Bank on Students Emergency Loan Refinancing Act -- Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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WEST AFRICA

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, this is an uneasy time in our world. There is no shortage of crises that demand our attention and our action. The President called on us last night to step up to the very real challenge posed by the terrorist group ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Russian aggression against Ukraine demands our attention. A fragile cease-fire continues between Hamas and Gaza. There is the Central American exodus to our southern border that riveted the attention of many this summer; and there is continuing negotiations to seek an end to Iran's illicit nuclear weapons program.

Behind all of this there is another and equally important challenge I wanted to draw this body's attention to for a few minutes today--the spread of a quiet and vicious virus throughout West Africa. While the Nation's attention today for good reason is on remembering the tragic events of 9/11, and the President's strategy for combating ISIS today, I would like to speak to another urgent challenge to our country and world, and that is the need to dramatically increase our support as communities across West Africa struggle to confront and combat Ebola.

I met and have spoken with Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. She is a Nobel Prize winner and impressive leader who has brought her country back from a terrible civil war and was making huge progress toward the development of Liberia. I had the honor of meeting with her here and visiting her country. In my role as the chair of the African Affairs Subcommittee, I have met few others who have impressed me as much as President Johnson-Sirleaf.

Leaders throughout this region are doing everything they can to save lives, but in my most recent communications with President Johnson-Sirleaf it is clear that Ebola is rapidly getting beyond the capacity and ability of these communities and countries to contain it and to recover from it. They need our action.

Individuals on the ground from groups such as Doctors Without Borders and Samaritan's Purse have done remarkable, heroic, and extraordinary work by putting their own lives on the line to help others, and they have borne the overwhelming majority of the risks, service, and sacrifice so far.

The news has just been announced that the Gates Foundation will contribute $50 million to this fight, which is critical, as public funds alone will not be enough to end this crisis.

Our own people, through the U.S. Government, can and must do more. It need not be the role of the United States alone to resolve this problem, but it is our responsibility to stand side by side with those working tirelessly to stop it. It is our responsibility to not just lend a hand but to help lead in ways that only we can and to use our unique capabilities to address this crisis. If Ebola's spread reveals one thing it is that we are more interconnected today than we have ever been in our human history and that disease truly knows and respects no borders. We need to continue to act, not only because we are morally compelled to help the tens of thousands who are facing an immediate threat, but also because we have a direct stake in the resolution of this crisis.

This is a manageable public health crisis that we know how to solve, but doing so requires our focus, our attention, our resolve, and our resources, tools that only the United States has.

Let me briefly outline five specific steps I believe we should take now.

First, I think it is critical the United States has one leadership point--that the White House designate a coordinator to oversee the U.S. whole-of-government emergency response. There are many ways the United States is currently helping across many agencies from the Department of Defense to the Centers for Disease Control to the State Department and USAID. Those agencies are doing great work as part of the disaster assistance response team on the ground.

At a time when the U.S. Government is also facing and addressing crises in Iraq, Ukraine, and elsewhere, I think we need one organizer, one coordinator, one responsible figure addressing this crisis who is appointed by the White House to coordinate all of our resources and all the people necessary from the U.S. Government for this growing effort. President Obama should designate an official to manage our country's response both overseas and here in the United States, including preparing us for the remote chance this virus might reach American soil.

Our ambassadors on the ground in the three most affected countries are playing the primary role in coordination right now, and they are doing remarkable work, but I will remind my colleagues in this body that in Sierra Leone there is no currently confirmed U.S. Ambassador. The nominee, John Hoover, has been waiting almost 8 months to be confirmed. This is just one painful reminder that the dysfunction of this body has prevented us from confirming nominated ambassadors to dozens of countries around the world. To be effective we need to coordinate our U.S.-based and our field-based efforts through ambassadors on the ground.

Second, we must begin to deploy U.S. military support to the maximum extent possible. Let me be clear: I don't mean combat capabilities, I mean the unique logistical capabilities of the U.S. military, their ability to deploy through their logistical capabilities. We have resources that no other country can bring to bear as quickly and as successfully as we can.

I was encouraged to hear an announcement this past week from the administration that they plan to use our military to establish a new hospital facility in Liberia to distribute equipment, to provide infrastructure and transportation support. I will admit I am concerned it will take weeks to deploy.

On my visit to Liberia last August, I was struck at how poor and underdeveloped this nation of brave and inspiring people currently is and how paved roads and the ability to move at any speed rapidly ends just a few miles from the capital, and how strained the infrastructure and the public health systems are by this rapidly growing crisis.

This is not everything we can and should be doing. We need to build more field hospitals for civilians in Liberia and beyond so there are facilities for health workers and civilians fighting the disease. We also can and should provide airlift of supplies from private donors.

I have heard from organizations that have worked at the transportation facility and have donated supplies that can fill cargo plane after cargo plane, but they are having difficulty getting it from here to West Africa. We need to deepen our coordination with foreign militaries. Other Nations possess similar advance capabilities, as we do, and we will be able to combat this crisis more effectively if we all work together.

I appreciate Ghana's efforts and partnership as it allows us to use some of their facilities as an air bridge for logistics. As more air resources are poured into this fight against Ebola, we need other countries in the region to lend a similarly open hand.

My third point is directed to our private sector, to international organizations, to the American people, and to citizens of other developed nations. We need your support and your generosity and we need it now.

This is a letter that Liberia's President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf sent to President Obama this week, and I wish to read from it briefly.

Mr. President, as you know, the outbreak has overwhelmed the containment and treatment measures we have attempted thus far.

Our already limited resources have been stretched to the breaking point and, up to now, only a private charity, Medecins Sans Frontiers, has responded robustly in all the affected countries. But they, too, have reached their limits.

My friend President Sirleaf is right: It is time for the rest of us to step up.

The World Health Organization has issued an Ebola Response Roadmap that calls for $490 million and more than 10,000 additional health workers, and we are far short of reaching those goals today.

So far the U.S. Government has contributed more than $100 million and has announced a commitment of another $88 million that we in this body will hopefully approve before we end this session.

The Gates Foundation, as I mentioned, has also made an impressive and incredible addition of $50 million, but the fact remains we need more.

I have heard from many in my State and across the country eager to give support. If you have the means, I urge you to go to usaid.gov/ebola for links to some of the impressive nongovernmental organizations that are doing what they can on the ground to stem this humanitarian crisis.

As much as this crisis needs money and equipment and supplies, it most importantly needs nurses and doctors, paramedics, and other medical professionals--literally thousands of them. The health systems of these countries, which were already among the least well resourced in the world, are overwhelmed, and so I am asking today for your help. We are asking for you to save lives. If you are a trained medical professional and willing to help, I urge you to please go to usaid.gov/ebola and consider how you might serve to help in this crisis.

Fourth, we need to develop and deploy a treatment and vaccine as rapidly as possible. Here is where in some ways America's unique gifts, our talents, and our strength in terms of the development and discovery of new pharmaceuticals, of new treatments, and of a new vaccine are a unique contribution we can make.

American scientists are making progress on both fronts, but the reality is it will be hard to confront and ultimately end this disease in the long term without either.

Much of the $88 million President Obama has requested from Congress will go toward this most important goal. It is critical we support that funding in this Chamber on a bipartisan basis and prepare for the reality that this is only the first investment we will need to make to quickly develop and deploy these lifesaving drugs and these critically preventive vaccines.

Lastly, we need to invest in the governing and economic institutions in the countries that have been so devastated by this disease.

It is not a coincidence that this outbreak has emerged in countries with some of the weakest health care systems on Earth--countries that face severe shortages of health care workers, labs essential for testing and diagnosis, clinics and hospitals required for treatment, and the medical supplies and protective gear such as latex gloves and face masks that are commonly available in the United States but are now completely exhausted in the countries of Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia.

We know how to combat this disease with practices such as isolation, meticulous infection control, good public health and burial practices, case investigation, and contact training. But all of these things require trained personnel and many more resources than are currently available.

In the short term we absolutely can fill many of these gaps with the additional resources I have just outlined but we need to act quickly. In the long term we need to think more deeply about why investing in local health care systems and institutions in the developing world is so critical, why a little preventive investment can go a long way toward making the country more resilient in a crisis such as this.

As we act now to do what we must to stop Ebola, we also must consider the actions we can and should take together to prevent the next public health crisis.

To that end, yesterday I introduced a resolution in the Senate with my colleagues Senators Menendez, Flake, Durbin, and Corker, outlining some of these very steps and recognizing the severe and real threat the Ebola outbreak poses to West Africa and, if not properly contained, to other regions across the globe.

Here is the bottom line: We have what it takes to halt the spread of Ebola in West Africa and to save tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of lives in the process. Unlike other foreign interventions, doing so will take neither bullets nor bombs but rather our willingness, our compassion, our generosity, and our determination to act. The lives of thousands and the stability of entire countries is at stake. It is my hope and prayer that we will rise to this occasion with everything we have.

ISIS STRATEGY

Mr. President, I have come to the floor this morning to speak about our military's critical mission to defeat and degrade the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a terrorist organization that threatens the stability and security of tens of thousands across these two nations.

As we consider more deeply involving the U.S. military into a new combat mission, I am reminded of the brave young men and women who will carry out that mission with unparalleled courage and professionalism.

This past Saturday I had the opportunity to join hundreds of fellow Delawareans to welcome home and celebrate 70 men and women of the 3rd Battalion of the 238th Army National Guard Aviation Regiment who were returning from 1 year of service in Kuwait. Many of them were returning not just from one tour of duty but from what was their second or third deployment, having previously served in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet these volunteer citizen soldiers were and remain willing to continue serving. I have had the honor of knowing several current and former members of this unit, and my heart was heavy this weekend, thinking about how many more units such as these, how many soldiers and airmen and their families will be asked to continue serving in combat or in distant and difficult places supporting combat missions in the years ahead.

After more than a decade of conflict in the exactly 13 years since September 11, 2001, I know Americans are tired of war. I know we are weary of war. As the President spoke last night, it was clear he is as well, as am I.

But I would challenge my colleagues and my friends, as I challenge myself, that though we are weary, we cannot ignore the very real threats we face today. We cannot ignore the brutal events that have taken place in northwestern Iraq and in eastern Syria. We cannot ignore the threat that brutality poses to America and our allies. ISIS is a brutal terrorist organization. It has killed innocent Americans, such as the two brave journalists, James Foley and Steven Sotloff, whom they beheaded. Thousands of innocent Iraqis and Syrians have perished at their hands, and it will continue to do so unless the world comes together to stop it.

Let us not forget, one of the biggest reasons we first acted against ISIS militarily in Iraq this summer was to prevent the imminent genocide of a religious minority, the Yazidi people in Iraq. Images of tens of thousands of Yazidis and Christians who were being hounded and persecuted and threatened by ISIS and who then ultimately retreated to the top of a mountain I think transfixed the American people this August, and the action our President took and our military executed, to allow them to safely flee, encouraged all of us to know there are times and places when American military might can and should be used for good.

Just as the ISIS terrorists threaten the Yazidis, they too threaten the very survival of Christians, Kurds, Turkmen, and other ethnic and religious minorities in the region.

Last night, with my Republican colleague Senator Kirk, I cochaired the first meeting of the Senate Human Rights Caucus. We heard from representatives from Iraq's minority communities in a conversation that focused on ISIS's atrocities against innocent civilians simply because of who they are or how they worship. As we expand our campaign against ISIS, we must continue to engage with the people of Iraq and Syria and the region to learn from the past and continue to prevent massacres of innocent men, women, and children. ISIS is a group bent on the destruction of all people, of whatever background or religion, who do not subscribe to their hateful ideology.

Our President is right. What makes the United States a global force for good is that we are still willing to do what is hard because we know it is right. That is the responsibility that comes from being a nation uniquely founded on principles of freedom, of liberty, of justice, and of having built one of the most capable and powerful militaries in the world, of being a nation and a people born of immigrants who came from all over this world and who remain connected to it and touched by the things that happen in the far reaches of our globe.

Last night President Obama addressed our Nation to make the case for expanding military action against ISIS. Already, sadly, today there are critics of his strategy, just as there have been over the past few weeks. In fact, in the 4 years I have served here, I have rarely seen a day in the Senate when the President isn't challenged, criticized, blocked, and harried by his opponents.

There is always some way he could have acted more quickly or with more strength. Critics claim we would be better served by a sterner tone or a more eager finger on the trigger. I must say I was struck when former Vice President Cheney this past week criticized President Obama's restraint, as he has throughout President Obama's tenure. I remind my friends we can do better--we could do better--than to listen to the voices of those who misled this country into war in Iraq a decade ago, especially when it is clear they have learned none of the lessons of that tragic strategic blunder. Surely, as we consider carefully taking expanded military action now, we should applaud our President for proceeding with caution and humility.

Critical to our current strategy and what sets it apart from some past actions is this fact: We are not going alone. Seeking to lead a multilateral coalition is not leading from behind. It is not weakness. A muscular multilateralism is recognizing we are an indispensable nation, we are a leading nation, but we are not the only Nation that should take on and tackle the challenge ISIS presents. Much of the allure of ISIS is the illusion they have created that the Muslim world is at war with the West, when the truth is ISIS does not reflect or represent Islam and ISIS has killed more Muslims than any other people. The President's strategy of building a broad coalition of support, including across the Arab and Muslim world, is crucial to our success.

This is not just an American problem, it is a regional and global problem, and it will not be solved without the hard work of those living in the communities and countries most at risk, most affected, most harmed by ISIS.

We cannot and should not do this alone. That is the only way this works. It is a critical reason I support the President's strategy for expanded action.

Central to this strategy's success is our military action as well as diplomatic resources and pressure. Let's remember one of the reasons this has even happened is because of the abject failure of Prime Minister Maliki and his Iraqi Government to act in a pluralistic, inclusive way, as he had pledged he would, and has instead acted more as a Shia warlord over the last few years, sewing the seeds of dissent and of disconnection with his Sunni citizens that created the very vacuum into which ISIS has charged.

That is why this administration's diplomatic efforts to build an inclusive Iraqi Government--to demand an inclusive Iraqi Government--have been so important. We cannot defeat ISIS without Iraqis working hand in hand on the ground, and that requires a united Iraq whose future every Iraqi has a stake in preserving.

As we deepen our involvement, it is also necessary that we broaden our strategy. The fact is we cannot defeat ISIS by attacking it in Iraq alone. As we hit ISIS from the air, we also need to be cognizant of the fact that most of its strength and support is in Syria and that the boundary line dividing Iraq from Syria is today on the ground largely a fiction. So we need in Syria a strong and a moderate and an armed and a trained Syrian opposition ready, willing, and able to fight ISIS on the ground.

The President referred last night to our successful counterterrorism strategy in several places in the world. Let me, as the cochair of the African Affairs Subcommittee, briefly mention ways in which this strategy in Syria is similar to what our strategy has been in Somalia in combating al-Shabaab, a deadly Al Qaeda affiliate, which has governed, ruled, and terrorized much of Somalia over the past decade. There has been a similar strategy to the one articulated last night, where the United States has combined training, equipment, logistics, and tactical support with an African ground force drawn from Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia, where those troops have done the hard work of retaking and holding territory while the Somali Government and security forces get reestablished.

In the case of Syria, Saudi Arabia has just stepped up and agreed to provide the facilities, the funding, and the space to train and equip Syrian coalition fighters.

In Congress, we must act swiftly and decisively to support that training and equipment mission that the President has asked us to support by granting our President the authority and funding he needs.

Air strikes could happen soon, and we cannot make the mistake of taking out ISIS while giving Bashar al-Assad, the dictator who still terrorizes Syria, the opportunity to rush in. By helping build a cohesive, trained, and equipped moderate Syrian opposition, we can help prevent the expansion of ISIS and the Assad regime.

In the long run, in Syria and in Iraq, it is Syrians--moderate Syrians--who must retake their country from ISIS and undertake the very difficult and daunting challenge of rebuilding a stable and inclusive and hopefully someday peaceful society, after decades of dictatorship and more than 3 years of a withering civil war. The United States and Syria's neighbors and the entire international community need to be invested and engaged to help them along this difficult path.

We need to be direct with the American people. This is not going to be easy and it is not going to be swift. We must ensure our military has the resources it needs to carry out this mission. As President Obama said last night, the lives of brave American pilots and servicemembers will be put at risk. But we must also be clear. In their courage and service, they will be part of an important effort to eradicate from this Earth one of the greatest threats currently walking the planet.

Last night President Obama asked for the support of the American people as our Armed Forces and our partners begin in combination to carry out this mission. Let me say, he has mine. I am committed to working with my colleagues as later today all Senators attend a classified briefing, an update on ISIS, and as next week committees in this Senate hear testimony from Secretary of State Kerry and Secretary of Defense Hagel. I am committed to working with my colleagues and with Chairman Menendez on the Foreign Relations Committee to review, consider, draft, and approve an authorization for the use of military force when submitted to us by the President that gives Congress an appropriate role in oversight and the President the authorization he needs.

We need to do everything we can together to ensure that ISIS will be stopped. It has already shown itself, demonstrating its capability to commit unspeakable crimes. If left unchecked, these terrorists will spread their reach beyond our ability to stop them. We cannot let that happen. As my colleagues discuss and debate this mission, I only ask that we leave the politics of the moment out of it. With an election soon upon us, the temptation is strong to use every opportunity to achieve any short-term partisan advantage. But this is too important. Too much is at stake.

Today all over this country we call to mind and honor the sacrifices of Americans who served and those who lost their lives 13 years ago today. We must consider this new mission with the utmost gravity, humility, and caution. I am eager then to work with my colleagues here in the Senate and with the administration in a bipartisan way as we move forward to take on the difficult task of defeating ISIS and strengthening the forces of inclusion and moderation in Iraq and Syria. I urge my colleagues to work together to support this mission every step of the way.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum

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