America's Small Business Tax Relief Act of 2015--Motion to Proceed
Floor Speech
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Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz).
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, last Saturday marked the 1-year anniversary of the Obama administration's deal with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. This is the nuclear deal with Iran that officially went into effect last October.
Briefly summarized, in exchange for billions of dollars in near-term and long-term sanctions relief, Iran made some very modest nuclear concessions--and that is if you believe the inspection regime is not fundamentally flawed, which I do not believe. So instead of trust and verify, we can't even verify Iran is complying with the terms of the agreement. Indeed, I think we can pretty much be guaranteed that Iran will do its dead-level best to cheat.
To make matters worse, the administration all but admitted the deal wasn't going to stop Iran from exporting terrorism--which is the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism in the world--or violating the human rights of its own citizens or advancing its ballistic missile program. We have seen a lot of evidence of that recently.
All of these major bipartisan concerns were highlighted by Congress but totally ignored by the administration. President Obama himself warned that ``this deal is not''--is not--``contingent on Iran changing its behavior. That is the President of the United States, the leader of the free world, the Commander in Chief. The President of the United States said: ``This deal is not contingent on Iran changing its behavior.'' Unbelievable and outrageous.
My concerns with this agreement have done nothing but grow ever since the deal was done, and Iran continues to prove it was not negotiating in good faith--to the contrary, that it was negotiating in bad faith and would take every advantage it could to advance its nuclear ambitions and to continue its state sponsorship of global terrorism.
Iran is still working to undercut the United States and its priorities in the Middle East by fueling proxy wars in the region in places such as Iraq, Yemen, and Syria. The administration has even made clear that it knew the money that was released as a result of the sanctions relief--that it knew--that the tens of billions of dollars of intermediate sanctions relief going to Iran would be funneled to terrorist groups across the Middle East. So we have an unverifiable deal, and we have money going to finance terrorism. What is not to love about that? That is the administration's attitude.
In fact, earlier this week it was reported that the U.S. Navy--the U.S. Navy--for the third time in just 2 months intercepted an Iranian shipment of weapons in the Arabian Sea believed to be headed from Iran to rebel groups in Yemen.
One has to wonder how Iran paid for those weapons. Well, one logical explanation would be perhaps with the sanctions relief authorized by the President's misbegotten deal with Iran. That was a huge cash infusion. It is only logical to believe that Iran used that money to pay for the weapons they were then trying to ship to the rebels in Yemen. And, of course, as we have seen recently, the deal certainly didn't keep Iran's Revolutionary Guard from test-firing ballistic missiles. The fact is, the Iranian nuclear deal is not worth the paper it is written on. I hope the next President will rip it to shreds day one in office and give it the sort of respect that it has really earned.
Unfortunately, Iran serves as just one of the many examples of how the administration's rudderless strategy is advancing America's interests in the complex world we are living in. On President Obama's watch, the United States has methodically ceded our irreplaceable leadership role throughout the world. This is most evident in the Middle East--a caldron of violence and instability.
In Syria, we don't see the JV team that President Obama referred to in ISIS. We see an emboldened terrorist group that exports death and destruction to our allies in cities such as Paris and Brussels, with the intention to do the same thing right here in the United States, anywhere and everywhere they can, including places such as Garland, TX, where thankfully an alert security guard was able to thwart two ISIS- inspired terrorists from killing innocent civilians.
In Iraq, where Americans spent their treasure and spilled their blood to bring relative peace and stability just a few short years ago, we now find complete chaos. President Obama's precipitous withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq helped turn the region back into a powder keg.
Much like the Obama administration's promised redline on chemical weapons in Syria, the border between Syria and Iraq has literally been erased. It doesn't exist anymore. As the Obama administration has stood by, today the black flag of ISIS flies high over places such as Mosul and Fallujah.
We all know that ISIS has carved out a safe haven in the heart of the Middle East, while Syria has plunged deeper and deeper into civil war and chaos. Millions of people have become displaced as refugees, both internally in Syria and in surrounding countries, causing further instability in the region. And now, of course, we are seeing them not only in refugee camps in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon, but escaping to Europe and creating huge challenges for the governments in Europe. That is not even to mention the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who have lost their lives in this civil war while the world has stood back and by and large watched with negligible strategy or effort to try to change the outcome.
What is the result? Well, beyond this hard reality, this sends a message to our allies and our adversaries. Our allies are questioning our commitment and our reliability. Our adversaries are interpreting our lack of strategy and action as weakness and opportunity. Israel, along with several of our gulf partners, has found a White House that repeatedly seems to care more about the interests of our common enemy than Israel's security interests. In Europe, North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries--NATO countries--question our dedication and commitment to transatlantic peace and prosperity as Russia prowls at their back door. Our adversaries have noticed. They have been emboldened by the lack of American leadership and strategy, and they have taken full advantage.
This administration's abdication of leadership has allowed China to grow more belligerent in the Asia-Pacific; North Korea to test what they claim is a hydrogen bomb and to threaten our allies, such as South Korea and Japan; and Russia to quickly fill the leadership vacuum left by the United States in Europe and the Middle East.
If we had any doubt about it, once again we have learned a hard lesson, and that is, weakness is itself a provocation. Weakness is a provocation. What this world needs, what America needs, is leadership and a strategic vision that doesn't just respond to every crisis on an ad hoc basis.
Fortunately, the Founding Fathers gave the Congress some tools to be able to help when the Chief Executive of the country seems to be without any particular direction or without a particular strategy. The Senate can play an active role in holding the administration accountable and putting forth a strategy to help keep us safe.
For example, yesterday the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing to discuss Iran's recent transgressions. I am glad the chairman of that committee, Senator Corker, and the ranking member, Senator Cardin, are working together on a bipartisan basis on legislation to levy more comprehensive sanctions on the Iranian regime to make up for what should have been done in the Iran nuclear deal but was essentially ignored. The administration had consciously decided to ignore Iran's role as a state sponsor of terrorism and decided we are just going to try to deal with the Iranian nuclear aspirations and not the terrorism aspirations. In doing so, I think they literally failed on both counts. They not only created a testing regime that can't actually verify when Iran is cheating, but at the same time they have unleashed tens of billions of dollars to help finance terrorist activity.
The administration has made clear that it simply doesn't have much interest in holding Iran accountable. They seem now absolutely nervous about doing anything that Iran might use as an excuse to walk away from the nuclear deal, which they could do on a moment's notice, meanwhile keeping the benefits they have already gotten from this deal; namely, the billions of dollars in sanctions relief.
I hope the Senate will move forward on this legislation soon. Our allies and our friends need to know that if the President will not stand by them and challenge our adversaries, Congress will.
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