Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I know that the hour is late and that my colleague from Oklahoma wishes to speak as well. I know Senators are eager to vote. I will not be long, but I will try to be concise in what I am about to say.

I came to the Senate primarily motivated by many different things, but one of the things that truly motivated me was the fiscal state of our country, the fear that our current spending patterns are not just unsustainable but threaten our future and impede our ability to achieve what I believe is our destiny--another American century.

That is why each time I have been here and I have had an opportunity placed before me to vote on a short-term spending matter, I have voted against it--because I felt they ignored our long-term problems of spending in this country and did not deal with them in a responsible way.

Once again, today we are confronted with a short-term spending bill that we are asked to approve; otherwise, the government will shut down and the world will stop spinning. But today's question is a little different from the ones that have been posed to us in the past. The one before us today has deeply imbedded in it an issue of national security.

For the better part of 3 years, I have argued that what is happening in Syria is in our national interest. Many, quite frankly, in my own party but also in the White House disagreed with my view. They felt that it was a regional conflict or one that could be handled by leading from behind. So from that time until today we have largely watched as events have unfolded in Syria without carefully explaining to the American people why we should care.

But I believed then--and I think I have been proven right by recent events--that what happened in Syria and what was happening in Syria was in our national interests because if we failed to influence the direction of that situation, it would leave open a space for radical jihadists from all over the world to establish an operation space from which they could carry out their plots not just against us but all free and freedom-loving people and peace-loving people in the world.

Sadly, that is what has happened in Syria. A protracted conflict has left open spaces, and foreign radical jihadists from everywhere on this planet have flowed to the deserts of Syria, where they set up organizations not just designed to topple Assad but to establish an Islamic caliphate that oversees multiple countries in the Middle East and ultimately will target us. I say ``target us'' because that caliphate cannot exist unless they drive America from the region. The way they intend to drive us from that region is by terrorizing us. Those efforts began recently when we saw the brutal murder of two brave young Americans--including one from my home State--for doing nothing other than being present and being from America.

Now we find ourselves in this situation. I feel the President and, as I said, people in both parties have taken too long to realize what a threat this is. I recognize that the options before us now are not as good as they would have been had we dealt with this 2 years ago, 3 years ago, or even 6 or 9 months ago. We have plenty of time in the weeks and months and years to come to debate what should have been done. I anticipate I will be involved in that debate because there are lessons to be learned from that. But today, as leaders of this country, we are called on to decide what we do now. What do we do now when confronted with a very real threat that, left unconfronted, will become a very real danger for the people we represent here in this country?

The President has come forward with a plan--a plan that I wish he had come forward with 6 months ago, that I called for 3 months ago. But I suppose, as in most things, better late than never. Even if late means our chances of success have been minimized, even if it will cost more money, and even if it will now take longer, better late than never.

That is the question before us now. I wish we had a separate debate on this issue. I wish we had a separate debate on this issue with regard to arming moderate rebel elements in Syria because there are real reasons to be concerned not just about whom we are arming but whether it will work.

I wish we had more time to debate the broader plan and come before this body and ask for an authorization for the use of force, although I think there is a compelling argument to be made that for immediate action, the President, as the Commander in Chief, does not need that authorization. We were not given that opportunity. What they are cheating is not just the political process, for in that debate we would have been able to inform the American people so they too would have learned more about this, but as a nation we could have come to a consensus about what the right thing to do is. But in the end, that is not the opportunity before us now. We are asked to decide things in this Chamber that are in the best interests of our country even if they did not work out the way we wanted them to or did not develop the way we wanted them to. That is what is before us here today.

I say this to you without a shadow of a doubt, as I said weeks ago: If we do not confront and defeat ISIL now, we will have to do so later. It will take a lot longer. It will be much costlier and even more painful. We will confront ISIL one way or the other--I believe the sooner, the better.

What we are asked to do now is approve funding to arm moderate rebel elements in Syria. There is no guarantee of success. There is none. But there is a guarantee of failure if we do not even try. Try we must for one fundamental reason: If we fail to approve this, the nations of that region will say that America is not truly engaged, that Americans are willing to talk about this but are not willing to do anything about it.

So despite my concerns about the underlying bill and the budgeting it entails, I will support this resolution because I think it is in the best interests of our national security.

I yield the floor.

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