[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 85 (Wednesday, May 18, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2570-S2573]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Ukraine
Mr. CRUZ. Madam President, I rise today to lay out exactly why I
intend to vote for the aid package to provide our Ukrainian allies with
the weapons and support they need to fight Vladimir Putin's invasion.
First, it is important to understand why--thanks in large part to
President Joe Biden--we are in this dangerous situation to begin with.
What is maddening about Russia's invasion of Ukraine is that it was
utterly preventable. This did not have to happen, and it was caused by
two specific mistakes by Biden and his administration. The first
mistake was Biden's catastrophic surrender and withdrawal in
Afghanistan. The second mistake was Biden's weakness and appeasement on
display and his capitulation to Putin on the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline.
Putin didn't just wake up yesterday and decide he wanted to invade
Ukraine. In 2014, Putin previously invaded Ukraine, but he stopped
short of invading the entirety of the country. Why is that? The reason
is simple: Russia's principal source of revenue is oil and gas, which
is transported via pipelines that go directly through Ukraine. Putin
knew that when the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline was complete, he could invade
Ukraine and not have to worry about potentially destroying Ukrainian
energy infrastructure because he would have in place an alternative
pipeline to get his gas to market.
Last spring, President Biden formally waived the sanctions that
Congress had put in place on Nord Stream 2, sanctions that I authored,
bipartisan sanctions that passed this body twice and that President
Trump signed into law twice. Last summer, President Biden surrendered
to Putin, lifted the sanctions, allowed Putin to build the pipeline,
and announced a deal with Germany to allow the pipeline to be
completed. When he announced that deal, that capitulation, the
governments of both Ukraine and Poland put out a joint statement
saying: Mr. President, if you do this, Vladimir Putin will invade
Ukraine.
In August, Biden surrendered in Afghanistan. In September, Nord
Stream 2 was physically completed, and then Putin began building up his
forces on Ukraine's border. Even then, our Ukrainian allies pleaded
with us: Sanction Nord Stream 2 now so that Putin will know he can't
turn it on later. The President, the Prime Minister, Parliament, and
civil society of Ukraine all said so again and again and again.
I authored a new set of sanctions mandating immediate sanctions,
which the Ukrainian Government formally called on the Senate to take it
up and pass it. The Biden administration fought tooth and nail against
those sanctions in January. I remember standing right here and saying:
Mr. President, if you do this, we will see Russian tanks rolling toward
the streets of Kyiv.
Sadly, 44 Democrats voted with President Biden against sanctions on
Russia, against sanctions on Putin; and the appeasement from the White
House and 44 Democrats led, within days, to the invasion of Ukraine.
That being said now, the difficult question is what should we do now
that this war is unfolding and, specifically, whether it is in
America's vital national security interests for Ukraine to
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fight and defeat Putin's invasion. My conclusion is that, yes, it is.
There is no doubt, $40 billion is a large number; and although much
of that spending is important--in fact, some of it is acutely needed in
the military conflict--I would have preferred a significantly smaller
and more focused bill. But our Ukrainian allies right now are winning
significant victories with the weapons and training that we provided
them already, and it is in our national interest for them to keep doing
so. They will not be able to fight Putin and have any chance of
prevailing if we cut off military assistance.
So why is this in America's national security interest? The answer
lies in some questions that my fellow Americans are rightly asking.
They are asking: What would Russia's invasion of Ukraine mean for our
problems here at home, including, for example, food and energy? They
are asking: Is the cost of this bill really necessary? They are also
asking: Isn't China our biggest long-term enemy?
These are all entirely legitimate questions. They are important to
ask. They are the same questions I asked myself before deciding how to
vote on this bill. Another question Americans are rightly asking is:
Why aren't we doing anything about our problems here at home?
I emphatically agree that President Biden and congressional Democrats
have failed on the issues here at home that Texans and Americans
rightly care about and we should fix. Right now, we have a raging
border crisis that President Biden won't do a damn thing about. We have
skyrocketing inflation. We have gas prices at record highs. We have a
baby formula shortage that has left parents all over the country
scrambling to try to feed their babies. These are real problems that
the Democrats caused and now refuse to even try to fix; and in multiple
instances, such as the gas prices, these are problems that Democrats
have deliberately made worse, inflicting pain on millions of Americans.
All of that can be true at home, and it doesn't mean the world has
suddenly become safe and that our enemies do not mean us harm. At the
same time that we need to secure our border and address the domestic
crises, we also need to stand up and confront the very real threat
posed by Russia and by China. We can't let the fact that Biden and the
Democrats have created massive domestic and economic failures cause us
to ignore threats to U.S. national security posed directly by Putin's
invasion of Ukraine.
On the question ``Why is what Russia does in Ukraine relevant for our
national security,'' I want to answer this by making four points.
No. 1, what Putin is trying to do is to reassemble the Soviet Union
and, beyond the Soviet Union, the Russian Empire from even earlier. If
Putin succeeds in doing so, it would be disastrous for global stability
and for American security.
The Cold War between America and the Soviet Union was incredibly
costly and incredibly dangerous. We don't want to see Russia become the
Soviet Union once again. When the Soviet Union was big and strong and
mighty with a much bigger military, the lives of Americans and the
lives of our allies were in much greater jeopardy.
It is overwhelmingly in America's interest to prevent Putin from
reassembling the Soviet Union, because we do not want our enemies to
become stronger and use that strength against us.
No. 2, Putin is trying to seize control of energy. If he is
successful, it will be felt by Americans filling up their cars with gas
or trying to heat their homes in the winter. We have already seen what
Putin has done with Nord Stream 2, and he is not going to stop there.
We don't want to see a world where Putin controls energy.
No. 3, the United States made a formal commitment to help Ukrainians
defend themselves. Why is that? Well, after Ukraine successfully
declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States
signed an agreement called the Budapest Memorandum on Security
Assurances. Under the terms of the agreement, Ukraine gave up its
nuclear weapons in exchange for explicit assurances that the United
States would protect Ukraine's territorial sovereignty. Ukraine had the
third largest nuclear arsenal on the face of the planet, and they
voluntarily, willingly, gave it up. And we made a promise in exchange
for that.
And No. 4, if we don't provide Ukrainians with weapons and they don't
defeat Putin, Putin will be emboldened and may well eventually invade a
NATO country that the United States has a treaty obligation to defend.
That would be an incredibly serious escalation that nobody wants to
see.
Some have further asked, ``Why should America keep these
commitments?'' Why should we keep our commitment in the Budapest
Memorandum? Why should we keep our treaty commitments to the NATO
countries? And the answer is, because one of the ways we protect
American national security is, when we make an agreement with a
country, when we make a formal agreement, a treaty, we honor our
commitments.
We want countries to know that America stands by our friends and that
we stand by our word and that our treaties mean something.
If countries learned that under weak and feckless Presidents our
formal binding documents aren't worth the paper they are written on, it
undermines the ability of any President of the United States to
negotiate agreements with our friends and allies to keep Americans
safe.
Another question I have heard is, why so much money? Sure, it is
important to help Ukraine win, but why should we spend so much? Again,
I would have preferred for this to be a smaller bill. But, in fact,
enormous amounts of money are both justified and necessary. Of this $40
billion, there is $9 billion for replenishing our own stockpiles,
American stockpiles which have been badly depleted in recent months as
we sought to help our Ukrainian allies.
We are already beginning to see the risks and effects of depleted
stockpiles. Just a few weeks ago, Taiwan's Ministry of Defense
announced there would be dramatic delays in the delivery of some
weapons, including howitzers and Stingers. Making sure we have the
weapons we need to defend ourselves is incontrovertibly a good thing,
and $9 billion of this $40 billion, I do not know a Senator in this
body who could reasonably object to replenishing our own military
stores and weaponry to keep America safe with America's military.
There is also $10 billion in this bill for Ukrainian weapons and
training, and altogether, $24 billion in military funds in this bill.
Ukrainian weapons and training--the very things they have been using to
defend themselves and that if we don't replenish, will cause them to
collapse.
The Ukrainian military right now is using tens of thousands of
artillery rounds and ammunition every couple of days. Already last
month, there was a growing concern that Ukrainian forces engaged in
heavy ground combat against Russian units would quickly go through that
amount of ammunition.
They have largely burned through the stockpiles of Russian-style
ammunition they are familiar with and used in the opening weeks of the
war. And last month, U.S. officials assessed that 40,000 rounds of
artillery were only expected to last a few days. New efforts to
resupply our Ukrainian allies are critical.
There is also about $5 billion for food in this bill. Ukraine is
rightly known as the bread basket of Europe. It is the sixth top
exporter of wheat in the world, and there is a growing risk of global
famine because of the disruption Russia's invasion is causing in
Ukraine.
Devoting money now to stop countless people from starving to death in
famine is a wise and prudent investment for American national
interests.
Then there is $9 billion in economic support funds for the Ukrainian
government. Will a certain portion of that money be wasted? Absolutely.
Will there be corruption? Almost certainly. If it were up to me, I
would cut that amount from this bill. Might some of it end up funding a
yacht for an oligarch? Very possibly. But unfortunately, this is what
happens when Democrats have control of Congress and write the bill.
When you have a bill authored by a Democratic White House and a
Democratic Senate and a Democratic House, the result is you get waste
and corruption and pork and fat and bloat in a bill.
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So the question facing each of us Republicans is whether you are
willing to cut off the missiles and cut off the bullets that we are
sending to Ukraine and allow Putin to win simply because there is a
portion of this bill that is waste and corruption that the Democrats
have insisted on.
The reality is that a Putin victory in Ukraine will be much, much
more expensive for American taxpayers in the long run than this bill.
And let me underscore that point. If Putin wins, the consequences for
America and American taxpayers will be hundreds of billions of dollars.
From a purely fiscally conservative view, ensuring that the
Ukrainians have enough military equipment to defend themselves and to
give Putin punishing defeats is overwhelmingly in our interest. And let
me underscore as well: It is the Ukrainians doing the fighting. I do
not want to see U.S. servicemen and women in harm's way. There is a
reason I have vocally opposed a no-fly zone in Ukraine, because that
would unreasonably increase the chances of an American pilot in an
American jet engaging in combat with a Russian pilot in a Russian jet,
and that escalation is not justified.
But ensuring the Ukrainians have the weapons to defend themselves is
very much in our own national security interest.
And now I want to talk about a question that many Americans have not
necessarily been asking but that is of staggering importance to our
national security. And that is, ``What does the war in Ukraine have to
do with China?'' The answer is, ``An enormous amount.''
Last summer, we watched the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan
unfold. We watched the surrender to the Taliban from Joe Biden. We
watched the incompetence of this administration in abandoning Americans
and leaving them behind, abandoning Bagram airfield before we
evacuated.
When that happened, all across the globe, America's enemies looked to
Washington and took a measure of the man in the oval office, and,
tragically, they concluded that President Biden was weak and feckless
and ineffective. And a weak American President is dangerous.
When the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan happened, I said
publicly that the chances of Putin invading Ukraine just rose tenfold.
I also said, at the same time, the chances of China invading Taiwan
just rose tenfold.
We have now seen the first of these two things happen, because Putin
understood the disastrous surrender and withdrawal in Afghanistan to
mean that President Biden was weak, and weakness is provocative.
If Putin wins in Ukraine, it will confirm to Xi in Communist China
that he can confidently invade Taiwan and that America will be too weak
and feckless to stand with our allies.
But if Ukraine defeats Putin with the help of American weapons and
military aid, Xi will see aggression as a recipe for failure and that
the United States has the strength of will to stand by its allies to
ensure that they have what they need to defend themselves.
China is--mark my words--the most dangerous geopolitical adversary of
the United States for the next 100 years. China has the military might
of the Soviet Union with a much, much stronger economy and an economic
engine.
China also carries out policies of murder and torture and genocide
and slavery and lies and deception. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would
be catastrophic for American national security. Right now, today, over
90 percent of the world's most advanced semiconductor chips come from
Taiwan. If China were to conquer Taiwan, it would give the Chinese
Communist Party a stranglehold on the global supply of semiconductors.
After that, if Xi wanted to turn off the supply of semiconductors to
Americans, he could do so instantly. It is simply irresponsible to
allow that to happen, and it is impossible to overstate the catastrophe
that would impose on Americans.
Overnight, it would be impossible to acquire or repair pretty much
everything we rely on in modern life: Cars, planes, medical devices
like pacemakers, clean water, refrigerators, all rely on
semiconductors--of course, so do vehicles, boats, tanks, missiles that
we rely upon for our national defense.
And even if China didn't turn off the supply of those chips, they
would be able to control what went into them, including potentially
planting spyware and espionage directly and immediately threatening
American security.
And it goes without saying, the Chinese Communist Party would also
immediately control the price of semiconductors and what they go into,
which would drive up the cost of pretty much everything to Americans.
If you think $40 billion is a lot of money, just wait and see the
disaster if the Chinese communists lock up semiconductors on the world
stage and use them to extract monopoly profits from Americans while
simultaneously spying on us using those same semiconductors.
Just as we don't want to see a world in which Putin controls energy,
we should not want to see a world in which Xi controls semiconductors.
I began this speech by talking about the consequences of failing to
stop Nord Stream 2. I very much wish that these consequences had not
come to pass, but the terrible reality is that President Biden failed
in Afghanistan and failed again with Nord Stream 2, which played the
decisive role in shaping the current crisis.
The reason we should help the Ukrainians defeat Putin by giving them
weapons is the same reason we need to keep our thumb on China. And it
is not what some of my colleagues on the Republican side have said: It
is not to defend democracy across the globe; it is not to defend
international norms. That sort of empty nonsense is the sort of things
John Kerry says.
The reason we should support our Ukrainian allies who are fighting
and killing Russian soldiers is because it protects American national
security, it keeps America safer, and it prevents our enemies from
getting stronger, from threatening the safety and security of
Americans, and from driving up the costs, the economic damage to
Americans, by hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars.
America needs to be strong--strong enough to stand up to Putin,
strong enough to stand up to communist China, strong enough to defend
the greatest Nation in the history of the world.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I came to speak to the Senate about
Police Week as we honor the law enforcement officers who made the
ultimate sacrifice.
Before I do that, we know that Putin was shocked by two things. He
was shocked by the amazing resistance and the strength and the
resiliency of the Ukrainian people and the effectiveness of their fight
back. Putin really couldn't believe that happened.
The other thing that Putin was shocked by was the skill with which
President Biden put together this international coalition of countries
that were not part of this in the past, part of something--Germany,
Switzerland, Sweden, Finland--countries that now a couple of them want
to be in NATO, and that really is the skill of the leadership of
President Biden.
And I know, in spite of the Senator from Texas's comments--I know
that most mainstream Republicans support what President Biden has done,
support his work on putting together sanctions--first, providing aid
for the Ukrainian people, the humanitarian aid, refugees going to
Moldova, going to Poland, going to other parts of Eastern and Central
and Southern Europe, and the skill with which he has gotten and the
success with which he has gotten weapons to the Ukrainian people and
the skills with which he put together sanctions.
The Presiding Officer, as a member of the Banking and Housing
Committee, has been part of that with sanctions, and it has really made
a difference in keeping these countries together at the fastest pace we
could do it but keeping them together.
So most Republicans support what President Biden has done. But, you
know, I am not saying that the Senator from Texas is part of this, but
I have heard Congresswoman Cheney, who is nothing if not a conservative
Republican, daughter of a very conservative
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Vice President, active in the Republican Party and Republican
leadership--she talks about the Putin wing of the Republican Party.
Again, I am not saying that she includes the Senator from Texas in
that category. I don't know if she does or she doesn't. I didn't hear
her mention names, but I do know that she thinks that a number of
Republicans are part of this Putin wing of the Republican Party, and it
is despicable, but it is true, and it is disappointing to all of us.
And I would add, too, that the Senator from Texas, maybe he missed
the news as he was talking about chips, computer chips, about
semiconductors. Intel made a huge announcement that they are coming to
Ohio. They are going to invest billions of dollars. They are going to
hire 5,000 building tradespeople--5,000 tradespeople--over a 10-year
period to build these fabs. Imagine the size of that. I have never seen
anything like that.
So I am excited about what we are doing, and that is why it is so
important what Senator Wyden and I and others are doing on making sure
that we pass the USICA--the Innovation and Competition Act. It is so
important to our country. It is so important to workers. We are finally
putting workers at the center of our economic policy, and that is a
thrill.
And as President Biden said on the Senate floor, we are finally
burying the term ``Rust Belt.'' We are burying it in Columbus with
Intel. We are burying it in Northwest Ohio with solar manufacturing. We
are burying it in Southwest Ohio with a new generation of jet fuel and
jet engines. We are burying it in Cleveland with what we are doing with
NASA. We are burying it in Youngstown with our manufacturing camps and
all that we are doing for America Works.
Mr. CRUZ. Will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. BROWN. Sure.
Mr. CRUZ. Just a moment ago, the Senator from Ohio made reference to
the alleged existence of the so-called Putin wing of the Republican
Party.
I would like to ask the Senator from Ohio, Is it accurate that the
Senator from Ohio and 43 of his Democratic colleagues in January of
this year voted against sanctioning Nord Stream 2, sanctioning Russia,
sanctioning Putin, despite the fact that Ukraine begged the Senate to
pass those sanctions and Putin invaded Ukraine just days after 44
Democrats sided with Russia and Putin?
Mr. BROWN. Madam President, I take back my time.
I have heard no Democrat talk about--I have heard nobody talk about
the Putin wing of the Democratic Party. No Democrat believes that.
I hear just down the hall 100 yards, Congresswoman Cheney talk about
the Putin wing of the Republican Party. I am not in intraparty fights;
I am only pointing that out.
I want to get to this. We expect a vote soon after 6, and I want to
get back to my remarks. I appreciate the engagement of Senator Cruz on
this issue