A bill to require the imposition of sanctions with respect to Nord Stream 2 AG pursuant to the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object. I recognize that my friend from Oregon has been busy with affairs on the Finance Committee and so has not been involved in the now 2 years of debate over Nord Stream 2 on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But, unfortunately, that has resulted in the Senator from Oregon being given talking points--perhaps from the administration, perhaps from colleagues--that are simply factually incorrect. I am sure that is inadvertent.

The Senator from Oregon just said that there is no way to stop this pipeline, and that the Trump administration failed to impose sanctions to stop

the pipeline. Both of those statements are factually wrong.

I was the author of two separate pieces of legislation that passed into law concerning Nord Stream 2. Both were bipartisan legislation. Both, I authored with Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, in the Senate. Both passed with overwhelming bipartisan support from both Houses of Congress.

The first bill passed in December of 2019. Nord Stream 2 at the time was more than 90 percent complete, and the argument then that was being pushed by Russian disinformation and that, sadly, has been echoed by the Biden administration and was just echoed by the Senator from Oregon--the argument from Russian disinformation was, the pipeline can't be stopped; it is too late.

We know that was Russian disinformation because it was conclusively disproved. Putin stopped building the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline the very day that the Cruz-Shaheen bipartisan sanctions were signed into law-- not the next day, not the next week. That day, we stopped the pipeline in its tracks.

But, Mr. President, it was not only stopped for 1 day; it was stopped for more than a year. For December of 2019, for January, February, March--every month in 2020, the pipeline lay dormant. It was a piece of metal at the bottom of the ocean. So the claim that we cannot stop this pipeline is flat-out false because we did.

By the way, when the Senator from Oregon said the Trump administration couldn't stop this pipeline, that, again, is just incorrect. When the President signed the legislation, the pipeline was stopped that day. It remained stopped for over a year.

When did Putin return to building this pipeline? The date is important. Putin returned to building the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline on January 24, 2021, 4 days after Joe Biden was sworn into office. And he did so because Joe Biden and his team had already conveyed weakness that they would not enforce U.S. sanctions law and that they would roll over and give Putin and Russia a generational geopolitical gift. The only reason Putin began building again is because the Biden White House defied U.S. law to surrender to Putin.

Now, Joe Biden is entitled to believe that is a good policy idea. What he is not entitled to do is ignore U.S. law. And the Senator from Oregon suggests this nominee has nothing to do with that. Well, it is the Department of the Treasury that is ignoring the CAATSA law, that is refusing to follow the policy.

Sadly, this moment marks a new threshold in that debate. Up until this point, it has only been the Biden White House that has been surrendering to Russia. Sadly, now we have a Democratic Member of the Senate objecting to legislation to stop the Biden White House from surrendering to Russia. That is a move in the wrong direction.

That being said, my offer of reasonable compromise remains if we can come together as we have repeatedly, Republicans and Democrats, to force the President to obey the law and to stop surrendering to Russia in a way that hurts America, hurts Europe.

By the way, the European Parliament--my friends on the Democratic side of the aisle like to consider themselves lovers of our friends in Europe. The European Parliament voted on Nord Stream 2. The vote was roughly 500 to 50 against Nord Stream 2 because it makes our European allies subject to energy blackmail by Putin and his successor dictators.

This is bad for America, bad for Europe, bad for peace, bad for the environment, but good for Vladimir Putin and for Russia. Joe Biden is mistaken to be committing this surrender, and my friend from Oregon errs in joining Joe Biden in that surrender to Russia.

I hope the Senator from Oregon reconsiders. I hope Congress comes together again. But as long as that does not happen, I object.

Mr. President, I don't have objection to the article being included in the Record, but I would note that, once again, the Senator from Oregon is limited by the fact that he has not participated in the debate on this in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the last 2 years, because what he stated in his first remarks was that there was no way to stop the pipeline initially and the Trump administration failed to do so. That was factually incorrect.

We stopped the pipeline the day President Trump signed the bipartisan Cruz-Shaheen sanctions into law. That was December of 2019, and the pipeline was stopped for over a year. As I mentioned, on January 24 of 2020, 4 days after Joe Biden was sworn into office, Putin began-- returned to building the pipeline because Biden had already telegraphed his surrender to Russia.

Now, what my friend from Oregon just said is--he repeated news coverage that the pipeline is now, today, complete. That is, in fact, correct, that because Biden surrendered on this point, Putin went all in and finished the pipeline. But this is where being part of the Foreign Relations Committee discussion matters, because even though the pipeline is now physically complete, it does not mean it is operative. After the pipeline is physically complete, there are months of certifications required and multiple authorities.

The legislation that Congress passed as a bipartisan matter also imposes sanctions on any entity, any company that certifies the pipeline. Indeed, the position of the Biden State Department has been that even when the pipeline is complete, we can stop it from ever going online by stopping certification.

So the legislation that I just asked for consent would do exactly that--it would stop certification, and it would leave it as a hunk of metal rather than an operating pipeline enriching Putin at the expense of Europe and America. So we still have time to stop this.

One final observation. This morning, I spent a couple of hours in a classified briefing on this topic, on Nord Stream 2. A question that I posed to the Biden State Department--I said: What exactly did Joe Biden, did the administration get in exchange for surrendering to Russia in a way that will impact this country and Europe for decades to come?

The answer, I will say, was altogether unsatisfactory. The only thing the Biden White House got was good will from Angela Merkel, whose party was just defeated resoundingly this past weekend in the election. So Angela Merkel is on her way out. We got good will from someone who will very soon no longer be the leader of Germany.

Instead, the German people voted in--elevated the Greens, who were vocally opposed to the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline. So the new government in Germany is not going to appreciate Biden surrendering to Putin in a way that hurts the environment and hurts Germany. But we have alienated the Ukrainians; we have alienated the Poles; we have alienated Eastern Europe. The European Union voted 500 to 50, roughly, against Nord Stream 2. We got nothing, and we hurt U.S. jobs.

This is foolhardy, and I am hopeful that the Senate will exercise our historical role over foreign policy and prevent a President and an administration from making this mistake.

I would note, Secretary of State Blinken and the State Department argued vociferously in the interagency process to sanction Nord Stream 2 AG, and it was the political operatives at the Biden White House who overrode the State Department. They should not have done so, and today the Department of the Treasury should follow the law and impose sanctions under CAATSA or delist them and trigger a vote in this Congress.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object, Mr. President.

Mr. President, let's understand exactly what is at issue here. Jonathan Davidson has been nominated to be the Deputy Under Secretary for Legislative Affairs. In that particular role, he would not be directly involved in decisions over sanctions, No. 1.

No. 2, when it comes to Nord Stream 2, the Biden administration, to their credit, has recognized the threat from Russia, but also that the pipeline is nearly complete and the Trump administration failed to stop the construction.

Everything my colleague from Texas is raising in his concerns about Nord Stream 2 is already happening with another pipeline--Turk Stream 2--and my colleague is aware of this. He has been briefed repeatedly.

Now, for those who don't have access to the same kind of information that my colleague has, gas is already being diverted from Ukraine into Europe through Turk Stream 2 because the past administration did nothing about that pipeline either.

The Biden administration has actually put a plan forward to mitigate the effects of Nord Stream 2 and has received concrete agreements from the Germans to move Ukraine toward energy independence and address Russian threats.

I am just going to close with just another dose of good government. The 9/11 Commission specifically warned about the need to have senior, confirmed individuals in place to avoid a threat to the homeland. And, by the way, we did that during the Trump administration. We have far less people confirmed today than we did in 2001, before 9/11.

In my view, this has got to end. For these reasons, I object to the

Mr. President, I am going to be very brief and then make a unanimous consent request.

Again, we have a difference of opinion with respect to the facts. That is what the Senate is all about--real debate. In a moment, I am going to ask unanimous consent to put into the Record at this point an article from just a few days ago from the Wall Street Journal that makes the truth about Nord Stream 2 AG very clear.

In effect, in the Wall Street Journal article that we are going to put into the Record, the pipeline owner said last week that construction on the pipeline has been completed.

There is no reason to object to this very talented individual, John Davidson, to head this important post after he got a 28-to-0 vote in the Senate Finance Committee.

I think this article in the Wall Street Journal that I have just asked to be printed in the Record at this point in the debate, so we can make sure the facts are correct, supports our basic proposition on this side of the aisle.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.