Government Funding

Floor Speech

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Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, in a few minutes here--in 45 minutes or so--the Senate is going to vote to decide whether we want to begin debate on the bill that is before us, S. 1, Strengthening America's Security in the Middle East Act of 2019. I remind everybody of why we began with this bill.

I don't know what the number is, but I would say the overwhelming majority of the Members of the Senate did not agree when the President decided to pull us out of Syria for various different reasons. Everybody was asking us: Well, why don't you guys do something about it? As you know, it is difficult. The Congress cannot order the President to take military action. It can authorize it, it can fund it, and it can defund it, but it cannot compel it. That is the role of the Commander in Chief. There are some things we can do. However, because there are things we were concerned about with his decision, there are things we can do to sort of deal with the consequences of what, I believe, would be a mistake, and this bill endeavors to do that.

We went through and said: Let's find some bills that would help our allies in the region--Israel, Jordan--and that deal with the human rights catastrophe in Syria. Let's find things that are bipartisan and have widespread support so that we are not starting with something controversial. Then let's put it all together in one bill so that the country will be able to see that the Senate is engaged in the foreign policy of this country and is acting out its constitutional role as a check and balance on the Executive.

That is what we did. No good deed goes unpunished, though, because as that bill was filed, apparently, the Democratic leader and others in the leadership asked their Members to vote against even beginning debate on a bill that an overwhelming number of them supported, that a majority of the Democrats supported. They asked them to vote not to proceed on the bill, and the argument is because of the government shutdown.

I still don't know how it makes any sense to respond to a government shutdown by shutting down the Senate. In essence, why did we even come up here this week? It appears they are not making any progress on the negotiations, and we are not moving on any bills or legislation. I don't know if it gives people any comfort to know that at least the Senate is shut down too. I don't know how that fixes the government shutdown situation. This should be a place that can walk and chew gum at the same time, meaning a place that works on solving and ending this shutdown, which is bad for everybody, that works on securing our borders, which is something we need to do for our country, but that also works on dealing with something like this, especially as timely as the decision is that was just made last month and the threats that are facing our allies in the region. That is what this bill is about.

We are going to have another vote here for the second time this week. So that everybody understands, this vote is not even in favor of or against the bill; it is just to the question of whether we can start debate on this bill. I hope a few more Democrats will join us so that we can get the 60 votes we need just to begin debating the bill. If you still want to make your point at the end of the day, then go ahead and vote against it or whatever. I hope you don't, but let's at least begin debate on it. We will see what happens here in about 30 minutes. My sense is that we still won't have the votes to do that, and it is unfortunate.

I do want to address two things that have been brought up with regard to this bill--one thing that has been brought up and one element of the bill that I hope will change people's minds in terms of beginning the debate on it.

First, let me talk about a provision in this bill that deals with BDS. BDS--boycott, divestment and sanctions--is an international effort to wage economic war on Israel in order to punish it for its supposed treatment of Palestinians. It boycotts companies that do business in Israel until they cut ties. It boycotts or pressures banks and investment firms until they divest of any investments that help Israel. It then asks governments to impose sanctions on Israel. That is BDS.

Some people support it. There are two newly elected Members of the House who openly support it. I assume that is their right. I think they are wrong, but that is their right. The vast majority of people do not support it.

What has happened across America is that there are States and counties and cities that have decided they don't support BDS. It is not illegal and we are not going to make it illegal if you want to be a company that participates in BDS. Yet we--the government, the cities, and the States--are not going to buy services or goods from any company that is boycotting Israel. All this bill does is protect them from lawsuits if they make that decision.

The argument against this has been--and I have seen this now in numerous statements from those on the other side of the aisle--that it infringes on the First Amendment rights of individuals. I don't know what bill does that, but it isn't this one.

To begin with, this bill doesn't even apply to individuals. Individuals can do whatever they want. If you don't want to buy stock in a company that does business in Israel, I think it is shortsighted, but no one is stopping you from doing that. If you want to divest your investments from companies that do business in Israel, no one is stopping you from doing that. If you don't want to shop at or buy from companies that do business with Israel, that is not illegal. This doesn't apply to any individuals.

By the way, it doesn't even make it illegal for companies to make that decision. This is not banning participating in BDS. You have every right to support it. You are wrong, but you have every right to support it. You have every right to carry it out if you are a company or an individual.

This bill does not apply to individuals. Any time people say they are protecting the individual First Amendment rights of Americans by opposing this legislation, I don't know what they are talking about because this does not apply to individuals.

All this says is to go ahead and do it. If you, company X, want to boycott Israel or divest investments from Israel, you can, but the people who disagree with you can boycott and divest from you. You see, free speech is a two-way street. If you want to proclaim something or say something, you have every right to do it, but the people who disagree with you have a right to do that as well. If there is a First Amendment right to companies to boycott or divest from Israel, then there has to be a First Amendment right to boycott or divest from those companies.

If you oppose this bill, then you are in favor of shielding from counter-boycotts anyone who decides to take these actions. That is what you are for, which is de facto support for BDS, because what you are basically saying is to go ahead and boycott Israel and divest from Israel, but no one can do that to you. That is not what the First Amendment is. The First Amendment protects your right to speech, and it protects from government infringement an individual's right to speak. It does not protect you from people who disagree with you. It does not protect you from people who speak out against you. So if you are a boycotter, you yourself can be boycotted. If you are a divestor, people can divest from you. I am talking about the elected representatives of our cities and counties. If the members of that community do not agree with that decision, they can vote them out of office.

Why does a city or a county have to be forced to buy products from companies that are undertaking a foreign policy action, which is what this is? This is not an effort to influence domestic policy; this is an effort to influence the policies of a foreign country. Why should a city or a county be forced by law to have to do business with those that a city or a county or a State disagrees with? That is all this bill is.

When people go around talking about how this infringes on the First Amendment rights of individuals, it is just not honest. It is just not true. This doesn't even apply to individuals. In fact, the bill says very clearly in writing--right there--that nothing under this act shall be construed to infringe upon the First Amendment rights of any American.

As they continue to say that, just know that this bill only applies to cities, counties, and States being able to not buy things from companies. This doesn't give you the right to fire an employee who posts a pro-BDS thing on Facebook. This doesn't give you the right to refuse to sell a home to or provide housing for or discriminate in any way against individuals who support BDS. This doesn't give anyone the right to put you in jail for supporting BDS. It doesn't do anything to infringe on anyone's First Amendment right. All it does is protect the First Amendment right to be against BDS and to do to the boycotters what the boycotters are doing to Israel. It is a two-way street. Those are the facts. If you are hiding behind that in order to oppose this bill, you are not being frank about what the bill does.

The second part of this bill that I wanted to talk about today shouldn't be controversial at all because we are all now painfully familiar with the grave humanitarian crisis we have seen in Syria. I would say and most would agree that what we have seen over the last 8 years of this conflict is the worst humanitarian crisis since the end of the Second World War. It began as anti-government protests, but it led to the fighting for political freedoms that has now escalated into a bloody civil war with a bunch of foreign fighters flowing in. It is a mess of all kinds of different groups from foreign countries and of radical jihadists.

Caught in the middle are innocent people who have been bombed and gassed. In fact, this administration has had to take action to punish militarily the Assad regime for dropping chlorine bombs and chemical weapons on civilian populations. We have seen these images of children, babies, and everyday people--bakers and plumbers and small business owners and professionals--who 1 minute were walking around and the next minute were choking to death because their own government, with the support of Russia and Iran, dropped chemical weapons on their communities and killed countless people.

Not only is this sort of activity horrifying, it is a war crime. It is a war crime to deliberately target civilian populations, and it is particularly cruel to do it with a gruesome form of death--that is, death by chemical weapon. That is what we have seen.

That is what we have seen supported, by the way, by Vladimir Putin. He knows for a fact what they are doing and doesn't care. He gives them cover, and he makes up these ridiculous stories about how it is the opposition that has done it. Everyone knows who has done it. There is zero doubt about it. That is why they don't allow inspectors to go in and find evidence and point it out. But it is abundantly clear who is doing it, and they have done it.

Even as this administration is deciding to pull out, the prospects grow and the likelihood grows every day that the people who have made these decisions will never be held accountable for what they have done. These war criminals--these savages--will never be held accountable for what they have done if trends continue the way they are going. This bill tries to address that.

The now chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, the Senator from Idaho, Mr. Risch, filed a bill last year, called the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, that is now included in this bill. I believe he will be here shortly to speak about it. It is called the Caesar bill--it has nothing to do with Rome--because it is named after a Syrian military defector. It is named after someone who was in the Syrian military whose code name was ``Caesar'' who smuggled out tens of thousands of pictures of what was going on inside of Syria, the images of the thousands of people who were killed while being detained in Syria. They were images of the torture, of the brutalization of women and innocent men and even sometimes children by the Assad regime and by those who supported them.

The pictures show the true face of what we are dealing with here--the face of an evil and criminal regime, a regime that needs to be held to account. All those who support them and are allowing them to do it should also be held accountable.

What Senator Risch's bill does is it provides the Trump administration new legal authority to bring some accountability for the people who have done this.

First, it requires a determination and a report by the Treasury on whether the Central Bank of Syria is a financial institution of primary money laundering concern. Why does that matter? Because they are using that bank to clean and launder money to fund their operations, to remain in power, and, ultimately, to gas and kill their own people.

The other thing it does is it imposes new sanctions on anyone who does business with or who provides financing to the Government of Syria, including Syrian intelligence and security services, or the Central Bank of Syria; who provides aircraft or spare aircraft parts that are used for military purposes in Syria; who does business with transportation or telecom sectors controlled by the Syrian Government; or who supports Syria's energy industry.

These aren't just about punishing them. It is about hurting them in their pocketbooks so they can't afford to put those planes up there to drop these bombs on innocent people. It gives the administration the authority to do this.

By the way, this bill also requires the administration to brief Congress. You hear them talking about holding the administration accountable and conducting oversight. This bill requires them to come before us and tell us what their plan is to deliver humanitarian aid.

By the way, I want to know how we are going to deliver humanitarian aid if there is no U.S. presence on the ground and the only people left are the Russians, the Turks, the Iranians, and the Assad regime. It would be interesting to be briefed on that plan with us not there, but it requires them to come forward and either tell us what their plan is or admit that there isn't a plan because we are not there anymore.

That is what this bill does. I would love for everyone here to support it, but before you can even vote for it, we have to start debate on it through the rules of the Senate. In about 15 minutes, we are going to vote on this thing, and there are going to be people who vote against even starting a debate on it, and the argument is that it is because of the shutdown.

I hope people reconsider. I don't understand the logic of it, but when you talk about the threats that are facing Israel, which the overwhelming majority of the Senators here say they are strong supporters of, and when you talk about the importance of Jordan and our alliance with Israel, something that every single person here basically agrees with, for the most part, and when you talk about these horrifying war crimes for which there should be some accountability, which I believe everybody here was outraged by, how does stopping a bill or refusing to move on to debating a bill that deals with those things help end the shutdown? It doesn't. It makes no sense, but, apparently, that is what some are willing to do.

They probably aren't watching at this point. They are probably off at their caucus lunches or doing something else, but I hope that over the last 48 hours, some of my colleagues on the Democratic side have thought about it and have said to themselves that it really doesn't make any sense to deal with the government shutdown by shutting down the Senate.

I hope they will reconsider and vote differently this time. If they don't, then, I am just not sure how we can explain to people why it is that we will not agree to even begin debate on something almost all of us agree on for reasons completely unrelated to it. In essence, that is what happened earlier this week and what could potentially happen here very shortly.

I actually, oftentimes, wonder what must go through the minds of visitors to the Capitol. I understand most people in America aren't watching this. Very few people probably are. I wonder. You come up here, and these groups from Close Up were here. It is a great organization. It brings high school kids up here. You try to explain to normal, regular human beings that there is a bill that 90 of the 100 Senators support, but we are not even going to be able to debate it because they are voting against debating it. They would look at you like you have three heads and say: What are you talking about? They support the bill, but they don't want to have a debate on the bill yet? Why? Because of the government shutdown. Well, what does that have to do with it?

There are no other aspects in our lives where we would do that. I have never heard that in my life. I have never heard someone say: I am not going to work today because I am upset that my favorite team lost the game yesterday, or I am not paying my bills this month because I don't like the fact that they charged me too much for changing my tires. If you did that in any part of your life, people would think you were crazy. Yet that is what is happening here.

What kind of leverage is this--that you are going to hold up a bill we all agree on as leverage to force us to negotiate? The Democratic leader and the Democratic Members know that in order for a bill to become law, it needs the support of the House, which their party controls, 60 Senators, which they can keep us from getting, and the President who will sign it. They know full well that this has nothing to do with that, but, nonetheless, a majority of them seem to be prepared to vote against even debating it.

I don't know how to explain that. I certainly don't know how to explain it to high school students up here visiting from Close Up or to anyone else, for that matter, but that is what happened earlier this week, and that is what might happen today here in a few minutes.

I hope I am wrong. I hope people have reconsidered because, honestly, this is an issue that deserves our earnest attention.

I will close with this. Please do not go around saying that Congress needs to do more to hold the administration accountable or to conduct oversight of our administration policy, when we started this Congress trying to do that and you decided to keep us from doing it for some other reason. Don't say that Congress needs to be more involved in the foreign policy of the United States, when this is exactly what we are trying to do here today and you will not let us for reasons unrelated to it.

This country needs a strong Senate more than ever before, not one that is shut down. I hope people will change their minds so we can get to work on this right now.

The Senate should be able to walk, chew gum, write, and read at the same time--or a lot of us. There are 100 people here. We should be able to do multiple things at the same time. We do it all the time.

You don't need to shut down the Senate, and you don't need to stop debate on this bill to solve the government shutdown. One has nothing to do with the other. Everyone knows that. Americans understand that. Normal people recognize that.

Let's act normal. Let's stop being weird about these things, and let's move on something like this and get the debate going, even as we work on the government shutdown and on border security.

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