Floor Statements

Mr. President, I would like to respond and to inform my colleagues about what would happen if this amendment were adopted by the body. No. 1, the foreign aid budget is less than 1 percent of the total Federal budget. It is about $52 to $53 billion. It has been reduced. A lot of things Senator Paul said about money being wasted were very much true in the past.

President Bush looked at foreign assistance in a different way to come up with the Millennium Challenge Corporation. We are now trying to make sure our dollars go to make us safer, to help people who are truly in need, and to make sure we have a presence in the world for which I think there would be no substitute. It cuts 67 percent of the foreign aid budget in three titles: USAID--those of you who have been to Afghanistan and other places, USAID projects are designed to make sure that once the military is withdrawn from that area, that we can hold.

Those of you who are tired of war, like all of us, I just want to go back to ``Charlie Wilson's War.'' The last scene in the movie was Mr. Wilson wanted $1 million to build some schoolhouses in Afghanistan, and the reply was: Man, I have got broken schools in my State and my district. And that is true in South Carolina, that is true in Kentucky, and it is true in West Virginia. But we had no soldiers in Afghanistan and no aid to Afghanistan during the Taliban reign. That model did not work.

If you think you can withdraw from the world and if you think America has no leadership role, then this is a good amendment. If you think the best thing America can do is invest in aid programs that help us as a Nation to be safer, then I would vote no for this amendment.

President Bush--one of his great legacies is that he invested in AIDS and malaria programs in Africa that saved a whole generation of African children. The Chinese are all over Africa trying to buy up the continent, and radical Islam is moving forward. What a time for America to tell the African people: No longer will we help you--because if this amendment is passed, it will devastate the account we have in Africa. We have almost no troops. The only thing we have to combat radical Islam and Chinese influence is our aid programs that will create a lot of jobs here in America.

Jordan--there are 250,000 Syrian refugees flooding into Jordan. The refugee account is being overwhelmed. If you care at all about the King of Jordan and stability in Jordan, for God's sake, vote against this amendment because it will devastate the money we set aside to deal with the refugee problem from the war in Syria.

As to Israel, the third title that is affected is the counternarcotics military assistance program, foreign military financing. We have contacted the Department of State and the Department of Defense. They told us: If you cut this account by 67 percent, it is going to put pressure on defense accounts. They are already under the threat of sequestration. It will affect the ability of our Nation to help Israel with the F-35 aircraft, armored vehicles, and protective systems for other vehicles.

If you think, as I do, that the world is a very dangerous place and it is better for America to lead than to come home and play like the world is not a dangerous place, vote against this amendment. It is $9 billion. It is 67 percent of the three accounts I have just described. Ask yourself, as a Member of the Senate, is now the time to tell the King of Jordan and the people of Jordan: We cannot help you with refugees overflowing into your country.

Because if the King goes, what happens next? Is now the time to send to the people of Israel a signal that we are going to reduce military assistance to their struggling nation, surrounded by a lot of adversaries? Is now the time to tell the people of Africa: America will be leaving; enjoy the Chinese presence.

Every time America tries to play the game that what happens in other places doesn't affect us, we pay a heavy price.

This meant 9/11 was the result of a place called Afghanistan falling into the hands of the most vicious people on the planet, and we sat on the sidelines. It wasn't long before the Taliban invited bin Laden in as their honored guest, and the rest is history.

There are at least six countries I can name in Africa today that, if we abandon Africa, are going to become the next places that attack us. I can tell you right now that if we abandon the King of Jordan, he will fall. You will wake up one day, and you will say, was that $9 billion worth all of what I have just described?

I wish we could come home. I wish we never had to send a dollar outside the State of South Carolina. But I promise you this: If we stop leading this world and we stop having a presence where others show up, we will pay a heavy price.

This amendment guts to their core three essential accounts that are very important to our national security and to who we are as Americans.

Don't create one disaster in trying to solve another. Please vote no.

Mr. President, I want to congratulate the authors and managers of the bill in the House with coming up with a very good bill for our military which will have pay raises and trying to increase our defenses.

I don't mind saying that I think we are at war. I know the Presiding Officer believes that. How long does the war last? I don't know. I cannot tell anyone. Am I supposed to know that? Can we not fight it unless we know the date it ends? America, is it part of the battlefield? Tell me. Where do you think they want to hit us the most? What do you think al-Qaida would like to do more than anything else? They would like to come here and destroy the building I am speaking in. The only reason they cannot get here yet is because we are fighting them over there.

We are gathering good intelligence. We are taking the war home to them. Our intelligence agencies, our FBI, our military, our CIA are all over the world tracking these crazy people so they cannot get here. So to suggest that I cannot tell when the war ends, therefore we have to turn it into a crime, is dangerous and absurd.

Did they know when Germany, Berlin, or Tokyo was going to fall? What happened to the German saboteurs who landed in Long Island during World War II? They were captured by the FBI and turned over to the military. What happened to the American citizens who were helping the German saboteurs? They were held as enemy combatants.

To my good friend from Kentucky, I don't doubt his passion or sincerity; I doubt his judgment on these issues.

The Supreme Court has spoken three different times. Less than 6 or 7 years ago an American citizen was caught helping the Taliban in Afghanistan and they said we could hold one of our own as an enemy combatant until the hostilities cease, and that is a hard time to figure out.

Let's get this right. If an American citizen helping the Taliban in Afghanistan kills our soldiers, can be captured and held as an enemy combatant according to the Supreme Court, what kind of world would we live in if the al-Qaida collaborator American citizen attacked us here, trying to kill us in our own homeland, to say: That doesn't count. The American citizen is no longer at war because we are in America; we have to read them their rights and give them a lawyer and we can't hold them for military intelligence-gathering purposes.

My good friend doesn't understand that in fighting a war, the goal is to win the war; it is to defeat the enemy. In fighting a crime, the goal is designed to hold somebody accountable for an illegal wrong. I have been a military lawyer for 30 years. He may not understand the law of war, but I do and the Supreme Court does. The Supreme Court has said in World War II and in this war, if an American citizen collaborates with the enemy, they will be given due process under the law of war. A Federal judge will hear the claim: I am wrongly held. I am not part of al-Qaida or the Taliban. That is the only time one could be held as an enemy combatant. In helping al-Qaida or the Taliban, one has to be involved in a plot or an act. If a Federal judge agrees with the government that, yes, in fact, there is evidence to suggest an American citizen is helping the Taliban or al-Qaida, I think most Americans would say it is reasonable to hold that person to find out what they know about this attack and future attacks.

Can my colleagues imagine what would happen in this country if three people were running up the Capitol steps to blow up the Capitol and one of them survived who was an American citizen and we couldn't hold them and question them by asking: Where did you train? Is there any other attack planned? What do you know? Whom did you work with? That we would have to say, within hours or a day or two, here is your lawyer and you have a right to remain silent? Can we imagine what would have happened in World War II if the American citizens who helped the Nazis--if we turned that into a common crime.

The difference between me and the Senator from Kentucky is that I believe with all my heart and soul that the al-Qaida, Taliban groups are at war with us and are trying to come to our homeland. I know they are trying to find American citizens who would help them, and they will. There has never been a war in America where somebody within the American citizen community did not collaborate with the enemy. That is happening today. When that day comes and we capture that person, I want as an option the ability to hold them as an enemy combatant, as we did in other wars. They will get their day in court, but they will not be read their rights or given a lawyer on the spot because that would stop intelligence gathering.

To the managers of this bill, to the men and women of the House who sent it over here, thank God they chose a balance between due process and common sense.

All I will say is that the way we found bin Laden was not through torture. I am offended by that, as are Senator McCain and Senator Levin. The way we tracked down bin Laden is we had people held at Gitmo for years under the law of war. We don't try them or let them go. When we capture somebody on the battlefield, we don't hold a trial; we hold the prisoner to try to gather intelligence and keep them off the battlefield. Through that process, over years, the Bush administration and the Obama administration put together the puzzle about bin Laden. It wasn't because of waterboarding; it was because this country had available to it the law of war detention that allows us to hold people and get to know them over time and make sure they could not go back to the fight and good questioning and good interrogation techniques led to finding bin Laden. What the Senator from Kentucky is saying is it would not be available to us as a nation if an American citizen were involved in attacking us on the homeland. What an absurd result, that if an American citizen joined al-Qaida to kill everybody in this room, for some unknown reason, we would turn that into a crime rather than an act of war.

If a person collaborates with al-Qaida or the Taliban, two things can happen to them: They can get killed or they can get captured. Most likely they will get a trial one day and nobody is restricting their trial rights. What Senator Levin said is true. There is nothing in here restricting the right of trial. What is in here is giving us the option to hold someone as an enemy combatant so we don't have to Mirandize them and turn an act of war into a crime.

I am afraid it will not be long before this is tested in reality. The enemy is afoot. They are trying to penetrate our homeland. They are seeking aid and comfort from Americans within our own country who are going to side with the enemy, unfortunately. When that day comes, I wish to make sure we have the ability in this war, as in every other war, to hold them and to gather intelligence--not to torture them but to make sure we are safe as a nation. Due process, yes. Under the law of war, it must be so. If we turn this war into a crime, we are going to regret it. If my colleagues don't believe we are at war, then I cannot disagree more. I cannot tell my colleagues when the war ends, but I will tell them how it ends. This is how it is going to end: We are going to win and they are going to lose because we can't afford to lose.

Between now and when that day comes, we are going to take the fight to them. If we find an American citizen helping the enemy overseas-- this President ordered the killing by drone of al-Awlaki, an American citizen overseas--I believe it was Yemen--and the President said: I have ample evidence he is now assisting al-Qaida overseas to attack American targets and I am going to take him out. Well done, Mr. President. Well done, Mr. President.

If most of us agree we can kill an American citizen helping al-Qaida kill us overseas, we can't capture an American citizen helping al-Qaida here at home and hold him for questioning under the law of war, what an absurd result.

I not only am going to vote for this bill, I am going to celebrate the fact we have done nothing to stop the right to trial. As Senator Levin said, there is not one thing in this bill that restricts a person's right to a trial. What we do have in this bill is the recognition we are at war and we retain as an option that has not been used--there is no American citizen in detention--but there may be a need for that one day and we retain that right under this bill.

Sure.

Good decision, Mr. President.

It makes no sense, I say to the Senator. He would be entitled to a habeas hearing if he were caught in the United States, but he would be held under the law of war because the allegation is not that he was committing a crime but that he was collaborating with the enemy.

So, yes, we could have a scenario, according to the view of the Senator from Kentucky, that we could kill somebody--an American citizen overseas helping the enemy kill our troops--but if they joined with al- Qaida here at home, all of a sudden we have to give them a lawyer and read them their rights and we can't hold them under the law of war detention to find out what they know about an impending attack. That makes absolutely no sense. The Supreme Court has rejected that kind of thinking.

I hope that day never comes, but I can tell my colleagues this: I don't know when the war is over, he is right about that, but I know this: As long as I am in the Senate, we are going to fight it and we are going to fight it as a war, not a crime.

Madam President, I wanted to be recognized for 10 minutes to talk about the decision by Senator DeMint to leave the Senate next year. But I wish to say to my friend from North Dakota, all of us have in our prayers the loss of our soldiers there and all of the soldiers who have been in a tough, long, hard war.

I met with Jim DeMint this morning. To say I was stunned is an understatement. Jim indicated to me that he will be retiring from the Senate next year and taking over the presidency of the Heritage Foundation, one of the great conservative think tanks here in Washington.

My reaction for the people of South Carolina is: You have lost a great, strong conservative voice, someone who has championed the conservative cause and represented our State with distinction, sincerity, and a great deal of passion. On a personal level, I have lost my colleague and friend. Jim and I have known each other for almost 20 years now. I think we have done a pretty darn good job for South Carolina, at times playing the good cop, the bad cop, but always trying to work together. What differences we have had have been sincere.

That is the word I would use about Senator DeMint. He sincerely believes in his causes. He is a conservative voice that people in our party look to for leadership and guidance. What he has done over the last 4 to 6 years to build a conservative movement to get people involved in politics, such as Marco Rubio, whom Jim helped early on in his primary, I think is going to be a great legacy. From a State point of view, we have lost one of our great champions. Jim and Debbie have raised four wonderful children. They have great grandkids. I know Jim is looking forward to staying involved and pushing the conservative outside the body. He was an effective voice in the Senate, whether you agreed with Jim or not. He really did strongly and passionately advocate for his positions and did it very effectively.

Jim made the Republican Party, quite frankly, look inward and do some self-evaluation. Conservatism is an asset, not a liability, as we try to govern this country in the 21st century. I look forward to staying in touch with Jim and to working with him at the Heritage Foundation to see what we can do to improve the fate of our country so we will not become Greece.

No one is more worried about this Nation's unsustainable debt situation than Senator DeMint. I have seen him evolve over time as someone who could not sit quietly anymore, who had to take up the cause.

In the 2010 election cycle, he was one of the strongest voices we had that we had lost our way in Washington. I know Jim to be a very kind, sincere man. He is an individual who is a joy to be around.

But when it comes to what is going on in America, I think Jim understands that if we don't make some changes and make them quickly, we are going to lose our way of life. That is what has driven him above all else. He is trying to keep this country the land of the free and the home of the brave, where people's hard work is rewarded--not punished--where we have a chance to come from nowhere to be anything, including President of the United States. Jim is right to say our debt is unsustainable, that Washington does too much, and there is a better way.

I will look forward to working with Jim in the private sector. From a personal point of view, we have had a great ride together. It has been fun, it has been challenging, and I think we put South Carolina on the map in different ways at different times. To people back in South Carolina, I hope if they get to see Jim anytime soon, say thank you. Because whether they agree with Senator DeMint, he was doing what he thought was best for South Carolina and the United States.

At the end of the day, that is as good as it gets. Because if someone is doing what they truly believe in and not worried about being the most popular or people getting mad at them, then one can do a good job in Washington. To the people back in South Carolina, everything Jim has tried to do has been motivated by changing the country, making South Carolina the best we could be at home.

So if you get a chance, run into Jim anytime soon or in the coming days, please say thank you because he did his job as he saw fit. He did what he thought was best, and he didn't worry about being the most popular or taking on people when he thought he was right.

I can tell you this. When it comes to me, he has always been a friend, somebody I could count on personally. We

enjoyed our time together. I was stunned this morning. Jim has an unlimited bright future in the private sector. I will say more next year when his time comes to an end.

But on behalf of all of us in South Carolina, I wish to say to Jim and Debbie, thank you very much for taking time away from your family, fighting the good fight, and pressing issues you passionately believe in. I wish to thank Jim and Debbie both for being my friends. You all both mean a great deal to me, and I am confident the best is yet to come for both of you.

On behalf of the people of South Carolina, great job, well done.

I yield the floor.

We thought there was 20 minutes on each side. Apparently, it is close enough. Just a few minutes? But I want Senator Ayotte to wrap this up.

Mr. President, long story short, the American people believe that the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, isolated from the American population, that is being well run by our military and monitored by all kinds of organizations, is a satisfactory answer to the problem of terrorism. Simply stated, the American people do not want to close Guantanamo Bay, which is an isolated, military-controlled facility, to bring these crazy bastards who want to kill us all to the United States. Most Americans believe that the people at Guantanamo Bay are not some kind of burglar or bank robber. They are bent on our destruction. I stand with the American people, that we are under siege, we are under attack, and we are at war.

Some of my colleagues in this body have forgotten what 9/11 is all about. The people in that prison who attacked us on 9/11 want to destroy our way of life. They do not want to steal your car. They don't want to break into your house.

We have a military prison being well run, so I think the American people are telling everybody in this body: Have you lost your minds? We are at war; act like we are at war.

I yield.

Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity. This is a good debate. It is a fascinating discussion. I guess the way I look at this issue--and we will talk with Senator Levin in a bit--I have been a military lawyer for about 30 years, and the first thing you do in JAG school is have a discussion about the difference between the law of war and criminal law. Every military lawyer is taught from the very beginning of their career that law of war detention is designed to neutralize the enemy and to gather intelligence about the enemy.

There is a reason that when we capture somebody in a war we do not give them a trial by jury, and we do not give them a lawyer. We have 3,000 people in American military custody in Afghanistan who were captured on the battlefield, and they are held under the law of war because we do not want to let them go back to killing us. And they are not given a lawyer because we are not trying to solve a crime; we are trying to win a war.

Here is the question to my good friend from California: I do not want anyone to believe that under the law of war construct we have created over the last 7 or 8 years that you can be put in jail because you look like a Muslim, that you sound like a Muslim, that you have got a name Mohammad. What happened to Japanese-American citizens is they were put in military custody because we were all afraid and they looked like the enemy. That was not a high point in America.

What are we talking about here? We are talking about detaining people under the law of war who are suspected of joining al-Qaida or the Taliban and engaging in a belligerent act against the United States. I want to make the record clear that some of my colleagues on the Republican side have been trying to deny law of war detention to the Obama administration, and they have openly said this: If you allow this to happen, President Obama is going to put you in jail because of political dissent.

There are people on my side who are afraid of law of war detention being in Barack Obama's hands because they think,--they hate him so much they think he is going to use a provision to protect us against an al-Qaida attack to put them in jail because they disagree with his agenda.

It gets worse. I want you to know this. There has been a statement in our conference that habeas corpus review by an independent judiciary where the intelligence community, the military, would have to prove in court by a preponderance of the evidence that the person in question has, in fact, engaged in hostilities against the United States by helping the Taliban or al-Qaida--that is the requirement of the government--they have to prove that to the judge, that is not really a check on government power because the judge could be an Obama appointee.

As much as I disagree with President Obama, as much as I think he has been a divisive President, in many ways has failed to lead, I want to disassociate myself from the concept that you cannot give this Commander in Chief the powers that Commanders in Chief have enjoyed in other wars because we hate him so much.

To my friends who get on the Internet and talk radio and stoke this paranoia, we are afraid enough for good reason. This is a dangerous world. We are about to walk off the fiscal cliff. We have people out there trying to undermine our way of life. There is a lot to be afraid of: Al-Qaida coming back to our shores, recruiting American citizens to help their endeavors. I hate to say it, in every war we have ever been in, there have been occasions when Americans joined the enemy.

In World War II that happened. You had German saboteurs land on Long Island, aided and abetted by American citizens sympathetic to the Nazis. All of those American citizens in In Re: Quirin were held in military custody and tried by the military because we have long understood that when you join the enemy, that is not a crime but an act of war.

We have very bad people who get a right to a jury trial. I will be the first one to say that when you go to court, no matter if you are the worst terrorist in the world, you will get a jury trial, you will get a lawyer, and you will have your due process rights. But the difference I am trying to inform the body of when you are fighting a war is the goal is not to prosecute people, the goal is to win. And how do you win a war? You kill them; you capture them; you interrogate them to find out what they are up to next. So I am here to say to my colleagues that the al-Qaida-Taliban efforts to do harm to our Nation are alive and growing. The narrative that al-Qaida has been decimated is a false narrative. What happened in Libya, unfortunately, is going to happen again.

I know my good friend from California, who is the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, knows there are active efforts in our own backyard--and Joe Lieberman can tell you, too--to recruit American citizens to attack us--not to commit a crime, to join the enemy.

All I am suggesting is that Barack Obama and every Commander in Chief in the future needs to have the tools available to protect us against an enemy. And the basic question is: Is fighting al-Qaida fighting a crime or fighting a war? I believe with all of my heart and soul that they do not want our property, they do not want our cars, they do not want our bank accounts, they want to destroy us. They hate what we stand for. Just as in World War II, when you decided to help the Nazis, you were held in military custody because you did something other than commit a crime.

The goal here is if you capture an American citizen who has sided with the enemy that we preserve the ability of our military intelligence community to find out what they know about future attacks and present attacks. The goal of a criminal prosecution is to find justice under a criminal statute. The goal in time of war is to win.

I do not believe in torturing people to get good information, but I do believe in interrogating them for military purposes if they have sided with the enemy.

This is a great debate. But the one thing I do not want to associate myself with is as much as I may disagree with this President's agenda, there are people on my side of the aisle who are stirring up their fellow Americans, making them afraid that Barack Obama could use legitimate powers in a time of war to gather intelligence against people who sided with the enemy to come after them because they look different or they may have a different political belief. I want to disassociate myself with those on my side of the aisle who say that habeas corpus, an independent judiciary, is not an adequate check because Barack Obama may have appointed the judge. That undermines our judiciary. That creates paranoia. That creates a fundamental distrust of what I think is something we should be all proud of: America.

This war will last probably longer than most of us. It is an ideological struggle. There is no capital to conquer, like Berlin and Japan. There is no air force to shoot down. There is no navy to sink. It is about an ideology that must be contained and fought, an ideology, unfortunately, that will be attractive to some Americans as it was in other wars.

Unfortunately, as I speak today, the enemy is trying to come back to our shores and use some American citizens to further their cause. To an American citizen: Do not join al-Qaida or the Taliban. Do not turn on your country. Do not side with their view of humanity. If you do, you have not committed a crime, you have engaged in an act of war against the rest of us and we have a right to win this war. We have a right to hold you under the law of armed conflict as we have held others in the past, to find out why you joined, what you know, and what they are up to next. There is no American citizen in law of war custody. This President has not rounded up one person and put them in jail using the statute that exists today because they disagreed with him. I do not believe he will. All I am asking is that we have options available in this war that have existed in every war America has fought. Because here is my bottom-line belief, that as much as the Nazis represented a threat to humanity, al-Qaida represents an equal threat to humanity. And nobody in World War II would have entertained the idea that if you sided with the Nazis and you helped the saboteurs blow up parts of America, you should be considered anything other than an enemy who has joined the other side.

So unlike criminal law, where you are trying to find justice for victims, this is about winning a war and marginalizing the enemy. And when the enemy is able to turn one of our own, the last thing in the world we should do is deny ourselves the ability to interrogate that person in a way to help us win the war and keep us safe. That has been the law forever when it comes to war. That is the law today, that will be the law tomorrow.

I look forward to talking to Senator Levin, who has been a 100- percent voice of reason, to talk about authorization to use force and the ability to detain.

I will end with this thought: If you deny the ability to gather intelligence and detain, you do not want to put our troops in a position where they have to kill everybody they find. We want to capture the enemy when we can. Because when you capture the enemy, not only do you hurt the enemy, you find out a lot about what they are up to. Here is the question: If an American citizen is engaging in helping al-Qaida and the Taliban in a terrorist activity on our shores, are they the enemy? Yes, they are. We need to know about why they did what they did and what they are going to do next.

With that, I will yield.

Mr. President, I would like to inform the body that I think Senator Levin's understanding and reasoning is incredibly sound. We have actually been talking about this for a couple of days. And in light of the Hamdi decision and just plain old common sense, I will support the Feinstein amendment.

I will be the first to say that if we are attacked by the Iranians tomorrow or some other group, we have an authorization to use force. Senator Levin and I will be the first to say in that authorization that it will provide that if an American citizen joins the Iranians in a war against America, they can be detained under the law of war.

Now, you can vote however you like. I know how I will vote. But this has already gone up to the Supreme Court. And if I can build on what Senator Levin said as to the logic of the Court and I think the logic of our position, let's get us back to the United States. I don't think anybody in their right mind would say the United States is not part of the battlefield in the war on terror. I would suggest that of all the places the enemy wants to hit us, they want to hit us here at home the most. Their goal is to kill us here. They will kill us in Libya, they will kill us in Afghanistan, they will attack our consulates, they will kill our soldiers, they will blow up our embassies, they will hit us all over the world, but don't be misled--they want to hit us here. Remember 9/11? I do. I am sure you all do.

You know what. The only reason we haven't had another 9/11 is we have been fighting these bastards over there, where we have been getting good intelligence. It took a couple of years before any of the people held at Guantanamo Bay told us what was going on, but we found out about bin Laden--and not because we tortured people but because we put the intelligence puzzle together over time by holding people under the law of war and gathering good intelligence. That is how we got bin Laden. So bin Laden is dead, but the war is not over. I wish it were.

Now, the homeland. If there is a planned attack on a Navy vessel or a military installation, I think the point Senator Levin was making is that we have already authorized the use of force to protect the country against the Taliban and al-Qaida; is that right?

I want to build on that just to make sure we understand about a potential attack on a Navy base here at home. No one is suggesting the military could not use force against an al-Qaida attack here at home. The Hamdi case was an American citizen captured in Afghanistan. I hope we are not trying to create a picture that somehow America is a place where our own military cannot fire a shot in defense of their ships or our country.

Let's say we have some ships up there in Virginia and we have a boatload of al-Qaida types trying to ram the ship. Does the Senator agree with me that our military can use force to defend us here at home against al-Qaida?

So if our military is authorized to use force, they do not have to call the FBI or the Virginia State Police to shoot. They can shoot against an enemy themselves coming at them in America.

Right. Because we are not fighting a crime. We don't have to disarm our military and call the local cops and say: Would you please shoot these people before they get here? No. Our guys are going to shoot you. If you are an American citizen asked to get in a boat and asked to attack a military ship or installation in the United States, we are going to shoot you, and if we wound you, we are going to capture you. And here is what we are going to do to you as an incident of using force. The Supreme Court has said that when you authorize the use of force, it makes no sense to give that authorization if you don't have the power to detain because the worst thing you can do to the American military is to make them kill everybody and capture no one or let the other guys go. So kill-them-all is not good policy, and it is a bad spot to put your military in. And the option shouldn't be to kill them all or let them all go; the option should be to kill where you have to and, if you can, capture. Does the Senator agree with that?

And our military can fire the shots because of the use of force to defend the homeland and to defend themselves here at home. And the Supreme Court says that once you authorize the ability to use force, it just follows, as night follows day, that detention is part of the ability to use force because, ladies and gentlemen, if it is not, you have turned our military into murderers because you are not supposed to shoot somebody and leave them wounded in the water, and you shouldn't watch them swim away. You capture them and interrogate them under the law of war. Isn't that what Hamdi is about and the point they are trying to make?

I will read another quote from Hamdi.

There is no bar to this Nation's holding one of its own

citizens as an enemy combatant.

Hamdi's detention could last for the rest of his life because the law of war detention can last for the duration of the relevant conflict.

Here is what we are trying to do. We are trying to create a system consistent with the Hamdi decision, and quite frankly, ladies and gentlemen, what I am trying to avoid is the criminal paradigm because I know the difference between criminal law and law of war. Under the law of war, you can detain somebody for interrogation to find out what the enemy is up to if you believe that person to be part of the enemy.

And let me tell my friends, I do not want to take our criminal justice system and bastardize it. During the Bush years when we had the military commission rollout, they had a provision that in a military commission trial, the military jury could be given classified information but not share it with the defendant. I said: No. If a trial means anything, it means the right to confront those witnesses against you. I jealously guard that. The worst al-Qaida member in the world, when they go on trial in military commissions, will have a lawyer, a right to appeal to our Supreme Court, and will be able to confront every witness against them. An American citizen who joins al-Qaida or the Taliban will be tried in Federal court because we took military commissions off the table. That is the trial.

Here is the main point: If you are allowing our military to use force to protect themselves, as Hamdi says, it naturally follows that with the use of force comes the lawful detention. And that is why I will be voting for Feinstein. I think that is where most Americans are. If there is any confusion, we can talk about this in conference.

But, Senator Levin, I want to thank you for--since 2006--working with me and against me. You know, our dispute about what would be an active substitute for habeas went to the Supreme Court, and you won 5 to 4. Damn those Justices, but that is the way it goes. And you know what. There were some Republicans and Democrats who disagreed with me and you both. But I respect an independent judiciary, and I know Justice Roberts kind of got some people mad at him because of the ObamaCare decision, but that is the way it goes. That is the way these old judges are. I just really appreciate an independent judiciary.

I just want to say that after that decision in 2006 or 2007, how much of a pleasure it has been to work with you and others to try to find a way to achieve a balance in a war that is hard to understand. There is no capital to conquer, no airplanes to shoot down in terms of their jet fighters, there is no navy to sink, but they use boats to attack us and they use private planes to kill us. At the end of the day, we are at war. The outcome does matter, and I want to win this war. I know everybody in this body wants to win this war. But I want to live within our values.

So I will work with Senator Levin and Senator McCain and say that even though we are fighting the worst people on the planet, count me out when it comes to waterboarding. I remember when people on my side would say--and I understand them very well--why do you care about what we do to these people? They will cut our heads off.

Because we are Americans. It is not necessary to go down that road to win the war. And quite frankly, ladies and gentlemen, the opposite is true. You can't win this war if you don't realize you are in a war. We are not fighting common crime, we are fighting a vicious enemy. And we can do it within our values. We can do it within due process consistent with the law of war and, when we get in that criminal arena, consistent with criminal law.

As much as I disagree with this President, I will not deny him the ability that every Commander in Chief has had for decades as an option, if he chooses to use it. And if you want to go down the criminal road, we can, but we need the option. As much as I dislike President Obama, I am not going to use as a reason to change the law of war that Barack Obama may put some people in jail who disagree with him, and I am not going to buy into some of the rhetoric coming out of our side that a habeas corpus independent judiciary view means nothing if Obama appointed the judge. We are better than that.

I stand ready to vote for Feinstein, I stand ready to work with my colleagues to continue to find a way to fight and win a war within our values, the outcome of which will matter not only to us but those who follow.

God bless every person on the front line who is risking their life at home and abroad. And here is what you have as a promise between Senator Levin and myself and many others: We are going to give you the tools to keep us safe and to keep your comrades safe. We are not going to do things in this war that made no sense in other wars. You need our help, you need our prayers, and you need the tools to fight and win this war, and we will give you those tools.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am very grateful to engage. Here is the request of the body: Benghazi needs to be investigated. We need to find out what happened so it never happens again. We have four Americans killed, the first Ambassador killed in the line of duty in 33 years. That is worthy of our time. Dianne Feinstein is doing a very good job with Saxby Chambliss on the intel side. General Petraeus must testify. I think Secretary Clinton must testify.

Here is the problem that I have with the approach we are taking. Armed services need to ask DOD: How could you not come to the aid of the consulate for almost 8 hours on September 11, of all days? The State Department needs to be asked: Why did you deny additional security requests that had been made for months, and could you not see this coming? And the CIA needs to be asked a lot of questions also.

A select committee where we have members of intel, foreign relations, and armed services listening to all three agencies explain themselves I think is essential to get to the truth. I will not know what General Petraeus says in the intel committee, and I want to get to ask him questions. There will be people on the intel committee who will not be able to ask Secretary Panetta, General Hammond, and others about the DOD piece. This is a failure on many fronts and I think the best thing for the Senate to do is have a bipartisan select committee where we combine the resources of all three of the committees that have jurisdiction over different pieces, and create a professional approach to solving the problem. It will be run by our Democratic colleagues because they are in charge of the body, and should be.

There have been times in the past--Iran Contra and other examples--of where committees combined their resources to make sure they fully understood what was being said. If we stovepipe this and one committee goes one way and the other committee goes another way, we are not going to get the complete picture of what happened in Benghazi. That is what we are asking, that the minority leader and majority leader create a select committee of the three committees that have primary jurisdiction over each moving part so we can get to the bottom of this.

Here is why it is important: There are a lot of conspiracy theories going around on the Internet, and I wish to be able to say that is just not so because here is what we found. There are a lot of accusations being made against people I know and like. I wish to be able to say this accusation is unfounded. If unfortunately there is some accountability to be had by somebody I like, I can say here is why we had to do it. It would help us all to go to the public and say we did this together and in a professional and logical way and here are the results of our work product, so we can get Benghazi behind us and move forward. Until we do that, I think we are failing the American people.

I think the process we are engaging in today is going to lead to uncoordinated fact-finding and pieces of the puzzle will never be put together because we are not talking and working together. I think we are going to let families down. The process we are engaging in today will not get to the truth.

Yes.

I will turn this over to the Senator from New Hampshire, but my response would be as follows: There is a news article coming from somewhere within the State Department suggesting the CIA was responsible for consulate security because this mostly was a CIA operation. But there is an article coming out of the CIA corners basically saying: We responded very quickly and efficiently to the attack.

Here is my problem. If you do not have a select committee listening to all the stories, it is pretty hard to put the puzzle together. My response would be, why did the people in the State Department assigned to Benghazi ask for support from the State Department if this was, in fact, a CIA responsibility? I want to hear the State Department explain that. In a news article, you are trying to create the impression that ``we are a secondary player.'' That would be news to every State Department official in Libya because they were asking the State Department for security.

I wish to challenge the CIA's narrative of what they did and how they did it. But I want to hear the complete story.

The Senator from New Hampshire has been an attorney general prosecuting cases, and I wish to get her input into how efficient she thinks it would be for three committees to do their own investigations, never talk to each other in a coordinated fashion, have a stovepipe investigation versus a coordinated, one-body-listening-to-everybody approach?

I thank the Senator.

It was very difficult politics. It was a very fragile but robust coalition back in the day. President Bush sent over two Cabinet Secretaries every week and was personally involved in trying to get comprehensive immigration reform passed in 2006 and 2007. I saw firsthand the commitment by the White House, where Secretary Gutierrez and many others came over--the Homeland Security Secretary came over-- and basically wrote the bill line by line--Senator Kennedy, myself, McCain, Kyl--a bunch of people--Salazar. Senator Obama showed up on occasion.

But at the end of the day, the basic construct was that for a modern immigration system--merit-based immigration, a new way of doing business, better border security, better employer verification systems--Republicans would allow the 12 million to earn their way into lawful standing--a long and arduous way back to citizenship they would have to earn--and, in return, we would get a temporary worker program that would help American businesses supplement the labor force when they could not find an American worker, after paying a competitive wage.

The chamber, all businesses were for this because it gave the business community the certainty they needed regarding immigration. Part of the grand bargain was that the chamber would be able to access labor in a more modern, efficient way. The labor unions hated that part of the bill. A lot of people on the right hated the idea of an earned pathway to citizenship--coming out of the shadows and living under the law, paying taxes, and all the other things in the bill.

Senator Obama, out of nowhere, came to the floor and said: I have a commonsense amendment I would like to propose that we sunset the temporary worker program--$400,000, I think it was, allocated to American businesses--after 5 years.

Well, what would have happened if I came to the floor and said: Let's terminate the pathway to citizenship or sunset it after 5 years?

That was the heart and soul of the deal. Thank God his amendment went down. But during the negotiations and during that critical time, I think he gave in to the pressure from the unions. But he did promise, in 2008, when he ran against Senator McCain, that he would pass comprehensive immigration reform in his first year.

I looked at the interview last night and got bits and pieces of it. As I recall the first year of the Obama administration, it was all about ObamaCare and

the stimulus. I do not remember any effort, bipartisan or otherwise, to deal with comprehensive immigration reform because all the political capital was spent on ObamaCare and the stimulus.

At the end of the day, the only time President Obama has talked about immigration reform was when rallies were going to be held. And here, at the late hour of the election, he tries to do something with a dream act modified in a unilateral fashion.

So at the end of the day, the Senator is right, I say to Senator McCain. He can blame others, but I think the record speaks pretty loudly and clearly where his agenda lay in the first couple years of his administration, and immigration reform was not even a blip on the radar screen.

Foreign Aid

Just briefly. I was very disappointed in the briefing yesterday too. The bottom line is that we asked questions like: How many security people were at the Benghazi consulate?

We will have to get back with you.

And you pick up the New York Times and you get a blow-by-blow description of what supposedly went on. So it was very frustrating, like pulling teeth to get information yesterday. A lot of Senators are frustrated. You pick up major papers in the country and you find details not shared with you.

One of the things I am worried about is that we are trying to find out who committed these terrible acts of terrorism. They were acts of terrorism, not a spontaneous riot.

We said: What is the game plan? Will they be held as enemy combatants? Are they going to be held as common criminals? Will they be prosecuted in Libya? Will they be brought back to the United States? Do you have to read them Miranda rights?

There was absolutely not a whole lot of information. But at the end of the day, I think it was a lost opportunity to inform the Congress.

Can we now move to the Rand Paul amendment?

Mr. President, I do see Senator Chambliss here. I will ask him a question and get his thoughts.

To kind of follow on what Senator McCain said and to begin with, Rand Paul is a recently elected Senator who has come to the body with a lot of enthusiasm, and he is willing to make hard choices. I have worked with him on Medicare reform, on Social Security reform. I think he will take on the spending situation in this country very aggressively. I think he is very brave when it comes to entitlement reform. On that side of the ledger, I find myself very much in agreement with what he wants to do. But he does have a view of foreign policy that I think is ill-suited to the times and historically has not worn very well.

As Senator McCain said, history is full of moments where America and other powers felt that now is the time to withdraw and let those people argue among themselves. The problem with letting ``those people''--and you just fill in the blank who they might be--argue among themselves is that it ignores the fact of what goes on in one place in the world can affect us, and there is no better example than 9/11. The entire operation to attack our Nation cost less than $1 million. The 20 or 21 terrorists who trained to attack us had about a $1 million budget. The author of this attack lived in a cave in a far-away place called Afghanistan. So it does matter what happens in places such as Afghanistan. Radical Islamists have no desire for democracy in the Mideast or anywhere else, and they are a force within the Mideast and throughout the world.

But the good news for us is they are a minority force. The Taliban, which is a cousin of al-Qaida, basically, are very much rejected by the Afghan people. When traveling to Kabul today, one sees a city with electricity, with commerce, with cars, with movement, and with women in school. The average Afghan doesn't want to go back to the Taliban way of doing business, where there is no music, there is no interaction with each other except on terms set for them. So what we see on the television at night is a political struggle for the heart and soul of the Mideast. This has been going on for a long time and, finally, the lid blew.

Egypt was an authoritarian, corrupt dictatorship. Tunisia. Libya was ruled by Qadhafi, Syria by Assad. What we see are people who have seen another way of living and they are saying, enough already, I am not going to be part of that anymore. I am going to try to change my life and my children's lives.

Within that population there also are people who are dead set on making sure that nation in the Islamic world go backward, not forward. We have to take sides. If we don't take sides, if we sit on the sidelines, we will pay a price.

I think it is better to help people fight the Taliban than it is to ignore the Taliban. I think it is good to go

after al-Qaida in every country on the planet so they never know a moment of peace, but we can have a few moments of peace. I think it is better to fight these guys in their backyard than to stay home and let them come to our backyard. There is a reason we haven't been attacked in over 11 years. We have been on the offensive, and there are more ways to be on the offensive than just bombing people.

The biggest fear of the Taliban and al-Qaida, beyond having a bomb dropped on their head--and they do not mind dying; they really don't like living. They will die in a heartbeat to make sure others can't live their lives the way they like. It is absolutely of no consequence to them to sacrifice their own life and take someone with them. Their goal is: If we are going to live, we are going to live their way, not our way. But their big fear is that people will have the capacity to say no to them and the ability to fight back and win in the countries in question.

When we killed bin Laden, that was a moment of satisfaction and justice. But has that changed the war on terror? Have the terrorists given up? Have people said: Oh, the Americans killed bin Laden so we better not go over the wall in Egypt; we better not attack the consulate? No. This is a struggle between the modern world and forces of darkness, and the way America wins this war is to empower those in other countries to fight and win in their own country, without us having to be there with 100,000 troops all the time.

The biggest nightmare of the Taliban and al-Qaida is to see built a one-room schoolhouse where kids can get an education, for the people to have clean drinking water that they own and control, where people can go to a courtroom rather than a sharia court to have conflicts resolved, and to see commerce and interaction with the rest of the world, to trade with the rest of the world. That is what they fear most.

Our foreign assistance budget--foreign aid--is 1 percent of the entire Federal budget. If we took it off the table, we would be left with the following way to affect the world: Do nothing or bomb people. You know what, those men and women in uniform have been at war for 11 years. How about having a tool in America's toolbox to fight the enemy without having to use military force? When we clear a village of the Taliban, how do we hold and build that village? We bring in a health care clinic, something with the most rudimentary standards. It is not something we would even think about sending our kids to, but they welcome it because they have never had anything. We build a basic one- room schoolhouse, with a chalkboard and a few books. That lights up people's lives like we cannot believe. That is how we hold and build, with the State Department and the Department of Agriculture teaching people to plant crops other than heroin. That is the al-Qaida and Taliban's worst nightmare--and Egypt and Libya and Pakistan and Yemen, and fill in the blank, Afghanistan.

Here is where I am going to challenge the judgment, quite frankly, of my friend Rand Paul. He has offered an amendment at one of the most critical times in the history of the Mideast that would break, that would sever all aid, all assistance to Libya, Egypt, and Pakistan. Why are we so upset by this thought process? Trust me, I know we are broke--$16 trillion in debt--and that America is struggling more now than at any other time in my adult life and that we have to get our fiscal house in order. But how do we live in peace and prosperity with the rest of the world in flames? If we want to pay $10 a gallon for gas, turn the Mideast over to these crazy nut jobs.

Here is my view of what we should do. We should stay in this fight and we should do more things than just bomb people. We should help them help themselves. The good news is most people appreciate our help. What we see on TV is the result not of a film but of radical Islamists taking advantage of a moment.

Yes, the cultures are different. It is hard for people in the Mideast to understand that a film could be made disrespecting Islam without the government approving of it, because in their world nothing gets done without the government approving it. So it is important for us to say: This has nothing to do with the United States Government or the American people. This is the result of some crazy group of people who have what we call freedom of speech. It is uncomfortable, but that is the way we are.

I think it is important to let the Mideast know, and Muslims in general, that this is the way we operate. We reject the disrespect shown to anyone's religion, and that is not who we are as a people, but freedom of speech does exist here. The reason we need to explain that is because in their world they can't imagine something being done like this without the government blessing it.

Having said that, there is no excuse in any society to do harm to another human being because of the way somebody speaks or acts unless it is an act of violence.

Senator Paul is proposing disengagement in three of the most volatile areas of the Mideast at a time when it means the most. The way he has written this amendment should make everyone pause and evaluate how they want to vote. AIPAC, which most of us are familiar with, has indicated the way the amendment is written, if there is an act of violence against a U.S. interest in Israel, maybe we would have to withdraw our aid to Israel. But they have said they oppose the Rand Paul amendment because they know what happens to Egypt if this were to ever pass and become law.

The treaty Senator McCain referred to was the Camp David Accords. Israel and Egypt have been living under a peace treaty for decades now. Part of the deal was that America would provide aid to Egypt and Israel, and if we broke the agreement with Egypt, that would break the treaty with Israel.

So do not tell me or anybody else you support Israel if you vote for this amendment, because one of two things is going on: Either you have no idea what it means to support Israel or you are trying to pull the wool over my eyes. It is impossible to support the security of the Israeli nation and vote for this amendment because it will lead to the breach of a treaty with one of their strongest neighbors--80 billion people living in Egypt. It will unravel a delicate balance that has existed for decades. And I will be recorded as having no part of that. Imagine if this amendment passed what the chatter would be on every Islamic Web site in the world. And by the way, if these people had a PAC, they would be supporting this amendment.

I know Rand Paul is as patriotic as anyone in this body, but the fact of the matter is the crazy Islamic extremist terrorists who try to kill us all would love nothing more than this to pass. They know they cannot win if we stay engaged helping people, so they are trying to drive us out because that is their best hope of winning the day. So if we want to empower the terrorists who exist in this world, we should pass this amendment because they will go crazy with hope and excitement that their tactics are working. And if we want to destroy the hope of everybody in the Mideast who has been brave enough to stand up to these thugs and lose their family members, if we want to break their spirit, then vote to pass this amendment. If this amendment passes, good luck finding anybody anywhere in the world who will partner with us, who would be brave enough to stand up to these thugs and say: You will not have my children's future. If this amendment passed, America could never look anyone in the eye again in the Mideast and say: Stand with me. You can count on me.

Ladies and gentlemen of the United States, and my colleagues in the Senate, I wish the world were not as screwed up as it is. I wish it would change. I hate the fact we have been at war and we have spent so much money. But I am telling you this right now: These are historic times in which we live. And every time in history when good people were confronted with evil and they blinked, millions died, not thousands. The only reason millions haven't died in the war on terror is the nut jobs who want to kill us all can't get ahold of weapons to do it. If you don't want Iran to get a nuclear weapon, if that bothers you--that they may get a nuclear weapon and throw the whole region into a nuclear arms race or share that technology with a terrorist organization to use it against us--then vote against this amendment. Because if this passed, what would the Iranians think about America's resolve to deal with them?

The last thing I am going to talk about is the vision of the author of this amendment, who, honest to goodness, is a friend, but on this issue I think he is dead wrong. Senator Paul had the guts to write a budget, and I give him credit for that, but look at the vision of this amendment when it comes to our role in the world. In his budget, the American military's budget was reduced by 16 percent in the first year. This foreign assistance account I was talking about, which gives us a tool other than killing people--staying engaged and trying to build up their lives so they can live in peace with us, and is about $50 billion, or about 1 percent of the budget--under his proposal it goes down to $5 billion after 2014 and is frozen there forever.

It is important to note that the author of this amendment believes we can gut the military--and that is exactly what he does with military spending--and then take all the assets we have to help people off the table and we will be safe. I don't know how in the world anyone can believe, given the times in which we live, it is a good idea to take military spending below historic levels, disengage from the world, and have absolutely no influence on nations other than trying to use military force.

I hope my colleagues will come to the floor and resist the temptation to do something that sounds good in a 30-second sound bite. I know people are frustrated and war weary, and I know we are broke, and we would like to leave everybody else alone, but they are not going to leave us alone.

Look how much money we have spent after 9/11. Look what 20 people can do to this Nation if we disengage from the world.

So now I would like to ask the question of my colleague, Senator Chambliss, who is the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee--and I have asked this of the author--when you wrote this amendment disengaging from Libya, Egypt, and Pakistan, which is a nuclear-armed nation, did you ask anybody in the intelligence community? General David Petraeus? If there is ever an American hero of modern times, it is he. Have you ever asked him or Senator Chambliss or anybody else: Oh, by the way, I am thinking about pulling the plug on our aid to Pakistan, Egypt, and Libya. What is your view of that? Have you been asked that question?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for the next hour.

Mr. President, we are going to have a nice discussion between Republicans and Democrats about an important issue. If you are looking for bipartisanship, your ship has come in. S.J. Res. 41 has 82 cosponsors. I am not sure we could get 82 of us to agree that Sunday should be a day off, but we have done it when it comes to the concept of not allowing the Iranian ayatollahs to possess a nuclear weapon and trying to contain them. S.J. Res. 41 has 82 cosponsors. The Presiding Officer is one of them. To my Democratic colleagues, Senators Blumenthal, Coons, Menendez, Casey--Senator Casey was the first one to step up--Senator Lieberman--it has been a real joy to work in a bipartisan fashion over something that matters, that if there is a time for the Senate to speak, it is now, regarding Iran's desire to get a nuclear weapon.

President Obama has rejected containing a nuclear-armed Iran as a national strategy. Mr. President, you are dead right on that. I know Governor Romney agrees.

What I wish to do is recognize my good friend from Georgia, Senator Isakson, and we have Senator Ayotte here, to share their thoughts. I will be joining later, and certainly Senator Blumenthal, who has been one of the leading voices on the Democratic side for this resolution.

At this time I wish to yield for Senator Isakson.

I thank Senator Isakson, who is on the Foreign Relations Committee. He is a ranking member on the African subcommittee. He has, frankly, opened my eyes with what we are doing in Africa. A little money goes a long way in Africa, trying to prevent radical Islamists from taking over the continent of Africa, combating the Chinese who are trying to buy up all the resources, and using American taxpayer dollars to create an environment and create jobs back here at home and, frankly, save thousands if not millions of young children from certain death from AIDS and malaria. Johnny is everything right about being a Senator in that regard. I appreciate him coming down here today.

If the Senator from New Hampshire doesn't mind, can we go to our good friend Senator Blumenthal? I have had the pleasure of going to Egypt with him and all these other hotspots and

enjoyed working with him on this resolution. This started with a meeting in our offices, an idea to try to back up what President Obama said about not containing a nuclear-armed Iran. The next thing we know we are on the floor of the Senate today with 82 cosponsors.

My good friend from Connecticut, Senator Blumenthal.

I thank Senator Blumenthal for those articulate words about the resolution and for his kind comments. Senator Lieberman was on the ground floor of this, as he is with everything, including bills to construct foreign policy for the country.

One of the original partners we had trying to get this matter going was Senator Ayotte, who is a freshman Senator but has quickly hit the ground running and has become a strong voice on national security.

With that, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to yield to the Senator whatever time she needs.

Thanks to Senator Ayotte for helping to get this whole process going, for being on the Senate floor and for getting this whole process started, and for her strong voice on national security.

Now I wish to recognize my friend, the Senator from Tennessee, Mr. Corker. He is on the Foreign Relations Committee and is moving up the ladder to be chairman or ranking member, depending on how the election comes out. But no matter how it comes out, Senator Corker will be there talking about constructive engagements and guarding the taxpayer dollar. I would like for him to give his thoughts about the Rand Paul amendment and the noncontainment of a nuclear-capable Iran.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Corker for his very good, country-by-country explanation; kind of a big picture, rational approach to what we are trying to do. I understand Senator Paul's convictions. A lot of Americans are frustrated. We are broke but giving money to people overseas. They all hate us.

Well, they all don't hate us. Some do, some don't. Let's invest in the ones we can live with and stand up to the ones who want to kill us all.

Before I turn it over to Senator Hoeven, one last thought about the world in which we live. We could get hit in the next minute. We could get hit today. We could get hit tomorrow. They are trying to get here as desperately as they can. Thank God for every day we have been able to survive without being attacked again in our homeland. But I would say this: One of the reasons we have been effective after 9/11 is that we are in their backyard. We are deployed over there--not just with military force but with assistance. We are making their lives more difficult by raising money and operating and being able to maneuver and

find allies. To get to America now to attack us is harder than it was on September 10, 2001, because we are engaged in the fight. If we withdraw aid, we take one of the most valuable tools off the table. There has to be more tools in the tool kit than just bombing people or disengaging from the world. So this 1 percent of the budget is a godsend to those in the military.

S.J. Res. 41

Now I will turn back to S.J. Res. 41. Senator Hoeven of North Dakota was my first Republican cosponsor of the idea that we cannot contain a nuclear-capable Iran, and I cannot tell my colleagues how much I appreciate his leadership.

So I yield to Senator Hoeven.

Mr. President, before I turn this over, may I have just 2 minutes to wrap up.

I want to thank Senator Reid and Senator McConnell for scheduling this vote. Eighty-two Senators stand behind President Obama's statement that it is bad policy to contain a nuclear-capable Iran. Let me tell you right quickly why. If the Iranians get a nuclear weapon or nuclear capability, the Sunni Arab States will want one themselves to counter the Shia Persian influence, and you will have a nuclear arms race in the Mid East. That is not a good result. That is the road to Armageddon. Israel will never know a minute's peace. If the ayatollahs in Iran have a nuclear weapon, my God, what would living in Israel be like? Look at the threat you would live under the rest of your life. That is a no-go for the people of Israel.

The big concern I have above all else is that the ayatollahs will share that nuclear capability, that technology with a terrorist group. The only reason thousands have died in the war on terror and not millions is they just cannot get the weapons to kill millions of us. And if the ayatollahs had those nuclear weapons or that capability, they would share it with terrorists. That is why containment is not a good idea.

This is not an authorization to use force. It encourages sanctions. It encourages diplomacy. It says that all options are on the table. It is not authorizing force, but it is taking off the table the idea that the Iranians can get a nuclear weapon and we will try to contain them because that is just emptying Pandora's box.

One last thought. An Israeli soldier was killed today because the Sinai border between Egypt and Israel was breached. Part of our aid to Egypt has conditions that say: If you break the treaty with Israel, you lose the money. And you need to beef up the security in the Sinai.

The Egyptian Army is basically being driven out of the Sinai. They are moving back in. So if you really do care about the security of Israel, we cannot break relations with Egypt. It is a complicated relationship, but it is in our interest to be involved.

Again, we are all over the world in different fashions, and I would rather be helping people help themselves than having to send soldiers in every time there is a hot spot in the world. We cannot disengage from the world. It is our destiny to be the leader of the free world; we just need to do it smartly.

One percent of our budget is spent on foreign assistance. I think it makes sense.

With that, I will yield the floor and thank all of my colleagues for jumping

on board for a resolution that I think is timely. If the Senate of the United States ever needed to speak with one voice on a single topic, it is now, and that single topic is to the Iranian regime: You will not be allowed to get a nuclear weapon, period.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this resolution has 83 cosponsors. Even I cannot lose this vote.

This resolution says it will not be the policy of the United States to allow the Iranian regime to get a nuclear weapon and try to contain them. President Obama has rejected containment. Governor Romney, 83 Senators have said that is a bad idea.

Very quickly, why will containment not work? If the Iranians get a nuclear weapon, every Sunni Arab state will want one themselves. Israel will never know a minute's peace. And my biggest fear: If we allow these people to get a nuclear weapon, they will share the technology with terrorists. The reason thousands have died in the war on terror-- not millions--is because the terrorists cannot get the weapons to kill millions.

Senator Casey has been terrific. My Democratic colleagues, thank you for working in a bipartisan fashion.

I yield now to Senator Casey.

Mr. President, lucky you to be presiding today.

We live in interesting times. You can receive a Nobel Peace Prize for not being somebody else. Now, 4 years later almost after the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded, where do we stand as a Nation? In case you have not heard, bin Laden is dead. That is good. That is a great accomplishment. The President should take pride in that. We should all celebrate the death of that evil man. But that is not foreign policy. Is anybody deterred from attacking America's interest in the Middle East because bin Laden is dead? Is anybody saying: I better not go over the wall of that Embassy in Egypt because we killed bin Laden? There is no coherent foreign policy at a time when we need one.

Four years later, after a charm offensive and an apology tour that has not worked, our enemies are on steroids and our friends are unsure about who we are. I will make a prediction: If this continues, the world is going to devolve into chaos, because at a time when we need to be certain, we are unsure. The Iranians are not taking anything we say seriously and the Russians and the Chinese have corrupted the U.N. So much for restarting.

I will be brief. There is not a whole lot to be added to the eloquent statements of my two friends other than to be here and to let the family of Chris Stevens know that we saw in their loved one what you saw--a wonderful man who did great things with a life cut way too short.

I do not think most Americans can ever appreciate the leadership Chris provided in Libya and throughout the world at a time when we needed it the most. So America has lost one of her greatest diplomats, the Libyans have lost one of their best friends, and the family has lost their dear loved one.

The one thing I can say for sure--Senator Lieberman just mentioned it--do not compound this tragedy. The worst possible outcome is to take the death of this wonderful, noble man and use it as an excuse to withdraw from Libya and the region and turn it over to the thugs who killed him. Chris would not want that, it is not in our national security interest, and Republicans and Democrats do not want that.

To the American people who are war-weary and frustrated, I totally get it. But the Arab spring--call it what you like--is a historic opportunity to change things in the Middle East. It will not come without a fight.

What we are trying to do in the Mideast and what the people in the Mideast are trying to do is have a better life for themselves. If you are a young person, you have been exposed to life outside of the corrupt country in which you live and you see it can be better and, quite frankly, you are demanding it can be better. You are demanding a better say if you are a young woman. You are demanding economic opportunity if you come from a certain class, not available to you today. And Chris Stevens risked his life because he understood that those demands were just and in our best interests. The people whom we are fighting and the people the Libyan people are fighting are the ones who have no interest in this agenda of being able to choose a better path for young women, being able to be tolerant, open, accept free markets, and to have a place where people can live their own dreams.

The world which we are fighting--your dreams are defined by the Ayatollah. Your aspirations are defined by someone else's view of where you should go and what you should be based on their interpretation of God's plan for you. That, to me, is so unacceptable that it compels people like Chris Stevens to risk their lives. That is what is at stake.

The good news is that we will beat these folks. The ace in the hole is that the people in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Afghanistan, and Iraq now have been exposed to a different way of life. Given the capacity, they have the will to fight back. But if we think this is going to be done without a struggle, we are kidding ourselves. Chris knew that. He knew the fight that was going on for the heart and soul of the Arab spring in Libya was a fight worth engaging in and, yes, risking one's life for. What more can you say about a fellow human being, an American, than the fact that they realized their time on Earth could be best spent in service of a cause, as Senator McCain said, greater than themselves. Chris understood what was at stake. He went to a place he did not have to go. He accepted risks he could have avoided. He did it for all the right reasons.

The one thing we should all unite around is that what compelled Chris Stevens to risk his life is absolutely in our national security interest; that is, to get the Mideast right, have a second opportunity never known before in the Mideast to live in peace with people who in the past wanted to kill us all. I am convinced that if we stick with it and we learn the lessons of Chris Stevens' life, we will eventually prevail

because the ones who want to kill us all are really a minority. The ones who would live with us in peace if they could just need our help. Let it be said that Chris Stevens was there to help.

Madam President, my comment, in response to the question Senator McCain has, is what we do today becomes precedent for tomorrow. So are we going to sit on the sidelines here and allow the Attorney General--who is under siege by our colleagues in the House about the way he has handled Fast and Furious and other matters--to appoint two U.S. attorneys who have to answer to him to investigate allegations against the very White House that appointed him? The reason so many Democrats wrote to President Bush and said, You cannot possibly investigate the Scooter Libby-Valerie Plame leak because it involves people very close to you--well, let's read some of the letters. Biden, Daschle, Schumer, and Levin letter to President Bush, October 9, 2003:

We are at risk of seeing this investigation so compromised

that those responsible for this national security breach will

never be identified and prosecuted. Public confidence in the

integrity of this investigation would be substantially

bolstered by the appointment of a special counsel.

Senator Biden:

I think they should appoint a special prosecutor, but if

they're not going to do that, which I suspect they're not, is

get the information out as quick as they possibly can. This

is not a minor thing . . . There's been a federal crime

committed. The question is who did it? And the President

should do everything in his power to demonstrate that there's

an urgency to find that out.

Then he goes on later and says:

There's been a federal crime committed. You can't possibly

investigate yourself because people close to you are

involved.

In the Abramoff scandal, which involved Jack Abramoff, a person very close to House leadership and some people in the Bush administration, and our Democratic colleagues, 34 of them, said the following:

FBI officials have said that the Abramoff investigation

``involves systematic corruption within the highest levels of

government.'' Such an assertion indicates extraordinary

circumstances and it is in the public interest that you act

under your existing statutory authority to appoint a special

counsel.

So our Democratic colleagues back during the Bush administration said, We don't trust you enough to investigate compromising national security by having an agent outed allegedly by members of your administration. We don't trust the Republican Party apparatus enough to investigate Jack Abramoff, because you are so close to him, and you should have a special counsel appointed.

Well, guess what. They did.

Here is what I am saying. I don't trust this White House to investigate themselves. I think this reeks of a coverup. I think the highest levels of this government surrounding the President, intentionally, over a 45-day period, leaked various stories regarding our national security programs, to make the administration look strong on national security. I don't think it is an accident that we are reading in the paper about efforts by the administration and our allies to use cyber attacks against the Iranian nuclear program as a way to try to head Israel off from using military force. I don't know if it happened, but the details surrounding the cooperation between us and Israel and how we engaged in cyber attacks against the Iranian nuclear program are chilling and something we should not read about in the paper.

The second thing we read about in the paper was how we disrupted the underwear bomber plot where there was a double agent who had infiltrated an al-Qaida cell, I believe it was in Yemen, and how we were able to break that up; and the man was given a suicide vest that was new technology and couldn't be detected by the current screening devices at the airports, and how we were able to basically infiltrate that cell, and God knows the damage done to our allies and that operation.

That is what we have been told in the paper.

We also have a story about the kill list--a blow-by-blow description of how President Obama personally oversees who gets killed by drones in Pakistan, and at the end of the day, I am not so sure that is something we should all be reading about.

But if that is not enough, what about releasing the Pakistani doctor--the person who allegedly helped us find bin Laden, and his role in this effort to find bin Laden is also in the paper, and now he is in jail in Pakistan.

The sum total is that the leaks have been devastating. They have put people's lives at risk. They have compromised our national security, unlike anything I have seen, and people expect us to sit on the sidelines and let the White House investigate itself? No way.

Those who wrote letters in the past suggesting that Bush could not impartially investigate himself, where are they today? Is this the rule: We can't trust Republicans, but we can trust Democratic administrations to get to the bottom of things they are involved in up to their eyebrows?

Do we think it is an accident that all of these books quote senior White House officials? There is a review of one of the books the Senator from Arizona mentioned that talked about the unprecedented access to the National Security Adviser. There is a vignette in one of the books where the Secretary of Defense goes up to the National Security Adviser and suggests a new communications strategy when it comes to the programs we are talking about: Shut the F up. Well, that makes great reading, but at the end of the day, should we be reading about all this? People's lives are at stake. Programs have been compromised. Our allies are very reluctant now to do business with us.

This was, in my view, an intentional effort by people at the highest level in the White House to leak these stories for political purposes. And to accept that Eric Holder is going to appoint two people within his sphere of influence and call it a day is acceptable. That is not going to happen. We are going to do everything we can to right this ship, and we are asking no more of our Democratic colleagues than they asked of the Bush administration.

To our Democratic colleagues: How do you justify this? How do you justify that you couldn't investigate Abramoff without a special counsel and you couldn't investigate what Scooter Libby may or may not have done without a special counsel, but it is OK not to have one here? How do you do that?

Absolutely.

Whatever the Senator from Illinois wishes to do. I am dying to hear how my Democratic colleagues think it is good government not to have a special independent counsel investigate the most damaging national security leak in decades. I am dying to hear the explanation.

Well, I tell you what. Why don't we let my colleague speak, and then the Senator from Illinois will have all the time he needs. What does my colleague, the Senator from Georgia, Mr. Chambliss, think?

I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, I rise to pay tribute to three fallen National Guard members from South Carolina who were killed in Afghanistan on June 20, 2012, in Khost Province. They were members of the 133rd Military Police Company who were serving on this duty. There are now 16 members of the South Carolina National Guard who have died in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003.

With the July 4 weekend coming up, we are preceding one of our biggest holidays in America, and people rightfully will take some time off, I hope, to enjoy their families and friends and get away from work and have some family time. It marks a special event in our Nation's history: The founding of our Nation through a declaration of independence that was not just words but resulted in men and women fighting to achieve our independence.

Here we are a couple hundred years later and we are still fighting. My belief is, as to the radical Islamists who would kill us all if they could, it is better to fight them over there so we do not have to fight them here.

Afghanistan was the place the Taliban took over after the Russians left and invited al-Qaida into the country, with bin Laden as their honored guest. He had sanctuary there and was able to plan the attacks of 9/11 from sanctuary provided to him in Afghanistan.

Our goal is to never let Afghanistan become a sanctuary for al-Qaida or other terrorist groups. Thus, we are in a long struggle. It has been 10 years. It has been hard, but we are making progress. The Afghan Army is getting better and stronger. The police are getting more proficient at their job. We are going to be winding the war down in 2014. But I think we can do it in a fashion to make sure Afghanistan remains stable and our national security interests are protected.

But to make all those things possible--the weekend we are going to enjoy, and the holiday season, and denying terrorists safe havens--some of us have to leave our families and go off and fight this war.

SFC Brad Thomas of Easley, SC, was killed in an attack on June 20. He was a graduate of Travelers Rest High School and attended Greenville Technical College. He was a member of the 133rd Military Police Company of the South Carolina Army National Guard.

He is survived by his wife Jana and a son Cayden, a brother and two sisters. I know the family is devastated. You are in our prayers, and God bless you and give you the healing and understanding during this tough time.

To SFC Brad Thomas, you died in the service of your country, and you will be missed.

LT Ryan Davis Rawl of Lexington, SC, was killed in the same attack. He was a first lieutenant in the 133rd MP Company. He graduated from Lexington High School. He was a graduate of the Citadel. He is survived by his wife Katherine and their daughter Callie and their son Caleb.

I just want to acknowledge to Katherine, who interned in our office, that you are certainly in our prayers. You did a great job for us, and anything we can do for any of these families in South Carolina, we will. We very much pray for you and your family.

Sgt John ``J.D.'' David Meador, II, graduated from Lexington High School. He was a member of the wrestling team and was a wrestling coach. He was a member of the same MP Company. He is survived by his wife Christy and three daughters: Olivia, Brianna, and Elana. To Christy and her family, you will be in our prayers.

This will be a tough weekend in South Carolina. We are going to have three funerals.

To General Livingston and the National Guard family, you are certainly in our prayers. This is a tough blow for an MP company to have three people killed in one attack. So to all the members of that company, we will do our best to take care of your families while you are gone.

We have had a big argument about health care and about transportation, and that is great--democracy in action. What is the right decision for the Court to have made in the health care case? Is this a good transportation bill? I appreciate in a bipartisan fashion trying to find a solution.

But I just wanted to take a few minutes before going to the holiday weekend and remind us of one thing we do have in common: Our freedom depends on people willing to fight for it, and the one thing about this war--whether you agree with the war in Afghanistan or not--virtually every American, regardless of political persuasion, has shown an appreciation for the troops and their families. I cannot thank Members of Congress enough for never losing sight. No matter how they feel about this war, we all appreciate those who fight it, and we all suffer and mourn for those who lose their lives in this cause.

I believe this is a just cause. I believe these men who joined the military voluntarily and left their families to go to Afghanistan were doing so in the most noble tradition of the country--that they were trying to make our families safer, my family safer, and they died in the service of their country. And that is a life well lived. They died far too soon. They left behind young children, but they will never be forgotten.

May God grant them eternal rest and peace. May God bless and provide understanding and healing to the families left behind. And may, as Americans, we never forget that our freedom is dependent upon a few of us being willing to go to faraway places, with strange sounding names, and risk never coming back.

Yes, it is.

Well, one, I hope my colleagues will stay around for a minute or two because this is an important topic to be talking about.

Let me put this in the perspective of what we are trying to do and what we are trying to avoid. We are about $16 trillion in debt. There is probably no stronger defense supporters in the Congress than Jon Kyl and John McCain.

The Senator just spoke of war. John McCain has seen his fair share of war. I think he understands as well as anybody in this body--probably better than most--what happens in war. People get hurt and people get killed and anybody who has been in the military is no fan of war. But the goal sometimes is to make sure those who are asked to fight a particular war can fight it quickly, overwhelmingly, win, and come home.

What we are doing is trying to get out of debt. The three of us are pretty big defense hawks, but we have all agreed the Pentagon has to reduce their spending too. I think all of us--particularly Senator McCain--believe there is a lot of waste in the Pentagon and that we could achieve $50 billion in savings over the next decade by reforming the way the Pentagon does business and, quite frankly, do more with less. So count us all in--the three of us--for reducing defense spending to help get us out of debt.

But here is what has us all upset. The supercommittee that was formed by the Budget Control Act had a mission of cutting $1.2 trillion over a decade to help get us out of debt. That is a pretty small number given what we are going to spend over the next 10 years. But the committee-- Republicans and Democrats--could not find common ground as to how to cut $1.2 trillion over the next decade. There was a penalty provision in the law, and it said that in the event the supercommittee failed, we would cut $1.2 trillion over the next decade as follows: $600 billion out of the Defense Department, $600 billion out of the rest of the government.

If that penalty kicks in, then we will have cut $1 trillion out of the Defense Department over the next decade, blindly, across the board. Every account gets affected.

What did Secretary Panetta say? He said: Sign me up for $450 billion. I think we can get there. We will lose some capability, but we will be OK as a nation. We could fight Iran and win if we had to.

Then I asked him: What if we did $1 trillion over the next decade--if we overdoubled what you are trying to cut? He said: We would be shooting ourselves in the head as a nation. We would not have the ability to go in and take out the nuclear program in Iran because the weapons we need we could not maintain and afford.

When it comes to personnel costs, we are reducing the Army by 80,000 people under the $450 billion plan. If we do sequestration on top of that, I say to Senator McCain, we are taking another 100,000 people out of the Army. Under sequestration, the Navy would be down to a little over 200 ships. We would have the smallest Navy since 1915, the smallest Air Force in the history of the country, and the Army would go back to 1940 levels.

To my colleagues, do you believe the world has gotten that much safer that we do not need a Navy bigger than in 1915, given the threats we are facing from Iran, China, North Korea? Do you think now is a good time for the country to basically disarm, given the threats we face from radical terrorism throughout the whole globe?

So here is what we are going to do, and our congressional leaders need to be on notice. About 1 million people would lose their jobs if we put these cuts in place, and we would destroy the defense industrial base that provides good jobs to the economy and keeps us free and safe by giving our people technology better than the enemy has.

Three National Guardsmen were killed in June in Afghanistan. We have improved the National Guard. But when we first started this war, National Guard units were leaving to go to the fight with inferior equipment. They did not have armor. So if we do sequestration on top of what we are already trying to cut in the Defense Department, we will destroy the finest military in the history of the world at a time we need it the most.

This is a body known for doing some pretty dumb things. This would be the prize. So what Senators McCain, Kyl, and myself are trying to do is avoid sequestration before the first of the year so our defense people can plan. If we do not set this aside before the election, that is political malpractice. I thank Senator McCain and Senator Kyl for their leadership.

Would the Senator yield?

I would like all three Senators to comment on this proposition. You have just challenged the President, who is the Commander in Chief, by the way, to fix the problem that your Secretary of Defense has said would be most devastating to our ability to defend ourselves. He said it would be catastrophic, it would be draconian, there is no way to plan for it, we would be shooting ourselves in the head. Mr. President, you are the Commander in Chief. When your Secretary of Defense and every general under your command is telling you and the Congress, you need to fix this before it gets out of hand, why are you not asking us, as Republicans and Democrats, to answer the call of the Secretary of Defense? You are the Commander in Chief, my friend. It is your job to make sure our military has what it needs to go fight wars that we send them to fight and protect our Nation.

But that is not enough. It is also our job as Members of Congress to take care of those who serve. So to our Republican and Democratic leader: Why do you not convene a group of Senators? And to our leaders in the House: Why do you not get a group of House Members, and ask us to come up with a plan to do at least one thing, avoid the consequence of sequestration for 1 year in 2013, to take the monkey off their back?

I am willing to meet our Democratic friends in the middle to find a way to offset the $110 billion in defense and nondefense spending. But to our leaders and to the President, if you think the rest of us are going to sit on the sideline and let this matter be taken up in lameduck when it becomes a nightmare for the country, you can forget it. So we are challenging our leaders and the President to get a group together to fix this.

I ask Senator McCain, do you think that is a good idea?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

I ask consent to be recognized for 5 minutes to speak about the Supreme Court's ruling.

Mr. President, there are a couple observations I would like to make about the historic ruling by the Supreme Court today. No. 1 is about the legislative process. Members of Congress during the debate on Obama health care had a very passionate, heated debate which is part of democracy. As I recall the debate, when people on our side suggested this is a tax increase, that all the fines and costs associated with the health care bill would be a massive tax increase, our friends on the other side, almost to a person, said: No, this is not a tax increase. President Obama assured the American people during the debate that the fine is not a tax.

I think the reason that was so is because if we debated this bill and the only way we could pass the bill is using the power of Congress to tax under the Constitution, there would not have been 10 votes for the legislation. Nobody would have wanted to go home and say I just increased your taxes by billions of dollars over the next 10 years to fix health care, because I think most Americans believe our health care in this country needs to be reformed, and it is in many ways broken and needs to be fixed, but there are very few people in this country who believe we don't tax enough and that is the problem with health care.

That is not the problem. The problem with health care is not the lack of how much we tax, it is the lack of choices people have and the competition when it comes to purchasing health care. Many of us want to give people a chance to buy health care outside of the State in which they live, which they cannot do today. Many of us believe some form of medical malpractice reform will lower costs. Many of us are for preventing preexisting illnesses being used to deny health care.

I would like to give individuals the same tax writeoffs as businesses have when it comes to purchasing health care, and I am willing to help those who do not have the money to buy health care to be able to purchase health care in the private sector.

I am willing to do a lot of things, but I am not willing to impose a massive tax increase to fix health care. Also, I do not think it is fair for people in the body, during the debate on a bill, to say: This is not a tax increase, vote for the bill, and wind up having to be told by the Court the only way this is legal is for it to be a tax increase.

Here is my challenge to every Member of the Democratic Party who said this was not a tax increase when we debated the bill. I am asking now, if they did not want to increase taxes to fix health care, repeal this bill and work with me and others to find a way to fix health care without a massive tax increase. If after the Supreme Court ruling they are still OK with the legislation, be honest enough to go back home and say: I raised your taxes to fix health care because I thought that was the right thing to do.

Then let's have a debate about whether that is the right thing to do. I can promise, it is not the right thing to have a debate where the President of the United States and the architects of the bill assure everyone they are not having a tax increase when, in fact, that is the only way this bill can stand.

I believe we all owe it to the American people to be on record. If after today's ruling Senators are still for this legislation, have the courage to tell the American people: I am for it, even though I had to raise your taxes to make it happen. Stand behind what they believe. If someone believed at the time this should not be considered a tax increase and they are upset or they are worried that it is now being called a tax increase and they think that is wrong, have the courage to say let's start over. Nobody is going to hold it against a political leader who is willing to change their mind if it makes sense.

I cannot think of a better opportunity for Congress to revisit an issue than this. If there is ever a bill that needed to be revisited it is the Obama health care bill. It needs to be revisited and it needs to start over because it was passed on a party-line vote. It was passed with statements being made that this is not a tax increase when it turned out to be. I hope we have the wisdom and the courage to start over and sort of get this thing right.

The second point I would like to make is that no one in this country has suggested that health care needs to be fixed through a massive tax increase. Let's find a better model to fix health care than hundreds of billions of dollars of new taxes.

A final thought is, how do we move forward? In November of 2012, every person who voted for Obama health care told their constituents this is not a tax. They owe it to their constituents to go back and say: Listen, the Supreme Court said this can only stand with it being a tax. I am either OK with that or I would like a second chance to fix it.

President Obama is a good man and sincerely believes that health care needs to be reformed in a certain way. I agree it needs to be reformed but not in this way. The President owes it to the American people to correct his statement when he assured us all this was not a tax increase. Many Americans found comfort in that. I have always believed the Court could uphold this law under one theory and one theory only. I never believed the commerce clause was so broad that we in Congress could compel someone to buy a product they did not want. The Court said today that the commerce clause cannot be used in such a fashion.

The bill was sold as a power within the commerce clause. The Court said today the commerce clause will not allow Congress to make the public buy a product. That is not commerce. That should make all of us feel better that there are some limits on the commerce clause vis-a-vis our Congress. But the Court did say when it comes to the power of a tax to tax, the Congress's discretion is broad. That is constitutionally true, and it has always been so. The Congress has the power to raise taxes to pay for a war. Even though we may disagree with the war, we have it in our power to say for the public good we are going to raise taxes to pay for a war.

Congress also has the power, in my view, to say: The health care system is broken. We are going to raise taxes to fix it. I don't think that is the right answer, but I think that is within our power.

The Court said today the fine is really a tax. Now that we know it is really a tax, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to leave in place the largest tax increase in modern history to fix health care or are we going to be smart enough, wise enough, and courageous enough to start over? I hope we are wise enough, courageous enough, and smart enough to start over and this time do it in a way that is truly bipartisan.

The worst possible outcome for the American people is for the Congress to pass legislation that affects one-fifth or one-sixth of the economy and say this is not a tax, and at the end of the day that is the only way the law can stand is for it to be a tax.

So I hope between now and the election we can have another debate about

health care. All those who stand by this product need to tell their constituents: I believe in this product, and I am willing to tax you in a large way to make it happen. If we had had that debate to begin with, this bill would have never passed and we would have worked together. Second chances are hard to get in life. Congress now has a second chance.

One final thought about Medicaid expansion. Congress said we are going to expand Medicaid dramatically under this proposal to insure people not covered by Medicaid today. If you are 133 percent above poverty, you would be included in Medicaid. In my State 31 percent of South Carolinians would be eligible for Medicaid under the Obama health care formula. That would mean an additional $1 billion of a matching requirement by the State of South Carolina to get the Federal money. That means my State would have to cut education, raise taxes, or cut public safety to come up with the money to match Medicaid expansion under the Obama health care act.

The Supreme Court said we cannot do that to the States. We cannot expand Medicaid dramatically, which will bankrupt States and tell them if they don't agree with the expansion, they lose all the money under the program; that is coercive.

In September of last year, along with Senator Barrasso, I introduced legislation called the Graham-Barrasso bill, which would allow States to opt-out of Obama Medicaid expansion and still receive the money they receive under the current program. That is basically what the Court said we should be doing. So I hope the Republican leader will impress upon the Democratic leader to bring up the bill we introduced last September and legislatively allow States to opt out of Medicaid expansion under ObamaCare if they choose to.

I guarantee there will be a bunch of red and blue States opting out of Medicaid expansion under this bill because it will make them hopelessly bankrupt, and that is not the way to solve health care for the poor. That part of the bill needs to be addressed too.

This is a historic ruling by the Supreme Court, but for it really to be historic in its fullest sense, Congress should take this historic opportunity to revisit health care and get this right without a massive tax increase.

I yield the floor. I note the absence of a quorum.

I think it not only would serve Mr. Holder well, but certainly the country well.

We are setting the precedent that if we do not appoint a special counsel--and I don't know these two U.S. attorneys at all. I am sure they are fine men. But the special counsel provisions that are available to the Attorney General need to be embraced because it creates an impression and, quite frankly, a legal infrastructure to put the special counsel above common politics. The precedent we are about to set in the Senate if we vote down this resolution is, in this case, we don't need to assure the public that we don't have to worry, the person involved is not going to be interfered with; that in this case we don't need the special counsel, and there is no need for it.

Well, to my colleagues on the other side, how many of them said we needed a special counsel--Peter Fitzgerald--who was not in the jurisdiction--Illinois wasn't the subject matter of the Valerie Plame leaks. It happened in Washington. When Peter Fitzgerald was chosen as a special counsel, the country said that is a good choice, chosen under the special counsel provisions, which are designed to avoid a conflict of interest.

What is the problem? For us to say we don't need one here is a precedent that will haunt the country and this body and future White Houses in a way that I think is very disturbing, I say to the Senator from Arizona, because if we needed one for Valerie Plame--allegations of outing a CIA agent--and if we needed one for Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist who had infiltrated the highest levels of the government, why would we need one here? Is this less serious?

The allegations we are talking about are breathtaking. Go read Mr. Sanger's book as he describes Operation Olympic Games. It reads like a novel about how the administration, trying to avoid an Israeli strike against the Iranian nuclear program, worked with the Israelis to create a cyber attack on the Iranian nuclear program, and how successful it was. It literally reads like a novel.

What about the situation regarding the Underwear Bomber case, a plot that was thwarted by a double agent. One could read every detail about the plot and how dangerous it was and how successful we were in stopping it from coming about. Then, how we got bin Laden and sharing information with a movie producer, but telling the world about the Pakistani doctor and how we used him to track down bin Laden.

That takes us to the bin Laden information. In the book there is a scenario where the Secretary of Defense went to the National Security Adviser, Thomas Donilon, and said, ``I have a new communication strategy for you regarding the bin Laden raid: Shut the F up.''

But the drone program, a blow-by-blow description of how the President handpicks who gets killed and who doesn't.

This is breathtaking. Certainly, it is on par with Abramoff and Plame, I think, the biggest national security compromise in generations. For our friends on the other side to say we don't need a special counsel here, but they were the ones arguing for one in the other two cases, sets a terrible precedent, and we are not going to let this happen without one heck of a fight.

Senator Obama wrote a letter with a large group of colleagues urging the Bush administration to appoint a special counsel and to have an independent congressional investigation on top of that of the Valerie Plame CIA leak case. He also joined in a letter with his Democratic colleagues urging the Bush administration to appoint a special counsel in the Jack Abramoff case because the allegations were that Mr. Abramoff had access to the highest levels of government and that extraordinary circumstances existed.

What are we talking about here? We are talking about leaks of national security done in a 45-day period that paint this President as a strong, decisive national security leader. The book questions--not just the articles--is there any reason to believe this may go to the White House? Look what happened with the Scooter Libby prosecution in the Valerie Plame case. The Chief of Staff of the Vice President of the United States eventually was held accountable for his involvement.

Is there any reason to believe that senior White House people may be involved in these leaks? Just read the articles. But this is a book review by Mr. Thomas Riggs of the book in question by Mr. Sanger. Throughout, Mr. Sanger clearly has enjoyed great access to senior White House officials, most notably to Thomas Donilon, the National Security Adviser. Mr. Donilon, in fact, is the hero of the book as well as the commentator of record on events. It goes on and on in talking about how these programs were so successful.

Here is the problem. In the House, when a program is not so successful, such as Fast and Furious, that is embarrassing to the administration. One can't literally get information with a subpoena. So we have an administration and an Attorney General's Office that is about to be held in contempt by the House for not releasing information about the Fast and Furious Program that was embarrassing. When we have programs that were successful and make the White House look strong and the President look strong, we can read about it in the paper.

All we are asking for is what Senator Obama and Senator Biden asked for in previous national security events involving corruption of the government: a special counsel to be appointed, with the powers of a special counsel, somebody we can all buy into. If we set a precedent of not doing it here, I think it will be a huge mistake.

Mr. President, if I may, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the letters written by Senator Obama and Senator Biden asking for a special counsel.

I guess the difference is we are supposed to trust Democratic administrations, and we can't trust Republican administrations. I guess that is the difference. It is the only difference I can glean here. Certainly, the subject matter in question is as equal to or more serious in terms of how it has damaged the Nation and in terms of the structure of a special counsel. If we thought it was necessary to make sure the Abramoff investigation could lead to high-level Republicans, which it did, and if we thought the Valerie Plame case needed a special counsel to go into the White House because that is where it went, why would we not believe it would help the country as a whole to appoint somebody we can all buy into in this case, give them the powers of a special counsel? That is what was urged before when the shoe was on the other foot.

This is a very big deal. We are talking about serious criminal activity. Apparently, the suspects are at the highest level of government, and I believe it was done for political purposes. To not appoint a special counsel would set a precedent that I think is damaging for the country and is absolutely unimaginable in terms of how someone could differentiate this case from the other two we have talked about.

To my Democratic colleagues: Don't go down this road. Don't be part of setting a precedent of not appointing a special counsel for some of the most serious national security leaks in recent memory--maybe in the history of the country--while at the same time most of my Democratic colleagues were on the record asking about a special counsel about everything and anything that happened in the Bush administration. This is not good for the country.

Madam President, to the majority leader, well done. I think we are going to be able to voice vote a resolution that states the policy of our country and our President very clearly.

To the Senator from New Jersey, Mr. Menendez, great job on the sanctions. I hope the Senator understands why I wanted to put in all options. I hope the sanctions will work. This is a clear statement by the Senate backing up our President that when it comes to Iran having nuclear capabilities, there will be more than sanctions on the table, and the Iranians need to know that.

I hope we can end this peacefully for Israel's sake, for our sake, and for the world's sake as we approach beefing up the sanctions with the Banking Committee, with Senator Menendez's and Senator Kirk's leadership, and others, who have done a great job. If you are on the Banking Committee, you did a great job. I don't even know who is on it.

The bottom line is I think the sanctions were really well drafted and will enhance the President's hand, so to speak. We cannot leave this debate without making a very simple unequivocal statement that the goal is to get it right. And if sanctions can lead to getting it right, God bless. If the sanctions will not get us to where we want to go, everything is on the table, including the use of military force, because this country--Republicans and Democrats--is not going to allow the Iranian regime to develop nuclear capability that will put the world into darkness.

To everybody who negotiated this outcome, thank you very much.

I yield the floor.

I wish to echo what my friend from Connecticut, Senator Lieberman, has said. I wish to get this done so we can vote and send the appropriate signal. It is not so much we act before Tuesday, even though that is important, but that we let the Iranians and the world know what we mean when we speak.

I hope they are watching in Tehran. I don't know if they get C SPAN. They will probably find it odd that Lindsey Graham is now being easy on Iran. Trust me, I am not. Senator Menendez has been a champion, along with Senator Kirk, of creating legislation we could all buy into 100 to 0. We can't agree we should take Sunday off 100 to 0. But what they achieved was remarkable.

I understand Senator Reid has been pulled and torn. I appreciate it. I enjoy working with him. He thinks maybe somebody is doing him wrong. We are not. He should ask himself this question: Why would Senator Graham be on the floor concerned about what we say if he genuinely did not believe we are making a mistake? I don't want to embarrass the President. I would say to the President: Keep it up with Iran. I hope sanctions work. And if you need to use military force to protect this Nation, if sanctions fail, I will be your strongest advocate.

But a couple of things have been said that need to be corrected. The managers' amendment is not what was in the base bill or we wouldn't need a managers' amendment. Section 102 in the base bill is approximately three paragraphs. Section 102 here is approximately 10 pages. The bottom line for me is that this section was added in the managers' amendment that didn't exist in the base bill:

Nothing in this act or this amendment or the amendments

made by this act shall be construed as a declaration of war

or an authorization of the use of force against Iran or

Syria.

That wasn't in the base bill. Where the hell did that come from? This is not a declaration of war. But when this sentence is in there, and the new amendment doesn't say one thing about the use of force to control the Iranian behavior--the President's own words are ``all options on the table.'' And the reason I am exercised is we are now producing a product that backs away from where the President has been regarding all options on the table. We end the new managers' package with the statement ``nothing here authorizes the use of force against Iran or Syria.''

It is all about sanctions in the bill, and the only time we mention force is to say we won't do it or we won't authorize it. All I am asking is what Senator Lieberman mentioned. These sanctions are great. I hope they will change Iranian behavior. They haven't yet, and I don't think they ever will, but I am willing to go down this road. All I am asking is when we include in the legislation ideas or concepts that will change Iranian behavior that we include ``all options are on the table'' in the bill. Because this would be the first piece of legislation where that is ominously omitted.

To end, the whole concept of what we are trying to do with the declarative statement ``this is not a declaration of war or the use of force against Iran or Syria'' would make the Iranians believe, quite frankly, we are all about sanctions and that is it. I am all for sanctions, but if you are listening, Tehran, I want more on the table to make you change your behavior.

This summer is going to be tough for the world. The Iranians talk and enrich. There is nothing credible I have seen to make me believe they are not pursuing a nuclear weapons capability. I hope the talks next Tuesday will change their behavior.

I appreciate what Senator Menendez has done, along with his colleagues on the Banking Committee, to give this President more tools, to make them even tougher than they are today. But the worst thing we could do before next Tuesday is to leave any doubt to anybody who is watching this debate that there is nothing more on the table than just sanctions; that on the table--and we hope to God we never have to use it to stop the Iranian nuclear program--is the use of force, if that is required.

That is all I want to say. I hope we never get there.

I agree with this last statement--I am not asking for a declaration of war against Tehran or Syria--but I will not vote for a document at this critical time in our Nation's history, with the existential threat we are facing from a rogue regime that denies the right of Israel to exist, that has killed over 2,000 Americans in Iraq, that has been a proxy for evil throughout the planet, whose own President doesn't believe the Holocaust existed. And to my friends at APACS, whom I agree with most of the time, if they think this is the right answer, I couldn't disagree with you more.

Add one simple line, that in addition to all the fine work of the Banking Committee, and my dear friend Senator Menendez, that we in the Senate recognize what the President has been saying for months--that military force is also an option.

Senator Corker asked a very good question, and I will answer it directly, as Senator Lieberman did. The resolution is not designed to authorize the use of force where anybody in the State Department administration could say, we have the green light to go into Iran from Congress. That is not what we are intending to do. We are intending to echo a policy statement made by President Obama that the policy of the United States will be--if you are listening in Tehran-- not to contain Iran if they obtain a nuclear capability.

I want to lodge an objection to my own resolution by my colleague Rand Paul, who could not be here, so I am going to object on his behalf. He wants to strike two provisions of the resolution, although I don't think we can get there from here.

But in response to Senator Corker, if he wanted to add a line into this resolution that it is not an authorization to use force, I will gladly do that so that nobody can mistake that. But here is what Senator Paul suggested to me. What if they get a nuclear weapon. You know, we don't want to contain them. That is our policy. But what if we wake up one day and they explode a bomb out in the desert and they have already got it? What would we do then? Does that mean we would go after their nuclear program or would we try to contain them? It means, from my point of view, we should go after their program. So we have a difference.

If the Iranians think they can sneak through and get a nuclear weapon, and then we are going to contain them, it doesn't work that way. They need to know their regime survival is at stake if they go down this road. If by some accident of our intelligence being wrong--if that could be even conceivable, which I think it could be given this closed environment--they need to know we are not going to allow a nuclear-capable Iran, period.

But to this resolution not being an authorization to use force, I would say to Senator Menendez that this last statement--which wasn't in the base bill--I don't object to that. This is not a declaration of war. I don't know why someone added Syria. We are not talking about Syria, but there are some people out there who want to limit the ability of the United States sometimes to defend itself. I want to put a sentence in your sanctions bill that all options are on the table, as they have been for months, if not years.

Yes.

The Senator is correct.

Here is what President Obama said: All options are on the table when it comes to the Iranian nuclear program. Israel, I have your back. Containment is not an option.

I agree with the President. I think he has made the right statements, and I am just trying to reinforce them.

Well, let me try to answer that.

Senator Menendez and a group of us--Senators Lieberman and Casey and Hoeven and myself--did the resolution in question today to echo the President's statement that we are not going to have containment as a policy.

There are some people--even Republicans, I might add, some very prominent Republicans--who believe you could contain a nuclear-armed Iran if you told them: If you ever use a nuclear weapon, we would wipe you off the face of the Earth.

President Clinton gave a very good answer to that situation. He said that the biggest fear he has is not that the Iranians would put a nuclear weapon on the top of a missile and hit Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv. That is a concern. His biggest fear is that they would share the technology with a terrorist organization. So that is why you can't ever let them get this capability.

So the resolution is basically echoing the statement of the President that containment is not an option. And it has 78 cosponsors.

Senator Paul has the right to object, and he did. I don't think we can get there from here. I think he has a different view of what we are trying to do--honestly held, a good man, just an honest difference of opinion.

Back to the sanctions bill. Senator Menendez did a great job, as he always does on things like this. The reason I found out about this and got so concerned is that section 603 is something that wasn't in the base bill. Again, it says: Nothing in this act or the amendments made by this act shall be construed as a declaration of war or an authorization for use of force against Iran or Syria.

One, nothing in here has anything to do with Syria, and I am OK with saying that. I don't want this to be a declaration of war or an authorization to use force; I want it to be a good sanctions bill. But if you don't have the other means available to stop the Iranian programs--as the President has indicated, all options on the table-- that has to be said because we would be leaving a gap in our policy.

So to Senator Menendez and Senator Reid, all I am asking is that we insert a provision that basically echoes what the policy of this country is--all options are on the table, not just sanctions. And we will get a lot of votes for this.

I would just close and yield the floor to Senator Menendez. The Senator is right about the resolution. We are not coming up with a new idea; we are just reinforcing an idea put on the table by our own President--we are not going to contain a nuclear-capable Iran as a policy. It is not a declaration of war. It is not authorization of force. It is restating the policy at a time when it may matter.

Well, here is my view about that. I think the President would be wise to include the Congress.

I am a conservative who thinks the War Powers Act is unconstitutional. I find it odd that our party for all of these years has railed against the War Powers Act until President Obama is in office, and all of a sudden we are great champions of the War Powers Act.

But what I would say is that it would be wise for the President to consult with the Congress and for us to be united. And if you do believe in the War Powers Act, he has to, within a period of time, come back to get our approval to continue. I think whatever the President needs to do to defend us against a nuclear-capable Iran is best made by the Commander in Chief consulting with the Congress. But you can't have 535 commanders in chief.

Back to the sanctions bill. The problem I have is that it is silent on a concept on which we all agree, and I don't want to create a document before the negotiations Tuesday that doesn't include something beyond sanctions to change the Iranian behavior that we all want to avoid. And this says: It is the sense of the Congress that the goal of compelling Iran to abandon efforts to acquire nuclear weapons capability and other threatening activities can be effectively achieved through--it goes through 10 pages talking about sanctions, and not once does it mention the possibility of military force, and that is what I want to add, that concept.

With that, I will yield the floor. I hope we can work this out.

To the Senator from New Jersey, I think he is a great guy, and I am sorry we are having this problem. But it is very important to me that we get this part of it right.