Vote on Motion to Proceed
Floor Speech
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Mr. CRAPO. Supreme Court. I was proud to vote for her in committee.
Unfortunately, my friends on the other side of the aisle decided to boycott the executive session. In addition, each day, the Democratic leader has attempted to adjourn the Senate.
They say that the Senate should not be working on the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, and that it is delaying work on COVID relief. Now we hear today that we are delaying work and not even engaging in any response to the election interference that we knew 4 years ago occurred and which, as my colleague said, nobody should be surprised that we heard again that there are efforts on election interference by Russia, by Iran, and others.
Yesterday, there were three different live unanimous consent requests like this to bypass committees and immediately pass legislation without debate or amendments. These motions to adjourn and take-it-or-leave-it requests are a fight over the Senate floor schedule rather than building the necessary bipartisan support to pass needed legislation.
We are told that we haven't done anything for 4 years, turning to focus specifically on the question of election interference. The reality is that we have already signed into law the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act--or CAATSA--the BRINK Act; the Hong Kong Autonomy Act that substantially expanded sanctions on Russia, North Korea, and China; and the White House, in addition, has taken steps to use its IEEPA authority to impose additional targeted sanctions on those who attempted to interfere in the U.S. election.
We are told we aren't doing anything to work on the COVID relief package. My colleague from Maryland mentioned that they tried to pass the Heroes Act here in the Senate through a similar tactic that we are seeing today with regard to the DETER Act. What he didn't point out was that twice we have tried to bring forward a $500 billion COVID relief package on the floor of this Senate only to have the effort to even move to the bill rejected by our colleagues on the other side. And we tried to bring forward the PPP Act just 2 days ago, only to have that act stopped by our colleagues on the other side of the Senate who now tell us that we aren't trying to pass legislation to help deal with COVID relief.
The reality is that we won't accept--without debate or amendment-- their take-it-or-leave-it proposals, and we need to get a bill on the floor to start dealing with these things.
Let's go back to election interference because I found it just remarkable that the claim is made that when we passed major legislation--with over 90 Senators on this floor voting for it--that put specific sanction authority and sanctions on Russia for election interference, for its aggression in Crimea, and for its other aggressive behavior around the globe--particularly its cyber security violations--and we have been implementing sanctions for that entire period of time. I just want to review a little bit of it.
On top of it, as I indicated, the President has used his IEEPA authority for additional sanctions activity. The President signed an Executive order that allows for sanctions on any nation or individual who authorizes, directs, or sponsors interference in our elections.
The National Defense Authorization Act, signed by the President last year, included numerous provisions designed to strengthen our deterrence against foreign interference.
The President has taken a strong stand against Russia for its malign activities, including imposing sanctions on more than 300 separate Russian-related targets through 32 distinct actions; imposing sanctions against 7 Russian oligarchs, their 12 companies and 17 senior Russian government officials; establishing rolling designations to strengthen sanctions in response to Russian aggression against Ukraine and Russian efforts to evade sanctions on North Korea, Syria, Iran, and others; imposing sanctions against 16 entities and individuals, including affiliates of the Russian Internet Research Agency for their roles in Russian interference in our elections; imposing sanctions against three individuals and five entities in Sudan assisting the IRA financier, Prigozhin, in evading previously imposed sanctions; designating three additional IRA actors for supporting the IRA's crypto currency accounts; imposing sanctions on Russian-related oil brokers for their role in assisting the circumvention of sanctions against Venezuela; expelling 60 Russian intelligence officers from the United States. And the list goes on. The argument that this administration and this Senate have done nothing is simply false.
Let's just talk a little more about election interference. The administration here, domestically, has taken unprecedented action to bolster the security of our elections and to counter foreign malign influence. President Trump signed into legislation passed by this Senate that spent more than $1.2 billion in the States for election security, infrastructure strengthening, and technological enhancements.
The President funded the formation of the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, a center which helps share security information with elected officials across all 50 States and more than 2,400 local and territorial electoral offices.
The administration has conducted hundreds of cyber security assessments at no cost to election officials and provides vulnerability reports on a weekly basis.
The administration has traveled the country to hold exercises in training with State and local election officials and their private sector partners to improve and test their ability to prepare for and respond to cyber incidents
The administration has held multiple national-level tabletop-to-vote exercises with thousands of State and local election officials and private sector partners nationwide.
The administration has provided tailored security guidance to nearly 6,000 local election jurisdictions.
Under President Trump, the administration has pushed to increase the security of elections through auditable paper ballots, and now more than 92 percent of the voters in the general election will cast their ballots with an auditable paper record.
I could go on and on about this, but the bottom line is, yes, we do need to work and continue to be alert--and my colleague from Maryland knows that I am willing to work on these issues--but we can't just continue to have these take-it-or-leave-it, no-amendment, no- opportunity-for-change unanimous consent requests in the context of the obstruction effort being undertaken right now to try to delay and interfere with a vote on Amy Coney Barrett.
We can work on all of these issues. I invite my colleagues on the other side to vote yes the next time we try to bring a COVID relief bill to the floor.
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Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, just to briefly respond.
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Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, first of all, the notion that there has been blockage of a deal on this side is news to me. The notion that we did not accept the Heroes Act from the House is not news. Trying to put the Heroes Act on the floor of the Senate without the opportunity for debate or amendment is also not the right way to try to build bipartisan legislation for a deal.
I also find it incredible that this administration's actions sanctioning Russia are considered to be a pinprick in comparison to whatever greater sledgehammer is supposedly needed.
The CAATSA legislation that I referenced, which was passed in the first year following the election of President Trump, which President Trump signed and supported, was a massive increase in American sanction authority against Russia--and North Korea, by the way--and has been utilized more by this President than any sanction authority that any other President has ever had. The sanction regime that we are putting in place today against Russia is designed to go aggressively at election interference. The argument that nobody is doing anything is simply wrong.
Now, I stand ready to work to build even stronger sanction regimes that can work without destroying our own economy or work without destroying our own industry in different sectors, which is part of the problem with the bill that is being proposed without amendment here today. But we need to recognize that the accusations that this administration and this Senate do not take election interference seriously when we passed the most significant, sweeping legislation that has ever been passed in this country to deal with it--and that there is no effort to try to work on the COVID relief package--is just part of, frankly, the political attack of the day.
I am sorry. This is simply wrong. If we want to work together on either of these two issues or other issues, we can on this floor, but we can't do it by these kinds of motions to adjourn and unanimous consent requests to bring bills to the floor and pass them without amendment. It is just not the way. And my colleague knows this is the kind of thing that Republicans and Democrats do. They want to bring attention to their legislation. But that is not the way you build a bipartisan agreement that can actually become law.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I will be very brief in response.
This is a bipartisan bill. It has bipartisan cosponsorship. We have been working for 3 years. We have made changes. And the proof that everything we are doing right now is not working is the fact that we just had the DNI say we continue to have Russian interference and other interference in our election. That is why we have to do something.
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