Hire More Heroes Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I am back to the floor a second time to speak very briefly in favor of the nuclear agreement with Iran. I don't clearly understand why we are here again.

When I was sworn into the House, I remember that one of the things people told me was a phrase that said that politics stops at the water's edge. The idea was we reserve our deep political, partisan disagreements for domestic issues, and we don't hesitate to disagree--often vociferously--with each other on issues of national security that regard our relations with other countries, but we do that based on policy grounds. We don't do that in order to try to score political advantage with one another, because when you are playing pure politics with international relations, you are really playing with the security of this country.

There is absolutely no reason to have this vote today other than a desire on behalf of the majority party in the Senate to try to gain some perceived political advantage over the minority party or over the President.

We know exactly what is going to happen. There aren't the votes for this resolution of disapproval to proceed past the Senate. There weren't the votes last week. There will not be the votes this week. We know this agreement is going to go into effect and we, frankly, have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do to keep the government open and operating. We have a lot of work to do to implement this agreement. I will mention in a few moments that we have a lot more work to do in the Middle East to try to secure those who are running from terror and violence.

This is a waste of our time tonight. This is just about politics. This is just about trying to gain political advantage over an issue that is fundamental to the security of this country and to our allies.

I continue to support this agreement for a very simple reason. I just think it is the best way, taking a look at the options in front of us, to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. I know there are others who are hopeful--by the moderates achieving a victory within Iran's political power structure--that there will be a willingness to try to come to the table and figure out some other very meddlesome issues in the region, but that is not why I support this.

I support this because I believe we have negotiated an agreement that is going to make it much less likely for Iran to get a nuclear weapon than if we were to reject the agreement. We are dramatically reducing the number of centrifuges; the quality of the enriched material will be greatly reduced from 20 percent down to 3 percent; we essentially eliminate their stockpiles, reducing their stockpile materials by about 97 percent; we get intrusive, unprecedented inspections on the entirety of the supply chain, so if they try to cheat--and they may try to cheat--we will have a much better chance of catching it with inspectors on the ground than if we rejected this agreement and had no inspectors on the ground.

Then, importantly--and I think especially for many of my more hawkish Republican friends--we preserve the military option and make it much more effective and credible under this agreement. It is much more effective because we are going to have eyes on the program and on the supply chain so that if we did catch Iran cheating with those inspections, we would have more information than we would if we didn't have any inspectors on the ground. It is more credible because we will do it in the context of an international agreement, meaning that if we do have to strike militarily, we will have our partners, our international partners, by our side--which we frankly would not have if they all asked us to sign this agreement to try to put us on a diplomatic path to divorce Iran from a nuclear weapon--we alone refused and then asked them for help in a military endeavor, they wouldn't go with us and, thus, we would be on our own. We have just the last 10 years to see what unilateral, U.S. military action in the Middle East looks like. We are better off when we have partners.

But this has always been a choice between one set of consequences flowing from the adoption of the agreement versus a set of consequences flowing from the rejection of the agreement. I have heard very little realistic talk from the opponents of this deal about what their conception of a realistic alternative would be because most serious foreign policy thinkers are of one mind when it comes to what will happen if Congress were to reject this deal--and we are not going to. We knew that last week.

But what we know is that Iran's nuclear program would start back up. I don't think they would rush to a bomb--very few people do--but they would start their nuclear program back up, have more centrifuges spinning, and more stockpiled material piling up.

The inspectors would get kicked out. I don't think there is any way they would allow for inspectors to remain in the country if it wasn't in the context of a deal. The sanctions would probably fray at first because the Russians and Chinese would not walk away, but they would--over time--fall apart. The military option, as I mentioned, would get harder because we wouldn't have as much knowledge of their program, and we would have to go it alone with Israel, potentially, but probably not with our international partners who would feel badly burned by this rejection.

Finally, U.S. credibility as an honest, diplomatic, negotiating partner would be greatly damaged if--with the unanimous support of the Security Council, the unanimous support of the P5+1--the Senate and Congress decided to walk away from this deal.

This idea that there is a magical, better deal on the table is just fiction, plain and simple. There is no way to go back to the negotiating table if Congress were to reject this deal. The Iranians will not come back to the negotiating table. Our P5+1 partners have told us to our face that they will not come back to the table. So you are left, at that point, with an isolated Iran with a nuclear program restarting, with sanctions fraying, and with U.S. credibility damaged. I have no idea how that makes this country or that makes our allies in the Middle East any safer.

I have listened to all of the arguments against it, and I listened to Senator Risch--who is a good friend--just make his secret agreement argument again. But it is amazing to me, having had so much attention over this AP article a few weeks ago on this supposed secret agreement between the IAEA and Iran, that there has been not even a whisper from opponents about the article this week correcting the AP story talking about how, in fact, the IAEA--according to this report--is going to have direct access to Parchin and is going to be able to take samples under the agreement they have with Iran.

There is a lot of talk about the first article, but the second article that corrects the record, nary a whisper from folks who oppose this deal. The reality is that this secret agreement you talk about, this agreement between the IAEA and Iran as to how they inspect Iran's nuclear program is nothing new because the IAEA has this with every single country they inspect. It is the foundation of the IAEA's inspection regime, the idea that they could only have credibility--they can only have credibility if they don't disclose the secrets of the countries that participate in the program. The IAEA could not function if it weren't for these agreements.

Now, we all sat in a room and were briefed on this agreement, so there is not a single Senator who cannot say they don't know what is in this agreement. There is not a single Senator who could say the AP story was correct. There is not a single Senator, if they were sitting in those briefings, who can say they were surprised by what we heard this week. The argument, especially after reporting that we have seen this week, just doesn't wash any longer.

But as I said at the outset, the imperative to move beyond this argument is not just because we shouldn't be playing politics with an issue of this import but also because we have to come together on other issues that are vital to the stability of the region.

SYRIAN REFUGEE CRISIS

Mr. President, I just came back from a Syrian refugee camp with Senator Peters: 80,000 people living in this camp with 250 of them getting on a bus every day and going back to Syria. Why? Because they have been sitting in this camp in abysmal, unconscionable conditions, for 2 years, 3 years, 4 years, and they have no hope, no hope of ever getting out. So they are going back to Syria. They are taking their kids and almost accepting the potential for death because the conditions in these camps gets worse and worse and their hope just atrophies away. Those who aren't just going back to live in Syria, as we know, are pouring into Europe by the tens of thousands.

When we were in the region, our partners in the Middle East told us two things. Our Arab partners in the Middle East said: Get this agreement done. It is vital to the security of the region. To a person, every single individual we met with in Qatar, in UAE, in Iraq, and Jordan said: Get this deal done.

Second, they said: Step up to the plate and do more when it comes to solving this humanitarian disaster. Take refugees--like we are--in Jordan, Iraq, and Turkey. Make sure that the World Food Programme doesn't run out of money, as it is about to. Think about that, 1 million refugees in Jordan are about to lose their food benefits because the United States and some of our partners refuse to put up money to continue to operate the program.

And guess what. When they do not get funding from the World Food Programme, they go to see who else is offering them sustenance, and often it is the extremist groups we are trying to fight. When you stop funding the World Food Programme, you push thousands of individuals into the very arms of the groups we are attempting to take out, degrade, and destroy in the region. It is unconscionable that we are not feeding people in the Middle East who have fled violence, but it is terrible national security strategy to push them into the arms of the extremists.

What we should be debating today is an emergency appropriations bill to allow for refugees to come to this country, as has been in the best traditions of America, and to fund humanitarian assistance so that people don't starve and die or get pushed back into Syria to be killed by Assad and others. But instead we are having another vote--another vote--on the Iran nuclear agreement when we know the outcome is predestined.

We have some really important stuff to talk about here, and we need to move on from this debate so we can start to build on the credibility we have already grown by virtue of negotiating this agreement in the region.

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Mr. MURPHY. I say to Senator Durbin, I come from Connecticut, one of the Thirteen Original Colonies. We are proud of our role as part of the foundation, the fabric of America, and our State's motto is ``He who transplants sustains.'' This Nation's existence is predicated on people coming here fleeing persecution, sometimes violence, and finding a home. It represents the best of America's traditions. Some 190,000 Vietnamese came here, and 180,000 from the Balkan countries came here just a decade ago.

The Senator is right--this isn't easy because we have to go through a substantial vetting process to make sure we are not bringing anyone here who even sniffs of potential violence or connection to terrorist groups. I was sitting in those Syrian refugee camps 2 weeks ago, and I was looking at 8-year-old kids digging ditches through the sand so the feces running out of their house has a place to go. Those little kids aren't terrorists.

We can figure this out. We are going to need some additional resources to do it. I thank the Senator for taking such a lead in the caucus, and I am hopeful we will be able to move on to that debate in the Foreign Relations Committee and in the Appropriations Committee after today.

I yield the floor.

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