Disapproving the President's Proposal to Take An Action Relating to the Application of Certain Sanctions with Respect to the Russian
Floor Speech
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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I am not going to talk about the substance of what we are here for.
To my dear friend, Johnny, whom I love and who serves the best barbecue I ever have every year, among his many other attributes, I will just make this point.
He says it is not a Democratic shutdown or a Republican shutdown. It is a Trump shutdown. We all know it. Donald Trump has called for the shutting down of the government 25 times. He said at our meeting he is proud to shut down the government.
We Democrats do not want to shut down the government. In fact, our slogan--our watchword--is ``open up the government.'' We have a difference on border security. We are for it. You are for it. You are for something different than we are, but we are not shutting down the government, and everyone knows it. The public opinion polls know it. There are 40 percent of all Republicans, let alone Democrats and Independents, who are for the wall, and most of those people say the government shouldn't be shut down over the wall.
I know how aggravated my colleague is. I would suggest to him that the best solution is to vote for what he voted for--or the whole Republican Party did by unanimous consent--which is to open up the government. Then we can discuss our border security issues.
I yield to my dear friend.
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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I thank my colleague.
There is just one difference between what happened then and what is happening now: Neither side was shutting down the government until it got its way.
I will make my statement, I guess, and wait for Leader McConnell and the motion to proceed. S.J. Res. 2
Madam President, before we take a vote on the motion to proceed on this resolution, I will make two brief points, and I know my colleagues have discussed this very well.
First, my friends the Republican leader and former Republican whip Senator Cornyn are being incredibly disingenuous to suggest this is a political stunt and to accuse Democrats of forcing this vote out of the blue. The timing of this vote was not determined by me or by Leader McConnell. It was determined by the wall. The law says that we only have 30 days to disapprove of sanctions relief on Russia. This was filed right before Christmas.
I would suggest the administration and the Treasury hope to get away with it because they know how unpopular it would be to remove sanctions on Deripaska or on the companies he controls. They knew how unpopular it would be, so they snuck it in right before Christmas, right before we left. We have only 30 days, and those 30 days expire on Thursday. If we wait, those 30 days will expire--they will be gone--and we will have no opportunity. So this is no accident.
If Leader McConnell and Senator Cornyn want to know why this vote is today, they should talk to the White House, because it is the one that filed this on December 21.
Second, there are serious, substantive reasons to oppose the Treasury plan. It fails to sufficiently limit Mr. Deripaska's stake in these three Russian companies. It gives Vladimir Putin exactly what he wants--sanctions relief on three major producers of aluminum and other metals. That is wrong for the country. Putin's Russia continues to run rampant over international norms, to meddle in democratic elections, and to destabilize the world. Russia has violated the sovereignty of Ukraine, has interfered in our elections and the Brexit vote, has propped up the brutal Assad regime, and has been implicated in nerve agent attacks on the soil of our closest ally. Yet the Trump administration proposes reducing sanctions on Putin and his cronies.
Show me the behavior from Vladimir Putin that warrants such relief. I can't think of any, and I will bet 90 percent of all Americans can't think of any.
Let me be clear. A vote against this resolution--a vote to not allow us to proceed--is a vote to go easy on President Putin and his oligarchs.
I understand my friend the leader, the Republican leader, will move to table the motion to proceed to the resolution. I remind my colleagues that the timeline runs out on Thursday--48 hours from now. We have to take this vote now. I strongly urge my colleagues to vote no on the motion to table and yes on the motion to proceed. 13, S.J. Res. 2.
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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, the leader's rhetoric belies his words. If you believe Putin is a thug, you don't vote to table this resolution.
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