North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act of 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, for some time now power has been gravitating from the legislature to the President. Many in Congress, including myself, have been critical of the President's overreach. However, Congress bears some of the responsibility and some of the blame in that this body continues to abdicate and transfer our power to the President. Nowhere is this more obvious than in foreign policy.

During the debate over the Iranian agreement to end sanctions, many congressional voices lamented that these sanctions were enacted by Congress and should not be unilaterally ended by the President without congressional approval. As many observers noted, Congress has only itself to blame. For decades now, Congress has granted the President national security waivers to just about anything. These allow the Executive to do what they want, to terminate sanctions or continue spending without any new vote of Congress.

A good example was when Egypt was overtaken by a military regime. This was not a democratic government. This became a military junta. Our laws on foreign aid said Egypt should no longer receive foreign aid if they are not a democratically elected government. Yet the President continues to give foreign aid to Egypt because he simply uses a waiver we wrote into the legislation.

It is a mistake to continue to grant so much power to the Presidency, and by doing so, we have abdicated our own power. For decades now, Congress has granted the President national security waivers on just about everything. The waivers are so flimsy and open-ended that all he has to do is write a report, claim that it affects national security, and then he can do whatever he wants. Congress then complains that the President is overreaching. Yet we give him that very power.

Looking back at the North Korean sanctions, we find that President Clinton removed sanctions by using the national security waiver that Congress provided him. Furthermore, about a decade later, President George W. Bush did the same thing, relieving sanctions against North Korea by taking advantage of national security waivers.

When we jump ahead to the Iran agreement, we find President Obama using national security waivers provided by Congress to unilaterally repeal Iranian sanctions without congressional authority. In fact, President Obama has utilized congressionally provided loopholes 40 times to remove Iranian sanctions. Everybody complains, and now we are going to do the same thing. We are going to write a sanction bill with the exact same boilerplate language that we had in previous sanctions bills, which will allow the President the leeway to end the sanctions if he desires.

When we fast-forward to these new North Korean sanctions before us, the new sanctions bill does exactly what previous sanction bills have done; namely, provide the President with the power to simply claim any nonspecific national security claim to waive sanctions.

Congressional critics of the President's use of national security waivers to end Iranian sanctions should decide now that they have no leg to stand on should a future President do the exact same thing with North Korean sanctions and decide to remove them without congressional approval. There are two examples of that--Clinton has already done this, and so did George W. Bush.

I propose that Congress take back their power. I propose that Congress not cede power to the Presidency, so I therefore ask unanimous consent to call up my amendment numbered 3301, which is at the desk. My amendment would remove national security waivers and give Congress its power back where it belongs.

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