[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 224 (Friday, January 1, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8002-S8004]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT

  Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, the time has come to declare victory and 
come home from the war in Afghanistan--the longest war in the history 
of our country.
  Over 4,000 Americans have died fighting in Afghanistan, and over 
20,000 have been wounded. It is time to bring our soldiers home.
  After the 9/11 attacks, I supported going into Afghanistan. We were 
absolutely justified in rooting out the Taliban who harbored al-Qaida.
  Had I been in Congress at that time, I would have voted in favor of 
going into Afghanistan.
  But the people who attacked us on 9/11 have all been killed or 
captured. They are long gone. But we are still there.
  Most of the people fighting us in Afghanistan today are the 
successors or children or the children of their children.
  The cycle shows no sign of ending. The war shows no sign of ending. 
It is not sustainable to keep fighting in Afghanistan generation after 
generation.
  Here is some perspective: We have been fighting in Afghanistan for so 
long that when the 9/11 attacks happened, our youngest soldiers 
fighting there today weren't even born yet. American fathers who fought 
in Afghanistan are now watching as their sons fight in Afghanistan.
  We have spent about $1 trillion to establish an Afghan government--a 
government that is rife with corruption and dysfunction. It is a 
government that cannot perform much of any government function on its 
own. So we spend more to do for them what they still cannot do for 
themselves.
  A trillion dollars and we have hardly progressed from where we 
started.
  Yet instead of outrage--which is how most Americans feel--the 
reaction from Congress is, gosh, maybe let's spend a trillion more.
  After World War II, much of Europe was reduced to rubble. It was 
utterly destroyed. So we rebuilt Europe through the Marshall Plan.
  We have now spent many times more to rebuild Afghanistan than we did 
under the Marshall Plan. What has that money gotten us?
  We have built infrastructure in Afghanistan and then watched it 
deteriorate and watched the Afghans be unable to even maintain the 
infrastructure we built for them, and then they ask us for more money 
to maintain the structure. So we rebuild the infrastructure we just 
built for them.
  Meanwhile, our roads and our bridges here at home crumble as we spend 
millions upon millions to rebuild the infrastructure in Afghanistan.
  I want to walk through some examples of how our money has been used 
in Afghanistan.
  Several years ago, we reportedly hired a local security consultant to 
help secure road construction projects, at a cost of $1 million per 
year. But according to the report by the Special Inspector General for 
Afghanistan Reconstruction, American officials came to suspect that the 
money was being funneled to insurgents to stage attacks on our 
infrastructure, which could be used to justify the security contract.
  So our money was going to a guy who was apparently paying insurgents 
to stage attacks against him so he could justify his security contract. 
It is crazy.
  We spent $43 million on a natural gas, gas station. Guess how many 
vehicles in Afghanistan run on natural gas. Zero. You can't even find 
the gas station. My staff actually went there to see how the money had 
been spent, and they were told they couldn't go there because it was 
too unsafe. Now the report is that the gas station has been abandoned--
and with it $43 million flushed away.
  We spent nearly $80 million on a luxury hotel. Why is the American 
taxpayer building luxury hotels in Kabul? Guess what. It was abandoned 
halfway through. It is a skeleton. The Taliban are now said to climb up 
into the structure and shoot down at our Embassy.
  We spent about $400 million on equipment and other things to create 
an Afghan Army Corps of Engineers. Except

[[Page S8003]]

all the equipment we bought was lost. Gone.
  We spent hundreds of millions on electrification projects in 
Afghanistan, but the system wasn't working. Afghans didn't understand 
that you had to pay for electricity and that you couldn't climb up 
utility poles. So, we spent almost $2 million on a public awareness 
campaign to tell Afghans that they did, in fact, have to pay for 
electricity and to please stop climbing on the electrical wires.
  There was a multimillion-dollar highway project that also required 
$32 million in community outreach. This is basically an attempt to help 
locals understand what is happening, since they have no experience with 
a giant highway or what it is for.
  The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction examined 
this ``community outreach'' and found that one Regional Coordinator was 
given cash--$75,000--to help with outreach with locals, but SIGAR found 
that they could not account for the $75,000 which had been filed as 
used for ``goat distribution.'' Now, I don't know a lot about goats, 
but that seems like a lot of ``goat'' money.
  The guy giving out the goat money mysteriously disappeared. The 
inspector general reports that the money is unrecoverable.
  My subcommittee held an oversight hearing on Afghan war spending, and 
Ambassador Boucher, one of the witnesses, recounted that the Afghan 
Finance Minister told him 80 to 90 percent of the money Congress 
approves disappears before it gets to Afghanistan. It is not just 
corruption. He said: You know, we hire a contractor who hires a 
subcontractor, who hires a bunch of consultants, who hires a bunch of 
security personnel, who flies in airplanes, etc. And by the time you 
get somebody on the ground in Afghanistan receiving a benefit, it is a 
very small portion of all those billions and billions of dollars that 
Congress allocated for whatever that purpose was.
  We continue to pour good money after bad into Afghanistan, hoping 
that the outcome will somehow change, hoping that maybe the next 20 
years will produce better results than the last 20 years did.
  The American people say ``Come home,'' and now is the time. A Pew 
poll from last year found that 59 percent of Americans--and 58 percent 
of veterans--thought the Afghanistan war has not been worth fighting. 
One poll from this year shows far more Americans support withdrawal 
from Afghanistan than support continuing the war, and almost three-
quarters of veterans support ending the war.
  We should be listening to those who have been on the ground in 
Afghanistan. There are so many veterans who have witnessed firsthand 
the rudderless direction of the war.
  We should listen to Army combat medic Shane Reynolds, who served in 
Iraq: ``For all of us that went over there and worked so hard, and put 
our families through so much, and there was never a strategy. We were 
just going through motions, chasing ghosts through mountains . . . We 
felt that there was no plan, there was no strategy and there was no 
will to change anything about that.''
  Maybe the Senate should listen to Infantryman Jay O'Brien, who served 
in Kandahar:
  ``Now I realize that no one above us knew what the hell was going on 
either. It's systemic willful ignorance all the way up to the top.''
  Army Intelligence Officer Gregg Frostrom, who served four deployments 
overseas over an 11-year period, captures the perspective of those who 
served:
  ``There's a lot of feeling like you're Sisyphus, like you're just 
pushing the rock up the hill, and you go home for six months, and you 
come back and the rock's at the bottom of the hill and you're like, 
well, now I've got to start pushing it again.''
  President Trump ran for the President promising to end these forever 
wars. The American people want to end the Afghanistan war. Yet the 
establishment powers in Washington and Congress have fought him at 
every turn.
  This bill explicitly tries to tie the hands of all Presidents and 
make it difficult if not impossible to declare victory and come home.
  Not only does this bill make it harder for any President to end a 
war, we already have high-ranking officials of our government directly 
defying the President's orders to deescalate war.
  Take Syria for example. President Trump ordered troop levels to 
decline from around 2,000 to approximately 200. Former Ambassador Jim 
Jeffrey not only defied this order, he lampooned it later by saying, 
``What Syria withdrawal? There was never a Syria withdrawal.''
  According to Defense One, ``outgoing Ambassador Jim Jeffrey, the U.S. 
special envoy for Syria acknowledges that he routinely misled senior 
leaders about troop levels in Syria.''
  Jeffrey's admitted to ``playing shell games'' to obscure from the 
President and his generals how many troops were really left in Syria. 
In reality, Trump's order to reduce the troops was countermanded by an 
unelected bureaucrat.
  As Becket Adams explains, ``Obscure federal workers have reportedly 
been in control of the U.S. military presence in northern Syria, and 
all in direct violation of explicit orders from the President.''
  Adams continues: ``Nothing to worry about here, folks. Just some 
nameless federal drones allegedly misleading the commander of the U.S. 
military in order to keep troops stationed overseas in conflicts that 
said drones believe are necessary and winnable. People laugh when they 
hear the term ``deep state,'' but it is no joke.''
  President Trump has ordered troop levels to be reduced in 
Afghanistan, so Congress responded by passing an NDAA which actually 
restricts his ability to withdraw troops.
  That is right. Congress, which has spent decades lecturing any and 
every one that we don't need 535 generals and that there is only one 
Commander in Chief who has absolute powers to wage war however he sees 
fit, has now reversed course and decided that we actually do need 535 
generals in order to stop the Commander in Chief from withdrawing 
troops from Afghanistan.
  President Trump vetoed that NDAA, and now we are here today in an 
attempt to override that veto, to add a 20th year to this war.
  This is a mistake. But Congress has had it wrong for a long time, so 
this is nothing new. They just passed a $1.4 trillion omnibus bill that 
no one saw until hours before it was to be voted on, and they paired it 
with a $900 billion coronavirus bailout, paid for with money borrowed 
from our children.
  We are told all the time that there is simply no more fat left to cut 
in the budget, that we have to borrow because we can't cut our high 
priorities. What are those high priorities, you may ask? Let's start 
with a look at this bill that just passed.
  There is $25 million for Pakistan in there. Pakistan puts Christians 
on death row when they are accused of blasphemy, except that 
allegations of blasphemy are often based on petty disputes among 
neighbors or coworkers. There are reportedly 80 people on death row in 
Pakistan for blasphemy-related charges.
  There is $700 million for Sudan in the bill, where freedom of 
expression is restricted.
  There is another $500 million to address the root causes of migration 
from Central America. I doubt the report mentions the allure of all the 
free stuff you can get after you break in to America.
  How about $575 million for ``family planning'' in the third world?
  How many businesses, struggling to make payroll because their 
Governor closed them down, could have used that $575 million?
  Congress is borrowing a trillion dollars a year so that they can keep 
spending money on these kinds of things. They don't want to set 
priorities.
  This is hardly new. I have been watching this for years and called 
out the big spenders in Congress for approving: $250,000 to send kids 
from Pakistan to Space Camp in Alabama and Dollywood in Tennessee; $1.8 
million to improve the international perception of Afghan artisans and 
craftsman; $10,000 to improve Pakistan's film industry. Really? U.S. 
taxpayer money to subsidize Pakistan's version of Hollywood; a $2 
million venture capital fund in Bosnia for businesses that couldn't get 
their own financing; almost $8 million for foreign dance residencies. 
Really? Ballet for Bolivia; more than $9 million to ease medical

[[Page S8004]]

debt in Cambodia. What about Americans' with medical debt; more than 
$23 million to help college graduates in Morocco find jobs. How about 
college grads in Kentucky; $273 million in grants to help people learn 
how to apply for grants. Really? U.S. taxpayers are being fleeced to 
teach people how to get more of our money; $20 million to teach 
Laotians how to speak Laotian. Makes me want to utter Laotian 
profanities. But I will likely need a government grant in order to 
learn to swear in Laotian; $1 million to produce a comedic variety TV 
show in Afghanistan. I don't know about you but I don't find that funny 
at all; almost $15 million to produce foreign versions of ``Sesame 
Street'' that would teach children in other countries about climate 
change. Next year, I am sure the taxpayer will be sending Muppets in 
Masks to Madagascar; and $153 million in development assistance that 
included subsidies for low-income mortgages in Nigeria.
  So Americans are losing their homes, but Congress has already spent 
the money buying Nigerian mortgages.
  Americans are losing their livelihoods, but Congress has already 
spent the money on economic support funds in places like Bosnia.
  American infrastructure is crumbling, but Congress spends billions on 
roads in Afghanistan.
  We could have rebuilt the Brent-Spence Bridge in my State, which has 
been a priority for some time, but Congress can't stop spending the 
money overseas.
  Again, the war in Afghanistan costs $50 billion per year. Our mission 
is complete. Al-Qaida is diminished. Osama bin Laden is dead. It is 
time to declare victory. The American people want the war to end. So 
many of our veterans want the war to end. The President is trying to 
bring it to an end. But Congress is standing in the way.
  Today we have the chance to act as the people's representatives 
instead of acting like 535 generals. We should not override the veto. 
We should remove the language that tries to block the President's 
drawdown of troops.
  I urge a vote against the veto override.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I voted against the motions to proceed 
and invoke cloture on overriding the President's veto of the National 
Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 because, at this time of 
national crisis, the Senate's first order of business should be getting 
more relief to struggling American families. That means the Senate 
should have held a clean up-or-down vote on the House-passed measure to 
increase the amount of the individual stimulus payments from $600 to 
$2,000. The Senate could have easily passed both the additional 
payments and completed the business of the NDAA veto override this week 
had Senator McConnell and the GOP majority been willing to do so. Given 
the President's purported support of this relief, it could have been 
signed into law this week. But instead of delivering this additional 
help to struggling American families, the Republican majority 
repeatedly blocked requests to pass the additional relief by unanimous 
consent and refused to schedule an up-or-down vote.
  That said, I support the underlying National Defense Authorization 
Act. The President's veto of this legislation put at risk a number of 
important measures, including a pay raise for our troops; critical 
investments for Maryland's military installations; a process to rename 
those military facilities that bear the names of individuals who fought 
with the Confederacy to preserve slavery; limits on the transfer of 
military equipment to local police forces; and support for key national 
security priorities. While the NDAA bill is not perfect and includes a 
number of provisions I oppose, on balance it is an important measure 
for our country. That is why I voted for it in the first place and why 
I voted in favor of overriding the President's veto.

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