Hire More Heroes Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, last week we experienced what I would think was a dark day in the history of the United States Senate where, on one of the most important national security issues that has confronted the country in the last 25 years--and perhaps longer--our friends across the aisle, led by the minority leader, decided to filibuster the resolution of disapproval on the President's nuclear deal with Iran.

So everybody understands what that means. Rather than cast a vote either in favor or against the resolution of disapproval, Democrats banded together and decided not to have a vote. Presumably they did that for two reasons: One is they didn't want the personal accountability associated with having to cast a vote for or against disapproval because they know at some point Iran is going to continue its pattern of misbehavior and people might come back and say: Why did you vote for this deal when in fact all the evidence pointed toward how bad a deal it was?

The second reason I believe our Democratic friends decided to filibuster the vote on the resolution of disapproval is they simply wanted to protect the President because they knew that had the resolution of disapproval passed, the President had threatened to veto the legislation. Having done so under that circumstance, the President would in fact own this bad deal.

As I said, it is a sad day when a political party decides to put partisan concerns ahead of the national security interests of the United States. This is especially true in light of the fact that we voted just a short time earlier to provide a mechanism for there to be that up-or-down vote following debate and review. It also had the effect of freezing the President's ability to lift sanctions on Iran during that timeframe.

This legislation, negotiated by the chairman and ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, was called the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act. This was not a partisan product, nor should any of this debate be a partisan activity. It didn't sneak through the Chamber in the dark of night. It wasn't the product of closed-door negotiations by one political party against another. Rather, it was a product of bipartisan concern over the President's deal with Iran and was specifically designed to make sure Congress had possession of all the relevant documents that laid out this agreement between the President and the Iranian regime. It would ensure a process by which the American people could be informed--and the Senate itself debate--through their elected representatives, whether this deal was a good deal or a bad deal in terms of the national security interests of the American people.

Most significantly, that legislation which sets up that process passed overwhelmingly--as a matter of fact, I think it was nearly unanimously--with not one Democrat in the Chamber voting against that legislation.

So having voted for legislation to create a process by which there would be transparency and accountability, and rather than partisanship the national security interests of the country would be elevated, our Democratic friends, listening to the White House, including the President of the United States, decided to block that very vote they had earlier agreed to have.

Ironically, the same day the minority leader and his colleagues blocked the up-or-down vote on the resolution, he lambasted Republicans on this side of the aisle for ``slowing down the legislation,'' and suggested we ought to move on to other matters. We could be well on our way to finishing this resolution and moving on to other pieces of legislation that we need to consider if in fact our Democratic friends would, consistent with their earlier vote, just allow us to have an up-or-down vote on the resolution of disapproval, but I think what our Democratic friends began to realize is this is an enormously unpopular agreement between the President and the Ayatollah in Tehran. As a matter of fact, only 21 percent of the American people have said they want to see this deal be turned into a reality. Many of them are concerned, as am I, that rather than a traditional treaty process that requires two-thirds vote of the United States Senate, this has somehow become more of a political document rather than a legal document, binding only this President and the Iranian regime, under some circumstances, during the remainder of the 16 months or so of President Obama's Presidency.

Almost 80 percent of the country has said they are not sold on the deal. Their voices deserve to be heard, and Members of Congress and the Senate should be on record whether they are listening to the American people or whether they are listening to the siren song of the White House and a President who is focused on his legacy, to the detriment of the national security of the United States.

Even supporters of this deal were some of its biggest critics. Yet these are some of the same people who voted to filibuster an up-or-down vote on this resolution of disapproval. Many of them made the case as well as or better than I could; that an agreement made with a theocratic regime that continues to call the United States the Great Satan and threatens the very existence of our friend and ally in the region, Israel--there should be real reason for pause and certainly debate and an up-or-down vote.

Here is just one example. The junior Senator from New Jersey, as a prelude to his announcement that he would vote against the resolution of disapproval, said:

With this deal, we are legitimizing a vast and expanding nuclear program in Iran. We are in effect rewarding years of deception, deceit, and wanton disregard for international law. .....

That is the junior Senator from New Jersey on September 3, 2015. Does that sound like somebody who is for this deal or against this deal? Well, miraculously, this is from a Senator who voted not just for the deal but voted to even prohibit us from having an up-or-down vote in the Senate. I couldn't agree with these comments more. Our colleague clearly understands the nature of the regime and the pattern of troubling behavior characterized by outright deception. Last week, although headlines emphasized the support of several of our Democratic colleagues for the President's deal, it was clear that many of them harbored deep reservations--and those reservations are entirely justified.

Here is a comment of the senior Senator from Oregon, who said:

This agreement with the duplicitous and untrustworthy Iranian regime falls short of what I had envisioned. .....

This statement was made on September 8, 2015, by somebody who said they were going to vote against the resolution of disapproval but in fact filibustered our ability to have an up-or-down vote on the resolution itself, and I couldn't agree with the statement quoted from the senior Senator from Oregon any more. This is not exactly a resounding endorsement.

Then there is the senior Senator from Connecticut, who said, on September 8, before he announced his agreement with the President's nuclear deal:

This is not the agreement I would have accepted at the negotiating table. .....

I presume by saying that, that means he would have rejected it. But yet, again, deferring to the President and deferring to the leadership of the Democratic leader in the Senate, not only did the Senator who made that statement indicate his approval of the deal, this Senator voted to block an up-or-down vote on the deal in the Senate--in other words, participated in the filibuster of this vote.

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