Greater Sanction Pressure on Russia

Floor Speech

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Mr. HILL of Arkansas. Madam Speaker, in 1958, former Prime Minister of Great Britain, Harold Macmillan, paraphrasing a remark from Winston Churchill 4 years earlier, left us with the great expression: jaw-jaw is better than war-war.

It is because of our great power that our rivals seek to end the American way of life through direct or gray zone war attacks or by cyber or economic destruction, and we certainly should routinely jaw- jaw with those great powers about our possible shared objectives and deep concerns.

However, in the instance of Czar Putin, he has never been interested in jaw-jaw. He is a creature of his KGB upbringing. There was no jaw- jaw with the Chechens in 1999, and there was no jaw-jaw with the Georgians, only tanks, in 2008. There was no jaw-jaw, only propaganda, corruption, and death in Putin's approach to Ukraine during President Obama's administration.

Under President Obama, Putin conducted his overt and covert actions in Ukraine with some 10,000 Ukrainians killed in the fighting, including 2,000 civilians, yet Obama and his European allies simply looked down at their shoes. In 2014, Putin took Crimea without firing a shot. He is a disgrace to the rich, cultural history of the Russian people, and he has thoroughly corrupted a false and bordering-on-insane historic narrative regarding his threats and ambitions in Ukraine.

America, as the instrumental force inside the transatlantic alliance, remains ready to stand shoulder to shoulder to back this European resolve. This is something that neither Obama nor Biden would do. They simply took the easy way out by agreeing to whatever the weakest European voice was at the time.

This European attitude of: Here, let me hold your coat, has plagued and frustrated all American Presidents from Eisenhower to Trump. Jack Kennedy famously called out their unwillingness to pay for their own defense stating how wrong it was to let the Europeans live off the fat of the land in American economic and military security.

Madam Speaker, here is what needs to happen now. The United States and our European allies must agree that we will not support the immoral importation of Russian oil and gas. Europe has affordable, effective alternatives.

The United States and our European allies should work through sanctions and other forms of economic statecraft to communicate firmly and consistently to large non-European buyers of Russian oil and gas that the time to act is now.

Congress should act by immediately passing Congressman Zach Nunn's bipartisan PEACE Act. This proposal would finally kneecap Russia's energy revenues, which still total some $200 billion per year. This would impose secondary sanctions on the country, including on Gazprom and Rosneft.

It passed out of my committee, the Financial Services Committee, by a vote of 53-1. It would be the first intensive sanctioning of the Russian banking industry since the invasion.

Under Congressman Nunn's PEACE Act, the U.S. would take Russian sovereign assets that have been immobilized and let the Ukrainians use them to purchase defensive weapons.

Congress should also fully consider, debate, amend, and pass the sanction legislation offered by Senator Lindsey Graham, which has 84 cosponsors, and its companion bill in the House sponsored by Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick.

The President should, as a part of a newfound backbone in the G7, fully implement the REPO Act, which I worked on diligently with former Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul and Senate Foreign Relations Chair Jim Risch. This measure, signed into law in 2024, puts direct and immediate heat on Russian sovereign assets held outside the country.

Here again, we need the Europeans to step forward. In the spring of 2024, the Council of Europe actually fully supported this idea with a 100 percent vote.

Congress should also authorize funding for the U.S. Geological Survey to fully review all Soviet-era geological surveys of Ukraine, both in the contested Donbas region, as well as free Ukraine, and provide Congress and the administration with an up-to-date assessment of the strategic minerals available for Ukraine's further economic development.

The time for action is now. Apparently, Putin needs more unified pressure to convince him that, in fact, jaw-jaw is better than war-war.

Let's not look back with regret that Congress did not act in the face of Putin's corrupt, catastrophic, and contemptuous regime that laughs in the face of his European neighbors and our American President.

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