climate change. So there are two explanations for 
his answer. Either Mr. Bridenstine has not bothered to read up on the 
scientific consensus on the most pressing scientific issue of our 
generation or he does not agree with that scientific consensus. Either 
explanation makes him unqualified to run NASA.
  I want to end by reading a few quotes from one of my Republican 
colleagues. My colleague said that NASA is ``the one federal mission 
which has largely been free of politics, and it's at a critical 
juncture in its history.'' He also said any NASA Administrator would 
need to have the ``respect of the people who work there from a 
leadership and even a scientific perspective.'' He also said Mr. 
Bridenstine would add to the politicization of NASA and that NASA, at 
this critical stage in its history, can't afford that.
  I agree with my Republican colleague. I urge every Member of the 
Senate to give NASA the leader it needs and to vote no on this 
confirmation.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, later today this body will vote to confirm my 
friend  Jim Bridenstine to be the next NASA Administrator. In that 
position, he will be in charge of rebuilding a space program that 
reflects the pioneering spirit and determination of the American 
people. I have known Congressman Bridenstine for a long time, and I 
know he is just the man for this really important undertaking.
  Let us review his record. The record shows that  Jim Bridenstine's 
service to our country is matched only by his eagerness to press the 
boundaries of sky and space.
   Jim Bridenstine is a veteran Navy pilot who flew combat missions in 
Iraq and in Afghanistan. He logged 1,900 flight hours over his 9 years 
of Active service, and he is still a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. 
Navy Reserve.
  Following his military service,  Jim Bridenstine worked as the 
executive director of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum. He even owned a 
team in the ambitious but short-lived Rocket Racing League.
  Since his first term in Congress 6 years ago, Congressman Bridenstine 
has served on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. From 
that position, he has been a thoughtful leader on American space policy 
as it relates to national security, commerce, and weather forecasting.
  The name of his latest bill on these subjects speaks to  Jim 
Bridenstine's ambitious vision for the future: the American Space 
Renaissance Act. If ever there were a need for a renaissance in space, 
it is now because who can deny that ever since Neil Armstrong's fateful 
``one small step'' in 1969, America has, in some respects, been 
retreating from space?
  Just 12 years separates the start of the space race from man's first 
footfall on the Moon. It has been almost 50 years since then, and it is 
unclear that we could go back to the Moon if we wanted to in a short 
period of time. As Vice President Pence pointed out recently, we have 
not sent an American beyond low-Earth orbit in 45 years.
  In a humiliating reversal of sorts, America now relies on Russia to 
carry our astronauts to the International Space Station because we 
shuttered our own shuttle space program in 2011. In other words, after 
America won the space race and after America won the Cold War in one 
fell swoop, we gave away the distinction of manned space flight to the 
second-place finisher.
  NASA's decline and disrepair is a great tragedy, but it is not all I 
see when I survey the horizon, and I know this is true of Congressman 
Bridenstine as well. I see no reason why America, in all of her 
ingenuity and might, cannot be the dominant leader in space once again. 
Indeed, I see plenty of areas where this transformation is already 
underway.
  In government, President Trump has signaled his commitment to 
American leadership in space by relaunching the National Space Council, 
which met for the first time last fall. Outside of government, private 
enterprise is pressing the boundaries of commercial space flight every 
single day. In the deserts of Utah, innovators like ATK are pioneering 
the next generation of rocket engines and space superiority 
capabilities. Just yesterday, the world watched

[[Page S2296]]

in awe as a SpaceX rocket flung a planet-hunting NASA satellite into 
orbit. Its mission complete, the rocket booster piloted itself back to 
Earth for reuse, landing nimbly on a drone ship floating out in the 
Atlantic Ocean.
  Achievements such as these prove that Americans are still awed, still 
starstruck, by space exploration and all the opportunities it provides.
  A new era of leaders can restore this sense of ambition in 
government. In the halls outside this Chamber, the Senate has a 
constant reminder of the importance of the space program. I refer to 
the commemorative mural this body commissioned in the wake of the 
Challenger disaster.
  The mural depicts the crew looking expectantly, hopefully, off into 
the future. Behind them is the shuttle that carried them to Heaven, and 
the world is in their hands.
  The Challenger Seven gave their lives in order to advance America's 
space program. They knew the risks--greater practically than those 
associated with any other profession on Earth or beyond it--but they 
also knew the mission was worth it because it contributed significantly 
to their Nation and to all mankind.
  What will it say about us if we fail to carry on the mission they 
undertook, if instead of exploring the infinite frontier, we remain 
here below, passing the torch of exploration to some other power? I 
don't want to contemplate that future, and I don't want to believe the 
American people do either.
  Claiming our right to a place in the stars will require an effort 
spanning many years and several Presidential administrations. We can 
begin that undertaking today by confirming a leader with a remarkable 
record of service to our country, a vision for the American space 
program that is big not small, and a genuine faith in his country that 
is as boundless as the heavens. That man is  Jim Bridenstine. Let's 
confirm him. Let's confirm him today.
  I urge my colleagues to confirm  Jim Bridenstine without obstruction, 
without delay.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.