Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019
Floor Speech
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Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, I am on the floor today to talk about a crisis overseas.
Before I do, I just want to take one moment. The Senator from Georgia talked about the increases in defense spending that we have done on a bipartisan basis and suggested that it was the prior administration that had gutted defense spending. That is not true. I think we should clear the record about that.
In fact, in the first 3 years of the Obama administration, defense spending was on the rise. It was the election of a Republican Congress that led to what we call sequestration--the downward descent of discretionary spending of both defense and nondefense dollars.
To the extent that my colleagues are worried about what happened to defense spending in the last 10 years, there is only one explanation for that; that is, the election of Republicans to the House of Representatives in 2010 and their demand that in order to vote for an increase in the debt ceiling, discretionary spending had to be slashed. In the first several years of the Obama administration, defense spending was on the rise. Yemen
Madam President, I am on the floor to once again talk about a dire humanitarian nightmare happening on the other side of the world in a country called Yemen, the U.S. complicity in that horror, and the national security disaster that comes with staying involved in this war.
I could have brought a bunch of much more disturbing charts to the floor to talk about the world's worst humanitarian disaster--a country in and on the brink of famine and with a cholera epidemic that the world has never ever seen before in recorded history. Instead, I chose to bring you a picture of a child with his back turned to you in order to spare you the worst of this nightmare.
Before we break, I am here to make an urgent plea to my colleagues because, as bad as the situation is today, it is about to get much worse over the course of the summer and this fall. There are millions of Yemenis who are going to die if we don't make some decisions and pressure our allies to make some decisions in the coming days. The reason for this is simple.
At the beginning of this year, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which are the primary military partners with the United States in Yemen, made a pledge they have made in the past, which is that while they would be dropping bombs and fighting battles on the ground in Yemen, they would be putting up money to make sure that people would be fed and that children would be immunized. They made that pledge at the beginning of this year. We are now halfway through the year, and the UAE and the Saudis have reneged on that pledge.
Saudi Arabia pledged $750 million to the United Nations. It still owes, today, $630 million. The UAE pledged $750 million. It still owes, today, $500 million. They have always been tough negotiators and have been difficult to get the money from, but this year is different. This year, 6 months in, the Saudis and the Emirates are essentially saying: We are not giving the U.N. its money.
If you meet with them, they will tell you that they are spending that money in other ways, that they are working with other partners inside Yemen to do the same kind of work. Don't let them put that argument over on you. There is no one in Yemen who can do the nutrition work, the healthcare work, or the anti-cholera work that the U.N. can and does. There are no other partners who have the capacity to keep people alive like the U.N. You can't just create and stand up that capacity outside of the United Nations.
If Saudi Arabia and the UAE were not planning on giving the U.N. the money, then they shouldn't have promised it at the beginning of the year. The U.N. went out and built infrastructure. It hired partners based on those pledges. If the Emirates and the Saudis were not planning on giving the money, then they shouldn't have promised it at the beginning of this year.
Let me tell you what is happening right now inside Yemen.
Work has been suspended on 30 new feeding centers in the most famine- stricken parts of Yemen.
Vaccinations have been suspended for 13 million people, which increases the risk for things like measles and malaria.
The procurement of new medical supplies and equipment has been suspended.
UNICEF has stopped its clean water and sanitation services for 8.4 million people, including 3 million kids, which means more cholera, and cholera is already on the rise. There have been more cholera cases reported in the first half of this year than had been reported in all of 2018. There have been half a million new cases of cholera just in the first 6 months of this year.
A U.N.-supported treatment plant that purifies water for agriculture has started to shut down as well, meaning an additional 4 million people could be eating vegetables that are irrigated with dirty water.
Starting very soon, the World Food Programme will not be able to buy vouchers for 3 million people.
Sixty more feeding centers will close in the coming weeks.
The World Food Programme has stopped providing nutrient bars to 2.6 million malnourished women and children, which will tip them now into the category of ``severely malnourished,'' just like this child is.
The U.N. is going to have to stop providing fuel for hospital generators.
There are 35,000 cancer patients who will stop receiving treatment.
I could go on and on and on.
Why are we standing here? Why aren't we all pressing our friends--the Saudis, our allies, the Emirates--to come up with this money? While we all enjoy our August recess, there are going to be millions of children in Yemen who will look like this who don't look like this today. There will be hundreds of thousands who will either die or reach the brink of death all because of a war that the United States has perpetuated and because of funding commitments that can't keep all of these people alive, that can't save all of these children's lives but that could save tens of thousands of lives if our friends, our allies, would simply do the right thing.
I am furious about this, my colleagues, because I don't know what the Trump administration is getting for this bear hug it has put around Saudi Arabia. After the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, we transferred to it more nuclear technology and sold it more weapons. Maybe the hope was, in exchange for that, Saudi Arabia would do something about the humanitarian nightmare, but it is making it worse. Saudi Arabia is getting everything from us, and it is not even feeding the people on the ground in Yemen who are dying as we speak.
At a 2015 campaign rally in Alabama, the President said: I get along great with the Saudis. They buy apartments from me. They spend, like, $40 million, $50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.
From 2016 to 2017, a lobbying firm connected to the Saudi Government paid $270,000 to the Trump International Hotel in DC. In 2018, a 5-day visit from Saudi officials to the Trump International Hotel in New York City helped to boost the hotel's quarterly revenue by 13 percent.
Boy, I hope this isn't the reason the administration isn't pressing the Saudis harder to come up with their funding commitment, but the President has been pretty clear that the Saudis send him and his family a lot of money. He has been open about that. I hope this is not the reason for our not forcing our partners to step up. This is life-or- death time right now. If the administration is not going to do it, then we will have to do it. Members of Congress will have to do it.
I hope, before my colleagues go home and enjoy some rest and relaxation over the month of August, they will get on the phone with their friends in the Saudi Government, that they will get on the phone with the Emirates Government, and that they will get on the phone with the Trump administration and tell them that it is time to pony up the money they have pledged.
The United States is the No. 1 donor, but we could do more. The Saudis and the Emirates have come through on a quarter of the money they have promised, and the consequences of that continuing are absolutely nightmarish. So, before we go home for our break, let's do something to make sure that a handful more of these kids are alive when we come back.
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