Foreign Policy

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I wish to talk about the intersection of national security and our mounting debt. Over the last 5 years, President Obama has had multiple occasions to embrace real structural entitlement reform that would help solve our long-term debt problem. One might wonder why am I talking about debt when the subject we are generally talking about is national security, including what is happening in Iraq and Syria.

It is because as the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, ADM Mike Mullen, when asked what the single biggest threat to our national security was, he said: It is our debt. The President had an opportunity, when the Simpson-Bowles Commission released its recommendations in late 2010. As you will recall, this is a bipartisan commission the President himself appointed to help come up with a formula to deal with our fiscal problems.

Unfortunately, once they made their recommendations in December of 2010, the President walked away from them and nothing came of it, even though we are facing, in addition to $17 trillion in debt, more than $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities. Perhaps it is because those numbers are so big that we have a hard time getting our head around it, that people have become desensitized to the urgency of dealing with our debt and these unfunded liabilities.

But the President has never once endorsed any sort of reform necessary to deal with this challenge or to prevent a future crisis. The fact is, somebody someday--probably these young men and women who are working as pages and others their age, is going to have to be the ones to pay this back because our generation will have failed them unless we meet the challenges this presents.

It seems as though the only part of the Federal budget the President is eager to cut is national defense. Under his latest budget plan, defense spending would drop from 3.4 percent to 2.3 percent of GDP by 2023. At the same time, we are told the U.S. Army might be shrunk to the smallest size since pre-World War II.

President Obama needs to realize that even America's current military capabilities are proving inadequate to meet global challenges. For example, one former Assistant Secretary of Defense has declared that because of Pentagon budget cuts, President Obama's highly touted pivot to Asia cannot happen. In other words, despite promoting the Asia pivot as a crucial element of American foreign policy, the President has failed to take the necessary fiscal steps to make sure that happens or could happen.

This of course makes it a hollow policy, one where the promises are extravagant, but the delivery is anemic, and one that will do major damage to U.S. credibility among our allies and adversaries. The prospect of bringing DOD spending back down to sequestration levels has alarmed our senior military officials in all branches of government. Chief of Naval Operations ADM Jonathan Greenert has said that reverting to sequester levels in 2016 ``would lead to a Navy that is too small and lacking the advanced capabilities needed to execute the missions that nation expects of its Navy.''

The Secretary of the Air Force has said that going back to those spending levels ``would compromise our national security.'' Ray Odierno, Chief of Staff of the Army, said it would put ``our young men and women [in uniform] at much higher risk.'' In other words, the President cannot simply keep cutting defense spending and the military in order to fund his other priorities and at the same time ignore the 70 percent of spending that is on autopilot, so-called entitlement spending. That is where the big money is. That is where the reforms need to take place, but it will not happen without a leader.

We all know what is happening in Iraq. I know time is short. I do not want to take away any more time than necessary from my colleague from Alabama, but this map reflects what is happening now in Iraq. The civil war in Syria, the President had drawn a red line which once crossed--there were no consequences associated with that.

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Mr. CORNYN. Now this border between Iran and Syria has basically been wiped away. We see all of these places where the ISIS, a horrific terrorist group that is even worse than Al Qaeda, has basically taken charge. So this is what happens with a failure of leadership. Unfortunately, this is where we are in so many places around the world.

In short: President Obama simply cannot keep asking America's military to shoulder such a disproportionate share of the spending cuts while our biggest entitlement programs remain virtually untouched. DoD spending did not cause our long-term budget problem, so slashing it to the bone would not solve that problem. Moreover, seemingly every week brings fresh reminders of the challenges our country will face in the years to come. At this very moment, we have Russia's ongoing aggression against democratic Ukraine. We have an Iranian theocracy that shows no signs of abandoning its quest for a nuclear weapon. We have a persistent terrorist challenge in Afghanistan. We have a potential failed state in Libya. We have growing Al Qaeda activity in many parts of Africa. We have a Chinese dictatorship that is increasing its annual military budget by more than 12 percent while continuing to bully its neighbors on the high seas.

Most notably, we have a burgeoning terror state in the heart of the Middle East, where a ruthless band of jihadist killers--a group that is even more radical and murderous than Al Qaeda, if you can believe it--now controls a massive piece of territory spanning both Syria and Iraq. Calling their movement the ``Islamic State of Iraq and Syria,'' or ISIS, members of this organization have taken over major Iraqi cities, including Fallujah, Mosul, Tikrit, and Tal Afar, leaving a trail of blood and medieval terror in their wake.

The map to my left shows just how much territory ISIS has conquered. To make matters worse, they have seized a tremendous amount of weaponry and money--almost half a billion dollars--making them perhaps the most well-resourced terrorist group on earth.

And again, just to reiterate: This group is considered more radical, and more vicious, than even Al Qaeda.

Amazingly, even after ISIS took control of Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, a National Security Council spokeswoman stuck to the White House's 3-year-old talking points and said, ``President Obama promised to responsibly end the war in Iraq and he did.''

Of course, the President did no such thing. By the time he assumed office in January 2009, Iraq had largely been stabilized. All the President had to do was convince the Iraqi government to sign a new Status of Forces Agreement, SOFA. Unfortunately, he was more interested in keeping a misguided campaign promise from 2008.

As a result of his failure to maintain a significant U.S. troop presence in Iraq, America emboldened the Iranians, the Shiite militias, and the Sunni terrorist groups to become more aggressive. We also emboldened Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to behave in a more sectarian and dictatorial manner.

Meanwhile, amid the fallout from America's Iraq withdrawal, President Obama's failure to take early, decisive action in Syria made it much easier for Sunni terrorists to increase their territory, weapons, and manpower. As you can see from this map, the jihadists have effectively been using their bases in Syria as a launching pad for attacks in western Iraq.

The path forward in Iraq is highly uncertain, but I would urge President Obama to explain to the American people what is at stake, and to formulate a robust strategy for defending U.S. interests and preventing the creation of a new terror state. The President may well believe--as a recent New York Times article suggested--that ``he is managing an era of American retrenchment.'' But with bloodthirsty jihadists marauding through Iraq and approaching the gates of Baghdad, now is not a time for U.S. retrenchment. Instead, now is a time for clear thinking, clear decisions, and clear action.

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