[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.