[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 55 (Monday, March 27, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S946-S951]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FIRE GRANTS AND SAFETY ACT
Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 28,
S. 870.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The bill clerk read as follows:
A bill (S. 870) to amend the Federal Fire Prevention and
Control Act of 1974 to authorize appropriations for the
United States Fire Administration and firefighter assistance
grant programs.
Cloture Motion
Mr. SCHUMER. I send a cloture motion to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
The bill clerk read as follows:
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to
proceed to Calendar No. 28, S. 870, a bill to amend the
Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974 to authorize
appropriations for the United States Fire Administration and
firefighter assistance grant programs.
Charles E. Schumer, Gary C. Peters, Christopher Murphy,
Catherine Cortez Masto, Tina Smith, Jack Reed, Brian
Schatz, Jeanne Shaheen, Jeff Merkley, Sheldon
Whitehouse, Patty Murray, Mazie K. Hirono, Cory A.
Booker, Benjamin L. Cardin, Chris Van Hollen, Margaret
Wood Hassan, Alex Padilla.
Mr. SCHUMER. I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum call
for the cloture motion filed today, March 27, be waived.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, just to inform the Members, I am moving
to file cloture on this bill, which would make sure that both the SAFER
grants and the AFG grants, which protect and help our paid and
volunteer firefighters, continue. It expires in a few months if we do
nothing.
Our firefighters, both paid and volunteer, are brave; they risk their
lives for us; they run to danger, not away from it; and they need both
equipment and personnel so that they can continue to do their jobs,
particularly in smaller, more rural, and more suburban areas where
there is not the tax base to support the stuff that they need. So I
hope we can move forward quickly on this legislation.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk called the roll.
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
S. 316
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, this week, the Senate is expected to
vote on legislation that would repeal the authorization for use of
military force in Iraq.
The bill before the Senate would repeal two separate authorizations--
one from 1991, which authorized U.S. intervention in Iraq, better known
as the Gulf war, to stop the dictator, Saddam Hussein, from invading
and terrorizing Kuwait. The second one passed in 2002 in response to
Saddam's persistent violations of the peace agreement that came out of
the Gulf war, including intelligence that he was pursuing weapons of
mass destruction.
In the decades since these authorizations passed, America's
relationship with Iraq has changed dramatically. Iraq has gone from a
hostile and unpredictable authoritarian government to become a
strategic partner with the United States. In recent years, our
countries have worked together to end the occupation of ISIS in Iraq.
In December of 2017, Iraq declared victory, though we have seen a
resurgence of some of those terrorists recently. Two years ago,
President Biden welcomed the Iraqi Prime Minister to the White House, a
friendship that would have been unimaginable 20 or 30 years ago.
Put simply, Iraq is a key partner in the Middle East. Our governments
and militaries cooperate to promote security and prosperity for the
Iraqi people. More broadly, we work together to counter Iran's malign
influence and continue to root out terrorism in the Middle East.
While there is still an American military presence in Iraq, it looks
dramatically different today than it did 10, 20, or 30 years ago.
Today, our soldiers serve solely in an advise and assist role. They are
there at the invitation of the Iraqi Government to support Iraqi troops
and military leaders as they defend their own security interests.
In short, American forces are no longer there to counter threats from
Iraq. We are now there to counter threats to Iraq. That includes
threats from Iran, the No. 1 state sponsor of international terrorism,
with its hired henchmen, terrorist groups, or other adversaries that
could disrupt peace and stability in Iraq.
Those who support repealing the Iraqi military authorizations point
to this evolution in our relationship as evidence that the AUMFs are no
longer needed. It has been 20 years since the U.S. invasion of Iraq,
and they say the
[[Page S947]]
authorizations are outdated. Our relationship is shifting, they argue,
so it is time for those AUMFs to go.
Unfortunately, it is not that simple. Despite the fact that Iraq is
now our partner, that doesn't mean it is time to abandon our security
interests in the region. America still has very real adversaries in the
Middle East who would do us and our allies harm if they got the chance.
Today, Iran-backed militias operate in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and other
countries throughout the Middle East. They are proxies of the Iranian
military, with the goal of spreading Iranian political influence far
and wide.
This isn't just some warmonger conspiracy theory. There is clear and
absolute linkage between the Iranian regime and the militias operating
throughout the Middle East. They are, in effect, hired guns, which are
fighting to take territory that has been no-man's land since the
drawdown of U.S. forces in the Middle East. And in many cases, they
continue to target U.S. troops.
Just last Thursday, an Iranian drone targeted a U.S. facility in
Syria, killing an American contractor and wounding five American
servicemembers. The U.S. responded the following day by conducting an
airstrike against an Iran-backed militia in Syria. And then, within
hours, Iran's proxies launched another attack on a U.S. military base
in Syria.
Despite the fact that we know a great deal about these groups and
their capabilities and the threat they pose to the Middle East, we are
relatively limited in our efforts to counter their aggression.
Counterterrorism missions rely on the 2001 authorization for the use
of military force, which was passed in the wake of the terrorist
attacks on 9/11. Since many Iran-backed militia have not been
designated as terrorist organizations, the 2001 AUMF doesn't apply to
them. That means we can only use the 2002 AUMF to counter Iran-backed
militia and other groups that pose threats to the stability of Iraq and
to U.S. national security interests.
If we were to repeal the 2002 AUMF, we limit the President's ability
to target these groups. We, in effect, have withdrawn congressional
consent. That applies to President Biden today, and it would apply to
future commanders in chief as well. In effect, this would tie their
hands when it comes to countering threats posed by Iran and its
proxies.
To state the obvious, we can't dispose of any tools that could be
used to protect the United States or our partners.
Three Presidents have cited the 2002 AUMF as an authorization for the
use of military force. In 2003, President Bush used his authority to
justify the invasion of Iraq. In other words, this was with
congressional consent. In 2014, President Barack Obama cited the 2002
AUMF to justify strikes against Islamic state terrorists in Iraq and
Syria. Then, in 2020, former President Trump relied on this authority
to justify the strike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in
Baghdad.
Given the growing threats from Iran, it would be absurd to toss this
authorization out the window today. If Congress repeals the Iraqi war
authorizations, it prompts a lot of questions about what comes next.
Without the 2002 AUMF, the President would lose the ability to contain
Iran and its aggression. Iran's influence in the region would swell and
Iranian-backed militia would terrorize Syria and Iraq with impunity.
Iran would be free to focus on its maniacal desire to destroy Israel.
And without having to contend with the United States, it would be free
to spend even more money financing terrorist groups like Hamas and
Hezbollah.
Russian influence in Syria would grow, giving Putin a launch pad to
further project power into the Middle East. Our friends and allies, no
longer safe with America at their side, could succumb to coercive
partnerships with China, giving Xi Jinping another region in which to
compete with the United States for global primacy.
In short, passing this legislation would create a power vacuum in the
Middle East that could be filled by Iran, Russia, and China. We would
be ceding the region back to competition after working for years to
promote stability.
Of course, there are costs to maintaining our position in the Middle
East, but the cost-benefit analysis clearly shows that we have to leave
every authority in place to defend American and allied interests in the
Middle East.
Over the last few decades, as I said a moment ago, America's
relationship with Iraq has changed for the better. It is a valuable
partner. We work together to support security for Iraq and the region
as a whole. The U.S. military works with Iraqi forces to counter
threats from Iran and to reduce its influence in the region. These
authorizations for the use of military force are key to our continued
success.
It also means that we will continue to work with the executive
branch, rather than have the executive branch rely strictly on the
President's constitutional powers. They give the President of the
United States the flexibility needed to counter these threats and the
threats that they pose from Iran. We would be doing Iran a huge favor
by repealing these AUMFs.
Suffice it to say, I oppose the effort to repeal these Iraqi war
authorizations, and I encourage my colleagues in the Senate to join me
in that opposition.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. GRAHAM. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Hirono). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. GRAHAM. Madam President, we will be voting about 5:30, about 30
minutes from now, to end debate and tomorrow have some amendments, then
go to final passage on legislation to repeal the authorization to use
military force for 2002 directed against Iraq and Saddam Hussein.
The problem I have with what we are doing is that we are repealing
the authorization to use military force because Saddam is dead and that
threat is gone, but we are not replacing it with an authorization that
our troops desperately need, which is to create an AUMF to allow our
military to go after Shiite militias that are attacking them routinely
inside of Iraq. There have been over 78 attacks since 2021 directed at
U.S. forces by different groups, mostly Shiite militias controlled by
Iran, in Iraq and Syria. A couple days ago, there was an attack on an
American base in Syria. An American contractor was killed. God bless
him and his family. And we retaliated, and they retaliated back. The
bottom line is that our response to aggression against U.S. forces in
Iraq and Syria is woefully inadequate. Seventy-something attacks since
2021. Clearly, nobody feels afraid to attack our troops over there, and
we need to create some deterrence that we don't have today.
So I had an amendment that failed that would allow authorization to
use military force to exist where the Congress blesses the use of
military force against Shiite militias that are operating in Iraq
because they are a threat to about 2,500 troops that we have stationed
in Iraq.
The forces in Syria--about 900--are there to finish the counter-ISIS
mission, and I hear people, particularly on my side, say that we
shouldn't be in Syria.
You know, doing the same thing over and over again expecting a
different result is insanity. The last time we pulled all of our forces
out of Iraq, it was President Obama with the support of then-Vice
President Biden, the ISIS JV team became the varsity team. They took
over great parts of Syria and Iraq. They destroyed the city of Mosul.
They set up shop in Raqqa, Syria, and they launched attacks from Syria,
ISIS directed, at United States and Europe throughout the world,
killing thousands of people.
President Trump authorized our military to take down the caliphate.
And this idea that if you leave, they won't come back is stupid. You
know nothing if you believe that. You may be tired of fighting radical
Islam. They are not tired of fighting you. I would rather fight in
their backyard than ours. They are going to destroy us if we don't
destroy them.
[[Page S948]]
Here is the good news. They are on the run. As long as we keep some
of our forces in place, working with people in Syria and Iraq who do
not want to live under ISIS rule, we will be relatively safe. If you
pull all the troops out, you are going to get the same outcome. People
who keep arguing this, you really are doing a great disservice to the
country, and your arguments make zero sense. You don't understand the
enemy. You have no idea what this war is about.
This is a religious struggle. They have declared war on every faith
but their own. They want to purify Islam in their own image--ISIS and
al-Qaida. They want to destroy the State of Israel and eventually come
after us. Leaving them alone doesn't guarantee you much. In 2001,
before 9/11, we didn't have one soldier in Afghanistan. We didn't even
have an embassy. We totally abandoned Afghanistan, and the attack
against our country on 9/11 originated in Afghanistan.
When will you learn that these people are out to get you? And when I
say ``you,'' I mean Americans. Anybody who believes in diversity in
faith, they have a world view that has no place for you. The good news
is most people in the Mideast are not buying what they are selling, but
they are very lethal and dangerous left unattended.
Now, when you create the right mix of U.S. forces and local forces,
you pretty well keep them on the run and keep them at bay. So to those
who suggest we shouldn't be in Syria with 900 U.S. forces to prevent
ISIS from coming back, you are setting the stage for a reemergence of
ISIS, and once is enough, folks.
They destroyed the Yazidi population, raped women by the thousands
and created carnage all over Syria and Iraq and projected attacks
against American Western allies from a safe haven in Raqqa, Syria.
Now, the theory of the case here is that we as Congress need to take
back authority, and this authorization to use force no longer needs to
be in place because the war against Saddam Hussein is over. We can
argue about Iraq being a good idea or a bad idea. We did have bad
intelligence. But here is what I would say 20 years later. Saddam being
dead is a good thing, from my point of view, because he was a thug and
a dictator on steroids. And the people of Iraq are on their second or
third election. It has been messy, but they are moving in the right
direction. And we have 2,500 troops back in Iraq to make sure ISIS
doesn't come back and destabilize the region and try to have some
influence against the Iranians.
So if you want to repeal the AUMF, I think you owe it to the troops
to follow it with something. So the people who want to do this say:
Article II, which is the inherent authority of the Commander in Chief,
allows President Biden to protect our troops in Iraq. There is truth to
that. But the whole idea is for us as a Congress to have a say in
foreign policy and not sort of give a blank check. So if you want to
cancel the check to go after Saddam because he is not around, I think
you owe it to the troops to lend your voice because the enemy sees this
as retreat.
No matter what you want the enemy to believe about what is going on
here, all they understand is the American Congress is making a step to
get out of Iraq, and that is good news for them.
After Afghanistan--the disaster there--don't you think we should be
more clear in our thought?
The Biden administration was wrong to take troops out of Afghanistan.
They are right to have troops in Iraq and Syria, but the Congress is
trying to be a bit hypocritical here. We want to cancel one
authorization to use force, and we don't have the courage, apparently,
politically, to say the military has our approval, as a Congress
working with the President, to go after Shiite militias that are
killing our forces in Iraq and attacking them regularly.
What does Iran want?
Now, this is not an authorization to go after the Iranian regime. It
is an authorization to protect American forces in Iraq from attacks in
Iraq coming from Shiite militias loyal to Iran.
What are they trying to achieve?
They want to drive us out. If the 900 troops left Syria tomorrow,
Assad would eventually conquer what is left of Syria and ISIS would
fill that vacuum and you would have a conflict with Turkey and the
Kurds. And all the people--our chairman of the Armed Services Committee
is a very smart guy and a very great friend--all the Kurds who fought
with us, they would be wiped out.
So I am glad the Biden administration is going to stay in Syria
because we need those troops to keep ISIS from coming back and to work
with our Kurdish partners.
But when it comes to Iraq, they are trying to drive us out because
Iran wants us out of Syria so their buddy Assad can run the place. They
want us out of Iraq so the Shiite radical elements in Iraq can topple
the Iraqi Government, and the Shiite militias would take authority away
from the Iraqi Army, and they will have influence over Iraq and Syria.
It is not in America's interest to allow the Ayatollah in Iran to
have more influence and more spaces to govern and more oil to generate
revenue from. So if you don't get that, you are not really following
what is going on.
So no matter what you say about article II, I hate to tell you, ISIS
probably doesn't follow our Constitution that closely. The best thing
we could do, if you want to repeal the 2002 AUMF that was generated to
get rid of Saddam, replace it with something new--an authorization to
use force to protect our troops that we all agree or most of us agree
should be in Iraq to protect America from attacks from Shiite militias.
That amendment was rejected.
Here is what you are doing. You are sending a signal by doing this
that we are leaving, we are withdrawing, and that we don't have the
will as a nation to see this thing through. There is nothing good comes
from this. You are openly admitting the President has authority to use
force to protect our troops, but you are not going to lend your voice
to that cause, and I don't understand that.
If the Congress, working with the President, said: No matter who is
President, you have the ability to use military force to protect our
troops against Shiite militias in Iraq, that would make us stronger.
The enemy would understand it better. Our allies would understand it
more clearly. And they have got to be wondering, What the hell is going
on here?
So the bottom line is, you are setting in motion, by not replacing
the AUMF with something specific to Shiite militias that are attacking
our troops regularly--you are setting in motion more danger for those
in Iraq and eventually Syria.
And I don't question your patriotism. I do question our judgment as a
body. This is a very ill-conceived idea. It is going to juice up the
enemy. It is going to confuse our allies. And it could be easily fixed,
but we choose not to.
I don't know what the political environment is in America today, but
the idea that the war is over with radical Islam is insane. I have
listened to people--some on my side--come down here and want to repeal
the authorization to go after al-Qaida and affiliated groups after 9/
11. General Kurilla, the CENTCOM commander in charge of the region,
said, last week, because of our withdrawal from Afghanistan, ISIS in
Afghanistan has the ability to strike us in this country within 6
months without warning.
So can you imagine the damage to be done to national security
interests if we repeal the 2001 AUMF?
So I will close with this. While I understand theoretically why we
want to replace--get rid of the 2002 AUMF because Saddam is gone, I
don't understand why we are leaving this vacuum and this doubt. This is
easily fixed.
You are creating a narrative that is going to come back to haunt us.
You think it is an accident within 2 days of introducing this idea that
they hit us in Syria again? They are going to test us.
And here is what I think. The Biden administration is doing a lousy
job, quite frankly, of instilling fear in the enemy. Whether you like
Trump or not, people were afraid of him. And there is no fear. And here
is what I would like to have established: Working with the
administration, not against them, to send a clear signal: You kill
Americans at your own peril. We are not leaving. We are not going to
let radical Islam come back and do it all over again.
So I will be voting no. This is one of the most ill-conceived ideas
after 9/11.
[[Page S949]]
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. REED. Madam President, I rise today to express my support for S.
316 and the repealing of the 1991 and 2002 authorization for the use of
military force, or AUMF. I commend Senators Kaine and Young for their
relentless work on this bill, and I am glad to be a cosponsor of it
along with 43 of my colleagues.
I voted against the 2002 AUMF when it was introduced more than 20
years ago. And I can assure you that as we debated that bill at that
time, no one would have believed that 20 years later we would be on the
floor debating its repeal. The war against Saddam Hussein is long over,
and our bilateral relationship with Iraq is fundamentally different
today. In our current fight against violent extremists, the Biden
administration has clearly stated it does not rely on the 2002 AUMF as
the basis for any ongoing military operations.
Let's remember what the 2002 AUMF authorizes. The United States went
to war, ``to defend the national security of the United States against
the continuing threat posed by Iraq.'' The Bush administration alleged,
falsely, that Iraq had amassed an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Bush
administration officials also alleged that the Iraq Government had ties
to the al-Qaida terrorists that attacked the United States on September
11, 2001. These false pretenses and cherry-picked information provided
the basis for Congress to authorize the war in Iraq in 2002--again, an
authorization I opposed.
And this costly war of choice caused the United States irreparable
harm. It caused us to take our eyes off violent extremist groups
throughout the region and resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. It also
forced us to take our eyes off Russia and China as they became peer
competitors. As we spent billions of dollars investing in tactical
vehicles to protect our troops in a counterinsurgency, as we spent
billions of dollars to try to train Afghan forces, the Russians and the
Chinese invested in hypersonic vehicles, in very sophisticated long-
range precision strike weapons. And the Chinese have been building an
entire navy since then. We paid little attention because we were
preoccupied with Iraq.
And finally and ironically, our war in Iraq allowed Iran to become
one of the most powerful and dangerous forces in the region, because we
took out a block against their ambition, which had been Saddam Hussein
and Iraq. As a result, we are paying, today, for those errors in
judgment, and I think it is only fitting that we recognize it and
repeal those AUMFs.
We have ongoing operations to suppress violent extremists. Beginning
on 9/11 and going forward, we have been fighting anyone who has
aspirations to use terror attacks against the U.S. homeland or our
allies. That is as a result of the 2001 AUMF that essentially empowered
our government to find and defeat terrorists, anywhere they are, who
pose a threat to the United States and to our allies. Retaining the
2001 AUMF or an appropriate successor to that statute remains essential
for the Defense Department's current counterterrorism operations, and
Congress must continue to exercise robust oversight over its use.
Further, the Biden administration has drawn a clear distinction
between the two Iraq AUMFs that would be repealed under S. 316 and the
2001 AUMF. The repeal of the two AUMFs would have no impact on our
current operations, and as a domestic legal basis, no ongoing military
activities rely solely on either the 1991 or the 2002 AUMF.
Leaving the 2002 authorization in place sends a harmful signal to
Iraq, where our forces remain at the invitation of the Government of
Iraq. Iraq is a critical partner now in our fight against ISIS and in
our fight against Shia militias that are transiting Iraq and attacking
our forces in Syria. We should not communicate to the Iraqi Government
that the United States reserves the right to use force against its
nation in the future. This is contrary to the cooperation that our
military forces need to counter ISIS operations.
Further, keeping the 2002 AUMF provides a propaganda tool for Iran.
The Iranian Government is constantly seeking to convince the Iraqis
that Tehran, not Washington, is a more reliable partner. We face a real
and growing threat from Iran, but the 2002 AUMF does not authorize the
use of force against Iran, and it must not be relied on for that
purpose now.
Finally, as laid out in the Constitution, Congress has the sole power
to declare war. We must exercise that responsibility with the utmost
care when it comes to matters of the use of military force. Repealing
AUMFs that have served their intended purposes and are no longer
applicable to current military operations is fully consistent with the
careful exercise of the Senate's constitutional responsibilities.
On that basis, I support S. 316 and the repeal of the 2002 and 1991
AUMFs. Again, I commend Senator Kaine for his leadership, and I urge my
colleagues to vote yes on this bill.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be
allowed to complete my statement before the vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam President, the vote the Senate is about to take
is about what is right for our Nation. It is part of exercising our
most solemn duty as elected officials. It is a recognition that
Congress not only has the power to declare war but also should have the
responsibility to end wars, and it is a decision to turn the page on
one of those chapters in our country's history.
With today's vote, we can move closer to repealing two obsolete and
outdated authorizations for the use of military force against Iraq.
Repealing these authorizations will demonstrate to the region--and to
the world--that the United States is not an occupying force; that the
war in Iraq has come to an end; that we are moving forward, working
with Iraq as a strategic partner. So I commend the Senate for moving
forward to take this critical step.
I hope the Senate will speak overwhelmingly in support of preserving
congressional prerogatives as to when and under what circumstances we
send our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters into harm's way and
clawing back authorities that have clearly outlived their purpose and
scope.
Some of my colleagues have argued that repealing 20- and 30-year-old
authorizations will weaken our ability to confront Iranian aggression.
Some have offered amendments that would alter these authorizations.
Others have offered amendments that would expand these authorizations.
And a few have offered amendments that have, well, quite frankly,
nothing at all to do with these authorizations. So let me address that
point briefly.
Just in the last few days, the President directed targeted strikes
against groups affiliated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
in Syria. This was in response to Iranian-backed drone attacks that
killed a U.S. contractor and wounded five American servicemembers at a
maintenance facility in Syria. The President looked at the
intelligence, he consulted his advisors, he ordered the strike, and he
committed, publicly, to continue to defend against Iranian aggression
and to respond to attacks against U.S. forces. He did so without--
without--relying on the 1991 or 2002 authorizations for use of military
force against Iraq.
This President has been clear in his view that he has sufficient
authority to defend against threats to U.S. personnel and interests. If
we are going to debate whether to provide the President additional
authorities, then we should have that debate separately. But it should
not be under the cloak of keeping old authorizations on the books,
authorizations that are not needed to meet any current threat. They are
not about the current threat; they are about a regime that is no longer
alive and has been gone for the better part of those 20 years. This is
just a tactic to delay this repeal from going forward. Nor should we
turn a debate about repeal and a chance to take
[[Page S950]]
a historic step forward into a new backdoor authorization for the use
of force against another country.
So I urge my colleagues to stay focused on the facts, repeal an
authorization that is no longer used or needed, and close this chapter
on American foreign policy. Let's finally--finally--repeal the 1991 and
2002 authorizations for use of military force against Iraq. I urge my
colleagues to vote to move forward with repeal of these AUMFs.
I yield the floor.
Cloture Motion
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
do hereby move to bring to a close debate on Calendar No. 25,
S. 316, a bill to repeal the authorizations for use of
military force against Iraq.
Charles E. Schumer, Robert Menendez, Tim Kaine, Tina
Smith, Benjamin L. Cardin, Jeanne Shaheen, Sheldon
Whitehouse, Tammy Baldwin, Patty Murray, Michael F.
Bennet, Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Duckworth, Robert P.
Casey, Jr., Christopher Murphy, Catherine Cortez Masto,
Jack Reed, Brian Schatz.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum
call has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on
Calendar No. 25, S. 316, a bill to repeal the authorizations for use of
military force against Iraq, shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Coons),
the Senator from California (Mrs. Feinstein), the Senator from
Pennsylvania (Mr. Fetterman), and the Senator from California (Mr.
Padilla) are necessarily absent.
Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator
from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs.
Blackburn), and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell).
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 65, nays 28, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 70 Leg.]
YEAS--65
Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Booker
Braun
Brown
Budd
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Cassidy
Collins
Cortez Masto
Cramer
Daines
Duckworth
Durbin
Gillibrand
Grassley
Hassan
Hawley
Heinrich
Hickenlooper
Hirono
Hoeven
Kaine
Kelly
King
Klobuchar
Lee
Lujan
Lummis
Manchin
Markey
Marshall
Menendez
Merkley
Moran
Murkowski
Murphy
Murray
Ossoff
Paul
Peters
Reed
Rosen
Sanders
Schatz
Schmitt
Schumer
Shaheen
Sinema
Smith
Stabenow
Tester
Van Hollen
Vance
Warner
Warnock
Warren
Welch
Whitehouse
Wyden
Young
NAYS--28
Boozman
Britt
Capito
Cornyn
Cotton
Crapo
Cruz
Ernst
Fischer
Graham
Hagerty
Hyde-Smith
Johnson
Kennedy
Lankford
Mullin
Ricketts
Risch
Romney
Rounds
Rubio
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Sullivan
Thune
Tillis
Tuberville
Wicker
NOT VOTING--7
Barrasso
Blackburn
Coons
Feinstein
Fetterman
McConnell
Padilla
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. King). On this vote, the yeas are 65, the
nays are 28.
Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in
the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Remembering Gladys Kessler
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here this evening to commemorate
the passing of a remarkable individual. I only met her once when I went
over to speak at a gathering of the U.S. District Court for the
District of Columbia. But on March 16, at the age of 85, Her Honor
Judge Gladys Kessler passed away.
She had been quite a trailblazer before she went on the court. She
cofounded the Women's Legal Defense Fund, now known as the National
Partnership for Women & Families, and she served as the president of
the National Association of Women Judges.
In her career, she rendered a lot of very good decisions, but the
most memorable one and the one that exemplified some of the
characteristics I admired the most about her was the decision that she
rendered exposing in detail a conspiracy by the tobacco industry to
deceive the American public about the safety of tobacco.
The Big Tobacco scheme is one that we are, I think, pretty familiar
with. You pay a lot of phony-baloney for-hire scientists to produce
studies making false claims about your product, you hire a web of PR
experts and front groups to spread doubt and critique the actual real
science that you don't like, and you have paid intermediaries to
relentlessly attack and try to smear your opponents.
In the face of this behavior, we had a remedy: the Racketeer
Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the RICO Act.
In 1999, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a civil RICO lawsuit
against the major tobacco companies and their associated industry
groups alleging that the companies, and I will quote the complaint
here, ``engaged in and executed--and continue to engage in and
execute--a massive 50-year scheme to defraud the public, including
consumers of cigarettes, in violation of RICO.''
The case took 7 years, but in 2006, Judge Kessler wrote one of the
most impressive opinions I have ever seen from a U.S. district court
judge. It was 1,683 pages long. She went through the evidence that the
U.S. Department of Justice had marshaled, and she organized it and laid
it out in a way that was completely compelling, that completely crushed
the defendant tobacco companies, to the point where, when it was on
appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit very powerfully
upheld it. It is one of the powers of a district judge that, with the
authority to find the facts and marshal the evidence properly, you can
make virtually bomb-proof opinions, and in 1,683 pages, Judge Gladys
Kessler did just that. She found the defendant--here is her quote:
Defendants coordinated significant aspects of their public
relations, scientific, legal, and marketing activity in
furtherance of a shared objective--to . . . maximize industry
profits by preserving and expanding the market for cigarettes
through a scheme to deceive the public.
She added:
In short, [they] have marketed and sold their lethal
product with zeal, with deception, with a single-minded focus
on their financial success, and without regard for the human
tragedy or social costs that success exacted.
It was a testament--this opinion was--to judicial diligence, and it
left a permanent, solid record for history of the campaign of fraud
that the tobacco industry had run until that point.
Of course, in order for her to be able to render that decision, there
had to be a plaintiff willing to bring the case. So kudos also to the
U.S. Department of Justice back then for being willing to take on a
defendant as powerful as the tobacco industry. We forget, now that
smoking is so much less of a thing, how enormously powerful the tobacco
industry was, how its network of suppliers gave it footholds in every
State, how its enormous revenues allowed it to cut into this building
and manipulate the politics of the U.S. Congress to the great detriment
of the health of the American people.
It goes without saying that there is an obvious parallel between the
conduct of the tobacco industry leading up to Judge Kessler's decision
and the conduct of the fossil fuel industry.
In fact, experts point out that when Judge Kessler's decision shut
down the fraud of the tobacco industry, some of the individuals and
some of the organizations that had been involved in that fraud simply
rebooted themselves as new experts in how to deny climate science.
I hope that we come to a point where today's Department of Justice
has the diligence and the fortitude to go ahead with a similar action.
But today, this is about Judge Kessler--a woman who saw something going
very badly wrong and sat down and wrote a 1600-page decision to put it
right. I think it is a pretty terrific example.
[[Page S951]]
And I have a few bits of business, if I may, and then we will open
the floor to the other speakers.
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