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Floor Speech
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Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I rise today to speak about the need for strong American leadership. President Biden's weakness, seen on the world's stage, is dangerous. It is dangerous for our Nation, and it is dangerous for the world. It hurts our citizens, and it encourages aggression against our Nation and others.
Sadly, America doesn't have strong leadership right now from the President or the Vice President. Joe Biden is stumbling, bumbling, blundering into a disaster. It is not one night of forgetfulness on the debate stage; it is 3\1/2\ years of a pattern of failures.
We are living in the time of heartbreak at home and humiliation abroad. Look at the drugs, the death, the destruction coming from our southern border.
Under Democratic open border policies, there have been 10 million illegal immigrants who have invaded our Nation. Americans all across the country are in danger. Democrats' open borders allowed Venezuelan criminals to go to Houston, TX, to sexually abuse and murder a 12-year- old girl. Illegal immigrants' crime has taken the lives of many Americans across the country. They make headlines every day.
The open border allows deadly fentanyl to flood our Nation and poison our communities in all of our States, and certainly Wyoming has been one of the victims of this poisoning.
More than 300 terror suspects have come into America. That is 300 percent higher than what we saw under the strong policies of President Trump. And terrorists are roaming our Nation undetected.
Remember, border security isn't optional; it is an obligation, a commitment to the safety of our American people. It is a foundation of our safety. Without border security, there can be no national security.
Under Joe Biden, Americans are not safe at home, and, increasingly, the world is not safe either. President Biden's weakness has invited war; it has invited conflict; and it has invited chaos around the world.
He continues to appease Iran by letting Iran avoid sanctions. Iran is exporting almost 1.3 million barrels of oil to China each and every day. It uses the money from these oil sales to fund terrorism around the world.
President Biden made the misguided assumption that concessions to Iran would stop conflict. Instead, Biden's appeasement makes Iran more aggressive.
Meanwhile, Biden has proven to be a fair-weathered friend to our strong ally Israel. On American college campuses today, student protestors express hostility to the very existence of the Jewish State. Democrats in Washington have also grown more hostile to Israel. Senator Schumer stood on the floor--he demanded on this floor in March that Israel replace its Prime Minister. Senator Sanders called the very next month for America to stop sending aid to Israel.
The anti-Israel rift in the Democrat party is bad enough. What is more worrying is that President Biden, the leader of the free world, lacks the backbone to stand up against it. Rather than resist the pro- Hamas wing of his party, Biden has repeatedly bowed to them. He recently slapped a de facto arms embargo on Israel. The weapons he withheld would limit civilian casualties and help Israel free the hostages. Biden stopped that.
That includes 8 American hostages who spent the last 9 months, including their 4th of July, in captivity by Hamas. President Biden blocked these war-winning weapons anyway. He would rather appease a small group of pro-Hamas voters in Michigan than support our closest ally in the Middle East.
Playing politics is the core of Joe Biden's foreign policy. He recently claimed that no American servicemembers died on his watch. He told the world that. Well, that is false. It is wrong. It is a denial of what happened.
On January 11, 2024, two Navy SEALs were lost at sea during a mission to stop weapon shipments from Iran to Houthi terrorists. Less than 3 weeks later, January 28, three American soldiers were killed in Jordan by Iranian-backed militias. Then there is the disaster of Afghanistan. On August 26, 2021, ISIS terrorists killed 13 brave American servicemembers. They were the first American military casualties in Afghanistan in a year and a half.
Twenty-year-old LCpl Rylee McCollum of Jackson Hole, WY, was one of them. This was a young man who loved his country and left an impression on everyone he met. He was our home State wrestling champion. He had recently been married. He was about to become a father. Madam President, 1,300 people in Wyoming showed up to attend his funeral. It was outdoors in a tent, 37 degrees, lasted several hours, and no one left because Americans deserve better than a President who forgets the sacrifices of American heroes and forgives the aggression of America's adversaries.
Joe Biden's weakness and confusion are a vivid contrast to what past Presidents have done.
I think of President Ronald Reagan and his successful policy of peace through strength. For 8 years, President Reagan built a strong national defense, he restored America's confidence, and he confronted America's enemies. His approach incredibly ended the Cold War without firing a single shot.
Three decades later, President Trump adopted a similar policy--no more apologizing for America like President Obama had done. We had strong borders. We had a strong military. We had a strong economy. And we had strong American leadership. Our allies respected us. Our enemies feared us. We were safer. It is time for America to return to that approach.
The truth is that Joe Biden is a President who cannot defend his record and cannot defend this Nation. For the safety of our Nation, we need a lot less of Joe Biden's weakness and a lot more peace through strength. That is what we need to do. That is the way we get America back on track.
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