Unanimous Consent Request--S. 3811
Floor Speech
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Mr. MARSHALL. I thank Senator Scott for leading this issue.
Mr. President, every moment of every day is precious, but none more so than when war has engulfed your home. It was just 3 weeks ago today, what now feels like an eternity, that Russian forces first invaded Ukraine's sovereign border and launched a deadly, unprovoked attack on the people of Ukraine. And since that day, the world has watched in horror as hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent civilians--including children--have perished from gunfire and explosive weapons. More than 2 million people have now fled their homes.
Among the Russian targets have been a bread factory, a maternity ward, and a nursery. Despite enduring the suffering and being greatly outnumbered by Russian force strength and military might, the Ukrainian people have bravely defended their homeland, an inspiration for the entire world. Here at home, though, President Biden has been doing his best to fool the American people into thinking he is a wartime President, but his track record tells a different story.
To say the President is leading from behind is an understatement. The President's handling of the Ukraine invasion has been littered with missteps and tardiness nearly every step of the way, his words and actions seldom lining up.
In December, the administration slow-walked a shipment of military arms that would have hardened Ukraine's defenses. It took nearly a month for the package to be approved and the armaments to arrive in Ukraine. In January, Senate Republicans moved to stop sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline. President Biden dispatched his allies in this Chamber to filibuster the bill and allow the project to be slowed down.
A month later, the President finally came around and moved to impose sanctions on the project. Last week, I introduced with 10 of my Republican colleagues to ban Russian oil imports. Democrats in the Senate joined in calling for an announcement of such an action during his State of the Union speech, but none was made.
Always afraid to lead, it would be a full week later when President Biden would finally impose the import prohibition. This President has repeatedly been late to act. His failure to show strength and take proactive maneuvers empowered a war criminal to move to reclaim one of the most prized former Soviet republics, a land rich with wheat and corn and sunflowers.
I was on a phone call with many of my colleagues last weekend with President Zelenskyy. And my friends across the aisle were so excited, they were so motivated, wanting to move quickly to place ammunitions and MiG-29 jets in the hands of the brave Ukrainians. But no; cowardice is contagious. Democrats in Congress have now taken a page out of our President's playbook by settling on a process that would deliver this most recent round of military aid to Ukrainians more than a week after President Zelenskyy laid out his country's need to Members of Congress.
And the MiG fighter jets that are so desperately needed by the Ukrainians, they remain grounded and out of the hands of the sieged. Instead of a stand-alone bill or attaching this invaluable relief to the short-term CR that will be signed to keep the government open while the massive 3,000-page bill is enrolled and sent to the President, they are insisting that it remain part of the omnibus in order to sweeten a sour bunch of grapes--once again, delaying lifesaving aid by many days.
At a time when our national debt is over $30 trillion and our government spent almost $2 trillion extra on government programs this year already, the bill increases discretionary spending on more than $45 billion. Indeed, we won't let a crisis go to waste.
It also funds the administration's tragically misguided attempts to electrify our electric fleet and implement the Green New Deal. All the while, we are witnessing a self-imposed Biden energy crisis because they have killed our domestic oil and gas industry by declaring war on American energy.
Today, I would ask the Democrats partying in Philadelphia with drag queens and sampling Pennsylvania beers that they should jump on the next Amtrak train and come back and help us pass this Ukrainian aid immediately. Let's not force it into an omnibus that makes the Ukrainian people wait 5 more days before it would be officially signed into law. I support the much needed Ukrainian aid. We would pass it as a stand-alone piece of legislation today.
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