[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 103 (Wednesday, June 3, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2664-S2666]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Protests
Mr. President, the protests around our State, throughout our country,
are an expression of fear and grief and frustration and of anger. Black
communities led the Nation in mourning the killings of George Floyd and
Breonna Taylor over the last week. They are now leading calls for
justice and long-term changes to dismantle the systems of oppression
that hold them back.
Instead of listening to those calls from the people who built this
country, instead of offering leadership and rising to meet this
moment--as every one of his predecessors of both parties did in times
of trouble for our country--President Trump fails yet again. Instead of
uniting, he divides. Instead of comforting, he stokes fear. He points
fingers. He places blame. Instead of healing, he rubs salt in the open
wounds of Black Americans.
On Monday night, the President of the United States turned the arm of
the state on peaceful protesters--we saw the video--tear-gassing the
citizens he is supposed to serve, all so he could walk across the
street and stage a photo op at a church he doesn't attend and hold up a
Bible that he doesn't read. The timid--you choose the adjective--timid,
cowardly, spineless Republican colleagues in this Senate just remained
silent. How offended they would have been if a Democratic President had
done what this President does and fails to do--the tear-gassing of
citizens he is supposed to serve, the photo op at a church, the holding
up of the Bible he doesn't read, the excuses, the divisiveness, all of
that.
People are tired. People are angry: more Black sons and daughters and
mothers and fathers killed by police officers--the very people who are
supposed to protect all Americans; more death, when many are already
grieving--so many in the Black community already grieving the loss of
family members and friends for the coronavirus, grappling with the
economic stress this pandemic has caused.
The pandemic has been the ``great revealer.'' We know Black and Brown
communities have been hit hardest by the coronavirus. They are more
likely to get sick. They have less access to healthcare. They make up
the communities hurt by Jim Crow laws and redlining and now the locking
in of those rules and regulations by the Trump administration. Black
and Brown communities disproportionately make up our essential workers.
It is not because they don't work as hard. It is not because of
individual choices. We all work hard. We are all trying to do something
productive for our families and our communities. We all want to build a
better country for our daughters and our sons. No; it is because of a
racist system that is making it harder for their work to pay off and
putting at risk their lives for generations, long before this virus
appeared.
A grocery store worker in Cincinnati said to me: They tell me I am
essential, but I feel expendable. I don't feel safe at work, and they
don't pay me very much. I feel expendable.
Long before this pandemic, millions of Americans knew we had a system
that treats them like they are expendable. Their hard work isn't paying
off. For some, it feels like the system is broken. For Black and Brown
workers, it never worked to begin with.
In the midst of the trauma and the grieving, millions of those same
Americans still go to work day after day, week after week, in grocery
stores, as delivery people, in drugstores, as busdrivers, and the
people who do the linen and change the beds in hospitals, the food
service workers, the custodians, the security people, the first
responders. In the midst of the trauma and grieving, those same
Americans--millions of them--still go to work day after day, week after
week.
Our job is to show the victims of systemic racism at the hands of
their own government that the same government can and will protect them
from this pandemic. We hear them. We see them. We fight for them. Their
lives matter.
Our response to this crisis must be to stand behind all the people
who make this country work, all workers, whether you swipe a badge or
punch a clock, whether you earn a salary or make tips, whether you are
raising children or caring for an aging parent; all workers, whether
your hard work isn't paying off now or whether it never paid off the
way it should.
Dr. King said:
One day our society will come to respect the sanitation
worker. For the person who picks up our garbage, in the final
analysis, is as significant as the physician, for if he
doesn't do his job, diseases are rampant. All labor has
dignity.
It is Black and Brown workers who have too often, far too long, far
too often been robbed of their dignity on the job. If we want to be a
country where all people have dignity, we need to start by recognizing
that all labor has dignity. But so far, our response to the crisis is
not the response of a government that believes that. This Senate, this
President, can always find trillions of dollars for corporations--for
tax cuts, for bailouts. But when hard-working families need help with
rent or to put food on the table, President Trump and Leader McConnell
say we can't afford it.
The President and the administration have already made racial and
economic inequality worse and undone
[[Page S2665]]
civil rights protections. They have been pretty clear that they are
willing to put American workers' lives at risk--to reopen stockyards or
just to juice the stock market.
President Trump and his administration believe that millions of
Americans are expendable. It is not a coincidence that many of the
people they consider expendable are Black and Brown workers.
Since the President is unwilling to protect people--whether that is
protecting their lives or protecting their financial future--we in the
Senate must fill the leadership void. As we do that, we work for
change. We need to be clear that part of leading is listening.
The best ideas don't come out of Washington--the solutions we need to
fix the justice system, to address wealth inequality, to reverse
disparities in healthcare, to help communities that have been hurt by
redlining and Jim Crow laws and so much more.
Whenever we talk about this, whenever people bring up the ways the
system has failed so many Americans on the Senate floor or at a protest
march, there are always naysayers--almost always White, usually men,
often pretty well-off--who say: How can you be so negative? Why do you
want to dwell on all the worst parts of our history? Don't you love our
country?
My response to our country's naysayers and sunshine patriots is this:
How can you be so pessimistic as to believe that this is the best our
country can do? Do you really think the American people, with our
ingenuity and our optimism and tenacity--do you really think the
American people can't create a fair economy and a more just government?
Do you truly believe we can't have a society that works for everyone--
Black and White and Brown, women and men--no matter who you are, no
matter what kind of work you do? Protesting, working for change,
organizing, demanding our country do better--those are some of the most
patriotic things any of us can do.
I love my country. If you love this country, you fight for the people
who make it work, all of them.
I yield the floor
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair would remind Senators that under
rule XIX, it is provided that ``no Senator in debate shall, directly or
indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other
Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.''
The Senator from Oklahoma is recognized.
Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I want to respond to the accusations
that were made. And I worded that carefully not to violate any rules. I
am going to do that.
I see kind of an active desperation that is creeping in on statements
and things that are said about other people. And right now, we are
experiencing some things that actually are a success.
I want to respond to some of the accusations that were made. First, I
have something else to do that is kind of an awkward thing to be doing
at this time because I am going to go back to talk about something that
happened not yesterday or this week but back in 1983. I think it is
important that we do this. About every 10 years I do this. And we are
going to be successful now because I have a commitment from the
President that he is going to stay hitched on an issue--a huge issue in
the past.
In 1983, not much was known about Iran's efforts to train and arm the
radical proxies and to kill Americans and to kill our partners and our
allies. People know now. In fact, only a few years earlier, Ayatollah
Khamenei led a violent revolution in Iran. Khamenei's regime introduced
himself to the world by taking American diplomats hostage for 444
days--444 days. We all remember when that happened. That was something
unprecedented. It was all tied into Khamenei. Of course, he used other
people. Nothing has changed since that time.
Nonetheless, for the next decade, until his death in 1989, Khamenei
was the ruthless face of an Iranian regime that applied a brutal
version of religious law, murdered innocent people, suppressed
religious and ethnic minorities, and supported radical Islamists.
He hated Western value, and he hated the freedoms that we enjoy.
Almost 4 years into his rule as Supreme Leader, October 23, 1983, 241
Americans, both U.S. marines and other service personnel serving a
peace mission in Beirut, were attacked at their barracks by a truck
that was carrying 2,000 pounds of explosives by terrorists who were
armed and trained by Iran. That was in 1983. Two hundred and forty-one
died.
These terrorists later became what we know as Hezbollah. That is the
first time they surfaced and were identified as they are today, as an
arm of Iran. Hezbollah struck.
In 2003, 20 years after the attack on our marines, the United States
District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in a civil suit
brought by the families of the victims--the 241 who were killed--that
Iran had used Hezbollah as a proxy to bomb the Marine barracks in
Beirut on that October day.
Not much has changed with Iran, unfortunately. It is the same way
they operate now. They don't play by the rules. They never have. They
are terrorists. They are worse than terrorists. They are the ones who
are training the terrorists. That became even more apparent when we
began to learn more about their ties to Islamist terror organizations
and how they use proxy organizations, with no true allegiance but on
behalf of a twisted interpretation of Islamic religious text, to murder
and then sneak back into the shadows. That is the way they operated,
and that is the way they operate today.
It happened under Ayatollah Khamenei, and it happens under the
current Supreme Leader as well. Nothing has really changed. A lot of
years have gone by. A lot of people have died.
As I speak here on the floor, Iran is providing weapons and cover for
the Houthi rebels, who are committing unthinkable atrocities in Yemen.
Iran has continued to support terrorist groups that threaten our
personnel in Iraq. It has repeatedly attacked our partners across the
region. What is even worse is Iran seeks a nuclear weapon capability,
and President Obama's Iran deal would have, ultimately, let it have
exactly what it wanted.
Fortunately, we now have a President who takes a strong stance
against Iran with the imposing of sanctions and the pulling out of the
flawed Iran nuclear deal that the previous administration put us in.
By the way, I had a joyful conversation for a half an hour yesterday
with Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel. He was reminding me that
I was in Israel and in the Prime Minister's office at the very moment
that President Trump pulled out of the Iran deal, and I had never seen
him so jubilant. We just talked about that yesterday.
Go back now to October 23, 1983, when 241 Americans were killed by an
Iranian-backed suicide bomber. It was a terrible day in U.S. history,
and, in 2003, a U.S. court ruled that Iran was responsible. That suit
against Iran, brought by the victims' families--the families of the 241
who died--provided punitive and compensatory relief in the form of
Iranian assets. In 2007, the district court judge awarded just over
$2.5 billion to the families of those murdered in that atrocity.
Our work isn't done now. You would think that it would be, but it is
not because there is nearly $1.7 billion in laundered Iranian assets in
a Luxembourg bank named Clear Street, and we need to make sure that it
stays there. Yet I have this gnawing feeling that, once something is
over in Luxembourg or someplace like that, all of a sudden, you wake up
and find that Iran has $1.7 billion it is not entitled to in order to
spread terrorism throughout the world.
In last year's NDAA--now, the NDAA is the largest bill we do each
year. I chair the defense authorization. It is called the National
Defense Authorization Act. We pass it every year. We included language
that made those assets available to the victims' families, and the
President signed it. I talked to the President, and he is anxious to do
this. We have one obstacle that we have to get past, which is some
activity by the second circuit where it is now being played out.
President Trump has been a firm leader against the aggressive Iran,
and I certainly stand with him. That is why this is a clear opportunity
to continue President Trump's maximum pressure campaign against the
current Iranian regime so as to ensure these assets do not return to
Iran, where they would surely be used to help the proxy organization,
such as Hezbollah.
[[Page S2666]]
I trust our Department of Justice with this, and I am glad we have a
President who has made this a top priority--making sure the families of
those 241 victims who were killed in Beirut receive this money as
opposed to having the money go back.