Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, we are at a critical moment in world history, filled with innumerable dangers and challenges. Russia is causing enormous trouble attacking the foundation of democracies around the world, interfering in our elections, developing new tools to move public opinion in countries other than its own while hiding behind robotic social commentaries. We have a nuclear-armed North Korea seeking legitimacy and recognition and critical talks about to occur over the effort to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. Syria is not just in the grip of a civil war, it is in the grip of a fractured chaotic state as a result of the destruction of cities and towns throughout the nation, leaving them as destroyed shells of buildings with infrastructure completely decimated. We have a humanitarian crisis in Burma and Bangladesh with massive ethnic cleansing. We have four famines unfolding in Africa, with 20 million people at risk of starvation. In every place you look, there are more of these challenges related to corruption of foreign governments, to climate chaos, to civil conflict.

We need a Secretary of State who can help navigate our country in these difficult times. We need to be able to work with neighbors around the world, with allies around the world, exercising diplomacy in partnership with the strength of the United States.

I come to the floor to share that I have grave doubts that Mike Pompeo does not bring the right skills to this job. I am concerned about his choice of military action over diplomacy in a position that is supposed to bring the art of diplomacy to its full execution. I am concerned about his statements of disrespect and dishonor to the fundamental nature of our Constitution under the first article that calls for Congress to be able to open the door to the exercise of military power, not the President. I am concerned about his deep-rooted conflicts of interest that may prevent him from tackling one of the gravest threats to humans on this planet; namely, climate change. So I will be voting against his nomination and felt it only appropriate to share more of my concerns.

Let's start with the issue of diplomacy. The United States led the world in working to stop the Iranian nuclear program, working with the P5+1 group of states and with Iran to say that such a program of developing the basic elements necessary for nuclear weapons was absolutely unacceptable and bringing to bear such international pressure that Iran said: We will agree to that. We will agree to that. We will dismantle our nuclear powerplant--our plutonium plant. We will fill it with concrete. We will proceed to eliminate the stockpile of uranium enriched up to 20 percent. They agreed to cut the stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98 percent, to profoundly reduce its gas centrifuges, shutting down two-thirds of them. On top of that, Iran agreed to the most aggressive and furthest reaching inspections that the International Atomic Energy Agency has ever had in any agreement, giving us profound insights into the operation of their nuclear program or, to put it differently, profound insights into the operation of their program and the dismantlement of their program.

Yet Director Pompeo has condemned this effort in diplomacy to stop the uranium program. He has told me it was unneeded because Iran wasn't pursuing a nuclear weapon. Well, quite interesting, but Iran was pursuing, clearly developing, all the elements necessary to have a nuclear weapon, and that represented a significant threat to the United States of America, and this agreement stops that threat in its tracks. So he condemned it, not just saying it wasn't necessary but that it showed negotiations occurred ``where we should have shown strength,'' and he said the United States ``bowed when we should have stood tall.''

What did he mean by that? He meant we didn't need an agreement in order to stop the Iranian nuclear program because we had something else. We had the sword that we could stop their nuclear program with, as he put it, ``2,000 sorties''--``2,000 sorties,'' he said, ``to destroy the Iranian nuclear capacity . . . is not an insurmountable task for [United States] coalition forces.''

Simply carrying the sword and saying we could stop other nations from doing things by bombing them is not the expertise we need in a Secretary of State.

Then there is Mr. Pompeo's attacks on the Muslim community--falsely claiming that Islamic leaders in America were silent in the face of terrorist attacks like the Boston Marathon bombing. It was not true, but he chose to attack Muslim Americans--single them out for assault. He said they were ``complicit'' and failed in the ``commitment to peace,'' not even bothering to get the facts in advance.

Then there is his longstanding opposition to equal rights for LGBTQ Americans. Much of what we try to do around the world is to lay out a vision of opportunity for all, and we should quit slamming doors in the faces of individuals around the globe who are pursuing personal happiness, opportunity, and success just as we try to end the door- slamming here at home--the discrimination, the prejudice, the hatred, the bigotry, but Mr. Pompeo engaged in calling the end of discrimination a ``shocking abuse of power'' when the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell. Not only that, but when he went to the CIA and the mother of Matthew Shepard was scheduled to give a speech on hate crimes, he canceled, at the last second, her speech. He did not want the mother of a victim of hate crimes to talk about the crime against an LGBT American strapped to a wire fence and left to die. Shouldn't that be exactly the sort of speech that should be given about our respect for all Americans and about how much we stand against hate crimes?

So that is very disturbing, when you go into a world where respect for people of every religion, from every part of the world, is part of the negotiating power and strength of America. If you disrespect people, they do not join us in partnership to solve problems. So those are my concerns on the diplomacy side.

I am also concerned that he expressed a complete lack of interest in the constitutional power invested in article I, which is the article for Congress to declare war. He indicated that the President had unlimited power in article II, which is the ability to conduct a war after Congress has authorized it, but he seemed to completely overlook that first step of congressional authorization.

We have tried to encapsulate that congressional authorization in the War Powers Act, making it clear that the President cannot take us to war without a declaration of war or, second, without explicit authorization through something like an authorization for the use of military force or without a direct emergency involving an imminent attack on the United States, our assets, or our forces. It is the War Powers Act that embodies the heart of the Constitution about the conduct, the ability, and the limitations on the President to start a war. It is given to Congress to decide whether or not we can go to war, and Mr. Pompeo does not agree with that important, important congressional factor. I don't know, quite frankly, how one can take the oath of office and not respect the Constitution as it delivers that power to this body, not to the President.

My third concern goes to the conflict of interest that he brought into consideration for this position. Specifically, it is the conflict of interest that he carries into his career through his very, very close association with the Koch brothers. He has been given the nickname ``the Congressman from Koch.'' The headquarters of Koch Industries is located in his district. The Koch brothers gave him the money to start his business. The Koch brothers were the biggest donors to his campaign. His entire career is carefully intertwined with the Koch brothers and advocating for whatever they wanted him to advocate for.

What we see is that the Koch brothers are advocating against our working with other nations to take on the challenge of climate chaos. Now, Mother Nature sent us a big, rude awakening this last year with three powerful hurricanes tearing apart parts of our country and with forest fires stretching from Montana across to the Pacific Ocean and down the Pacific coast, deep into California, because of the carbon pollution that is warming the seas and changing the weather patterns and drying out our forests.

We suffer that, but we see so much more. We see the moose dying. We see the lobsters migrating. We see the oysters unable to have babies. A billion of them died back about the time I took office here in the Senate because of the acidification of the ocean, coming from carbon pollution.

The whole world is coming together to try to take on this problem, but Mr. Pompeo is uninterested in this major threat facing humanity. He supports our disengaging from the international community and taking this on. He is fine letting China take the lead and producing the economic results of taking the lead instead of the United States taking the lead and being engaged in these partnerships. So, colleagues, those are my concerns.

We need an individual dedicated to the power of diplomacy, not someone who reaches first for the sword. We need an individual who respects different religions and respects the opportunity in the United States that we carry to the world as a beacon of freedom, not one who disrespects it. Third, we need an individual whose career is not tied to a single industry and whose outlook is to continue to protect that industry, even in taking this job.

So for those reasons, this nomination should be turned down.

Thank you, Mr. President.

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