Floor Statements

Mr. President, I have five requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders.

Pursuant to Rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

committee on armed services

The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate Thursday, March 2, 2017, at 9:30 a.m.

committee on finance

The Committee on Finance is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 2, 2017, during the first scheduled vote on the Senate floor, tentatively scheduled for 10 a.m., in S-216, the President's Room of the United States Capitol.

committee on foreign relations

The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 2, 2017 at 10:30 a.m., to hold a hearing entitled ``Venezuela: Options for U.S. Policy.''

select committee on intelligence

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the 115th Congress of the U.S. Senate on Thursday, March 2, 2017 at 2 p.m., in room SH-219 of the Senate Hart Office Building to hold a closed hearing.

subcommittee on communications, technology, innovation and the internet

The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation's Communications, Technology, Innovation and the Internet Subcommittee is authorized to hold a meeting during the session of the Senate on Thursday, March 2, 2017, at 9:30 a.m., in room G50 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to hold a hearing titled ``Exploring the Value of Spectrum to the U.S. Economy.''

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to enter into a colloquy with the Senator from Delaware.

Mr. President, I am here to discuss, along with the Senator from Delaware, the issue of Russia. I know it has been at the forefront of much of the debate that is ongoing in this country. I wanted to begin by commending the Vice President and Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Homeland Security and Secretary of State for the strong message of support for NATO. That includes the President last night and their strong support, by the way, for the Transatlantic Alliance that these individuals outlined during their respective visits to the Munich Security Conference and meetings with allies in February.

At that Munich Security Conference on February 18, the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, said: ``I hope [he means the world] will choose a democratic world order, a post-West one, in which each country is defined by its sovereignty.'' I think that based on recent history, it is clear that when a Russian leader says ``post-West,'' we should interpret that as a phrase to mean post-America.

So I would ask the Senator with regard to this, what are his views with regard to Vladimir Putin's desire to establish spheres of influence in Europe and the Middle East, create divisions with our allies. How should we view the Russian world view as it compares to the national interests of the United States?

To answer that question, I would begin by reminding everyone that when we are talking about Russia, we are not talking about the Russian people. We are talking about Vladimir Putin and the cronies who surround him and their goals for the future. We have no quarrel with the Russian people, who I actually believe would very much want to have a better relationship with the United States and certainly live in a world in which their country was more like ours than the way their government now runs theirs.

The second thing I would point to is, it is important to understand history. At the end of the Second World War, Nazism had been conquered, and the Japanese Empire and its designs had also been ended, fascism defeated. The United States and the world entered this period of a Cold War, a battle between communism and the free world. The United States and our allies stood for that freedom. At the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Soviet bloc, the fall of communism, the world we all hoped had entered into this new era, where every nation had a different system--maybe some had a parliamentary system, maybe some had a republic, such as ours--but in the end, more people than ever would have access to a government responsive to their needs.

That was the growing trend around the world, up until about 7, 8, 10 years ago. We now see the opposite. We see a rising arc of the totalitarianism, and within that context is where I believe Vladimir Putin's world view is constructed. He views the values we stand for, which some may call Western values, and perhaps that is the right terminology, but I really believe in universal values: the idea that people should have a role to play in choosing their leader, that people should have a freedom to worship as they see fit, that people should be able to express their opinions and ideas freely without fear of retribution or punishment by the government.

These are the values I think we have stood for and that our allies have stood for and that we had hoped Russia would stand for in this new era, but Vladimir Putin viewed that as a threat. In particular, over the last number of years, he has decided the best way for him to secure his place in Russian politics is through an aggressive foreign policy in which he views it as a zero-sum game.

That is not the way we view it. We actually view the world as a place where we can help rebuild Japan; we can help rebuild Germany. They are stronger, and we are stronger. It isn't one or the other.

He does not see it that way. He views the world as a place where in order for Russia to be greater, America has to be less; in order for him to be more powerful, we have to be less powerful, and it is a world in which he has to undermine democratic principles and try to expose them as fraudulent.

That is why you saw the Russian intelligence services meddle in our elections in 2016. One of the main designs they had was to create doubt and instability about our system of government and to not just discredit it here at home but to discredit it around the world.

I just returned from Europe a week ago. Germany and France, which both have upcoming elections of their own, are seeing an unprecedented wave of active measures on the part of Russian intelligence to try to influence their elections. In the Netherlands, we have seen some of the same. So this is very concerning.

Our European allies are very concerned about the weaponization of cyber technology to strategically place information in the public domain for purposes of undermining candidates, steering elections, and undermining policymaking.

I want everybody to understand this is not just about elections. The exact same tools they used in the 2016 Presidential election, they could use to try to influence the debate in the Senate by attacking individual Senators or individual viewpoints and using their control over propaganda to begin to spread that.

I will give you just one example, and that is in May of 2015, the German intelligence agencies reported an attack on the German Parliament, on energy companies, on universities. They attribute that to Russian hackers.

In Montenegro, the Prime Minister has sought membership in NATO, an action we have supported in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which both of us serve on, but Russian intelligence has plotted at a very aggressive level to disrupt their elections late last year.

Moscow has used TV and Internet outlets like Russia Today, or RT, and Sputnik to launch propaganda campaigns to galvanize anti-EU extremists ahead of the Dutch elections. The list goes on and on. There is no shortage of them.

The point is, we are in the midst of the most aggressive, active measures ever undertaken by a foreign government to not just meddle in American policy debates and American elections but in those throughout the free world, and it is deeply concerning.

I think another matter that I would love to hear the Senator's opinion on is on the issue of human rights violations because, on top of being a totalitarian state, what goes hand in hand with totalitarianism are human rights violations. In fact, totalitarianism is, in and of itself, a human rights violation; that there can be no dictatorship, no repressive regime, no totalitarian leader who can maintain themselves in power without violating the human rights of their people.

So I would ask the Senator--I would love to have his comment on whether or not, indeed, Vladimir Putin is a serial human rights violator and what our policy should be in terms of outlining that to the world.

That is the central question. The first is what we are doing now, which is an important part: shining the sunlight on all of it, making people aware of it. For example, we know in France two of the leading candidates have views that I think the Kremlin would be quite pleased with, if that became the foreign policy of France--a third, not so much. He is a very young candidate running as an independent. His last name Macron. Suddenly, as he began to surge in the polls, all these stories started appearing, ridiculous stories about his personal life, about his marriage, things that are completely false, completely fabricated. Fortunately, French society and the French press understands this and has reported it as such.

It is important for us. This is happening and is real, and it is unprecedented in its scope and in its aggression. So shining a light on the reality and understanding, as I always tell my colleagues--I said this last October, that this is not a partisan issue.

I am telling you that--to my Republican colleagues who might be uncomfortable about discussing Russian interference--this is not about the outcome of the election; this is about the conduct and what happened throughout it. And what they did last year, in the fall, in the Presidential race, they can do against any Member here. If they don't like what you are saying, if they think you are getting too far on policy, you could find yourself the target of Russian propaganda in the hopes of undermining you, perhaps even having you eliminated from the debate because they understand our political process quite well.

The second is to do no harm. There is this notion out there--and I think on paper it sounds great, right--why don't we just partner up with the Russians to defeat ISIS and take on radicalism around the world.

The problem is this: No. 1, that is what Russia claims they are already doing. Vladimir Putin claims he is already doing that. So if he is already doing it, why would we have to partner with him? He is already doing it. Obviously, the answer is because he hasn't. This has been about propping up Assad.

Here is the other problem. When you partner up with someone, you have to take responsibility for everything they do and all the actions they undertake.

Senator Coons just outlined a moment ago, he said: Well, we talked about the bombing in Aleppo.

Think about it. If we had partnered with Russia in Syria and they were bombing Aleppo and they were hitting hospitals and they were killing civilians and they were our partners, we have to answer for that as well. We would be roped into that.

The third is to understand their strategic goal is not to defeat radical elements in the Middle East; their strategic goal is to have inordinate influence in Syria, with Iran, potentially in other countries at the expense of the United States.

We have had two Presidents--a Republican and a Democrat--previous to the current President who thought they could do such a deal with Vladimir Putin. Both of them fell on their face because they did not understand what they were dealing with. It is my sincerest hope that our current President doesn't make the same mistakes.

In addition to that, I know there are a number of legislative approaches that we have worked on together, as members of both the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, and I would ask the Senator from Delaware if he could highlight some of those legislative matters that we have been talking about: resolutions, laws, and public policy that we have been advocating.

I thank the Senator for joining me in this endeavor here today. It is important that we speak out about this.

In a moment, the majority leader will be here with some procedural matters that will, I guess, take the Senate to a different posture.

Before that happens, I wanted to close by not just thanking him for being a part of this but by making a couple more points.

The first is, I want you to imagine for a moment, if you are sitting at the Kremlin and you are watching on satellite television the debate going on in American politics today, you are probably feeling pretty good about yourself. You have one group arguing that maybe the elections weren't legitimate because the Russians interfered. In essence, there have been news reports about a tension between the President and the Intelligence Committee. You have these reports every single day back and forth. You are looking at all this chaos, and you are saying to yourself: We did a pretty good job. If what we wanted to do was to divide the American people against each other, have them at each other's throats, arguing about things, and sowing chaos and instability into their political process, I think you look at the developments of the last 6 weeks and 6 months, and if you are in the Kremlin, you say: Well, our efforts have been pretty successful with that. I think that is the first thing we need to understand.

The second thing is, this should all be about partisanship. I am a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It is probably known that we are undertaking an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections. I want everyone to know--I speak for myself and I believe almost all of my colleagues when I say, on the one hand, I am not interested in being a part of a witch hunt; on the other hand, I will not be part of a coverup. We are going to get to the truth. We want to get to the truth. We want to be able to deliver to this body and to the American people a document with truth and facts, wherever they may lead us, because this is above political party. Our system of government and this extraordinary Republic has been around for over two centuries. It is unique and it is special, and with all of its blemishes and flaws, I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

I want people to think about that. The next time you wonder and say to yourself that things are so tough in America and things are going so poorly, well, with whom would you trade places? I am not saying we don't have problems, because we do, but I ask, in what country would you rather be? I promise you that you won't say China if you know anything about China. I promise you that you won't say Russia if you know anything about Russia. There is no nation on Earth we would trade places with, and there is no process of government I would trade for ours. It is not perfect.

One of the strengths of our system is our ability to stand up here in places like the Senate and discuss our differences and our problems and make continuous progress forward even if the pace is slower and more frustrating than we wish. That is what is at stake in this process and what is at stake in this debate. That is what none of us can allow to see erode because of interference by a foreign government, especially one that is a thug and war criminal in every sense of the word.

So our quarrel is not with the Russian people and it is not with Russia. I have extraordinary admiration for the Russian people. I have extraordinary admiration for the sacrifices and contributions they have made throughout history to our culture and to the world. But, unfortunately, today their government is run by an individual who has no respect for his own people and no respect for the freedom and liberty of others, and it is important for our policymakers on both sides of the aisle to be clear-eyed and clear-voiced in what we do moving forward.

I thank the Senator for being with us today and allowing us to engage in this discussion. I hope we will see more of that in the weeks and months to come so we can speak clearly and firmly in one voice that on issues involving America and our sovereignty and our system of government and decisions we must make, we will speak with one voice as one Nation, as one people, as one country.

I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I know we are working through these nominations, and there is an important one before us now, but as we continue to debate it, I thought it would be a good time to talk about the overall function of the Federal Government and some of the important things it does.

Today I had occasion to meet with individuals on behalf of the ONE organization. It is a fantastic group I learned about for the first time in 2010. I was running for the U.S. Senate, and a group of activists in black shirts with a round white symbol on the shirt that said ``ONE''--and I didn't know what it was. I thought it was maybe a protester or someone of that nature. They were very polite, and in the end they approached me and started talking about it. They are a group of supporters of global engagement on behalf of the United States, cofounded by Bono, the front man for the band U2, which I think is familiar to most people at this point. So they are here again today, and we had an opportunity to meet with them early this morning. Many of the Members around here perhaps have seen them visit around the Capitol.

That brought to mind something I want to talk about today, and that is the broader issue of U.S. foreign aid, the State Department, and engagement in the world. Let me back up and tell you what I think I hear--that most people hear around here as well from a lot of people. This has been going on for a long time. I don't blame people because people have real lives, businesses to run, and families to raise so they are not watching the Federal budget, line by line, on a regular basis.

There is a perception out there that the U.S. Government spends an extraordinary percentage of our overall

budget on foreign aid. I saw a poll recently, a legitimate poll conducted, and it asked people: How much of the Federal budget do you think goes out of the country? And the average was 26 percent. That is what people thought. Of course the truth is, it is nothing even close to that.

I want to begin by saying that today foreign aid as a part of our overall budget is less than 1 percent of the total amount the U.S. Government spends--less than 1 percent. The second thing people bring up is: Well, but we have so many problems in America. We do. We have real issues we need to confront. Why do we spend so much money on these other countries when we have so many problems here at home? That is a legitimate question. People should ask that. I think it is important for those of us who believe in global engagement and believe in the function of foreign aid to justify it, to never take it for granted, and to constantly examine it to make sure the money is being spent well and that it is worth spending at all. That is what I wanted to come to the floor to do today for a few minutes.

I know we are soon going to end a budget cycle. There will be debate, and every dollar in the budget should justify itself. I want to explain for a moment why I believe global engagement and foreign aid are so critical.

Here is the first reason. The world has always been interconnected, especially for America. We are not a small, obscure nation. We are the most influential, the most consequential nation on the planet. I can tell you that almost without exception, if there is a major crisis anywhere on this planet, it will eventually have a nexus to life in America in one way or another.

You think about one of the controversial issues that has been debated in Washington and being discussed politically is the Syrian refugees. I remember a couple of years ago that people would tell me: Well, it is very sad what is happening in Syria, but what does that have to do with us? Well, 2 or 3 years later, I think we all know the answer; that is, when refugees are created anywhere in the world, it is natural that a significant percentage of them want to come to the richest, freest, safest nation in the world, and that is the United States of America.

It also impacts our allies. We have seen it in Europe where a tremendous strain has been placed upon our allies in Europe. A significant amount of the budget in Germany, where I was recently just visiting, is being spent on dealing with the refugee crisis and the impact it is having on them. I would tell you that what happens in the world has a direct consequence to the United States.

Here is another fact for why it matters to America. This is a key fact that I was able to pull up today--or my staff was. Twelve of the fifteen top trading partners of the United States were once recipients of U.S. foreign assistance.

I think the best way to justify foreign assistance is to understand the history of it. Let's go back in time. Let's go to the end of the Second World War. Europe was in ruins. Japan was in ruins. The United States, had it behaved like most great powers in history, would have either abandoned those nations itself or the United States would have conquered them and made Japan a colony or made Germany a dependent on the United States. Instead, through the Marshall Plan the United States rebuilt Western Europe and in particular Germany. Through additional assistance, the United States provided aid to rebuild post-war Japan. For the Japanese, between 1946 and 1952, the United States invested $2.2 billion--or $18 billion in today's dollars--in Japan's reconstruction efforts. That amounts to more than one-third of the $65 billion in goods the United States exported to Japan just last year, in 1 year alone.

What is the result of this aid? Here is the result. Today we have a prosperous, unified Germany, which is a strong member of NATO and a strong ally of the United States. We have in Japan the world's third largest economy and one of the most important allies of this great country of ours in the Asia-Pacific region. This would not have been possible without U.S. assistance. Did it help the people of Japan and the people of Germany? Absolutely. Did it help the people of the United States? Without question.

Is the world a better place today because Germany is a free democratic nation involved in trade, involved in alliances with us, deploying troops around the world for NATO missions? Without a doubt. Is the world a better place because Japan is the third largest economy and a strong ally of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region? Without a doubt. That is an example of the fruit of U.S. engagement.

Some would say to me: Well, that was after the Second World War. That was a catastrophic event, but as a matter of course, what else has borne fruit? Isn't this just money we throw down a hole and never see results of? I would tell you that is not the case.

I would point to South Korea. It is hard to believe, but just a few decades ago South Korea was poorer than North Korea. South Korea had less money, less of an economy, less prosperity than North Korea. Today, South Korea is an industrialized, fully developed economy--one of the largest economies in the world. A nation that not long ago was a military dictatorship is now a vibrant, functioning democracy and a strong American ally.

Again, another example--do you want one in our own hemisphere? Look at the country of Colombia. Not long ago, Colombia was basically a failed state. That country had been overrun by drug gangs, the cartels--the Medellin Cartel, the Cali Cartel. The government was on the verge of collapse. Presidential candidates were being assassinated--an extraordinary source of instability in the Western Hemisphere. Colombia still has challenges, but in helping them move forward with Plan Colombia, today trade between the United States and Colombia is at $14 billion, and as of last year, it actually was a surplus.

What is more, Colombia is now a force multiplier for our cousins. For example, if you visit Honduras, as I did during the summer, and you see the Honduran police and the Honduran special forces being trained to take on the criminal elements and cartels in that country, do you know who is there training them alongside of our people? The Colombians--the Colombian military units who have the same uniform, the same training, the same weaponry, and the same practices as the Green Berets of the United States, and they are a force multiplier. Today, Colombia is doing the things America once had to do because of the aid we provided them, and they are perhaps our strongest ally in the Western Hemisphere.

It goes on and on from a human perspective. You think about America and America's Feed the Future Initiative. It is an initiative that has trained thousands of farmers in Tanzania over the last decade. Now our country exports to them, and exports to Tanzania from the United States have increased by 500 percent.

An important point, by the way, is that there have been reductions in foreign aid over the last few decades. Today, we spend 50 percent less on foreign aid than we did as a percentage of our gross domestic product when President Reagan was in office, which was near the end of the Cold War. There is rationale for this, as well, for our economy and for our national security.

From an economic perspective, 95 percent of the consumers in the world--95 percent of the people on this planet who buy things--live outside of the United States. Seven of the ten fastest growing economies happen to be in the developing world. So if you are an American company that makes things--and I know we want to make things in America again--you have to sell them to someone. If you can only sell them to 5 percent of the world's population that happens to live in the United States of America, that is one thing, but imagine how much more you could sell, how much more money you could make, how much more value you would have for your shareholders, how many more employees and jobs you would create if you could sell to more of that 95 percent of the people around the world. You cannot sell to people and people cannot be consumers if they are starving. They cannot be consumers if they are dying of HIV/AIDS. They cannot be consumers if they are dying of malaria. They cannot be consumers if they live in an unstable country.

So there is an economic rationale for our investment around the world. We

are helping people to emerge from poverty and to ultimately become members of a global consumer class that buys American goods and services. We are, in essence, planting the seeds for markets to develop that we can trade with and that we can sell to. That is one of the reasons it is so important. That is one of the reasons that today one out of five American jobs is tied to international trade and that one in three manufacturing jobs in America is tied to exports. You cannot export unless there are people on the other end of the deal to buy it from you, and we want as many people in the world as possible to be able to afford to buy things from us. In many places around the world, it begins by ensuring that they are alive and then by ensuring that they have the education they need to develop an economy so that their people can become consumers and trade partners with us.

The list goes on and on in terms of the accomplishments it has had.

Our global anti-malaria program has saved over 6 million lives, primarily those of children under the age of 5. PEPFAR, which is the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, has saved more than 11 million people and has prevented 2 million babies from being born with HIV. The number of school-age children worldwide who are not going to primary school dropped to 57 million children in the year 2015. That is still too many, but the number was nearly twice that--100 million--just 7 years ago. There has been a 99-percent reduction in polio cases thanks to the efforts we have led in the vaccination program. The list goes on and on.

There is a national security component to this, and here it is: Imagine for a moment that you are a child born in Africa, that your parents had HIV, and that they survived because of American assistance. Imagine if you yourself were someone who survived HIV or malaria because of American assistance or that you got to go to school because of American help or that because of American assistance you didn't contract polio the way your relatives used to. Imagine if you were one of these young people around the world whose lives are better because of the help of the American taxpayer. This is never going to be 100 percent for sure, but I promise you it is going to be a lot harder to recruit someone to anti-Americanism and anti-American terrorism if the United States of America is the reason one is even alive today. That is the national security component, apart from allowing countries to become more stable and provide for their people and for themselves.

By the way, when we talk about the international affairs budget, it is not just foreign aid; it is everything--diplomatic relationships with the global community, security assistance with key allies--Israel. As an example, it provides them $3 billion in military assistance as they are a key ally in a strategic part of the world.

We have talked about the health clinics in the schools and the humanitarian relief efforts. I remember going to the Philippines about 3 or 4 years ago. One of the first things people mentioned to me was that after that horrible storm that killed and hurt so many people, they woke up one morning and saw a U.S. aircraft carrier off the horizon, and they knew things were going to be better because America was on the case. Think about the power and what that means for our Nation and the impact it has on people around the world. This is part of it.

By the way, when we travel abroad--when you are an American and you are in another country and you lose your passport or your wallet gets stolen or you have any sort of an issue--you have to work abroad, as do many people whom I know, and we get the calls in our office from people who have kids who are studying abroad and have an issue and have to go to the consulate or the Embassy--this is the budget that pays for that stuff. This is the budget that pays for that.

If you are a company that decides ``I want to do business in this new country. I want to fly to this country and find some customers and maybe come back to America and hire 20 more people so that we can build products to sell. I want to expand our reach,'' it is our U.S. Embassies and the agencies working within them that are helping to make those connections for American businesses. That is part of this budget.

When we talk about this, I think it is critical for us as leaders to explain to the American people just exactly what it is we are talking about. We always want to put America first. We always want to think about the American people first. That is our obligation. But I think this is part of that. If you really want to help the American people, you have to ensure that the world we live in is a more stable place.

I close by saying that this always gets back to the argument that some make: Why does it have to be us? We have been doing this for so long. We have been involved in this for so long, and we have spent so much money and so much blood and treasure around the world for the cause of freedom, democracy, humanitarianism, and the like. Why does it have to be America?

I think that gets to the fundamental question of, what kind of country do we want to be? The choice before us is that it has to be America because there is no alternative. That is the point I hope people remember and understand. There is no alternative for America in the world today. If America decides to withdraw from the world, if America decides to step back, if America declines and our influence around the world becomes less palpable, what will replace it?

There are only two things that can replace it--not the U.N. There are only two things that can step into whatever America leaves if it steps back. No. 1 is totalitarianism. For the growing movement around the world led by China and Russia and North Korea and Iran, it is the totalitarian regimes. That is the first thing that can step in and fill the vacuum. The other is nothing. The other alternative to America is nothing. It is a vacuum, and that vacuum leads to instability, and that instability will lead to violence, and that violence will lead to war. That will ultimately come back and impact us whether we want it to or not. This is the choice before us.

Without a doubt, I am the sponsor of a law that we passed last year, foreign aid accountability. I want to make sure that every dollar of American taxpayer money that is invested abroad for these purposes is spent well and is not going to line the pockets of corrupt dictators. I 100 percent agree with that. Yet this idea that somehow we can just retreat from our engagement in the world is bad for national security, it is bad for our economy, and it isn't good for policymakers who want to put the American people first. By the way, it doesn't live up to the standards of who we are as a people.

I have said this many times before, and in this I am guided by my faith. I believe that to whom much is given, much is expected. That is what the ancient words and Scripture teach us. I think that principle is true for people, and I think that principle is true for nations. I believe in the depth of my heart that our Creator has honored America's willingness to step forward and help those around the world, and I believe He will continue to do so as long as we use our blessings not just for our good but for the good of mankind.

I hope that in the weeks to come, as we debate the proper role of government and the proper way to fund it, we understand what a critical component foreign aid and the international affairs budget is to our national security, our economic interests, and our very identity as a people and as a nation.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I come here this evening to speak on the issue of human rights in Venezuela and developments today in regard to all these issues. It is part of the broader effort my office has undertaken for a while now. It is the hashtag ``Expression NOT Oppression'' campaign.

Every week we come here to the floor of the Senate when in session and highlight political prisoners and dissidents whose lives are being destroyed by oppressive regimes around the world.

Today, I will be highlighting the case of Leopoldo Lopez, a Venezuelan opposition leader who, 3 years ago this week, led peaceful demonstrations against the regime of Nicolas Maduro, and he was thrown in jail for it.

I am honored that this week we will be visited here in Washington by Lilian Tintori, Leopoldo's wife and the mother of their two children. She is an incredibly brave woman who does not rest as she continues advocating for her husband's release and the release of all political prisoners and continues to fight for a free and democratic Venezuela. So I want to recognize her as she visits Washington this week to ask for our government's continued help.

Before I get into Leopoldo's case, I want to take a few moments to talk about what is happening in our own Western Hemisphere and in Venezuela specifically.

For decades, the Western Hemisphere has been neglected by our foreign policy--sadly, by administrations of both

parties. As we see all over the world, when America fails to lead and engage on the world stage, bad actors emerge and they grow emboldened, while our enemies and adversaries rush to fill the void. We see democracy under assault and with it, an assault on the universal, God- given rights and dignity of citizens throughout this region.

Despite the one-sided concessions of the past 2 years, Castro's Cuba remains as repressive as ever. In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega ran for and won an unconstitutional third term, with his wife as the Vice President. Of course, we are growing increasingly familiar with the economic, social, and political disaster in Venezuela, which I shall elaborate on shortly.

By the way, I am also concerned about the impact of ongoing, rampant corruption in the region, which will undermine democratic governments and their institutions.

There is another major issue plaguing the region and threatening the security of the United States, and that is rising insecurity stemming from narcoterrorist drug cartels. In recent years, we have seen the worst of them--the FARC in Colombia--brought to their knees and to the negotiating table by the Colombian Government's efforts. But Mexico and other countries throughout Central America continue to be threatened by organizations such as these.

A third problem in the region is the lack of economic opportunity. It is simply in America's interest to have more prosperous neighbors, people to sell to and trade with. Ultimately, if people can't earn enough money to feed their families and live in a safe neighborhood, they will either pick up and leave by any means necessary, including illegal immigration, or they will join drug gangs.

I know that too often there is a tendency to overlook what is happening in our own region. Some might say: I have enough problems here at home to worry about what is going on in other countries. But I hope that everyone remembers that all of this I have described and am about to talk about ultimately has direct consequences on us here in the United States and on our people. When you have a breakdown in any of these areas, people in these countries look to leave. The first place they often look to is the freest and the most prosperous country in the region--in the world--the United States of America. Because it also happens to be relatively close, that creates immigration pressures on our borders and on our communities.

When economies aren't functioning, it means American workers and entrepreneurs have fewer customers abroad to sell products and services to. And when you have all of this instability, vacuums are created that foreign enemies or adversaries like North Korea, Iran, China, and Russia seek to fill, not to mention terrorist organizations. It allows for the rise of tyrants and authoritarians like Castro and Chavez, Maduro, Ortega, Morales, Correa, and others.

Today in Venezuela, all these problems have come together to bring this country--one of the richest countries in the world in terms of resources--to the verge of becoming a failed state, and today the people of that proud country are living a nightmare.

Not that long ago, Venezuela was a vibrant democracy. It had strong democratic and independent institutions. It had free and fair elections. But today in Venezuela, democracy and human rights are under assault. The country is ruled by an incompetent strongman--a criminal, a human rights abuser, someone who has perverted every independent institution in the country, and is incompetent, whether it is the judiciary, the military, intelligence, or the media--in order to entrench himself and his cronies in power.

Here in the United States, when we have disagreements, people use different rules at their disposal to prolong debates and slow things down. We are aware of that here in the Senate. In Venezuela, when people have disagreements, especially with the government, they just try to stop debates completely. For example, after the opposition party in Venezuela miraculously won the last legislative election--despite every effort by the Maduro government to steal that election--the Venezuelan state police then blocked the new members of the Parliament from going to work.

Imagine for a moment 2, 4 years ago, 2012, when President Obama was elected, if he had ordered--in 2014, when Republicans took control of the Senate, imagine if at that time the President had ordered the police to stand at the door of the Chamber and not allow Senators from the Republican Party to enter the Chamber. That is what happened in Venezuela. Then that same government in Venezuela ordered their hacks on the kangaroo supreme court to invalidate laws passed by the National Assembly to free political prisoners.

Venezuela also has a drug cartel problem. In fact, there are officials in the highest levels of the Venezuelan Government who have even been linked to drug cartels. Among them is the former head of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, and the Vice President of that country, Tareck El Aissami. I will talk about him in a moment.

We also learned last week--and I came to the floor to discuss the CNN report confirming what my office had been gathering for a while. By the way, that is going to be airing tonight on CNN, the second part of that series. We learned that organized crime syndicates in Venezuela, with the tacit approval of the Government of Venezuela, of Maduro, are running counterfeit passport rings, with counterfeit Venezuelan passports being sold to terrorists and to individuals with links to terrorism.

But it is Venezuela's economy that is perhaps the saddest story of all. The failures of Chavez-style socialism in Venezuela led to misery for people there of all ages. Not that long ago, Venezuela was a relatively rich economy. It is a rich country blessed with oil and other natural resources, and it has long had a well-educated population and vibrant middle class. But under Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela has been crumbling. Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, has become the murder capital of the world. It is one of the most dangerous cities on the planet. Venezuela is defaulting on its loans. In fact, it will owe about $6 billion in April. They will not be able to make those payments. In Venezuela, the grocery shelves are bare--a rich country, and they are completely bare. Everyday products, like toilet paper, are scarce, as is food. The people of Venezuela are literary starving, so much so that a recent Miami Herald article from last week detailed how people have turned to hunting and eating flamingos for food. By now, many of us have seen the images of newborn babies being put in cardboard boxes at the hospital because these hospitals can no longer afford cribs.

So it comes as no surprise that the Venezuelan people, living in misery like this--robbed of their dignity and aspiring for more than this disaster--would choose to speak up. They began to do so in full force 3 years ago this week. That is when Venezuelan students took to the streets to protest the violence and the scarcity of basic necessities due to the negligent, incompetent policies enacted by the Maduro regime. What began as a student protest soon became something bigger. It became a movement.

Government thugs responded to this movement with violence, and the peaceful demonstrations came to look like a combat zone: 43 people dead, 600 people injured, and approximately 3,400 people detained. Among those detained was Leopoldo Lopez, a Venezuelan opposition leader. The government of Maduro outrageously accused him of being responsible for all of this violence, and they threw him in jail and he has been there ever since. It has been about 1,100 days. To put that number into context, Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian was held prisoner by the Iranian regime for 544 days. The Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 lasted 444 days. In September 2015, Leopoldo Lopez was sentenced to 13 years, 9 months, 7 days, and 12 hours for his participation in the protests. In jail he has suffered physical and psychological torture.

He is the father of two young children, and he is married to Lilian Tintori. He was the mayor of Chacao, and the leader of Popular Will or Voluntad Popular political party. He will be a critical part of building a

freer, more democratic, and more prosperous Venezuela, but for now, sadly, he languishes in prison.

He is not alone either. In Venezuela today, there are at least 108 political prisoners. Like Leopoldo, they each have a lot to contribute to make Venezuela a better place, but the Venezuelan Government is robbing them of their freedom, and it is robbing their families of the memories every child and spouse deserves to create with their father, husband, and loved ones.

All these political prisoners should be free. I have encouraged, publicly and privately, our new Secretary of State and the administration to make the freedom of these political prisoners their cause and to make it a priority. I know we are trying to work through our top-level Cabinet nominations here in the Senate, but we need to get people in place in other key roles throughout the administration; for example, our next Ambassador to the Organization of American States, where the United States needs to recommit to making its voice heard in that forum as a voice for democracy and human rights and for holding Venezuela's regime accountable for violations of the Inter- American Democratic Charter.

I am also pleased that today the administration announced a new round of sanctions against a key Venezuelan official. Specifically, Venezuela's Executive Vice President Tareck Zaidan El Aissami Maddah, El Aissami, as I talked about him earlier, and Venezuelan national Samark Jose Lopez Bello were sanctioned under the Kingpin Act for international narcotics trafficking.

Aissami's primary front man was Samark Jose Lopez Bello, whom I just discussed. He was designated for providing material assistance, financial support or goods and services, and support of international narcotics trafficking activities and acting for or on behalf of El Aissami. Five U.S. companies owned or controlled by Lopez Bello have been blocked as part of today's action.

All five of them are located in my home State of Florida. In fact, all five of them have mailing addresses in South Florida where I live. Among the properties seized: A U.S.-registered aircraft with the tail number N200VR. It has been identified as block property owned or controlled by PSA Holdings, LLC, controlled by Lopez Bello and by El Aissami, with funds that were able to get by conducting prohibited transactions dealing with drug traffickers.

It is an outrage that the Vice President of a country in our hemisphere not only is a narcotrafficker but is also in the business of selling passports and travel documents to people with links to terrorism.

For years now, I have been talking about how Venezuelan regime officials were committing crimes in Venezuela, stealing from the people of Venezuela, and then they spend their riches living in the lap of luxury in my hometown of Miami. These announcements today further confirmed how true this is and the extent to which corrupt regime officials have been allowed to freely travel and prance around free U.S. soil with impunity.

I am hopeful this is only the beginning of the sanctions today, to make sure the Maduro regime feels pressured to cease its illicit activities, to free all of its political prisoners, to tolerate dissent, and respect the will of the Venezuelan people who voted to abandon the disastrous past of Chavez and Maduro.

I am hopeful this is only the beginning of making sure the Maduro regime feels pressure to cease its illicit activities and everything it is doing that has placed Venezuela on this disastrous path.

We in this country are a blessed people, to have a vibrant democracy that serves as an example to the world. With those blessings come the responsibility of speaking out when we see others yearning to be free but repressed by their government. In recent years, this body, the Senate, has spoken unanimously in support of the Venezuelan people's aspirations, and we have spoken unanimously against the Maduro regime's brutality.

Today I come to the Senate to renew that support. To Leopoldo Lopez, all of Venezuela's political prisoners, and all in Venezuela who are fighting for a better life, we stand with you, and we will continue doing everything in our power to make sure your cause is supported by this Congress and by this administration.

Mr. President, finally, on a separate topic, I did want to take this moment to recognize someone I am proud to represent in the Senate. He is a fellow Floridian and a constituent by the name of Tim Tebow. By now, a lot of people know I am proud to be a University of Florida alum. So as a proud Gator fan, I have been rooting for Tim Tebow since he first stepped foot on campus in 2006.

He went on to win two national championships, becoming the first sophomore to win the Heisman Trophy, and in the process he rewrote the record books. When I was the Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, we hosted the Gators championship team. One of my favorite memories of my time in State government was catching a pass from Tim Tebow--No. 15--on the floor of the Florida House. It was not a great pass, but I caught it. The rules are a little different in the Senate. I wish it were OK to throw passes in here, but it was a great pleasure to be able to do that.

From the moment Tim arrived in Gainesville, we football fans saw that he was as good as advertised on the field, but we also started learning that as good a football player as he is, he is an even more extraordinary human being off the field.

He is a man to much has been given, whether it was the chance to be born to two great parents, an incredible support network, and of course God. He has been given much, and he has given back even more. We saw this once again this past Friday, when the Tim Tebow Foundation held its Night to Shine Initiative, an annual prom for special needs students from all over the world.

All told, 375 churches participated as Night to Shine hosts in all 50 States, 11 countries, and on 6 continents. There were 150,000 volunteers, and 75,000 special needs students were the guests of honor at events across the world. I encourage those of you here today or watching this or watching this in the future to Google search Night to Shine, to visit Tim Tebow's Facebook page, or to see the hashtag ``Night to Shine'' on Twitter. There you will see all of the photos that have been shared from Friday night's events. You will see 75,000 young people with special needs having the time of their lives. You will see volunteers and teachers and especially parents overcome with joy and emotion at the sight of their children feeling as loved, as important, and as special as each and every one of them truly is.

Personally, I was very moved. So I wanted to take a few minutes this evening to recognize Tim Tebow, the Tebow Foundation, the churches and the volunteers who participated, and all of the incredible students and parents who inspire us every day. I know I speak on behalf of the entire Gator Nation--I should say the entire State of Florida--in saying that we are proud of Tim. We are even prouder of all he has done and continues to do.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wanted to take a few moments today. I know we are in the middle of this debate about the health care law, about the nomination. On a topic I have been working on for a while, I was compelled to come to the floor at this late hour because it has now broken in the press. It is important to kind of give some clarity.

As my colleagues know, I have spent a significant amount of time over the last few years discussing the issues in the nation of Venezuela, which has a direct impact on my home State of Florida but ultimately on the country. It is a nation that faces some very significant challenges, primarily because its political leadership is a disaster. It is no longer truly a democracy. It is now a government run by a tyrant who has basically ignored the Constitution. They have taken over the courts. The members of the judiciary in Venezuela are now basically under the complete control of their so-called President, Nicolas Maduro, and before that, Chavez. They control the press. They have a national assembly that actually is controlled by the minority party or the opposition party to the government. But it is pretty shocking. My colleagues would be shocked by this. We all travel abroad often. Imagine if you lived in a country where the President denied you the ability to travel abroad. Well, that is what has happened.

One of the members of the National Assembly in the opposition, Luis Florido was trying to go to Peru to travel and was denied the ability to

leave the country. Imagine that. Imagine that one of our Democratic colleagues here in the Senate decided they wanted to take a trip next week overseas in the conduct of their office and were told that the President was not allowing them to travel abroad. That happened in Venezuela. Another one, Williams Davila, had his passport taken away by the President of Venezuela. So the country is a disaster because of their leadership. It is actually headed into a cataclysm.

In April of this year, Venezuela has to make a $6 billion payment on their debt. They will not be able to make that payment. The Government of Venezuela knows that. It is a terrible situation.

But in the midst of all of that, I have argued that the national security interests of the United States is at stake in what is happening in Venezuela. This is not just about the issue of democracy; it is also about the threat it potentially poses to the United States. That is what I come to the floor to speak about tonight.

My office has been engaged with a number of people over the last few months and year who have been coming to us with information. We have been working on some of this. Some of that has now broken into the press tonight in a CNN report that I am about to describe in a moment, but first, let me lay out the scene.

There have been about 8.5 million names added to Venezuela's immigration system since it was last independently audited in the year 2003. OK. So 8.5 million people were added to their immigration system, the new names that have come about. Of the 8.5 million names that were added, 221,000 of those--over 221,000 of those are foreign nationals, and at least 173 of those 221,000 foreign nationals are from the following countries: Iran, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan. So 173 people from these countries were provided government passports and national IDs between the year 2008 and 2012, which leads me to this: In November of 2015, a Venezuelan attache by the name of Misael Lopez Soto, who was assigned to the country's Embassy in Baghdad, became a whistleblower, and he began to reveal the identities of several of these 173 names.

Understand that this is important because there has been a 168- percent jump in U.S. asylum applications from Venezuela since October of 2015, now the third highest nation of origin for asylum applicants to the United States. The overwhelming majority of them are legitimate people fleeing all this craziness that is happening. But I lay the groundwork to understand the connection between Venezuela and the United States.

I now want to go into the story of Mr. Soto, who, as I said, used to work at the Embassy.

Mr. Soto was assigned to work at the Embassy of Venezuela in Iraq. As he began to work there, he noticed some irregularities, so he began to report what he says was a scheme to sell passports and visas for thousands of dollars out of that Embassy. He was offered all kinds of money to do this, to get a cut of those thousands of dollars. He says he declined it.

CNN and CNN en Espanol have over the last year teamed up on a joint investigation, relying on much of the same information that I have had access to, looking into all of these allegations and what they uncovered. In the story that posted tonight was evidence of serious irregularities in the issuing of Venezuela passports and visas, including passports that were given to people with ties to terrorism.

According to CNN, one confidential intelligence document obtained by CNN--intelligence documents from nations in the Western Hemisphere, not from the United States--actually directly links Venezuela's now new Vice President, who is in line to potentially become the President when the current dictator is going to have to give up power here soon because of this cataclysm that they are facing--the name of that Vice President is Tareck El Aissami. There are now links, according to CNN, to the current Vice President, Tareck El Aissami, and the 173 Venezuelan passports and IDs that were issued to individuals from the Middle East, including people connected to the terrorist group Hezbollah.

It is important to understand--and the CNN article appropriately outlines this--if you have a passport from Venezuela, you are allowed to enter over 130 countries on this planet without a visa. That includes the 26 countries in the European Union. So a Venezuelan passport is a valuable commodity for someone who is trying to travel around the world under an assumed name with a valid government document. That is why it is important.

Mr. Lopez, the whistleblower who once worked at the Embassy, is a lawyer. He used to be a police officer in Venezuela. He said, according to the article, that he thought that becoming a diplomat was a great career opportunity that would allow him to serve his country, so he moved to Baghdad and started his new life at the Embassy.

He remembers what he calls an unwelcome surprise on his first day in July of 2013. His new boss was Venezuelan Ambassador Jonathan Velasco. The Ambassador handed him a special envelope, he said.

``He gave me an envelope full of visas and passports,''

Lopez recalled. ``He told me, `Get this, this is one million

U.S. dollars.' I thought it was like a joke. Then he told me

here people pay a lot of money to get a visa or a passport to

leave this country.''

Meaning Iraq.

About a month later, Lopez said he realized it was no joke.

An Iraqi employee of the Embassy who was hired to be an interpreter told him that she, the interpreter, had made thousands of dollars selling Venezuelan passports and visas and that he could make a lot of money too. He says he told her it was wrong and he refused. The employee pressed the issue, telling him that there were thousands of dollars to be made, even discussing an offer to sell visas to 13 Syrians for $10,000 each.

Lopez said that he was stunned when he found the document inside the Embassy. It was a list of 21 Arabic names with corresponding Venezuelan passport numbers and Venezuelan identification numbers. A Venezuelan immigration official told CNN that a crosscheck of the passport numbers indicated that the passports are valid and that those passports, given to these people with the 21 Arabic names--when he ran the crosscheck, they actually matched the names on the list Lopez found, meaning the people on the list could be able to travel using those Venezuelan passports.

But here is what is incredible: A publicly available database in Venezuela examined by CNN shows that 20 of the 21 identification numbers of the people with the Arabic names that match the passports are actually registered to people with Hispanic names, not the Arabic names listed on the passports.

So basically CNN has uncovered evidence that at least on 21 occasions, the Venezuelan Government--the Venezuelan Embassy has sold passports to someone from the Middle East but assigned them a Hispanic surname or a Hispanic name. People are traveling under assumed identities from the Middle East. We have a couple of those names we are going to share with you in a moment.

In April 2014, only 9 months after he started the job, he emailed a report about all this to the Ambassador. He said the Ambassador did nothing, and, in fact, the Ambassador, Velasco, threatened to fire him.

By 2015, he was so frustrated that no one would investigate it that he took what he found to Delcy Rodriguez, who was Venezuela's Foreign Minister. He emailed the report and said that there was fraudulent issuing of visas, birth certificates, and Venezuelan documents. He said nothing happened. With nowhere else to turn, Mr. Lopez said he contacted an FBI official at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid.

By the end of 2015, the Venezuelan Government accused him of abandoning his post and removed him. A police official showed up at his home in Venezuela with a document that said he was under investigation for revealing confidential documents or secrets.

Now, this is not the first time this Congress hears about this. U.S. lawmakers heard reports about Venezuela's passport fraud during congressional hearings as far back as 2006. In fact, a congressional report warned that ``Venezuela is providing support, including identity documents that could prove useful to radical Islamic groups.''

A State Department report at that time concluded that ``Venezuelan travel and identification documents are extremely easy to obtain by persons not entitled to them.''

Roger Noriega, the former U.S. Ambassador to the OAS, a former Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, said in prepared remarks before Congress in 2012 that ``Venezuela has provided thousands of phony IDs, passports and visas to persons of Middle Eastern origin.''

In 2013, confidential intelligence reports from a group of Latin American countries obtained by CNN said that from 2008 to 2012--I already outlined this earlier--173 individuals from the Middle East were issued Venezuelan passports and IDs. Among them were people connected to the terrorist group Hezbollah. The official who ordered the issuing of those passports, the report said, is Tareck El Aissami, who just a few months ago was appointed and is now the Vice President of Venezuela. Back then, he was the Minister in charge of immigration, as well as a Governor. He personally took charge of issuing granting visas and nationalizing citizens from different countries, especially Syrians, Lebanese, Jordanians, Iranians, and Iraqis, the report said.

So what we have now is an unbelievable situation in which a country in this hemisphere, according to both the whistleblower, independent reports, and now CNN's own investigation--Venezuela--has been providing passports to people from the Middle East under false pretenses, basically fraudulent documents that allow them to travel all over the world.

Among them, Hakim Mohamed Ali Diab Fattah, a Palestinian and suspected Hezbollah member, was given national ID No. 16.105.824, issued on July 12, 2012. He was deported from the United States in 2002 for his possible connection to the 9/11 hijackers via aviation school in the United States. He was detained and arrested by Jordanian authorities on May 3, 2015, for suspicion of financing terror. This individual has that national ID number from Venezuela and a passport that was allowing him to travel.

Here is another one: Ahmad Adnan Ali, an Iraqi, another suspected Hezbollah member. He is a convicted trafficker facing charges in France and Denmark, and he has documents under two aliases: Ahmed El Timmy Villalobos, with the number 29.645.898. That is the number on the ID that was issued on January 16, 2014. He has another alias and another document: Ahmad El Timmy Gomez. His name is neither Villalobos nor Gomez, but he has these documents.

By the way, all of this, according to CNN, is no surprise to General Marco Ferreira, who was in charge of the immigration office in Venezuela in 2002. He now lives in Miami. He was granted political asylum. ``He told CNN that he personally witnessed corrupt senior officials ordering passports for people who were not citizens when he was running the department.'' He said it was ``very easy'' to assume someone else's identity. It was ``very, very easy to go and be a Venezuelan or pretend being born in Venezuela.''

I bring this up in the midst of all these other things because we now understand that what we are facing in Venezuela is not just a corrupt government and a tyranny but a nation that is under the corrupt leadership of its now Vice President and, of course, its President, a nation that is trafficking in selling passports and travel documents to individuals with links to terrorism. That poses a direct threat to the national security of the United States. I hope in the days to come, with this new information and with this report, that we can work with the Justice Department and the State Department to take appropriate measures to protect our Nation and the world from what is occurring at the hands of the Venezuelan Government under the tyrant Maduro and under its Vice President, who personally ran the department that was undertaking these corrupt activities.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I know that we are in the middle of an important debate about a topic of education in our schools. One of the topics I hope young Americans will learn more about is the state of affairs across the world when it comes to human rights.

We are a vibrant society engaged in a heated debate, as we often have been throughout our history, about items of political matters. If you look here today, there are people standing up to speak on different sides of an issue. You see that the Republican Party today controls the White House, the Senate, and the House, and yet you have people with the freedom in this country to be able to stand up and oppose that. We have seen that across the country with demonstrations and speeches and all sorts of other protected speech. We are very fortunate

and blessed to live in a nation with those freedoms. That is not the case all over the world.

I wanted to take this opportunity in the midst of all of this debate and discussion about an important topic, the nomination before the Senate, to remind people that despite our differences on these issues, we are truly blessed to be able to live in a country where opposing the party in power does not mean you go to jail.

As I have been doing for some time now, I wanted to come this evening and highlight yet another example of human rights abuses that is taking place in a very important part of the world. For the past couple of years, my office and I have been highlighting human rights cases through our social media campaign. We call it hashtag ``Expression NOT Oppression.''

The goals of this are to raise awareness about these cases and the individuals who are suffering at the hands of these repressive governments. We know that through history some of the oppressed people--we may not think these floor speeches matter; we may not think that mentioning it here in this forum matters, but it does to them because one of the first things oppressors tell them is that the world has forgotten about them, and they don't matter anymore. That is one of the first reasons we come: to raise awareness and let them know we know their names, we know their story, and we will continue to speak out on their behalf.

The second reason is to show their families and their loved ones that elected officials--like me here in the United States--have not forgotten them because we know that tyrants, as I said, like to tell political prisoners that they are alone in their struggle.

The third reason is to call for action, whether it is for the administration to make their causes a priority, too, or to call on these governments to release these individuals.

There is one more reason I think that this effort, hashtag ``Expression NOT Oppression,'' is important. As well as all the good work being done here on both sides of the aisle in defense of human rights, promotion of democracy and the defense of God-given freedoms like religious freedom and freedom of the press and free speech, which we celebrate here even in this debate, have to continue to be pillars of our foreign policy. I hope that these cases we highlight bring those guiding principles to light.

Today, I want to discuss the cases of two Chinese political prisoners whose courageous wives I had the opportunity to meet last week when they visited in Washington, DC. These women personally requested that I intervene on behalf of their husbands, pressing on the Chinese Government to unconditionally release them and, in the case of one, to account for his whereabouts. Perhaps just as importantly, they urged me that I press our own State Department to prioritize these cases diplomatically in the hope that these families can be reunited in the not-too-distant future.

I come here today to urge our now new Secretary of State, Mr. Tillerson, to prioritize the release of these men in his diplomatic engagement with China. In the coming weeks, I also expect that we will have a chance to hear from the President's nominee to be U.S. Ambassador to China, Governor Branstad of Iowa. When he comes before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for his confirmation hearing, I will bring up these cases and others and urge him to make their freedom a priority of his work if confirmed.

Jiang Tianyong is a 45-year-old lawyer. He was disbarred by the Chinese Government because of his vigorous human rights advocacy, including his representation of blind legal advocate Chen Guangcheng, fellow rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, Falun Gong practitioners, and other human rights cases. Despite the risks of this work, he has been steadfast in his support of the families and of their right to lawyers and legal advocates caught up in China's sweeping nationwide crackdown on the legal community in July of 2015, which ensnared roughly 250 lawyers and advocates.

Consistent with a spate of recent media stories, Jiang's wife indicated that his family and friends lost contact with him in late November of last year. That is when a Chinese state-controlled newspaper reported he had been detained for a series of trumped-up charges.

His wife has received no formal confirmation of his precise whereabouts, and, to date, he has been denied access to a lawyer of his choosing. Even more troubling is that this is entirely legal under China's laws, even though it violates all international norms of justice. Under China's own laws, authorities may hold him, or anyone, for up to 6 months without informing his family where he is held and without allowing him to access a lawyer, conditions that the United Nations Committee Against Torture has found place ``detainees at a high-risk of torture.'' Indeed, reports over the past months about four other human rights lawyers provide detailed information about the Chinese authorities' use of torture to extract ``confessions'' and impose unbearable psychological pressure.

All of these realities underscore that China remains a country of rule by law. Congressmen Chris Smith of New Jersey and I cochair the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which found in our 2016 annual report that ``the Chinese Communist Party has continued to reject the notion that the rule of law should supercede the Party's role in guiding the functions of the State.'' As such, lawyers, advocates, dissidents and others often find themselves in the party's crosshairs, persecuted under the law, rather than protected by it, and they have no recourse of justice.

A second Chinese individual I want to highlight today is lawyer Tang Jingling, who has also been disbarred for his rights advocacy. He first gained prominence as a lawyer working on cases related to village compensation, corruption, and by representing activists. In January of last year, he was convicted of ``inciting subversion of state power.'' That is the charge, and he was sentenced to 5 years in prison. He was first detained in May 2014 on suspicion of ``picking quarrels and provoking troubles.'' Just imagine that. Picking quarrels and provoking troubles is a crime in China. This happened, by the way, during the lead up to the 21st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests, when the Chinese Government worked desperately to wipe out any discussion or memory of this historically brutal crackdown. In reality, all Tang and other activists did was participate in a nonviolent disobedience movement seeking legal and social reform in China.

Following his conviction, Tang eloquently wrote:

Inside the grand edifice of the court, we can see stately

and ornate furnishings and decorations, and we can see the

government employees in dignified attire. But we cannot see

the law and we can definitely not see justice.

He continues, movingly, speaking of the faith that has sustained him in the midst of injustice:

The Holy Bible has a passage that reads: ``Blessed are

those that are persecuted for righteousness' sake.'' Today,

we have been pronounced guilty, thrown in prison, separated

from our families, and have endured humiliation and

difficulties--and I am far from being able to convince and

prove to others how these tribulations could have become my

blessings. But God's will is inevitably difficult to

understand. I often pray and ask him to give me more

strength, so that I may persevere until the moment of

revelation. I dare say, in 2011, while in a secret jail, and

now in detention, almost every day I have passed has been

calm and fulfilling. I have never lost my direction.

The courage and conviction of these men should be an inspiration to us all--an inspiration that should propel us to act. I would add a reminder again of how blessed and fortunate we are to live by the grace of God in a nation where we have the freedom to speak, to object, to state our views without fear of the circumstances and the consequences that these brave men now face. The Chinese people who yearn for the protection of their most basic human rights and bravely stand with their fellow marginalized countrymen are China's greatest asset--not its biggest threat, as the government of the Communist Party wrongly believes. Any government which views its own people with such fear and hostility will, as has often been said, find itself on the wrong side of history.

So I hope more of my colleagues in this body, in the House, and especially in the administration will join their voices in support of these political prisoners and all who languish in jails, prisons, and gulags simply because

they want a better life, because they want a say in their future and have bravely made these aspirations clear.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have a parliamentary inquiry as well.

The first question, Mr. President, is this: It is my understanding that the ruling of the Chair was based on the advice of the Parliamentarian. Is that accurate, Mr. President; on the advice of the Parliamentarian that the rule had been violated?

OK. The second question I have, Mr. President: Does the rule say anything that impugns another Member of the Senate, directly or indirectly? Is that an accurate reading of the rule?

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, I first have a parliamentary inquiry. These are the continuing rules of the Senate that have been in existence previous to this time and have carried over into this session, is that correct?

The reason I ask that is the following--but I think we all feel very passionate about the issues before us. I have not been here as long as Senator Leahy, whose service has been quite distinguished over a long period of time. I truly do understand the passions people bring to this body. I like to think that I, too, am passionate about the issues before us.

I think this is an important moment. It is late. Not many people are paying attention. I wish they would though because I think the question here is one of the reasons I ran for this body to begin with. Maybe it is because of my background; I am surrounded by people who have lost freedoms in places where they are not allowed to speak. One of the great traditions of our Nation is the ability to come forward and have debates.

But the Founders and the Framers and those who established this institution and guided us over two centuries understood that that debate was impossible if, in fact, the matter became of a personal nature. I don't believe that was necessarily the intention here, although perhaps that was the way it turned out. But I think it is important for us to understand why that matters so much.

I want people to think about our politics here in America because I am telling you guys, I don't know of a single Nation in the history of the world that has been able to solve its problems when half the people in the country absolutely hate the other half of the people in that country. This is the most important country in the world, and this body cannot function if people are offending one another, and that is why those rules are in place.

I was not here when Secretary Clinton was nominated as a Member of this body at the time, but I can tell you that I am just barely old enough to know that some very nasty things have been written and said about Senator Clinton. And I think the Senate should be very proud that during her nomination to be Secretary of State--despite the fact that I imagine many people were not excited about the fact that she would be Secretary of State--to my recollection, and perhaps I am incorrect, not a single one of those horrible things that have been written or said about her, some of which actually did accuse her of wrongdoing, was uttered on the floor of the Senate.

I happen to remember in 2004 when then-Senator Kerry ran for President. Some pretty strong things were written and said about him. I was here for that when he was nominated and confirmed to be Secretary of State. And I don't recall a single statement being read into the Record about the things that have been said about him.

Now, I want everybody to understand that at the end of the night, this is not a partisan issue. It really is not. I can tell you this with full confidence that if one of my colleagues on this side of the aisle had done that, I would also like to think that I would have been one of those people objecting, and here is why.

Turn on the news and watch these parliaments around the world where people throw chairs at each other and throw punches, and ask yourself: How does that make you feel about those countries? It doesn't give you a lot of confidence about those countries. I am not arguing that we are anywhere near that tonight, but we are flirting with it. We are flirting with it in this body, and we are flirting with it in this country. We are becoming a society incapable of having debates anymore.

In this country, if you watch the big policy debates that are going on in America, no one ever stops to say: I think you are wrong. I understand your point of view. I get it. You have some valid points, but let me tell you why I think my view is better. I don't hear that anymore.

Here is what I hear almost automatically--and let me be fair--from both sides of these debates. Immediately, immediately, as soon as you offer an idea, the other side jumps and says that the reason you say that is because you don't care about poor people, because you only care about rich people, because you are this or you are that or you are the other. And I am just telling you guys, we are reaching a point in this Republic where we are not going to be able to solve the simplest of issues because everyone is putting themselves in the corner where everyone hates everybody.

Now I don't pretend to say that I am not myself from time to time in heated debates outside of this forum. I have been guilty of perhaps hyperbole, and for those--I am not proud of it.

But I have to tell you, I think what is at stake here tonight and as we debate moving forward is not simply some rule but the ability of the most important Nation on Earth to debate in a productive and respectful way the pressing issues before us. I just hope we understand that because I have tremendous respect for the other Chamber, and I understand that it was designed to be different. But one of the reasons I chose to run for the Senate and, quite frankly, to run for reelection is that I believed I served with 99 other men and women who deeply love their country, who have different points of view, who represent men and women who have different views from the men and women whom I may represent on a given issue and who are here to advocate for their points of view, never impugning their motives.

One of the things I take great pride in--and I tell this to people all the time--is that the one thing you learn about the Senate is, whether you agree with them or not, you understand why every single one of those other 99 people are here. They are intelligent people, they are smart people, they are

hard-working people. They believe in what they are saying, and they articulate it in a very passionate and effective way.

When I see my colleague stand up and say something I don't agree with, I try to tell myself: Look, I don't understand why they stand for that, but I know why they are doing it. It is because they represent people who believe that.

I am so grateful that God has allowed me to be born, to live, and to raise my family in a nation where people with such different points of view are able to debate those things in a way that doesn't lead to war, that doesn't lead to overthrows, that doesn't lead to violence. And you may take that for granted.

All around the world tonight, there are people who, if they stood up here and said the things that we say about the President or others in authority, they would go to jail. I am not saying that is where we are headed as a nation; I am just saying, don't ever take that for granted.

The linchpin of that is this institution. The linchpin of that debate is the ability of this institution through unlimited debate and the decorum necessary for that debate to be able to conduct itself in that manner.

I know that tonight was probably a made-for-TV moment for some people. This has nothing to do with censuring the words of some great heroes. I have extraordinary admiration for the men and women who led the civil rights effort in this country, and I am self-conscious or understanding enough to know that many of the things that have been possible for so many people in this country in the 21st century were made possible by the sacrifices and the work of those who came before us.

This has to do with a fundamental reality, and that is that this body cannot carry out its work if it is not able to conduct debates in a way that is respectful of one another, especially those of us who are in this Chamber together.

I also understand this: If the Senate ceases to work, if we reach a point where this institution--given everything else that is going on in politics today, where you are basically allowed to say just about anything, for I have seen over the last year and a half things said about people, about issues, about institutions in our republic that I never thought I would see ever--ever. If we lose this body's ability to conduct debate in a dignified manner--and I mean this with no disrespect to anyone else. I don't believe anyone came on the floor here tonight saying: I am going to be disrespectful on purpose and turn this into a circus. But I am just telling you that if this body loses the ability to have those sorts of debates, then where in this country is that going to happen? In what other forum in this Nation is that going to be possible?

So I would just hope everybody would stop and think about that. I know I have been here only for 6 years, so I don't have a deep reservoir of Senate history to rely on. But I know this: If this body isn't capable of having those debates, there will be no place in this country where those debates can occur. I think every single one of us, to our great shame, will live to regret it.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, first, I do appreciate the words of my colleague from Colorado, and I thank him for them, and that topic deserves more discussion on the floor of the Senate.

One of the things that always gives me extraordinary pride to be an American and to be a Member of the Senate is the realization--as I sat here today and listened to my colleague from South Carolina, Senator Scott--that neither my ancestors nor his were participants in terms of structuring this Republic. Yet this Republic is so grand that it has plenty of room for people like me and him and so many others participating--including here, as one of only 100 Americans who are entrusted with the responsibility of representing our States and also upholding our Constitution in this body.

The Senator from Colorado is also right in talking about the role of the Senate not just in terms of passing laws but in conducting oversight irrespective of who occupies the White House. It is a difficult thing to do these days because everything in American politics is covered through the lens of politics and of elections. Almost immediately, whatever I say here on the floor today will be analyzed through the lens and construct of elections past and elections future. What is he trying to achieve or what are any of us trying to achieve politically? There is a place for that. I think we are not foolish enough to believe there is no politics in politics.

There is also something that is incredibly important, and that is the Constitution that every single one of us is sworn to uphold. It is a pledge I again took recently on these very steps a few feet away from where I stand here now a few weeks ago.

Part of that is, in fact, to oversee the foreign policy conduct of the United States. As many of us are aware, there has been recent discussion in some circles, including in my party, about a desire to achieve a better relationship with Vladimir Putin and with Russia. By the way, I share that goal. I think it would be good for the world if the United States and Russia had a better relationship and, in particular, with the Russian people, with whom we have no quarrel. I also think we have a responsibility to understand what the obstacles are to better relations.

It is in that context that I come to the floor of the Senate today because I had a lot of people ask me over the last week, over the last few months: Why is it that you have such views about our relationships with Russia on the way forward?

I want to take a moment to discuss that in the broader context, with everything else that is happening here now. Even as we work through these nominations, the world continues to turn, and events around the world continue to have an impact on us here.

Let me begin by saying this. I don't think this is a fact that can be disputed. Vladimir Putin today has amassed more power in Moscow and Russia than any leader in Russia in about 60 years, if not longer. He used to maintain that power through a pretty straightforward deal that he had with both elites and the broader society.

Here is the deal he used to have with them. The deal was this: I will help you--especially the elites--make a lot of money and become very wealthy, and I will help society at-large by helping to grow our economy. In return, however, I need complete power and complete control of the government.

That was basically the arrangement he had up until just a few years ago when a combination of falling oil prices and economic decline forced them into a different direction. The new model that Vladimir Putin is now pursuing in Russia is one in which he is basically trying to gin up and rally public support, and he is largely doing it through a foreign policy which is aggressive and which is designed to create an impression among the Russian people that Russia has now been restored to great power status--a status equal or on par with that of the United States.

The first thing we have to understand is that much of what Vladimir Putin does is not in pursuit of an ideology, like the Soviet Union did. It is about domestic politics in Russia and about needing the Russian people to believe that he and his strength are essential to what Russia has. So much of it is about that.

What are the prongs of the strategy? The first is that he has sought to make their military modern and strong, and you see evidence of that in the fact that while Russia is going through crippling budget cuts as a result of a downturn in the global economy, oil prices falling, and sanctions against the Putin government, they are increasing defense spending. They are modernizing. They are adding capabilities. They are, for the first time, although in a limited way, beginning to conduct naval exercises and projection of power in places they hadn't been in for 25 years or longer.

The second is a crackdown in internal dissent. For that, I think the evidence is overwhelming. I know we have all heard recently about the case of Vladimir Kara-Murza, who is a Russian political opposition leader. He is a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin. He works at something called the Open Russia Foundation, an organization of activists who call for open elections, a free press, and civil rights reforms in Russia.

This is an interesting thing to talk about because there has been a lot of discussion on this floor a moment ago about the press and a lot of discussion about elections, of course, over the last year and longer. There has been a lot of discussion about civil rights. Think about this. This is what the Open Russia Foundation works for and on behalf of in Russia.

In America, when you believe that civil rights are being violated at this moment in our history or you think the election system isn't working the way it should or you are defending the press, as my colleagues have done here today in the right of a free press, you have a bad blog post written about you, someone may run against you for office, cable commentators will say nasty things about you from the other side, maybe somebody will stand up on the floor and criticize you for this or that.

Let me tell you what happens when you do that in Russia. They poison you. Kara-Murza is believed to have been poisoned in February 2017; after he experienced organ failure, and he is currently in the hospital--just this month. This comes 2 years after another suspected poisoning that nearly killed him in May 2015.

I want to take a moment to urge the administration to do everything in their power to ensure that he is receiving the medical care he needs and to help determine who was behind the latest apparent attempt against him.

If this was an isolated case, you would say: Well, maybe something else happened. There is an incredible number of critics of Vladimir Putin that wind up poisoned, dead, shot in the head in their hotel room, found in the street, and other things.

In other instances, just today we have this article from the Wall Street Journal about someone who was thinking about running against Vladimir Putin. Alexei Navalny was thinking about running for President.

So what happens in America when somebody thinks you are going to run for President? They do an opposition research file. They plant negative stories about you. They start badmouthing you on cable news. That is unpleasant, no doubt. He was found guilty by a kangaroo court of corruption, which, of course, according to Russian law, finds him and blocks him from running in next year's Presidential election.

Again, if this were an isolated case, you would say: Maybe this guy did

something wrong. The problem is, just about anyone who is either thinking about running for office or challenging Putin winds up poisoned, dead, in jail, or charged and convicted of a crime.

The second thing he has done is just completely crack down on all internal dissent. There is no free press in Russia. I would venture to guess that if I controlled 80 to 90 percent of the press reported about me, I would probably have approval ratings in the eighties and nineties as well. That is a pretty good deal for the leader but not for the people.

The third thing that is part of this effort is that they are basically doing everything they can--Vladimir Putin--to undermine the international order that is built on democracy and respect for human rights. I think the example of that is in various places.

Look at what has happened in Syria. Vladimir Putin gets involved in Syria, not because he cares about humanitarian crises--because, in fact, Russian forces have conducted airstrikes in civilian areas. We have seen the images. It is undeniable that it happened. It is by every definition of the word a war crime to target civilians with military weaponry.

That is what has happened in Syria. But for Vladimir Putin, it has been successful because his engagement basically changes the conflict. He now has positioned himself in the eyes of the Russian people and many people around the world as a power broker in the Middle East--in fact, as an alternative to the United States in that region.

This is part of his strategy. It wasn't about Syria as much as it was about his goal of being able to go to the Russian people and say that we matter again on the global stage. In Ukraine, there was talk about moving toward the European Union in terms of economic relations. There was talk about joining NATO. Then he invaded Crimea, and he kept it. He has funded separatists forces in eastern Ukraine. There is no more talk of NATO, and there is no more talk of unifying the economy with Europe, and they kept Crimea. The last few days we are starting to read open press reports of mobilization and unusual activity among eastern Ukrainian separatists backed, supported, trained, and equipped by the Russians, and we fear that new fighting could be imminent at any moment once again.

Then we have all heard the discussions about the elections in the United States and the efforts of other governments to not just hack computers. It is not about hacking alone. It is about the strategic placing of information, gathered through cyber intrusion, for the purposes of undermining political candidates and, therefore, influencing the election.

There was something deeper here. It was part of a broader effort to discredit our Republic and our democracy, to be able to go back to the Russian people and to the broader world and say that the American political system is corrupt. The American political system is not a true democracy. The American political system is as bad as all these other systems in the world that they criticize. They do not come to this with clean hands.

I often wonder sometimes if we contribute to that argument in the way we behave toward one another in our political discourse in this country. That is something to think about in the long term. I hope people understand that as we engage in these political debates in this country, these things are being viewed around the world. For people who may not have a clear perspective, or if this information is being used negatively--by no means am I saying that we should not have vibrant debate in this country; we should, but I also want people to understand--that oftentimes gives off the perception that, in fact, our Republic is on the verge of collapse.

We are in challenging times. We have some strong disagreements, and oftentimes they become heated. I know for a fact that there isn't a single Member of this body prepared to walk away from the Constitution or the liberties that it protects and are enshrined therein.

By the way, I don't believe Vladimir Putin is done in this effort. I think you are now going to see him continue to interfere in Yemen. He can use that as leverage against the gulf kingdoms, against the Saudis.

I think you are going to see him continue to engage in Egypt. He will go to the Egyptians and say: The Americans are always hassling you about human rights. Why don't you just buy your weapons from us? Why don't you give us a military base? We are never going to give you grief about human rights. We are a much easier and low-maintenance partner.

I wouldn't even be surprised to see him start dabbling in Afghanistan with the Taliban, in some capacity anyway, and couch it in terms of fighting ISIS.

We will see. My point is, it is not done. I bring all that up in the context of this suggestion among some, and I think it is important to talk about it because I don't think we should dismiss viewpoints. There are some, including in the administration, who believe that maybe we can do a deal with Vladimir Putin where he helps us fight against ISIS and in return we lift sanctions. The argument that I hear from people is this: Why wouldn't we want better relations with Vladimir Putin and enlist them in the fight against ISIS?

I come here today in the context of everything I have laid out to tell you why I think that is unrealistic and deeply problematic.

Here is No. 1. Why do we have to do a deal with Vladimir Putin to fight ISIS? He already claims that he is. In fact, that is the way he describes their operations in Syria--as an anti-terror operation. There is no more dangerous terrorist group in the world today than ISIS. There is certainly no more dangerous terrorist group in the world today than ISIS. There is certainly no more dangerous and capable a terrorist group in Syria today than ISIS.

Isn't that what he is already doing? Why would we then have to cut a deal to encourage him to do what he claims to already be doing? There are only two reasons. Either No. 1, we think he should do more, which in and of itself tells you that he is not doing it; or No. 2, because he is not doing it now.

Here is the second problem: this argument that as part of this whole effort with Russia, one of the things we would be able to achieve is to break them from the Iranians, to create some sort of split between the Russians and the Iranians.

I saw an article the other day talking about that as part of this endeavor. My argument to you is that we don't really need to do that. That is going to happen on its own. Say what you want, as soon as ISIS is destroyed in Syria and Iraq or in both, the Iranians are going to immediately not just push to drive the Americans out of the region but drive the Russians out as well.

The Iranians are not interested in replacing American influence in the region with Russian influence. They want to be the hegemonic power in the region. As to this argument that we somehow can peel them apart, my friends, that is going to happen all on its own. If we abandon there tomorrow, the Iranians would immediately turn to driving the Russians out as well because they want to be the hegemonic power. They have long desired to be the hegemonic power in the region. That is going to put them in conflict with the Russians sooner rather than later at some point here, at least to some level.

The third thing I think we have to understand is that there is absolutely no pressure, no political rationale why Vladimir Putin needs a better relationship with the United States at this time, at least not politically. He is not going to lose an election, because if you run against him, you go to jail. He controls the press. He controls the political discourse in the country. So one of the reasons we should always be advocates for democracy is because democratic leaders act much more responsibly because they have to answer to their people, but in essence that is not what you have in Russia. There is really no reason or rationale why he would be pressured to have a better relationship with us.

Do the Russian people want a better relationship with America? I have no doubt about that, but I want you to understand that everything they learn about our relationship with them is largely derived through the Russian press. If you never had the pleasure of watching, for example, the RT Network on television, and you are interested in comedy and satire, I encourage you to tune into that station from time to time so you can see an alternative representation of events that would startle you, and perhaps make you laugh.

This is unfortunately the sort of media information that filters to the Russian people that Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin completely control.

Here is the fourth and perhaps most important reason I think this endeavor is unrealistic and perhaps even counterproductive. The price you would have to pay is simply too high in return for the alleged benefit that would come about.

No. 1, the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin has basically violated every agreement they have made now and in the past. They are violating the cease-fire. They violated all sorts of arrangements with regard to arms reductions, and they will continue to do that in any deal anyone cuts with him.

The second is one of the first things he is going to ask for is the lifting of all sanctions for both Ukraine and interference in our elections, in return for no changes to the status in Ukraine and no promise of not undertaking efforts like what happened here in the future.

The third thing they are going to demand is recognition of a Russian sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, especially in places that are now countries that were once part of the Soviet Union. In essence, a United States acceptance officially or otherwise that there are countries in the world who are not allowed to enter into economic or military engagements with the United States unless Russia allows it.

You think about that. They are basically going to ask us to play some game of geopolitical chess, where we basically turn over the sovereignty and future of other Nations and say to them there are these countries in the world, and we are not going to try to do anything with them, economic, political, cultural, socially or militarily, unless you give us permission to do so. This would be a requirement. It is one of the things he insists upon.

He would also require the United States to support pulling back NATO troops and equipment and personnel and operations from Nations in Europe, which would be devastating to the NATO alliance, which one of his other goals is to render NATO feckless and irrelevant.

I just don't think that is a price worth paying in exchange for alleged cooperation against ISIS--that he claims to already be conducting--and in exchange for basically sending a message to the world that America is your ally, unless there is a better deal with us for someone else. That would be devastating. What do I think we should do, and what I hope the Senate will do, if there is an effort now or any time in the future, by anyone, to change or conduct a deal of this magnitude?

I think the first thing we need to do is be committed to the principle. These sanctions that are in place should remain in place until the conditions in those sanctions are met, until the sovereignty of Ukraine is respected, and until these efforts to undermine democracy and spread misinformation are fully accounted for.

The second is, I think it is important for us to reaffirm our commitment to NATO, and that includes the building up of defenses and exercises, that we continue to do that firmly, not just with our NATO allies but with any nation who seeks cooperation with us.

The third is careful but strategic engagement in the Middle East to the Iraqis, to make very clear that the United States will continue to be their partner after ISIS falls; that we want Iraq to be prosperous and free and that we believe it is better for the world and we are prepared to help them achieve that.

To the Egyptians, we will continue to press them on human rights, and we should. We should also be willing at the same time--and, by the way, with the argument that respecting human rights is actually good for Egypt, that in the long term these conditions that exist will lead to constant threats to their government, but we can do that while at the same time continuing to partner with them on military sales. I think they would welcome a conversation about trade and potentially a bilateral trade agreement with them about opening up avenues for business investment and so forth.

The fourth is to point out that if they are not going after ISIS, then what exactly are they doing now? It is important for us to point that out to the world. Again, I made this point numerous times. I want to make it once again; this idea that we are going to get them to cooperate much more against ISIS basically implies they are not doing it now, but they claim that is why they are in Syria to begin with.

Finally, I think it is important for us to try to communicate directly with the Russian people to the extent possible. It is hard to do because the Russian Government, under Putin, also controls the Internet with filters and the like. It is important for us to say our quarrel is not with the Russian people; that for many years up until this unfortunate turn of events over the last decade, the links with the United States and the Russian people grew strong and those links remain.

In my home State of Florida, there is a significant number of Russians who live in Florida part time and so forth. I hope that will continue. Our quarrel is not with the Russian people, and we desire for Russia to be powerful and influential in the world. We want Russia to be prosperous. This country does not view this as a zero-sum gain. In order for America to be influential, Russia must be less influential.

Our quarrel is not with Russia but a leader who does view it as a zero-sum gain, a leader who believes the only way Russia can be more important is for America to be less important, a leader who has chosen to try to undermine an international order based on democracy and free enterprise and human rights that has kept the world out of a third world war, and I think it is important for us to do that.

I think that is important and why we need at least to be prepared in this body, if necessary, to move forward with legislation that doesn't just codify existing sanctions but that prevents the lifting of those sanctions, unless the conditions in those sanctions are met. This is our job. It is true that Presidents and administrations have an obligation, a duty, and a right to set the foreign policies of the United States. There is no doubt about it. I think that is true, no matter who is the President.

But it would be a mistake, and in my opinion, a dereliction of duty for the Senate and the Congress to not recognize that we, too, have a duty to shape the foreign policy of the United States and the power to declare war in the budgets that we pass, in the laws and conditions that we put in place, and in our ability to override vetoes, when necessary, even in the process of nominating individuals to serve in the U.S. Government and the executive branch.

We not only have the power, we have the obligation; the obligation to shape and mold and direct the foreign policy of this Nation, and if we don't, then we are not living up to the oath we took when we entered this body, and that it is not a political thing. This is not about embarrassing anyone. This is not about partisan issues. It should never be. In fact, one of the traditions that has existed in this Nation for a long time is that foreign policy, when it came to issues that impacted the security issues of the United States, there was an effort to make sure it was as bipartisan or nonpartisan as possible because when America gets in trouble on national security, there is no way to isolate on a bipartisan basis.

It is my hope, as we debate all these other issues, that we continue to keep these issues in mind because it is critical to the future of our Nation, critical to our standing in the world, and ultimately vital and critical to the kind of world and Nation we will leave to our children and grandchildren in the years and decades to come.

I, for one, in the midst of all of this debate about a bunch of issues that divide us, will continue to work to ensure that this is one that unites us and allows us to live up to our constitutional obligation, to participate fully in shaping and directing the foreign policy of this great Nation.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today I want to recognize Adele Griffin, a longtime Senate staffer in my Jacksonville office, for her years of hard work; for me, my staff, and the people of the State of Florida.

A fifth-generation Floridian, Adele previously worked under Senator Mel Martinez and Senator George LeMieux before her time in my office. Adele has been a dedicated and diligent leader who took special pride in addressing the many issues facing northeast Florida over the years.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Adele for all the great work she has done and wish her a happy retirement.

Mr. President, we are here in the Senate debating what I believe is the most important Cabinet position that the President has to nominate, the Secretary of State. It comes at an important point in American foreign policy history. There is so much uncertainty and debate about our role in the world these days. A lot of our allies have questions. Our adversaries are obviously watching very closely.

I hope that all of us--and I mean the Executive Branch to the Congress--recognize that as people around the world are watching what is happening on television, they see an America that is deeply divided and fractured right now. I think this needs to be a moment of restraint, both in action and in words. As we work through our differences, these vibrant debates are important to our system of government.

It is one of the reasons that led me to ultimately support the nomination of Mr. Tillerson. I believe that despite some of the concerns that I had and have about his answers to some of my questions, it is vitally important for this country to have a Secretary of State in place at this moment.

I have never had any doubts about Mr. Tillerson's qualifications, his intellect, his background. I have had some concerns about his answers to some very important questions, at least important questions to me, and what I hope will be important questions for a lot of Americans. That is what I wanted to come to the floor and speak about in conjunction with this nomination, and that is the issue of human rights.

To me, human rights is critical both to our national identity, but it is also important to our national Security. In America today, we have, as we have done now for the past few centuries, contentious debates all the time about policies and about what kind of country we want to be. If you have watched the proceedings on the Senate floor or in committee over the last few days, you have seen a lot of that.

Even as we debate these things among ourselves, and even as the American political rhetoric has become so incredibly heated--and we will have more to say about that in the weeks to come--I don't know of any other time where we have gotten to the point that when we disagree with people, we don't just disagree with them, we question their motives and their character.

In fact, it is almost automatic today in American political discourse. You don't just disagree with someone; you immediately jump to why they are a bad person. In the months and weeks to come, I will have examples about why that is a bad idea. But as we are having those contentious debates, I hope that we never take for granted, sometimes as I think we do, that we live in a place where losing an election, losing a vote, losing on an issue, does not mean you end up in jail or disappear or are executed because that is the kind of stuff that happens in other places all over the world, even now, in the 17th year of the 21st century.

As we have seen in recent weeks, this political dissent is part of our way of life. It has come to define our country. We protect it in our Constitution. It has made us an example to the rest of the world. I was reminded of this just a couple of months ago, right here in Washington, DC. After our most recent election, I had to a chance to visit with my opponent, Congressman Patrick Murphy of Florida.

When I was finished with that meeting, I walked into another meeting. That other meeting was with a Cuban dissident. He is an opponent of the Castro regime, an individual who risks his life in the pursuit of freedom, an individual who does not just get bad blog posts or a bad article or a bad editorial or a nasty campaign ad run against him. No, this is an individual who routinely gets thrown into jail, and he has the scars to prove the beatings he has taken from the Cuban state police over the last few years.

I was a little bit late to this meeting. I apologized to him. I explained that I had just been in a meeting with my opposing candidate, the man I had just ran against in the election. I could see the look on his face. It kind of struck him. He immediately, I believe, appreciated what that represented. He said--and I am paraphrasing: That is what we want for our country too.

This is the essence of what has been America's example to the world, the essence of how our principles and our values have inspired others to seek their own God-given rights and how we have a moral duty to support--in our words, in our foreign policy, and in our actions--those aspirations of people all over the world.

In a way, dictators and tyrants have never had it worse than they do today because we live in this high-tech information age. We often get to see the images of repression within minutes of it happening, if not in real time. We can monitor it; we can catalog the status of human rights in every city, in every country, on every continent.

But as Americans, we are called to do much more than observe and record these atrocities for history. With this knowledge, it is our duty to act and to do what we can to support the people demanding their rights. We must hold those who are violating their rights accountable. I believe this is more important than ever because of the totalitarian resurgence underway in many parts of the world as democracy in every continent is under attack.

Even as I stand here now before you, there are political prisoners on this planet. They languish in Chinese prisons. Political dissidents and journalists are being silenced and targeted for murder in Russia. Those who seek democracy in Syria are being massacred. The United States has a unique responsibility to highlight, to expose, and to combat these grave human rights abuses around the world.

Historically, we have been a compassionate country that has welcomed people seeking refuge from repression and atrocities. That is why I understand. I understand the concerns about refugees from certain failed states or governments who sponsor terror, places where very often it is difficult if not impossible to verify the identities of people seeking to come to the United States.

I say this to people all the time. When you talk about changes in policies, there is a legitimate argument and a credible argument to be made that there are people we cannot allow into the United States, not because we don't have compassion for their plight but because we have no way of knowing who they are. You can't just call 1-800-Syria and get background information about the individuals who are trying to enter the United States. We know for a fact that there are terrorist groups around the world that have commandeered passport-making machinery and are producing passports that are real in every way, except for the identity of the person in the picture.

So I do believe that we need to have very careful and rigorous screening, more than ever before, of all people entering the United States but especially those who are coming from areas that we know do not have reliable background information available to us.

But at the same time, I cannot help, and I think we should not help, but to be worried about the impact of a 120-day moratorium on every single refugee from anywhere on the planet, refugees from places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ukraine, Colombia, El Salvador, Vietnam, Burma, and, of course, Cuba, just to name a few places. These are among the most vulnerable people on the planet, living often in the most difficult and dangerous circumstances imaginable.

I remind everyone: This is a moratorium; it is not a permanent policy. I understand that there are provisions available for waivers, and I find that to be promising.

But I also want to everyone to understand that 120 days, for someone who is trying to get out of a place where they might be killed, may be 1 day too many for some of them. I hope that that does not turn out to be the case. That is why I urge the administration, that is why I urge soon-to-be Secretary Tillerson, to exercise great caution in making sure that dissidents and others are not being turned away.

By the way, I am pleased to see that the administration is heeding some of these calls already, early this week. We must understand that when tyrants and dictators oppress their people, we are all paying a price. It is happening all over the world. Vladimir Putin continues to institute Draconian laws targeting the freedom of expression and assembly.

Earlier this year, my office and I highlighted the case of human rights activist Ildar Dadin, who was the first person imprisoned under Russia's new criminal provision that bars any form of public dissent.

In China, rights lawyers are tortured. Labor activists are arrested. Tibetan Buddhist nuns are expelled from their homes, and churches are being demolished. Just earlier today, I met the wives of two Chinese rights advocates, who both pleaded for the United States to champion their husbands' cases in the hope that they can see their husbands again.

In Iran, dissent, freedom of expression, and freedom of press is nonexistent, heavily restricted. Many continue to be jailed for simply exercising their fundamental human rights. The Government of Iran targets religious minorities, often jailing Christian pastors and those who gather to worship together in private homes. In Syria, one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in modern history, the Assad regime, with the assistance of Vladimir Putin and the Iranian Government and military, is committing war crimes against innocent women, children, men, and civilians in Aleppo and beyond.

In Iraq, we have seen ancient Christian and Yezidi communities on the verge of extinction, all because of ISIS.

In Venezuela, the Maduro regime continues to imprison political opponents while the country descends further and further into economic chaos and has now become on the verge of a total humanitarian catastrophe in the Western Hemisphere. In one of the richest countries on the planet, we are at the point of people literally starving to death.

Saudi Arabia is an ally of the United States on many key geopolitical issues, and we will have to continue working with them on those shared causes. But they also remain one of the most censored countries in the world. The government has intensified its repression of activists and journalists. In Saudi Arabia, women remain under the male guardianship system. They are banned from even driving.

Globally, assaults against press freedom around the world are a major problem because, ultimately, the cause and champions of human rights need information to expose abuses and call for reforms. Without independent journalists, without information, tyrants and dictatorships can get away with so much more.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, in 2016, 48 journalists were killed and 259 journalists were jailed worldwide. In 2016, Turkey, a NATO member, again, an important geopolitical alliance of the United States, but, sadly, they became the leading jailer of journalists on the planet, following a widespread crackdown on the press.

The abuses and threats to human rights around the world are many. We could be here all night trying to break Senator Strom Thurmond's filibuster record, going country by country, case by case, and it still would not be enough time to do justice to all of the heroic figures around the world. But it is my hope that more of my colleagues will join me in doing so over time because it is important. Our voices here in the Senate give people all over the world confidence and motivation to stay the course.

As famed Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky has said of himself and fellow prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union: ``We never could survive even one day in the Soviet Union if our struggle was not the struggle of the free world.''

In essence, what he is saying is that these tyrants and these dictators, when they jail these people, the first thing they tell them is that no one even remembers you anymore. No one talks about you anymore. You have been abandoned.

Today, I want to highlight one particular human rights case as part of the weekly social media campaign my office has been doing for the last couple of years called Expression NOT Oppression.

Here you see a picture of a gentleman named Dr. Eduardo Cardet of Cuba. He is a medical doctor and the national coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement, a group which advocates for democracy and freedom.

Cardet assumed the role of national coordinator after the suspicious death of Castro critic Oswaldo Paya Sardinas. After allegedly stating in an interview that Fidel Castro was hated by the Cuban people--that is what he said--he was savagely beaten in front of his two young children and wife by Cuban state security on November 30 of last year. He has been in jail ever since.

He has been charged--get this. He has been charged with challenging authority. He faces a 3- to 5-year prison sentence. Let me repeat that. He is officially charged with challenging authority. That is a crime in Cuba. His father has written to Pope Francis begging for his intervention. By the way, this is a reminder that even though Fidel Castro is dead, his authoritarian system still lives on.

Dr. Cardet's persecution and the overall increase in repression in Cuba over the past 2 years is a reminder that the policy of rewarding the Castro regime, under the guise of engagement, with cash and concessions has not worked and must be strategically reversed here in the coming months.

So I come here today in the hope that our President and our State Department and especially Mr. Tillerson,

in whom I am entrusting my vote for confirmation, and all Members of Congress, for that matter, will add their voices in solidarity with Dr. Cardet, with all the Cuban people yearning to be free, and with those around the world who look to our Nation--to America--for leadership and often for nothing more than for us to lend our voice to their cause.

As we move forward here with our Nation's work, we must continue to highlight these cases and to raise awareness of them. We must never forget that there are people all over the world who are challenging authority because they want a better life for themselves and their families. They should be able to challenge authority peacefully and then go home to their families, not be thrown in jail, tortured, or killed.

Today I ask all to pray for those who are victims of their own government. I pray for the release of prisoners of conscience and their families, and I pray that our own country at this moment of extraordinary division on so many key issues can reaffirm its founding principles in calling for the sacred right of every man, woman, and child to be free.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all time during recess or adjournment of the Senate count post-cloture on the Tillerson nomination; further, that following the prayer and pledge, the remaining post-cloture time be equally divided between the two leaders or their designees.

The Senate is about to adjourn.

Under the standing order, we will convene at 12 noon tomorrow. Following the prayer and pledge, we will resume consideration of the Tillerson nomination post-cloture.

For the information of all Senators, the post-cloture time on the Tillerson nomination will expire at approximately 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time tomorrow, and the Senate will vote on confirmation at that time.

I move to adjourn.