Motion to Discharge--S.J.

Floor Speech

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Mr. RISCH. Mr. President, tonight we are going to consider S.J. Res. 35 and 36, and they are the resolutions of disapproval regarding arms sales to Egypt. Egypt has been a key partner of the United States since the 1979 Camp David Accords.

It continues to play a critical role in Middle East peace. Egypt is a valuable counterterrorism partner and is essential to U.S. accession in the region and the U.S. success in the region. Look, for those who haven't had the good fortune of being there, when the peace broke out between Israel and Egypt decades ago, Egypt played a key role in making that peace. And ever since then, the border between Egypt and Israel on the Sinai has been peaceful, notwithstanding the fact that they have incidents there all the time.

But the Egyptians and the Israelis, brokered by the multilateral force that is there, keeps the peace, and it has been a great success story in the Middle East, one of the few that has had duration. And so in that regard, Egypt has been very valuable in helping keep the peace in the region.

The Biden administration and Democratic Senate and House leaders agreed on these sales because they are in the interest of the United States and, indeed, of the world and particularly of the Middle East. These sales of cargo aircraft and radar support the United States-Egypt relationship and are in keeping with Egypt's legitimate defense requirements.

Human rights are a critical element of our foreign relations. They always have been, and they always will be. And Egypt has problems it needs to fix.

The United States has withheld aid and taken other measures to highlight our concerns to the Egyptian Government. Indeed, Egypt is not a perfect partner, and we have almost no perfect partners when we are dealing with foreign countries on national security.

Nonetheless, each of these is transactional, and they have to be weighed and viewed individually. These sales that we are talking about here to Egypt present no direct human rights concerns and should be separated from that conversation.

So, on substance, I oppose the resolution.

In addition to that, there is a bigger issue here. The statutory 30- day congressional notification period for these sales expired last Wednesday, March 2. The Parliamentarian has now ruled that the statutory 30-day period is effectively irrelevant and that any Senator can offer for privileged consideration a resolution of disapproval for any arms sales notified over the course of an entire Congress.

If this stands and continues, it would have a chilling effect on U.S. alliances and partnerships worldwide, and it could set a new procedure as far as dilatory tactics are concerned on the Senate floor.

The 1987 precedent that the Parliamentarian cites as justification is from a time when there was a bipartisan agreement to extend the timeline for simple procedural reasons. This is not the case now. And I disagree with the Parliamentarian's interpretation thereof.

It always amazes me around here that we can get a Parliamentarian ruling that is in direct--I mean direct contradiction of a statute, which is what we have here.

I ask--and I would urge--Senate leadership to work to ensure the intent of the statutory 30-day notification period is restored. Perhaps we should repass the statute and say we really, really mean it. Nonetheless, that is where we are, and this really needs to be corrected. Vote on Motion to Discharge

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