[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 81 (Thursday, May 12, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2482-S2486]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                Ukraine

  Mr. GRAHAM. Madam President, we will get into this in a minute, but I 
want to respond to something that was said just a few minutes ago.
  What would it cost America if Putin continues to slaughter Ukraine 
and gets away with it? What kind of world do you want to live in?
  Let's see if I have got this right. I can understand not wanting to 
get involved in wars. If you have ever been in one, if you have ever 
been in a war zone for any time period, you understand war is a 
horrible thing. If you have ever been in the military, you understand 
some of your buddies don't come back when you have wars.
  But what I don't understand is this idea that not only are we not 
going to engage in a war against a thug and a bully like Putin but, 
when somebody like Ukraine is fighting like tigers, we are not going to 
help them either.
  So this idea about this aid package costing too much, put it in the 
context of what happens to the world if Putin continues to rewrite the 
map of Europe. If we don't get Ukraine right, then China will invade 
Taiwan. And 90 percent of all the semiconductors and high-end chips 
come out of Taiwan.
  Why do you have the cops? Because if people go up and down the 
streets breaking into stores and ransacking the community, nobody wants 
to live there. I would rather have the rule of law versus the rule of 
gun. Sometimes, you have to pay a price. Ukrainians are paying the 
ultimate price. They are fighting like tigers. They are dying by the 
thousands to stand up to an enemy of the United States and mankind.
  Putin is a war criminal by any reasonable definition, and if you 
think he is satisfied with Ukraine, you are miscalculating him like we 
did in the last century with Hitler. In June of last year, Putin talked 
about the Russian Empire being recreated. Well, it is just not Ukraine 
that he considers a legal fiction; it would be Moldova. And when you 
look at his view of recreating possibly the former Soviet Union, there 
are NATO nations in his crosshairs.
  What does it matter to the United States, if Europe is in a constant 
state of turmoil, that you have Russia toppling one democracy after 
another? It means a lot to us. We can't live in a world that way--or at 
least, I choose not to live in a world that way.
  To the American people, $40 billion is a lot of money, but if we can 
stop Putin in Ukraine, it would be the best money you could ever spend. 
Let's don't be penny wise and pound foolish. They are running out of 
ammo. They are kicking the Russians' ass all over Ukraine. They are 
doing the fighting on behalf of freedom itself, and we should be the 
arsenal of democracy. The EU should spend more. The Germans are giving 
lethal weapons. Everybody can do more.
  And there is a problem with baby formula. I would like to get more 
baby formula on the shelves, but letting Putin win in Ukraine doesn't 
help the problem of babies here in America. If you care about raising 
your children, you need formula, but you need a world where you can 
travel and trade without chaos.
  Who is going to run the world in the 21st century: the communist 
dictatorship in China, people like Putin, or a world order where the 
rule of law really matters more than the rule of gun?
  So this package has been stalled, but it will get over the finish 
line.
  To the people in Ukraine, Senator Paul's request to have an inspector 
general overseeing the money actually makes sense to me. I don't know 
why we didn't do that before, but his argument that this package is way 
beyond what the market should bear misses the point of what we are 
engaged in here.
  The outcome of Ukraine matters because if you don't stop Putin there, 
he keeps going. This doesn't end. Have you learned nothing from World 
War II? Go watch a movie about World War II. How many people appeased 
Hitler to the point that 50 million people eventually died? Putin is 
not going to stop in Ukraine unless somebody stops him.
  Here is the good news: His army was oversold; and with the weapons we 
have delivered to Ukraine, plus our allies, the Ukrainian military and 
citizenry are dismantling the Russian military. It would be an enormous 
blow for freedom and stabilize the world if we could stop Putin in 
Ukraine. And the Ukrainians are not asking us for soldiers; they are 
asking us for weapons.
  And if you don't think Russia under Putin is a foe to the United 
States and all we believe in, you haven't been paying attention to what 
has been going on for the last 20 years.
  So we have a moment in time here to go all in in terms of economic 
assistance. Their economy is in shambles because they are under siege. 
They are fighting like tigers. The weapons we have given them, they 
have put to good purpose. The Democrats and Republicans are now united 
around the idea that it is a good thing to help Ukraine.
  To my Republican colleagues who vote against this package, what is 
your alternative? Don't go to Poland anymore. Don't go to Ukraine and 
say: We are with you. If you vote against this package--and there are a 
million reasons to vote against anything--you are missing the point. 
The world hangs in the balance here. If we don't get Ukraine right and 
stand up to Putin, there goes Taiwan.
  I am tired of being lectured to by people who have no understanding 
of

[[Page S2483]]

the world in which we live. The mistakes of the last century are being 
played out on our screen every night.
  So to those who believe that we can just let it go in Ukraine, boy, 
you are going to be in for a rude awakening. The world is going to be 
turned upside down, and the converse is true.
  If we can stop him in his tracks, help the Ukrainians, who are doing 
all the fighting and dying, then China is less likely to go into 
Taiwan.
  This is one of the biggest moments in the 21st century. Where are 
you? Whose side are you on?
  Oh, it is too much here; it is too much there. To one Senator who 
will remain nameless on our side, why don't we have money for food? 
There are 227 million people in the world knocking on famine's door. 
Between droughts and wars all over the world, the World Food Programme 
run by Governor Beasley from South Carolina is completely under siege. 
Forty-something countries in the world have over 50 percent of their 
grain supply coming from Ukraine, and they are out of production right 
now.
  It is in our interest, ladies and gentlemen, to help people when they 
are starving so they don't do the things that they may do to feed their 
families that are bad for us. What would you do to feed your family? 
Would you take money from Al Qaeda and ISIS if it was the only source 
of money available to feed your family? So we live in a very dangerous 
time where one thing affects the other.

  This package was put together quickly, and I am sure there are things 
in this package that could be done better. But we are living in 
realtime here. The President's ability to send weapons really expires 
in a couple of days.
  So what I hope will happen is that we will unite around the idea that 
Putin is the bad guy and the Ukrainians are the good guys, and if we 
lose this war, we are going to regret losing this war because it won't 
end in Ukraine.
  So to my two colleagues on the Democratic side, thank you both. You 
have done something that is hard for people around here to do. Talk 
about victory, victory for Ukraine--Senator Blumenthal, there has been 
no stronger voice of standing up to Putin and making him pay a price. 
How many people does he have to murder? How many war crimes does he 
have to commit until we realize this needs to stop?
  We had this same experience with Adolf Hitler. People excused his 
behavior, wrote it off as he just wants to get German-speaking 
territories back. No. He wrote a book about what he wanted to do. He 
wanted to kill all the Jews and remake Europe and create a master race 
for people on planet Earth, in his own image.
  What is Putin trying to do? A bit less ambitious: create the Russian 
Empire in the former Soviet Union anew, crush democracies that have had 
a chance to go a different way. And are you surprised that the 
Ukrainians are fighting? Who the hell would want to live under Putin's 
thumb? Would you? Would you want to live in Putin's Russia? Would you 
want him to be your leader if you didn't have to? People who have gone 
down the communist road are literally willing to die because they don't 
want to raise their children that way.
  So we are going to have a discussion here in a moment about some 
things that we can do that will matter beyond money. The American 
taxpayer should not be the only source of help to the Ukrainian people. 
Count me in for that.
  There is a proposal that was left out of this bill that would empower 
the Department of Justice to go after Putin and all of his cronies and 
take from them their yachts and their villas and their dachas, sell it, 
and put the money into Ukraine to buy bullets. That got left out of the 
package.
  To the American people, I get it. Other people should be doing more. 
There is a bipartisan consensus here that, with additional resources in 
the hands of the Department of Justice and some legal changes, we could 
go after billions of dollars of ill-gotten gain and ply it back into 
the Ukrainian war effort--money coming from thugs and thieves in 
Russia--to help the brave people in Ukraine. But that fell out of the 
package.
  To my colleagues in this body, what the hell are you thinking? Why 
would you do that? Why would you take out of the package the ability to 
hunt down the oligarchs and take their stuff away from them--that they 
bought with stolen money--to help the Ukrainian people, another source 
of revenue other than the American taxpayer? We are not going to let 
that go.
  Finally, there is an idea that Senator Blumenthal and I have that 
maybe it is time to label Russia a state sponsor of terrorism. Why? 
Because they are.

  After 20 years of mass murder on an industrial scale, the Wagner 
Group is roaming the planet, which is a proxy, according to our 
Treasury Department, of the Russian military. They are in Africa today 
doing all kinds of horrible things. Russia is propping Assad up, who is 
one of the four countries that are considered state sponsors of 
terrorism.
  Without Russia, Assad would have fallen. So we have an idea that 
doesn't cost any money to designate Putin's Russia as a state sponsor 
of terrorism, and it would allow and waive sovereign immunity so people 
who are a victim of his terrorism could take him to court. And it would 
put Putin in a club that he deserves to be in--Iran, North Korea, 
Syria. We would add Russia. We couldn't get that in the package. We are 
not going to stop.
  It would be good to let the Ukrainian people know that we see Russia 
in the hands of Putin as a terrorist state. We would like to tell 
everybody who is on the fence, America has made a decision about Putin 
and there is no going back. If he is still standing when this is all 
done and we forgive and forget, the worst is yet to come.
  So from my point of view, Putin's Russia needs to end. The Russian 
people need to fix this problem. Until they do, we need to keep all the 
sanctions in place and up the ante. Labeling Putin's Russia a ``state 
sponsor of terrorism'' is a good place to start. Going after the ill-
gotten gains of the oligarchs to help the war effort is a good thing to 
do.
  We are not going to quit here.
  To the people of Ukraine: Most people in this body--not all--are with 
you because we understand your fight makes our world in America a safer 
place and a better place to live.
  I will ask a question to my colleague from Connecticut. Why does he 
think Russia is a state sponsor of terrorism and what can we do to make 
that happen?
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. I want to thank my friend and colleague who has been 
such a leader of this bipartisan effort, Senator Graham, for the 
question and for his powerful and passionate remarks just now.
  Very simply, the reason for this bipartisan initiative to designate 
Russia a state sponsor of terrorism is because of what the American 
people and the world have seen day after day after day, not only this 
assault on Ukraine, trying to deprive it of its freedom and 
independence, but also the mass atrocities that its soldiers have 
committed at the direction, potentially, of Vladimir Putin: holding 
women and children hostage when bombs are falling, tying people's hands 
behind their backs and shooting them in their heads, raping and 
torturing innocent civilians, making them the targets of warfare in a 
purposeful and direct way, in a reign of terror. Make Russia a state 
sponsor of terrorism in the same way that Iran and Syria and Cuba have 
been. Vladimir Putin should be part of that club.
  It will give individuals who are victims rights of action. But 
equally important, it will impose additional support controls and 
sanctions and other kinds of measures and send the world a message 
that, literally, anybody who deals with Russia is dealing with a 
terrorist cabal, a terrorist organization that is beyond the pale, that 
is to be treated as a pariah and is a member of a club that no one 
should want to be a part of.
  It costs nothing to give Russia this well-merited label. It also 
works very much in favor of not only Ukraine but American taxpayers and 
our NATO allies to have the Asset Seizure for Ukraine Reconstruction 
Act, a bipartisan initiative, that will enable not only seizure but 
also sale of Russian oligarch assets as a part of this package.
  I am disappointed that it wasn't included, but I am very optimistic 
that we will move forward because people have seen on their TVs, day 
after day, the seizure of the superyachts. We have seen those 
pictures--the mansions, the

[[Page S2484]]

jets, the fine art, other ill-gotten gains. They have bought these 
items with money they have stolen from the people of Russia and 
elsewhere around the world. Those ill-gotten gains are sometimes in 
bank accounts that can be seized, and they should be used for Ukraine's 
defense against this invasion and for reconstruction of Ukraine.
  Their use should be humanitarian reconstruction efforts, as well as 
the ongoing fight. They are resources that Putin has, in effect, 
enabled his oligarchs to take in this kleptocracy known as the Russian 
regime. We should be cracking down on those beneficiaries of ill-gotten 
gains and enablers of Putin's cruel and kleptocratic regime.
  Let's be clear. Once enacted, this measure would enable law 
enforcement agents from around the world to seize those oligarch assets 
and enable them to liquidate--that is to say, sell those assets--to be 
used immediately to provide more weapons for the brave Ukrainians who 
are fighting Russian aggression and to deliver humanitarian aid to 
displaced Ukrainians.
  I have been to the border and seen those refugees coming from 
Ukraine--literally crossing the border, carrying their pets and stuffed 
animals, women and children--because the men are staying to fight--with 
just the clothes on their back. They need help. Those assets should be 
used to help them, as well as the men who are left behind to fight with 
a ferocity and bravery that is the awe of the world. Literally, our own 
military has said how deeply impressed they are with the fierceness and 
courage of Ukrainians who are pushing back not only from around Kyiv, 
but now in the Donbas, Lutsk, and Luhansk. Literally, they are winning 
victories.
  But those victories are occurring because of aid we have provided. If 
we cease that aid, they will be deprived of the tools they need to win 
this war.
  Yes, our objective should be Ukraine winning this war. We are not 
going to have troops on the ground. We are not going to be engaged 
through NATO. We are not going to be a party in the combat. But we can 
be the arsenal of Ukraine's democracy. We can step up and stand up for 
democracy.
  My colleague has made the point very well that history teaches about 
bullies. They are stopped, or they will continue. That is a lesson 
throughout history, whether it is World War II or any of the other 
conflicts where aggression has been stymied and halted.
  Vladimir Putin is a thug. He is a KGB operative. He understands only 
one thing: force--economic force, military force--and that force needs 
to be brought to bear before he moves against countries that are at 
risk.
  What does it mean that Finland wants to join NATO? What does it mean 
that Sweden is talking about joining NATO? They see the threat. They 
need that protection. They know they can't do it alone. They know that 
Putin will pick them off if we do not stand together.
  As Benjamin Franklin said at the time of our Revolution: We will hang 
together, or we will hang alone.
  That has to be the mantra that we take to our allies and to the 
American people. One last point. We need to bring together this body 
and our Congress in the bipartisan way that the three of us are doing 
today. This issue is way above partisan politics in its importance to 
our future as a nation.
  The American people understandably are focused on inflation, which is 
a serious challenge. They are fatigued and tired of COVID, which is not 
only irksome but threatening. Our job is to make them aware of the 
threat that is posed by Putin's Russia. It isn't the Russian people's 
Russia. They have no idea what is actually happening. They believe 
because they have been told that President Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, is 
actually a Nazi. That is what they have been told.
  We visited Ukraine not long before the invasion. One of my colleagues 
in this bipartisan trip said to President Zelenskyy: Are you fearful 
about a Russian invasion?
  This was January of this year.
  He said: The Russian invasion began in 2014. The Russian invasion has 
been ongoing and has killed 14,000 of our people.
  This latest threat of an assault on Ukraine is just another phase of 
the same war, and Ukrainian people have fought on behalf of democracy 
for these years. They have lost blood and lives and treasure, and we 
have an obligation to stand strong for our democracy at this moment. We 
have an opportunity and an obligation.
  I am proud to stand with my colleagues in favor of using the proceeds 
of selling oligarchs' ill-begotten gains so that we can benefit the 
people of Ukraine in their fight for freedom and their effort to 
reconstruct their country.
  I would like to yield the floor back to my colleague, hopefully, 
having answered his question and pose a question to my colleague from 
Rhode Island.
  Will the proceeds from the sale of these ill-gotten gains potentially 
benefit Ukraine in a way that will be meaningful and will help save 
American taxpayers' funds that are necessary to support the freedom of 
that country?
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I would say to Senator Blumenthal, 
absolutely, yes, and to Senator Graham, also yes, and thank you.
  Let me just give a quick overview of my part of this colloquy as to 
where we are.
  This began with the Munich Security Conference, which Senator Graham 
and I led this year, the so-called McCain codel. When we heard about 
the imminent invasion, we both became very ardent that we needed to get 
after Russia's oligarchs; first, because it was turning the oligarchs 
against Yanukovych, which freed up Ukraine, and, second, because these 
oligarchs in Russia are part and parcel of the way in which Putin has 
manipulated his country and acceded enormous hidden wealth to himself.
  So we knew that the oligarchs needed to be a target. We talked about 
it so relentlessly that whenever Secretary of State Blinken saw us 
coming, he would say: I know. I know. Oligarchs, I get it.
  Afterward, the President came back and he took the Treasury's Asset 
Forfeiture Section and the State Department's Asset Forfeiture Section 
and the Department of Justice's Asset Forfeiture Section and pulled 
them together into what he is calling the Kleptocratic Initiative. That 
is a good thing the President did.
  In this bill, there is money for it. We give $67 million to that 
enterprise and another $30 million to FinCEN, which is the group within 
Treasury that tracks dirty money. So that is about $100 million to 
support the KleptoCapture operation.
  What they still need is authorities, and that is what our bill would 
give them. When we got back, Senator Graham, Senator Wicker, Senator 
Blumenthal, and I drafted this bill, and a version of it has been 
passed in the House, thanks to the leadership of Representative   Tom 
Malinowski. And after that bill was filed, the Biden administration got 
together and they gave technical assistance to us from the Department 
of Justice as to what it was that they actually need to be more 
effective at going after these oligarchs to seize, to sell, and to send 
to Ukraine the proceeds.
  So that is where we are right now. And one of the things that we need 
is to speed up the process; it can take forever to go through the 
process. We need to couch this process in the national security 
authorities of the President as much as possible, because this is 
primarily a national security issue. We need to speed up the process so 
that, for instance, you don't have to prove who the true beneficial 
owner is before you seize the yacht.
  You can go on intelligence reports. You can go on whistleblowers. 
And, by the way, we want to reward whistleblowers. You remember the 
Ukrainian who sunk his boss's yacht and he got arrested because he 
pulled the plug out of that yacht and sunk it?
  I would rather have that guy come to the Department of Justice and 
say: I can tell you all about who owns this yacht. You don't have to 
worry about going through the Cypriot bank account, the Cayman Islands 
shell corporation, the Dakota trust--wherever else this has been 
hidden. I can tell you that is the guy--and be able to act based on 
that and have the authority to have the action, what is called ``in 
rem'' by lawyers. You don't have to find the defendant.
  This is United States v. Motor Vessel--whatever it is called--
Scheherazade. And you give public notice, and

[[Page S2485]]

you invite the world to come and make whoever has a claim to that yacht 
to show that it is there and it shouldn't be condemned, sold, and the 
proceeds go to Ukraine, which is an interesting predicament for the 
oligarch who owns it but has pretended he does not, who has hidden 
behind all these shells.
  He now has to come forward and say: Actually I own that yacht.
  Gotcha, game over.
  Or he has to put in some phony to come and say: Hey, I actually own 
that yacht. I may be a cellist, but I am a billionaire cellist who 
happens to own that yacht.
  And we get to say in a court of law: Prove it. Let's have some real 
discovery. Let's have some testimony under oath. If this is your yacht, 
God bless you, you can have it. Prove it. We dare you.
  I think what is going to happen is a lot of these claims are going to 
be forfeit, because they are, in fact, crooked. And we have every right 
and every need to go after these assets because Putin's attack on 
Ukraine is supported, aided, abetted, and given aid and comfort to by 
this retinue of slippery oligarchs around him who have protected him.
  You saw 29 of them showing up in that big office of his to have the 
little talk with him about how this was all going. We know who they 
are. And we know what their role is, and they are aiding and abetting 
and giving aid and comfort to an enemy of our ally Ukraine--as Senator 
Graham has pointed out--at the fulcrum in the world of our battle for 
freedom right now.
  If we can't act on this, shame on us. So we are going to continue; we 
are going to continue in bipartisan fashion. We are going to take our 
bill, and we are going to add on to it the technical language from the 
Department of Justice that will specify the authorities that they need. 
And we are going to find a way to get this passed. If we can't do it by 
unanimous consent, which I hope we can, then perhaps on the NDA or some 
other must-pass piece of legislation.

  But this must be done. And to Senator Blumenthal's question, will 
this make a difference? Some of these yachts cost half a billion 
dollars, and there are dozens of them floating around. This is real 
money. And that is before you get to the fancy paintings and before you 
get to the mansions in London and before you get to the villas on the 
coast of Spain.
  We need to make it very expensive to be an oligarch supporting Putin, 
and we need to take the filthy pelt, the lucre that they stole from 
their country and put it to the benefit of the Ukrainian people.
  So I am delighted that Senator Wicker was an initial cosponsor of 
this bill. I am delighted that Senator Graham was an initial cosponsor 
and Senator Blumenthal.
  And I will close by saying that, you know, this Munich security 
delegation that we do every year has made a big difference on several 
occasions, because we get together in bipartisan fashion, we are 
presented with real, immediate problems in the world that we face when 
we go to that conference. And we craft bipartisan solutions in realtime 
there, and then we come back and deploy them. And that is what was done 
here. We are going to see this through. We are going to get this right.
  Thank you, Senator Graham.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Yield for a quick question?
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Gladly.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Number one, Senator Whitehouse has been talking about 
this 3 years that I know of. Long before Putin invaded Ukraine, when we 
were in charge of the Judiciary Committee, we had several hearings 
about autocracy, about ill-gotten gains, people stealing money from 
their country, but particularly in Russia. So I want to thank you for 
understanding this issue better than anybody I know and been talking 
about it for years.
  Now, we have a moment here, and to my colleagues over here, this is a 
moment in world history. This is not about, I don't like this part of 
the bill, and I don't like that part of the bill. It is about you are 
either going to help Ukraine or not, and perfectly so. Whatever 
imperfections in this bill that exist, the worst possible outcome is to 
say no to the people of Ukraine because it is not exactly the way you 
would have done it.
  Now, if you want to say no to the people of Ukraine because you don't 
care about what happens in Ukraine, that is a different conversation. 
Please come down here and say that. If you believe that the outcome in 
Ukraine has no effect on the national security interest of the United 
States, if you believe that Putin will stop after Ukraine and China is 
not watching, come down here and say it.
  The reason nobody will do that--I doubt--is because you would be 
crazy. But you can say it. The floor is yours. Come down here and make 
the argument that Ukraine is not connected to world events and that 
Putin would be satisfied with dismembering that country and stop. He is 
not.
  You know, Hitler wrote a book. Somebody should have read it. This guy 
gave a speech and for 20 years has been acting on that speech. So the 
people around him, the oligarchs--and Senator Whitehouse is the 
oligarchs' worst nightmare--have been living large off the system 
created in Russia where everybody gets a piece of the action except the 
Russian people.
  We have got a chance where the world is galvanized, and Attorney 
General Garland, who I have been working with on this, has been very 
good, needs some changes in the law to make this more effective.
  About seizing yachts, you have got to have a reasonable belief that 
the yacht is part of a criminal enterprise, an ill-gotten gain. You 
seize the yacht, and you ask people to come forward to contest your 
assertion. If they don't, then it proves all you need to know. If they 
have got a good counterclaim, then they win in court.
  But right now, you have got this game where you have to find a 
specific person, which is crazy. Seize the yacht if there is reasonable 
evidence it is part of one of these enterprises. This bill that we are 
talking about would do that.

  And why it didn't get in the package, I don't know. But I want to ask 
Senator Whitehouse one final question: How much money does he think 
could be gathered up if we unleashed law enforcement throughout the 
world to go after these oligarchs, and what would be the signal we 
would be sending throughout the world if we actually did this?
  Would it make the world a better place? What is his view?
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The oligarchs working with and for Vladimir Putin 
have stolen almost all of the wealth of Russia. These are extremely 
wealthy individuals. If you can afford a $500 million yacht, you have 
got money to burn. And that is not your only asset--that is just your 
yacht.
  And you have got all the other stuff, the villas and the mansions and 
the artworks and the jets and all of that. The number is obviously in 
the tens of billions of dollars. When you consider that we are 
appropriating $40 billion, I think it is a fair bet that we can do half 
again, just from these oligarchs. And to have that money go to 
Ukraine's relief, to its victory, and to its rebuilding would be a 
very, very good use.
  And at the same time, it would provide the strategic feature that it 
would start turning these greedy oligarchs against Putin because we are 
going to keep coming after them until this is over, and it would 
disable his apparatus of control over Russia, which is run through 
being basically a gang of thieves who all allow each other to loot 
their country.
  I am reminded of Senator Graham's great friend, Senator McCain, who 
used to describe Russia as a gas station run by gangsters with an army.
  Well, this turns the gangsters against each other, in addition to 
taking ill-gotten gains and turning them to a valuable and proper use. 
And the message it sends is: If you are a crooked oligarch who will 
support a dictator, a tyrant who will go into another country and shell 
its schools, send cruise missiles into its apartment buildings, target 
artillery at its hospitals, you are not going to get away with that 
easily.
  And it sends a signal through that to the entire world of 
kleptocracy, which extends beyond Russia, that your days of thievery 
are numbered, we are going to have the resources to put rule of law 
back in charge.
  Mr. GRAHAM. I can't say it any better. Just to wrap this up, I 
believe that

[[Page S2486]]

if there were a vote tomorrow designating Russia as a state sponsor of 
terrorism, we would get 90 votes in the U.S. Senate. I will ask Senator 
Whitehouse to comment on that. I think we could take his idea, his 
kleptocracy regime, and embolden the Department of Justice and others 
to make it easier to go after these assets. If we had a vote on that 
concept, we would get 90 votes.
  So what is frustrating is that in the desire to get aid and bullets 
and help into the Ukraine, we left out two provisions: state sponsor of 
terrorism and permissions to go after the ill-gotten gains of the 
Russian oligarchs and plow it into Ukraine to help them.
  But what I want you to know is that the process did not accommodate 
these two provisions. But as you can tell from this discussion, we are 
not going to stop. To my colleagues in this body, we are not going to 
stop. Everybody is going to stand up one way or the other here pretty 
soon.
  I have talked to the Speaker of the House. She is very sympathetic to 
the idea about Russia being a state sponsor of terrorism. I will talk 
to Kevin McCarthy. I think the bipartisanship here exists in the House. 
You should see it.
  So just finally, Senator Whitehouse, can he assure the people of 
Ukraine, can he assure the oligarchs, can he assure Putin, that we are 
not going to stop?
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I can, indeed, Senator Graham. I can, indeed. And I 
thank him for his persistent effort on this, and I thank our colleagues 
in the House who have been very persistent on this, none more than 
Congressman Malinowski of New Jersey.
  Mr. GRAHAM. I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Warnock). The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________