Providing for Consideration of H.R. United States Financial System Protection Act of Providing for Consideration of H.R. No 2H2O From Iran Act; and Providing for Consideration of H.R. Iran Accountability Act of 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, one year ago, America made a momentous decision concerning the best way to deal with Iran, a dangerous, authoritarian regime with a history of promoting terrorism. We made a choice between war and peace. We learned something from the colossal failure of the Bush-Cheney go-it-alone, war-of-choice in Iraq. We wisely chose the path of diplomacy.

Now, one year after these very difficult negotiations with Iran, we should recognize that success has been achieved. And even though we have not limited every danger from Iran, we have limited the most significant danger, the development of a nuclear weapon. Whereas before, Iran could have developed a nuclear weapon within a few months, it now would take a year or more, if Iran made that horrible decision to produce a nuclear weapon.

Before the agreement, Iran's nuclear program was cloaked in secrecy. Now we have inspectors and the opportunity for rigorous examination of their sites on a regular basis.

Tomorrow, if Iran were to decide to produce a nuclear weapon, not only would it take four to six times longer than before, we would quickly be aware of it and would be able to take appropriate action.

Iran has shipped over 8.5 tons of enriched uranium to Russia. It has disabled more than 12,000 centrifuges and poured concrete into the core of a reactor at Arak designed to produce plutonium. Now, it is the United States that is acquiring some of Iran's heavy water that might have gone to nuclear production.

Each of these steps carries us further on a long and important road toward eliminating Iran's short-term uranium and plutonium pathways to a nuclear weapon. That is progress, by every measure. America and our key allies are safer today than we were a year ago, and before that-- safer than if we had followed their path of confrontation and war. Continuous, intrusive monitoring is the key to keeping our families safe and avoiding war.

An impressive bipartisan group of some 75 high-profile signatories-- Nobel laureates, generals, diplomats, and legislators--have approved this accord, advising the President and Congress yesterday that this agreement is ``providing greater security to our friends and partners in the region and to the world,'' noting that ``all pathways to an Iranian nuclear weapon have been blocked.''

After doing everything they possibly could think of to subvert and undermine the negotiations while they were underway with Iran--even an outrageous letter from a Republican group of Senators telling the Iranians to believe them and not the President of the United States-- the Republicans today continue to interfere with and refuse to accept peace as the better course to safeguard our families.

Through today's debate, they launched yet one more partisan attack on this agreement. In all, they have authored more than 20 pieces of legislation attempting to undermine this agreement.

While the administration properly focuses our energy on enhanced verification, Republicans focus theirs instead on how to destroy the agreement. It is much like the debate we had over the Affordable Care Act. All they are concerned with is one vote of repeal after another, and they offer no viable alternatives. That is the case here. Instead of focusing on how to make us safer, their goal is to undermine the President of the United States and destroy this agreement.

As usual, my colleagues are choosing inaction over a Plan of Action. They know the President has issued a veto threat. In the unlikely event that this regressive legislation were to be approved in Congress, it would never become law.

Today they are adopting a procedural rule so that this House will waste a full day discussing how to destroy the Iran nuclear agreement. It will not address gun violence. It will not address the failure to fund research for a vaccine to prepare and prevent the Zika virus from spreading. It will not do anything about voting rights or a host of other issues this Congress should be considering. Instead, it is raising three bills going the wrong direction.

Some of those that reject diplomacy today are the same people that were backing the go-it-alone invasion of Iraq, a debacle second to none in the history of America.

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Mr. DOGGETT. One country, more than any other, benefited from their wrong-headed decision, and was empowered. That country was Iran. Today, diplomacy, the opposite of war, is hard to start and easy to end. Let us continue on that path.

The path ahead remains difficult. Iran will be challenging. We must watch it like a hawk and monitor it, but we need not yield to the hawks who reject peace.

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Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I think the previous question is extremely important because Republicans, just as they fled in the middle of the night from discussing gun violence before the July 4 break, have now decided not to consider a gun bill at all, even an NRA-backed proposal they have rejected.

But I want to ask the gentleman specifically about the comments that were just made about the Zika virus and the possibility of an epidemic, because it is so important. Am I correct that that proposal that he says they passed is the first one in the history of my time here, and perhaps in the history of this body, where they prohibited even one minute of debate of the way that they were funding Zika by taking the funds away from Ebola and threatening our public health system?

It is not a question of Democrats having blocked something. It has been their refusal to deal with and recognize the public health challenge, denying $4 of $5 asked for by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to deal with Zika, even threatening the possibility of developing a vaccine.

Is that correct, this has been the history of their failure to come to terms with a major public health crisis and listen to the scientists and the physicians and the public health experts and, instead, pursuing this ideological crusade to take away money from public health?

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Mr. DOGGETT. I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.

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Mr. DOGGETT. Those Texas-size mosquitos that are beginning to spread around my part of the country, they can't tell a Republican from a Democrat. Young women desirous of having a family, people of all ages and genders, are threatened by Zika.

It is just a matter of time before the Continental United States faces some of the problems that Puerto Rico already faces, and what we need is to come together and have a bipartisan solution, not something offered in the middle of the night on which all debate is denied, a totally partisan approach.

So just as I am pleased that we have strong bipartisan support for the Iran Nuclear Agreement, coming together with this major letter that was sent to us yesterday, that is the kind of bipartisan approach I hope we can work to eventually, perhaps when we come back after this long Republican recess, one of the longest in the history of the Congress, to address Zika, and address these other problems that they refuse to deal with today.

I thank the gentleman.

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