Hire More Heroes Act of 2015
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I thank my ranking member and friend, the Senator from Maryland, for those kind words.
Mr. President, I rise to discuss the Iran deal currently being debated in the Senate. We have not had a national security issue during my time in the Senate that has received so much attention in committee and on the floor of this body as this, and that is appropriate. The debate has been, and will continue to be, thorough and vigorous. That is appropriate, and I respect the views of my colleagues regardless of how they will vote on this matter.
I wish to spend a few minutes recapping why I support the deal. I did speak on the floor early in August about this. Since that time, a number of leaders have come out in support of the deal: former Senators John Warner, Richard Lugar, Sam Nunn, and Carl Levin; General Brent Scowcroft, General Colin Powell; and today, former head of the IAEA Commission Uzi Eilam. After I briefly talk about my reasons for support, I want to address three final points: one, the Republican argument on the floor today that it is wrong to have a 60-vote threshold for the vote on a resolution of disapproval; two, the arguments that Vice President Cheney made against the deal yesterday; three, finally, the place of vigorous diplomacy as a tool of American strength.
So first, to quickly recap why I support the deal: I support it because it is better than the status quo for 15 to 25 years. I don't compare it with a hypothetical alternative. We can create a hypothetical to justify a position. If we can, let's talk about the status quo.
Before diplomacy started, Iran had rocketed ahead to 19,000 centrifuges and 12,000 kilograms of enriched uranium, a plutonium reprocessing facility under construction, and we had very few inspections. The system was very opaque. That was the status quo.
The best description of the Iranian status quo was the description that Prime Minister Netanyahu made to the U.N. in September of 2012. That was a speech known because he drew a bomb dialogue, and that sort of cartoon was known. But if we go into the guts of his speech, he gave a description of where the Iranian program was, and then he concluded and he said this: I want to thank the international community because the sanctions you have imposed together have hurt the Iranian economy, but ``we have to face the truth.'' The sanctions have not stopped the Iranian nuclear program. In fact, there is a pretty good argument that the sanctions accelerated the program.
So if we go back to the status quo, it is an accelerated program, with 19,000 centrifuges and enough enriched uranium for multiple weapons. What we get with this deal, for 15 years disabling two-thirds of the centrifuges, for 15 years rolling back enriched uranium to 300 kilograms--not even enough for one weapon--for permanently disabling the plutonium facility, for 25 years enhanced inspections--more than any nation has to comply with--we get in this deal much better than we would have with the status quo that existed before diplomacy, and that is why I support it.
The second point, the argument about the 60-vote threshold. I am surprised to hear arguments on the floor that it is somehow wrong to use a 60-vote threshold on this bill. When I was in my first 2 years in the Senate and in the majority, the 60-vote threshold was used on everything--immigration, minimum wage, turning off the sequester. Sometimes we exceeded the 60-vote threshold. Many times we exceeded 50 votes, but we couldn't get to 60 on minimum wage. We couldn't get to 60 on turning off the threshold, but there was an insistence: We need to get to 60 votes. I can't think of a single issue of importance in my first 2 years in the Senate where the 60-vote threshold wasn't invoked.
As my ranking member, Senator Cardin, mentioned, I was one of the coauthors of the Review Act under which we are now proceeding. The act was clear, and it was understood by all that action in the Senate to pass either a motion of approval or a motion of disapproval, either one, would be by a 60-vote threshold. We talked about this explicitly in committee, we talked about it before the vote on the floor, and we voted in favor of the act by a 98-to-1 margin. I think the current majority party understood that. As was indicated in the letter of 47 to the leadership of Iran, it was stated very plainly we would understand this would be a three-fifths, 60-vote threshold. That is what happens in the Senate, so we shouldn't change the rules now.
The debate has been full, vigorous, and fair. We have spent a lot of time on this and we are going to spend more, and that is appropriate. There is now a complete accountability because all 100 Senators have declared exactly where they are and their position. We should stick with the agreement we made a few months ago, and treat this Resolution of Disapproval under a 60-vote rule.
Point No. 3, the Vice President's arguments yesterday. I respond to them because I think Vice President Cheney basically made two arguments, and they are the two arguments that have been repeated in different ways on the floor. Let me address those two main arguments.
No. 1, we can't trust Iran. I agree. I think everyone on the Democratic side agrees, and there is nothing about this deal that involves trust. That is why we have insisted that Iran subject itself to intrusive inspections by the IAEA for 25 years, and then, following that, to the additional protocol inspections required of all NPT members. The IAEA inspections--130-plus inspectors in the country--will enable us to catch Iran cheating and give us the intel that will be incredibly helpful if we ever need to take military action against them. It is that inspections intel that caused our two former colleagues, Senators John Warner and Carl Levin--chairs of the Armed Services Committee--to write an article recently, ``Why Hawks Should Also Back the Iran Deal.'' It is because inspections give us intel, which increases the credibility of our military threat.
Now, the Vice President's response to this, interestingly enough, is: Wait. We can't trust IAEA inspections. They are going to do it wrong. They have the wrong protocols, and we can't trust them.
Folks, that argument has been made in this body before by the Vice President and others. Vice President Cheney promoted that we go to war with Iraq, and he repeatedly made the case in 2002 and 2003 that we had to do that to stop Iraq's nuclear weapons program. Two weeks before the war began, in early March, the IAEA issued a report indicating, ``we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq.'' The Vice President then went to the airwaves with others and led a campaign to trash the credibility of the IAEA, to say that neither the integrity of their inspections nor their accuracy could be trusted. After that, we entered into war against Iraq saying that the IAEA was wrong. And what did we find? What we found was the inspectors and investigators and engineers and scientists of the IAEA were right, and Vice President Cheney and others were wrong. We have been down the path before of trying to trash the IAEA and said they couldn't be trusted, and it was a horrible disservice to America and the world that we didn't give those inspections a chance. We shouldn't go down that path again.
The Vice President made a second argument yesterday--here is a different and better strategy for dealing with Iran--the same strategy that the previous administration followed: Heavy sanctions, threats of military force, but no diplomacy.
But the Cheney doctrine didn't work with Iran. Under that strategy, the Iranian nuclear program rocketed ahead, centrifuges, enriched uranium, growing by the day. The Prime Minister of Israel, Prime Minister Netenyahu, acknowledged this before the U.N. in September of 2012. And when the Vice President was confronted with this by Chris Wallace over the weekend on television, he had no answer for it. He couldn't answer for it because the advance of the Iranian program under the Cheney doctrine cannot be disputed.
I was interested in his speech yesterday when he tried to justify that the strategy had worked when they tried it. Again, he ignored it.
So if we go back to the preferred doctrine of no diplomacy, sanctions, and military threat, we are likely to get what we just got before, and that is an acceleration of the Iranian nuclear program. We should not go back down that path.
Let me conclude with a story about my favorite President, Harry Truman. Truman was a bold and courageous wartime President. He fought in World War I as a captain. He made tough decisions to use the atomic weapons in Japan. He came back to a war-weary Congress and said: Give military support to Greece against Soviet bloc expansion. He came to a war-weary Congress and said: We have to put troops into North Korea. Nobody would say Harry Truman was a softy. He had military bona fides. Truman also was the President who made sure that America was the first nation to recognize the State of Israel, and he always held that as one of his proudest accomplishments. It is one of the reasons that he is my favorite President.
In October 1945, 70 years ago next month, President Truman did something that seems minor but was really important. He called reporters into his office at the White House and said: I have something to show you.
He unveiled that he had redesigned the seal of the Presidency of the United States. The seal is the eagle. The seal has the arrows of war in one claw and the olive branches of diplomacy in the other claw. Truman had redesigned the seal so that the eagle was now turned to face the olive branches of diplomacy before the arrows of war--this wartime President. He explained: Look, I am a wartime President and I will use military force, but American values are such that we should always prefer diplomacy before the military.
We have the strongest military in the world. As a Virginian, I am so proud of it. We use it when needed. I have voted twice in 2 1/2 years in the Senate as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to use military force. When I cast that vote, it is a very personal one for my State, for me, and my family. These votes are the hardest votes we take. But Truman believed--and I believe--that it is fundamentally a part of our values that we prefer diplomacy first. Before we use military action, we have to be engaged in vigorous diplomacy with allies and adversaries if we can see a path to possibly create a more peaceful world. Other Presidents have reached the same conclusion, not only President Truman--President Kennedy, in negotiating the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union; President Nixon, in going to China when China was supporting the North Vietnamese against us; President Reagan, in negotiating against the evil empire, the Soviet Union, over their nuclear program; and now President Obama. Our great Presidents have realized that diplomacy isn't just for friends. Diplomacy is important, even and especially with adversaries if you can see a path--a possibility--to a more peaceful world.
Here is something that is fascinating. Just as a strong military enhances diplomacy, strong diplomacy enhances our military might. That is true in this case. If we do a deal, we get an Iranian pledge that they will never pursue, develop or acquire nuclear weapons, caps on their programs for 15 years, and inspections forever. These tools will increase our intelligence. They will increase our legal justification to take military action if they break the pledge that is in paragraph 1 of the agreement.
It will also increase the likelihood that America will have global support if military action is necessary. But what if we walk away from diplomacy now? We lose the military intelligence that inspections will give us. We give up a clear legal justification for military action if--God forbid--we should need it. We weaken the likelihood that other nations will support military action if it is necessary.
In this case, diplomacy strengthens--not weakens--the American credibility of our military threat. Trying diplomacy here will keep the world's attention on Iranian behavior. Walking away from diplomacy here will put the world's attention on American negotiating tactics and why we decided that we would rather go it alone. I believe the article I branch should send the message that we value diplomacy as a first option, just as President Truman did 70 years ago.
I yield the floor.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source