National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2017

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I came to the floor to talk about the visit of Prime Minister Modi of India and to speak about an amendment I have, but listening to the Senator from Washington, I have to express my sense of wonder and amazement at our Democratic colleagues for whom no amount of money, no growth in the size of government is too much.

While I am certainly sympathetic to the amendment by the Senator from Arizona which would increase defense spending at a time when there is a greater array and a greater diversity of threats to our country than Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has said he has seen in his 50-year career, the idea that because we want to take care of the No. 1 priority of the Federal Government, which is national security and self-defense, we have to somehow use that to leverage more spending in other areas that are nondefense-related is simply unacceptable, particularly at a time when our national debt is $19 trillion.

The other day, I happened to be speaking to a young woman who said: Well, what would you tell me to tell my peers?

She must have been--who knows how old she was--in her early twenties.

She said: What would you tell me to tell my peers about politics and why they should care and why they should be involved?

I told her: Well, if I were you, I would be angry. I would be mad. Your generation should be angry with my generation because what we have done is spent a bunch of money we did not have, and we have simply passed the debt and the bill off to your generation.

It is not just the $19 trillion in debt, it is also the pathway to Social Security and Medicare, the promises we made to our seniors for a secure late-in-life lifestyle that simply can't be kept unless we support and reform Social Security and make it sustainable for future generations.

So this is not the main reason I came to the floor to speak today, but I just have to express my own sense of wonder and amazement at our Democratic colleagues who want to continue to spend money we don't have because they know that if you end up spending this money they are asking for, it is just going to be added to the bill that is going to be paid for by the next generation, people like these young folks down here who are pages. That is, frankly, immoral, and it is not acceptable. Visit by the Prime Minister of India

Mr. President, the main reason I came here to speak--today was really a historic day in Washington, DC, and in the relationship between the Government of the Republic of India and the United States of America. Like many of my colleagues, I had a chance to listen to Prime Minister Modi speak to a joint meeting of Congress this morning over in the House of Representatives. I was reminded of how far our two countries have come in such a relatively short period of time.

My first visit to India was about 10 years ago. I had been encouraged to go because of some of my constituents back in Dallas, TX, who started the Dallas Indo-American Chamber of Commerce. We actually have a large Indian-American community in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area and also in Houston. Around the State of Texas, we probably have some 250,000 to 300,000 Indian Americans--part of the diaspora Prime Minister Modi talked about before and of which he said he was particularly proud and which binds our two countries together.

When I came back from my trip to India, at the same request of the same constituent--he encouraged us to create a U.S. Senate India caucus, knowing that our two countries had a lot more work to do together. I am happy to say that 10 years ago, when Secretary Clinton was Senator Clinton, she and I cofounded the U.S.-India caucus. Later on, Chris Dodd--after Senator Clinton became Secretary Clinton--and then after Senator Chris Dodd left, Senator Mark Warner is my current cochair. We have about 30-some-odd members of this U.S.-India caucus, which demonstrates again the acknowledgment of how important this relationship has become.

I am grateful for the concrete manifestation--the evidence of that relationship, things like the fact that, as Prime Minister Modi said, India joins the United States in more joint military exercises than any other country.

We also have a robust civil nuclear agreement that allows for the exchange of critical information and technology. This has been a long time in coming. I think it was 2008 when the Bush administration advocated for this civil nuclear agreement which now, apparently, is coming to fruition. I noticed that President Obama and Prime Minister Modi announced the construction plans for a number of nuclear powerplants in India. India is a vast country--I think he mentioned 1 \1/4\ billion people. Many of them simply don't have electricity and live very impoverished lives. So it is an acknowledgment of our close- knit relationship but also of the need that India has, in order to advance and lift its own people to better living conditions, to have access to the electricity that is going to become available once these nuclear powerplants are constructed.

Of course, our economies continue to rely upon each other increasingly for trade and investment. As more and more American-made goods or American agricultural products are sold to India--with the rising middle class, there are going to be more and more people purchasing those goods and services. Of course, that is going to help improve jobs here in the United States, as well as the quality of life there.

Perhaps most importantly, we share growing cultural ties. Fast- forward to today. When Prime Minister Modi spoke today, he talked about his vision for his country's future, including deepening and broadening the relationship with the United States. That is a very welcome statement by the Prime Minister.

Unfortunately, over the last few years--7 or 8 years of the Obama administration, many of our friends and allies around the world have questioned our commitment to those friendships and these alliances, and, conversely, many of our adversaries have become emboldened when they see America retreating from its engagement with the rest of the world. We do not need American boots on the ground around the globe, but we do need American leadership around the world. There is no other country with benign intent like the United States that can fill that leadership void.

So I was glad to hear Prime Minister Modi talking about the importance of it. I hope we all respond appropriately. Of course, this is important not just today, but it will become increasingly important in the 21st century. The safety and stability of the Asia-Pacific region in particular will depend more and more on the safety and stability of India. Here in the Senate, we have had ample opportunity to work with our friends from India in order to guarantee that goal.

There are a couple of pieces of legislation I have cosponsored with Senator Warner, my cochair of the U.S.-India caucus, that will bolster our ties with India.

The first would help bring India into an existing trade structure, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum, or APEC. It would direct the Department of State to develop a strategy to facilitate India's membership status in this organization, and it would urge APEC nations to support India's membership. As the world continues to become more interconnected through trade, we need to make sure like-minded countries with economic might, such as India, have a seat at the table.

Of course, it is a truism that countries that do business together and trade together are much less likely to engage in some conflict against each other. So trade is good for national security and internal security as well, not just for the economy.

The second bill I have introduced will help cement India's status as a major partner of the United States. It would strengthen our defense and technology ties and also make sure that India is equipped to handle the myriad threats coming its way. The truth is that India is at risk for many of the same sort of threats that the United States is. This morning, Prime Minister Modi mentioned the cyber threat. Certainly that is true, but we know India is a target for international terrorist attacks. Indeed, the Prime Minister mentioned the terrible attacks that occurred in Mumbai not that many years ago, when terrorists came in and killed a bunch of tourists there in Mumbai or Bombay.

I am proud to cosponsor an amendment to the Defense authorization bill filed by the junior Senator from Alaska. This amendment would encourage greater military cooperation with India. Even though it is at an alltime high, it could certainly be improved through more joint military operations and officer exchanges. This is really an incredible source of American diplomatic power and strength, particularly in our military-to-military relationship.

I can't tell you how many times I have been to countries around the world, the way I was, for example, in Cairo, Egypt, sitting there talking to the President of Egypt, President Sisi, who was talking about his military training here in the United States, in San Antonio, TX, my hometown. Of course I had to ask him how he likes the Tex-Mex, Mexican food. He said it was a little too spicy for him.

The point is that these military-to-military exchanges with countries like India and Egypt and others are a great opportunity for us to establish friendships and connections, and people who invariably--and I am sure nobody dreamed that then-Military Officer Sisi would become the President of Egypt, but he rose in that leadership position and now is the leader of that large country of some 92 million people. So those military-to-military relationships, those joint military exercises with countries like India are very important.

Let me close on the Prime Minister's comments this morning by thanking him publicly. It speaks volumes to his commitment to further the U.S.-India relationship. I look forward to continuing to play a small part in that effort through the work of the Senate India caucus.

As Prime Minister Modi's visit illustrates, the United States cannot afford to ignore our friends and those who share common values, as Prime Minister Modi spoke. The world is simply too unstable and too dangerous. Plus, it is just plain stupid not to maintain a good relationship with your friends and allies and people who share similar values. But we also have to look at the other side of the coin, and that is to push back on our adversaries. And as I said, unfortunately, over his 8 years in the White House, the President has seemed somewhat detached from both of those--either encouraging stronger relationships with our friends and allies by demonstrating that we have their back and that we can be trusted or by pushing back on our adversaries when they take aggressive action. As I mentioned earlier this week, his first Secretary of State, Secretary Clinton, regularly lacked the ability to call a spade a speed, particularly with regard to challenges like our enemy in North Korea.

Not long ago--I guess it was in August of last year--I had a chance to visit with Admiral Harris, the four-star head of Pacific Command. When we asked him to list the danger spots in the world that keep him awake at night, he mentioned North Korea as the No. 1 threat. Of course, some of that may be the proximity of his command there in Hawaii. But the fact is, North Korea is ruled by a dangerous dictator who has nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles, which is a dangerous mix.

Of course, unfortunately, under Secretary Clinton's watch and President Obama's watch, this has gotten nothing but worse. As we continue to consider the National Defense Authorization Act, we do have a chance to take up some of the slack, though. We are not without tools here in the Congress to fill in some of the gaps and to correct some of the misguided foreign policy prescriptions of the White House.

One way we can do that is by supporting an amendment I have filed that will help us hold Iran accountable for its recent hostile actions against U.S. sailors. We all remember that last January, two Navy riverine boats with 10 American sailors on board made headlines around the world when they strayed into Iranian waters. They were taken captive by members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps after being forced at gunpoint to surrender. The sailors were blindfolded. They were hauled back to Iranian soil. They were interrogated and detained. The IRGC henchmen documented the event at almost every step along the way, quickly broadcasting those videos and photos of the captured sailors among state-run media outlets.

This is not in line with international norms. This is not the way we would treat a foreign country's navy if the same thing happened, and the Geneva Convention makes clear that when military forces from one country detain military forces of another those prisoners are to be protected from public displays of humiliation, not to be used for propaganda purposes, which is what the American sailors were used for. Something called the doctrine of innocent passage--a concept of what is known as customary international law--provides that all vessels have the right of travel through another country's territorial waters to get from point A to point B swiftly.

It is pretty apparent that Iran violated our sailors' right to innocent passage, but we haven't heard a peep out of the White House. Instead, the administration has patted itself on the back and claimed their bad Iran deal somehow brought these sailors home safely. They claim that somehow the enhanced credibility they had from the misguided Iran nuclear deal somehow gave them a seat at the table and an ability to negotiate the release of our own sailors from Iran. This is absolutely ridiculous, and it ignores the crux of the problem. These sailors shouldn't have been taken captive in the first place.

While the President may leave this kind of aggression unanswered, we don't have to. My amendment would require the President to answer two simple questions: Did Iran's hostile actions in January violate international law? And were any Federal funds paid to the Iranian regime to effect the release of our sailors? In other words, did the Obama administration pay ransom to bring them home? I think the American people, certainly our taxpayers, have a right to know whether the Obama administration used their hard-earned tax dollars to pay ransom to a rogue regime like Iran's.

If the administration does find that Iran violated international law, sanctions on those Iranians responsible would be triggered under my amendment. It is absolutely imperative we not turn a blind eye to aggression by the world's thugs, tyrants, and renegades, which is, unfortunately, what we seem to do too often.

We need to hold Tehran accountable in some way. Since the President, so far, has refused to do that on his own, it is incumbent on Congress to lead on this issue, and my amendment is a good start. I am hopeful my colleagues will support it so Iran knows, even if it doesn't have to answer to the President of the United States, it will have to answer to the American people through their elected representatives in Congress.
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