Authorizing the Limited and Specified Use of the United States Armed Forces Against Syria--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I wanted to use this opportunity to say a few words about the issue that is on everybody's minds; that is, Syria. I want to tell you that approximately 95 percent of the thousands of e-mails and phone calls my office has received are against U.S. military intervention in the bloody and chaotic civil war in Syria.

The truth is the numbers in Vermont may be higher than the national average in terms of opposition to this war. But there is probably no State in this country where U.S. military intervention in this bloody and complicated civil war in Syria is being supported. It is an interesting phenomenon.

We have a very divided Nation politically, but on this issue it appears the vast majority of Democrats, Republicans, Independents, the vast majority of progressives--I am a progressive--conservatives, moderates, have all come together to express deep concern about the United States being involved in the third military intervention in the Middle East in 12 years.

Let me tell you why I believe the American people feel so strongly against military involvement in Syria. Clearly, it has much to do with the fact that the United States has already been at war for 12 years. There are kids in this country who are halfway through primary school who have never known an America that has not been at war.

What the American people also understand is these wars have been enormously costly in many ways. Not only have these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost us the lives of some 4,600 brave American men and women who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, but as chairman of the Veterans Affairs' Committee I can tell you that today we have tens of thousands of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who are dealing with traumatic brain injury, who are dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder, problems they are going to be carrying with them for the rest of their lives.

The human cost of those wars has been enormous. But it is not only the human cost, it is the financial cost as well. Today, at a time when working families are struggling to keep their heads above water economically, we are throwing thousands and thousands of little kids who desperately need preschool education off of Head Start. We should be expanding Head Start. But because of sequestration we are throwing them off of Head Start. We are denying nutrition programs, the Meals on Wheels Programs, that go to some of the most vulnerable and fragile seniors in this country. We are throwing them off basic nutrition programs.

We are forcing massive cuts through furloughs on tens of thousands of Federal employees, including members of the Vermont National Guard. At the end of the day, by the time we take care of the last servicemember who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, those wars will have cost us at least $3 trillion.

But it is not only the human cost of those wars that troubles the American people. It is not only the financial cost of these wars that troubles the American people. It is the deep sense that exists across the political spectrum that foreign policy and going to war are a lot more complicated and unpredictable and have unintended consequences, far more so than many of our leaders in past years have believed.

Afghanistan is a small country that in 2001 virtually had no army when the United States invaded it; no army against the most powerful military force in the history of the world.

What is the problem? Twelve years later we are still in Afghanistan. All of us remember President George W. Bush standing on an aircraft carrier telling us that in Iraq the mission was accomplished. Mission accomplished.

Well, it didn't turn out quite that way. Thousands of deaths later for American servicemembers, tens of thousands of deaths later for the people of Iraq, peace and democracy in that country has not yet been accomplished. It is a lot more complicated than people thought it would be.

Today people worry what are the long-term implications and what are the unforeseen consequences of the United States being involved in a horrendous, bloody, and complicated war in Syria. All of us know Asad is a ruthless dictator who has exploited his people terribly and used chemical weapons against them. But not every American knows that some 20 to 25 percent of the opposition to Asad turns out to be Islamic fundamentalists, some of them affiliated with Al Qaeda.

What are the long-term implications and unintended consequences of being involved in a war in that area? I know the President has been very clear about saying he is talking about strikes that are very targeted, very minimal. But once you break the egg, once you get involved, we have to bear and will bear a certain amount of responsibility for what happens during the war and even after the war if Asad is overthrown.

This is why the American people are extremely concerned about the United States unilaterally going into Syria without the support of the international community and without the support of the United Nations.

Having said all of that, in my mind there is another reason, a deeper reason, as to why there is so much opposition to the President's proposal and the proposal that came out of the Foreign Relations Committee, which was more open-ended and spoke about regime change. That has everything to do with the fact that the favorability rating of the Congress is today somewhere between 8 and 15 percent.

The vast majority of the American people don't know. They don't care who controls the Senate, whether it is the Democrats. They don't know who controls the House, the Republicans. By and large, the American people have given up believing that the Congress and the White House are listening to their needs, which are very serious at this moment, or are interested or capable of responding to their needs.

What the American people are saying, and they are saying it very loudly, is we have a Congress and a White House which continues to ignore the enormous crises facing the middle class and working families of our country. What they are saying is: Yes, Mr. President, we agree with you, what Asad is doing in Syria is unspeakable; that he is gassing his own kids is beyond belief. We understand that. We want the international community to address that.

But what they are also saying is: Mr. President, Members of Congress, think about our children, the kids in West Virginia, the kids in California, the kids in Detroit, the kids in Vermont. What about our kids? What kind of future are they going to have in an economy in which the middle class continues to disappear and poverty remains at an almost all-time high for the last 60 years?

Today real unemployment in this country is not 7.4 percent, the official unemployment rate. Real unemployment is close to 14 percent.

Youth unemployment is a tragedy. Kids are graduating high school, going out and looking for jobs, and they want to get a sense of independence. There are no jobs for them. Youth unemployment in this country is close to 20 percent.

For minorities, the number is considerably higher. Black youth unemployment in this country is close to 40 percent. Parents are worried that their kids are graduating from high school and there are no jobs available to them.

Before I came to Washington the other day, I talked to a physician in the State of Vermont who said: Bernie, do you know what. In Vermont, beautiful Vermont, rural Vermont, we are facing a heroin epidemic. Kids are shooting up heroin in Vermont, not to mention the rest of the country, because they don't see much of a future facing them.

Parents are worried that their kids are graduating college, often deeply in debt, and that either they can't find a job or the jobs they do obtain often do not require a college degree. The fact is most of the new jobs being created in this country are part-time jobs with minimal benefits, and they are often low-wage jobs.

What the Department of Labor is telling us is that, in fact, most of the new jobs we see coming down the pike for our kids do not require a college degree. They are low-wage jobs.

The people are saying from one end of this country, yes, we are concerned about Syria, but we are also concerned about Los Angeles, Detroit, and St. Johnsbury, VT. Please, Mr. President, create jobs for the working families of this country. What they are begging the Congress to do is to address the needs our people face.

What they understand, and I think this has a lot to do with why there is so much opposition to getting involved in this war in Syria, is that the Congress has virtually done nothing to improve the economy for working families, and they worry very much that if all of our time, energy, and resources are devoted to Syria, we are never going to address the serious problems facing the working families of this country.

Tens of millions of our fellow Americans today are working longer hours for lower wages, and many of them are earning wages that are simply too low to support a family. We have been happy to hear in Michigan, for example, the automobile industry is doing better; more people are being hired. That is the good news.

Do you know what the bad news is. The new jobs in the automobile industry are barely more than 50 percent in pay of what the old jobs were. All over this country the new jobs that are being created are not paying what the jobs in this country used to pay. We have millions of people working for a disgracefully low minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

People are saying: Mr. President, Members of Congress, yes, we are worried about Syria, but why don't you work to make sure every person who has a job in this country can earn a wage which enables him or her to take care of their family?

The media doesn't pay a lot of attention to it, Congress doesn't pay a lot of attention, but the American people also understand it is not only high unemployment and low wages, something else is going on in this country. They know that while the middle class is disappearing and 46 million Americans are living in poverty, they understand the people on top today, the people whose lobbyists surround this institution, the people who make huge campaign contributions to the political parties, are doing very well. They are doing extraordinarily well. Corporate profits are at an all-time high. The people on Wall Street, whose greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior caused the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, well, guess what. They are doing phenomenally well. They are making record-breaking profits. The rich are doing well and corporate America is doing well. They are making all kinds of campaign contributions.

The American people are looking around and saying, What are you doing for us? What are you doing to protect the seniors and their Social Security? What are you doing to protect the children of this country, to make sure they get a decent education? What are you doing to make sure the United States joins the rest of the industrialized world so all of our people have health care as a right?

One of the reasons I think there is so much lack of support for this war is the American people feel it is high time for us to pay attention to their needs.

We have recently heard, and the news is being updated almost momentarily, that Russia, for whatever reasons, has decided finally to play a positive role in this crisis. They are urging Syria to allow the international community to take possession of their chemical weapons. We believe that France right now is prepared to go to the Security Council with a resolution similar to what the Russians are talking about.

I can't tell you how honest the Russians are being in this effort, what their ulterior plans may be. But I think now is the opportunity to work with Russia, to work with China, to work with the Security Council and the United Nations. It would be an extraordinary victory, in my view, for the people of Syria, who are going through horror after horror right now, for the entire world, and for the future of the world, if we could take those terrible chemical weapons out of Asad's hands and destroy them. I would hope very much the President and our Secretary of State will be working with the international community to make that happen.

Let me conclude. I think we are in a very interesting and, in fact, momentous moment in the history of the United States of America. The people are coming together to say we have enormous crises in our own country and if we don't get our act together, we are going to see the decline of a once-great Nation. We are going to see, for the first time in the modern history of our country, our children having a lower standard of living than we do.

I would hope the lesson we learned of this entire episode is the American people do not want us unilaterally getting involved in another war in the Middle East. I would hope also the lesson we learned is the American people are saying very loudly and clearly this country faces enormous crises: economically, global warming, health care, education, income and wealth inequality, and they want us to start addressing those needs. I hope that out of this very difficult moment the silver lining is we learn something from what the American people want and we begin to do what they say.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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