Floor Statements

Mr. President, in less than 2 hours, the United States will have a new Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Those watching may conclude that perhaps there is still debate going on about how we are going to vote. Everyone in the Senate knows how they are going to vote on this confirmation. Quite frankly, the President deserves the right to have someone at the CIA whom he trusts and is going to do a good job at a very critical agency. This is a critical component of our national security apparatus. It is unfortunate that the first weekend as President he had to have that position vacant. Nevertheless, that ill will be remedied here in about an hour and a half.

I am proud to stand in support of Congressman Pompeo, whom I got to know well. He was very supportive of my efforts earlier last year when I chose to pursue the Presidency. I got to know a lot about him in that endeavor. So I want to take a few moments to tell the people of Florida and those who may be watching this, now or in the future, a little bit about their next Director of the CIA.

First of all, he is an incredibly respected leader. Anyone who has interacted with him, anyone who watched the hearing before the Intelligence Committee would conclude that he was a star in terms of the way he presented himself. That is in line with his honorable service during his time on the House Intelligence Committee, which he has been on for over 6 years.

He is a graduate of West Point. He is an Army veteran. He finished at the top of his class at Harvard Law. I don't think anyone here would say that someone who went to West Point, who served in the Armed Forces, and who finished at the top of his class at one of the most exclusive law schools in the world does not qualify for the job. He certainly has the intellect for it, but he also has a very keen understanding of our national security issues, both as a Congressman but also from a practical perspective, having operated in that space in the Army.

Senate Democrats, unfortunately, have delayed his confirmation for political reasons. As I said earlier, we could have voted on this last Friday, as the Senate Democratic leader had promised the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. That word was not kept. Nevertheless, we are here today, and we are going to move forward.

Our new Commander in Chief deserves and needs the Director of the CIA in this job as soon as possible because we face a complex number of dangerous threats, perhaps more than at any time in our recent memory. These include the threat of radical Islamic terrorism--in Iraq, Syria, Southeast Asia, North Africa, even here at home; Russian aggression toward our friends and allies in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. We face the savage Assad regime in Syria, which continues to slaughter innocent men, women, and children, targeting civilians in Aleppo and other places. We, of course, face an increasingly unstable dictator in North Korea who continues to develop long-range missiles, soon capable of reaching the west coast of the United States--at least according to his claims. We face an emboldened China which, in pursuing their illegitimate territorial claims in the South China Sea, threatens to destabilize the region. We face Iranian leaders--an Iranian leader who still leads the chant of ``Death to America'' every week as they cheat on the lax requirements of President Obama's flawed nuclear deal. We face illicit trafficking in the Western Hemisphere, right here in our own backyard, that destabilizes governments in the region and floods the streets of our country with narcotics.

Quite frankly, Congressman Pompeo's national security experience makes supporting his nomination one of the easiest nomination decisions I have faced in the 6 years and 1 month that I have had the honor of serving the people of Florida in the U.S. Senate.

As a military veteran, as a West Point graduate, as I said earlier, he knows firsthand. We can read about this in a book. He knows firsthand the role intelligence plays in helping the President and other policymakers formulate both U.S. foreign policy and U.S. national security policy and in turn protecting the American people.

Quite frankly, I believe any delay in approving this nomination weakens America and strengthens our adversaries. It sends the wrong message to the men and women of the Central Intelligence Agency who are our first line of defense and among our finest public servants.

Congressman Pompeo served our country in the gulf war, and since 2011 he has served the country in Congress. I truly hope many of my colleagues are willing to cross the aisle and support his nomination. He is extraordinarily well qualified. It is a phenomenal thing for our country that he will, in a few hours, be the new Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, are we on the Carter nomination?

Madam President, this is an important nomination, at a time when this country faces very significant national security threats.

As I commented yesterday, the President came to us yesterday asking us to authorize the use of force, and I think we should do that. I am not necessarily sure we should do it in the way he has asked us to do it. I think it should be a pretty straightforward authorization, and here is what it should say. It should say we authorize the President of the United States to destroy ISIS and to defeat their military. It is up to the Commander in Chief to decide the right way in which to do that.

I have very serious concerns and very serious reservations about our current strategy when it comes to ISIS. I am not sure it is sufficient. I think it is a strategy that will contain them but will not defeat them. In fact, ISIS is now popping up, for example, in Libya, where they have a very significant hub. They have a very significant presence in Benghazi. Just a few days ago they carried out an attack in Tripoli. We are now hearing media reports that ISIS has a presence in Afghanistan, perhaps even terrorist training camps.

So they continue to grow their affiliates, they continue to grow their presence, and we need an authorization of the use of force that allows us to defeat them anywhere in the world where they are to be found.

The President's suggestion has been well received. We thank him for submitting one. But now it is the responsibility of the Senate to do its job and to write one of its own. It may reflect many of the things the President wants, but what I believe it should reflect more than anything else is that we authorize him to defeat ISIS no matter what it takes and no matter how long it takes. If we have problems with the President's strategy, there are different ways to address it. I do have problems with the strategy and I want that to be addressed.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President. I would like to touch on two topics. The first is that today the President has submitted a request for authorization for use of military force with regard to ISIL, or ISIS, as some call it.

First, I think it is good news that the President has made that submission, and I think he is right when he says the country is stronger when both Congress and the President act together.

I would say there is a pretty simple authorization he could ask for, and it would be one sentence, and that is, ``We authorize the President to defeat and destroy ISIL.'' And that is what I think we need to do.

I look forward to reading through his submission. I understand it contains a time limitation. It does not contain geographic limitations. It contains some language that supposedly will make people feel more comfortable about the use of ground troops.

An authorization to use force that has limitations built into it is really quite unprecedented. We did some research, and the Congressional Research Service said that there really were only two previous authorizations that have limited the President in terms of the use of force to be used or the duration of the conflict. One was in 1983 in Lebanon, and one was in 1993 in Somalia. Both of those were peacekeeping missions, so it made sense to limit the peacekeeping mission to use of force. But it appears that never before in certainly modern history has the Congress of the United States authorized the President to take on and defeat an enemy but has done so with limitations on the time or geography or anything of that nature. That is an important point for us to understand because under no circumstances can ISIL stay. What we need to be authorizing the President to do is to destroy them and to defeat them and allow the Commander in Chief--both the one we have now and the one who will follow--to put in place the military tactics necessary to destroy and defeat ISIS.

It is important to point out that circumstances on the ground might rapidly change. They already have. For example, when this began--if you look back a year and a half ago, if I had stood on the floor and given a speech about defeating ISIL or ISIS, no one would have known what I was talking about because at the time most Americans and most Members of Congress had no idea what that was. That is how quickly this has developed into a threat.

I would remind everyone that when they actually crossed over from Syria into Iraq, the President called them the JV team. Even today the facts on the ground continue to evolve very rapidly. For example, we now know through open source reports that ISIL has now established a presence in Derna, Libya, which gives them access to a port facility, and it is a completely uncontested space. There is no government shooting at them. There are no airstrikes. There is no one coming after them there. They can do whatever they want in Libya, and they are doing it. They are using it as a place to train, a place to recruit, a place to resupply, a place to raise money, and they have access to a port that allows them to bring all these things in.

There have also been open source reports of groups in Afghanistan beginning to pledge allegiance to ISIS. In fact, in at least four different countries in north Africa, there are now groups who have pledged allegiance to ISIL. So while we continue to focus on the conflict with relation to Iraq and Syria, we cannot overlook the fact that they are sprouting affiliates throughout the entire region.

I think that after the brutal murder of numerous Americans--we saw last week what happened to the Jordanian pilot--I don't have to spend much time convincing people how dangerous this group is. What we don't hear enough about is the atrocities being committed on a daily basis on the ground, what they are doing to the Sunni population, for example, of areas they have now conquered, the brutality, the way they enforce sharia law with brutal tactics, not to mention the brutal stories we have heard of women being sold off or given away as brides to ISIL fighters, children trafficked into slavery, entire populations slaughtered, and fighters who were captured and killed in mass killings. This is what this group envisions for the world.

The goals of this group are not simply to govern what we knew once as Iraq or Syria or Libya or any other country; their ultimate goal is for the entire world--including where we stand today--to one day live under their mandate, under the rules they have established, under their radical version of Sunni Islam. You may say that is far-fetched, and it may be today, but that is their clear ambition--to spread their form of radical Islam everywhere and anywhere they can. They openly talk about this.

This group needs to be defeated. I wish we had taken this group on earlier. I wish, in fact, that we had gotten involved in the conflict in Syria earlier and equipped moderate rebel elements, non-jihadist rebel elements on the ground so that they would have been the most powerful force there. The President failed to do that in a timely fashion, and as a result a vacuum was created, and that vacuum was filled by this group who has attracted foreign fighters from all over the world to join their ranks.

Now we are dealing with this problem, but I would argue better late than never. Had we dealt with this a year and a half ago or 2 years ago, it wouldn't have been easy, but it would have been easier. But it is important to deal with it decisively now. We can debate the tactics, but it is the job of the Commander in Chief, in consultation with his military officials who surround him and advise him, to come up with the appropriate tactics to defeat the enemy.

For our purposes--very straightforward--ISIL is the enemy. They need to be defeated, and we should authorize this President and future Presidents to do what they can and what they must to defeat ISIS and erase them from the equation.

Venezuela

Mr. President, I also wish to take a moment to talk a little bit about what is happening in Venezuela. Tomorrow, February 12, will mark the 1-year anniversary since students and others across Venezuela took to the streets in peaceful demonstrations and demanded a better government and a better future than the current one, which is corrupt and incompetent and provides no leadership to the country.

Tomorrow also marks the 1-year anniversary since the Venezuelan Government, under Nicolas Maduro, responded with a violent crackdown that left dozens of people dead, thousands injured, and hundreds in jail as political prisoners. There have been at least 50 documented cases of torture by government

forces on peaceful demonstrators, and more than 1,700 individuals await trial today in Venezuela before a judiciary that is completely controlled by Maduro's government. This includes Leopoldo Lopez, who has been languishing in the Ramo Verde prison for almost a year.

In the year since the people took to the streets demanding more opportunity, accountability, and more freedom, the basic necessities have vanished from the shelves. It is one of the richest nations in the hemisphere, and its economy is in shambles.

Venezuela is also plagued with one of the world's highest murder rates, rampant corruption related to state assets, a 57-percent inflation rate, a junk rating on the global bond market, and unprecedented scarcity of goods as basic as toilet paper. Lately, things have gotten so bad in Venezuela under Maduro that they are no longer just kidnapping people. As the Diario las Americas, which is a newspaper in Miami, reported earlier this week, people are now kidnapping dogs and other pets in Venezuela and holding them for ransom. That is how bad things have gotten.

Why is this happening? Why has the cradle of Latin American independence--a country blessed with oil and energy wealth, with talented and hard-working people--become a failed state?

For starters, because it is modeling its economy after Cuba, which itself is a failed state.

Second, for years Venezuela has been in the grips of incompetent buffoons, one after another. First it was Hugo Chavez and now Nicolas Maduro. They have squandered the nation's riches.

Third, the country is being run by corrupt individuals. Just last week reports came out alleging that the speaker of the national assembly, Diosdado Cabello, is himself a drug kingpin.

Fourth, even with all the oil wealth Venezuela has squandered, it still possesses some of the largest oil reserves on the planet, but oil prices are dropping. In a country such as Venezuela where innovation and entrepreneurship are stifled, where wealth and power are concentrated in the government and its cronies, the entire economy is the oil industry. Ninety-six percent of Venezuela's export revenues come from oil.

So I am proud that in December the Senate and the House passed and the President signed a bill that sanctions human rights violators in Venezuela. It mandates that their assets be frozen and visa restrictions be placed upon them if they are involved in human rights violations. That is going to be critical going forward. As things get worse, more people in Venezuela will take to the streets, and the national guard in the country--which is nothing but armed thugs working on behalf of the Maduro government--will be tempted to crack down on people violently. So our legislation would impose visa sanctions and asset sanctions on individuals responsible for these human rights violations.

The good news is that the President has moved forward with some of these visa restrictions, and that is a very positive step. America should not be and cannot be a playground for Venezuela's human rights violators. But the financial sanctions part of the bill are long overdue. They are urgently needed because things are only going to get worse in Venezuela. People are only going to get more desperate. They are only going to speak out more. They are only going to demand freedom more. And I suspect, although I hope I am wrong, that the response from the Venezuelan Government will be more violence and more crackdowns on the people of their own nation.

If, God forbid, they use lethal force against their own people--which is a right they have reserved for themselves, a right the government has approved and has given authority to the national guard to use--we cannot simply stand by and watch as innocent people are killed or injured because the regime believes there will be no consequences.

So today I wanted to come here for a few moments and urge the President to do what I asked him to do in a letter last week, and that is to not sit idly by on the Venezuelan sanction law he signed last year but to use it--to use it immediately and decisively to make clear that the United States of America will not stand for repression taking place in Venezuela and that we will use the tools of our economy and the power we have given the President to punish those responsible for committing human rights violations in Venezuela against the people of that great nation.

Thank you, Mr. President.

With that, I yield the floor.

Madam President, due to previous commitments in Florida today, I was unable to cast the following four votes:

Motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy to be U.S. Surgeon General, as well as a final vote to confirm him. On both occasions, I would have voted no. I oppose Dr. Murthy's nomination because he has never served in the uniformed services, and one of the primary duties of the Surgeon General is to command the entire Commissioned Corps of uniformed public health officers. I am opposed to his advocacy efforts to weaken the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans as enshrined in the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution;

Motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of Daniel Santos to be a Member of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. I would have voted no; and

Motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of Frank A. Rose to be an Assistant Secretary of State. I would have voted no.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. President, I appreciate this opportunity to speak on the floor tonight. People watching at home--to the extent there is anyone watching at home tonight--but to those who have gathered here and are still in the gallery watching the Senate, the Senate is debating a budget. It is a massive budget. It is the largest in the world in terms of any entity--I was about to say any government but of any entity on the planet.

As of right now, if that budget is not passed I believe by tomorrow night, the Federal Government will not have authority to keep operating beyond the bare minimum. That is what the debate is about that you are watching. We will see what is going to happen over the next few hours in terms of ultimately getting a vote and what the leaders of the respective parties have agreed on.

But what I wanted to talk about is related to the budget but goes much deeper than that; that is, the state of America and the state of our economy.

Last night I had the opportunity to come here and speak a little bit about foreign relations and an international situation we were facing. But I wanted to speak for a moment because that is what the budget is about--it is about our domestic affairs. I think the budget is a reflection of that.

You have heard a lot of different speeches here tonight--to the extent you are watching--about different things that are happening in our country. The Senator from Alabama spoke a moment ago about immigration, but in talking about immigration, he talked about the constraints that are upon the middle class. Before that, we have seen others speak about issues. So at the end of the day, as we talk about the budget, increasingly the debate is through the lens of those factors that people are facing in their daily lives throughout this country.

I always tell the story of my parents because, for me, it puts a different framework to my vision of this country. My parents were very poor. They grew up in another country. My father lost his mother when he was 9 years old. He had to go to work literally the next day. He would work for the next 70 years in Havana, Cuba.

My mother was one of seven girls who remembers that she never went hungry, but she is pretty sure her parents did so that their children would have enough to eat. She was raised by her father, my grandfather, who was disabled as a young man. He had polio and struggled his whole life to provide for his girls.

They came to America in 1956 in search of a better life. They came here with nothing more than the dream of a better life and the hope of a better life. They did not know anyone. They barely had any money. They barely had any formal education. They arrived in this country in 1956. They never made a lot of money here. My father ended up settling into a job as a bartender, at a hotel primarily. My mother was a cashier. She was a stock clerk at Kmart. She worked as a maid at a casino in Las Vegas. My parents never became rich, but my parents achieved the American dream because the American dream is never about how much money you make.

The American dream has always been about achieving happiness as you define it. And while they weren't rich, my parents were able to afford and own a home in a safe neighborhood--a neighborhood safe enough that they would allow us, my sister and me, to walk to school when we lived in Las Vegas.

My parents were able to retire with dignity. My parents--just a generation removed from poverty and a lack of any formal education-- lived to see all four of their children go to college and have a life much better than their own. They fully lived the American dream.

It is the American dream that has been possible because this Nation was founded on the powerful idea that all people are created equal and that all people deserve an equal opportunity to achieve happiness as they define it.

That American dream isn't just a talking point. It defines us as a nation and as a people. It makes us different, special, and, in my opinion, better than any other nation that has ever existed.

But today something that troubles us is that American dream seems to be eroding in the minds of way too many people, and we understand why. There are people, when they open the newspaper every day and they read--today is a perfect example. The Dow Jones closed over 300 points. Wall Street is setting record profits.

They keep reading about how the economy is rebounding and unemployment is down, but they don't feel any of this. They are working as hard as they ever have, but their paychecks haven't gone up in more than a decade. In the meantime, everything in life costs more.

Think about that. You are working hard, making less than ever relative to how much things cost, and you are frustrated to read that all these other people seem to be doing so great. Everybody keeps telling you about how the economy is doing fantastically, and meanwhile you are being squeezed in your own life. You can't get a pay raise, there is nothing you can do about it, and everything costs more: your rent payment, your health care, your children's education. This squeeze is real and the middle class is feeling it.

We ask ourselves, but why is this happening? This is not just because of a downturn. We had a very serious financial crisis in this country. We had a very serious downturn.

But what I describe to you is not just a feature of that, because if this were just a cyclical downturn, it would go up, down, and back up again.

We have had a very dramatic change in the structure of our economy. Our

policies have not reacted to that, have not changed with those structural changes that have happened in our economy.

Even in this debate about the budget, you will see evidence of that. I didn't come to the floor to be critical of people who worked on it, I know they have worked hard, but our policies do not reflect these structural changes. They are very real.

In the 20th century, practically anybody who wanted a job in America could find one. There were plenty of blue-collar jobs for people such as my parents and there seemed to be plenty of white-collar jobs for people such as their children. But in the 21st century many of those jobs are gone. They have been sent overseas or they have been replaced because of technology or innovation. New jobs have been created, but they require skills that too many of our people still don't have.

In the 20th century, ours was a national economy. Your clients and your competitors were halfway across town, maybe halfway across the country.

In the 21st century, we operate in a global economy where your customers, your clients, your investors, your competitors, and your partners are just as likely to be halfway around the world as they are halfway down the street. That has made a dramatic structural change to our economy.

Last but not least, everything costs more. In the 20th century a bartender and a maid could afford to own a home, own a car, take a vacation once a year with their kids. If my parents tried to do today what they did in 1956, they couldn't. Those jobs just don't pay enough and all those things I just described cost so much more money.

We have to respond to these structural changes. We have to turn the page on these old ideas and, quite frankly, on the leaders who have those old ideas. We cannot continue to confront 21st century challenges with 20th century strategies.

We need new leaders, and we need new ideas that respond to these deep structural changes. For 4 straight years that I have been talking about this in the Senate, the progress in that regard unfortunately has been slower.

I didn't come here today to be overly partisan, but I know in 2008 a lot of people thought that our current President would be that kind of new leader, but that is not what we have gotten. They thought he would be that kind of new leader because he talked about being a champion for the middle class. He talked about a modern agenda of hope and change.

But that is not what we have received. Instead of focusing on working families, he focused on things such as the liberal dream of government- run health care.

He focused on radical environmental policies instead of focusing on the middle class.

Instead of modern ideas, what we got was just old-fashioned big government and crony corporatism. A startling example of it is how the insurance companies have gamed ObamaCare.

Imagine for a moment if you were in a business and the government came in with a law that said: We are going to make the people buy the product that you sell. We are going to give them the money to buy the product that you sell. By the way, if you lose money selling the products, we are going to bail you out with taxpayer dollars.

That is what big insurance companies were able to get out of ObamaCare. People are required to buy insurance, they get a subsidy to buy that insurance, and if they lose that money, they get a bailout with taxpayer dollars. That is outrageous, and it is not surprising that the stock prices of big insurance companies have doubled since ObamaCare passed.

Meanwhile, working Americans are paying more, higher deductibles, higher copayments, higher premiums, and they are getting less coverage. That is an example of corporatism.

Despite all this rhetoric that they are fighting on behalf of the middle class, the past few years have been a bonanza for big business, a bonanza for people who can hire the lawyers and the lobbyists to navigate the complexities of government.

So it is very simple. If you can hire an army of lawyers and lobbyists in Washington, DC, you get your priorities and bills like the one that is before us today, or others, for that matter. But if you are trying to start a business out of the spare bedroom of your home, if you are a small businessperson who works 7 days a week, 16 hours a day just to stay afloat, you can't hire the best law firm in Washington, DC, to navigate those regulations. And you sure can't afford to hire a lobbying firm to come here to write those laws to your advantage.

In fact, I would go farther and say that big government is a competitive advantage for big businesses, because they know that the bigger and more complicated the rules are, the harder it is for someone new to come along and compete with them for that same business.

We have seen that time and again. I saw it during my time as a State official, as the speaker of the State house in Florida, and I see it in Washington, DC.

This is corporatism and both parties are guilty of it.

That is why it shouldn't surprise us that under the past 6 years of this presidency, 95 percent of the income gains in this country have gone to the top 1 percent of earners and 93 percent of Americans have seen virtually no income growth in the past 6 years. Yet we continue to see an effort to push policies from this administration that keeps us on the same course. Here is the course that we are on--radical environmental groups are going to get their way, their policies, and their Executive orders written. Meanwhile, people who work at factories, people who are dependent on energy jobs, they get nothing.

Public employee unions that are well represented and spend a lot of money influencing government, they get all the rules they want from the NLRB and the government. They get their help.

Do you know who doesn't? The UPS truckers, the plumbers, the pipefitters, the electricians, and the construction workers. All these elites who are going around begging for more government spending, they are going to get their way in this bill from this administration--and middle-class Americans who are working as hard as they ever had, they get stuck with the tax bill to pay for it.

We can't keep doing this. If we keep doing this, we are going to lose the American dream. We are going to lose what makes us different, and we are going to lose what makes us special.

But I believe with all my heart that if we can turn the page on these policies, not only can we save the American dream but we can have another American century. To do that, there are three key things we have to do, and I wish more of this was reflected in the bill before us.

The first thing we need is we need better jobs. Jobs that don't just pay more--and that is important, but jobs that provide enough flexibility as well so that you do have time if you need to take time off to go take your kids to a field trip or a doctor's appointment.

Do you know how many Americans out there can't take their kids to a dental appointment because that requires them to take 2 hours off of work? Do you know how many Americans don't have the flexibility to be able to watch their son or their daughter at the Christmas pageant this year in school because their job doesn't have flexibility?

These better jobs that I am talking about are jobs that pay more but ultimately provide the flexibility so you have the time to be a better spouse, a member of your community, and a better parent--and jobs that won't disappear with the next advancement in technology, jobs that give you an opportunity for promotion and upward mobility. These are the kinds of jobs we need.

In order to have those jobs in America in the 21st century, we need to become globally competitive. We are engaged in a global competition with the rest of the world for these jobs. It is the economic olympics every single day.

We can win that competition. We can win it if we had a Tax Code that no longer made America one of the most expensive places in the world to create those jobs. We could win it if we reformed our regulatory code so that we are no longer such a burdensome place to create those jobs. We could win it if we got our national debt under control, which scares people from creating those jobs here because they believe we

are headed for a debt crisis in the future.

We can win that competition if we fully utilize our energy resources in a safe and responsible way. We have already seen the benefits of American energy exploration, the jobs it creates, not only in energy but in manufacturing.

You have already seen the benefits of American energy production in the falling price of gasoline at the pump, and that has real-world implications. Being from Florida, we expect that many more people are going to take the drive to Disney World this winter because getting there is a lot cheaper than it was a year ago. Ticket price is another matter, but getting there is a lot cheaper than it was before. This has real implications.

The other thing is we can win that competition, but we have to keep our edge on innovation. We are the world's greatest innovators. We can't lose that edge. By the way, winning that global competition requires us to be globally engaged.

We must remain involved in global affairs. Strong American leadership on this planet is a factor in allowing the world to have the prosperity and the stability it needs for a rising middle class--people who can afford to buy the things we sell, the products we offer, the services we offer. We will benefit from that.

But creating more of those jobs is not enough. The second thing we have to do is to make sure people have the skills for those new jobs because these new jobs in the 21st century are going to require a higher level of skill than ever before. The problem is we have an archaic 20th century education model.

We tell kids in high school that the only way you will ever be successful is you all have to get a 4-year degree. There is nothing wrong with getting a 4-year degree, but it is wrong to tell children and students in this country that is the only way to get ahead when we know in the 21st century there are going to be millions of quality middle-skilled, quality-paying jobs that require more than high school but less than 4 years of college.

We have a system that does nothing, absolutely nothing, about that. We don't offer nearly enough vocational problems in high school.

Why have we stigmatized jobs where people work with their hands, when we know that we need airplane mechanics, electricians, plumbers, and pipefitters? We need high-tech welders and people who know how to do 21st century welding and machinists for 21st century factories and manufacturing.

We can teach these people skills while they are still in high school so they can graduate ready to go to work. We also need more apprenticeship programs, and that is something we can partner with labor unions so we can train and retrain Americans in these higher skilled jobs. We also need to help people who have to work full time.

Imagine for a moment a single mother raising two kids on her own and she is a receptionist at a law firm. She is never going to get a significant raise working as a receptionist. The only way she is ever going to get ahead is if she can become a paralegal. But to become a paralegal, she has to go to school. How is she going to go to school under this current system?

She wakes up at 6 o'clock in the morning, makes her kids breakfast, drops them off at school, drives to work, works 8 or 9 hours, rushes to the daycare center or the afterschool program before it closes, picks them up and brings them home. She is already tired, but she is not done. She has to make them dinner and make sure they finish their homework.

By 11 o'clock she hits that bed and she is exhausted. When is she going to go to school--4 o'clock in the morning?

We need to have an education system that is flexible enough so that she can acquire the skills to become a paralegal while she works full time and she raises that family, allowing her to package learning from online courses and work experience.

If someone is a receptionist at a law firm and has worked there for 8 or 9 years, there are some skills they have picked up working there that should count for credit hours, instead of forcing you to sit through a 2-year program so the college they are going to can make the money off of them. We need to create programs so that people like her can acquire those skills for 21st century jobs.

We also need to create alternatives to traditional college. It doesn't matter where you acquire the learning. You should be able to package all of your learning. Take, for example, someone who has worked 10 years, served in the military, has extensive experience at volunteering, has taken a number of courses at a community college, and wants to get a degree in something. We should be able to package all of that lifelong learning, all of those sources of learning, into the equivalent of a degree program.

Do you know how many Americans out there are sitting on 30 or 40 credit hours from a community college? But having 30 hours of college credit is the same as having zero because you don't get any degree certificate for it. So the private sector looks at you and says: We are glad you went to class, but where is your degree or your associate's degree?

I wish we had a more concerted effort in helping people who are halfway there to get all the way there by using things such as online coursework and giving them credit for life and work experience.

We need to think outside the box on these issues because if we don't empower people with these skills, they won't be able to take advantage of the opportunities of the 21st century. This is what a 21st-century educational system looks like.

I would make one more point when talking about schools. The most important school a child will ever attend is their home. We cannot ignore the fact that the breakdown of American families is having a dramatic impact on our economy and the quality of life of our people. There is a reality here about this. A growing number of children are born into single-parent homes or are born into broken families. We have to help them because we know that, statistically speaking, children being raised in broken families and single-parent homes with low incomes will struggle to succeed. They will not have an equal opportunity unless someone does something to help them out.

We can help. We can help by helping their parents acquire the skills they need for better jobs, such as the single mother I talked about earlier, but also by giving their parents the opportunity to send them to the school of their choice. It is immoral, it is un-American that the only people in this country who cannot choose where their children go to school are poor people. It is outrageous. Rich people can send their kids to any school they want, and that is their right. The middle class will move to a better neighborhood or struggle to put together just enough money to put their kids into a better school. But if you are poor and the school in your neighborhood is a dangerous school and you are not learning, there is nothing you can do. That is outrageous. The answer to that is, well, improve that school. I agree. But in the 5 years it takes to improve that school, that child has gone from first grade to sixth grade, and you are never getting those years back. Every parent in America--especially low-income parents--deserves the opportunity to put their children in the school of their choice.

There are other ways we can help families. Primarily that is our responsibility as individuals and communities. But we should have a promarriage Tax Code, a promarriage government program. We shouldn't have marriage penalties. We shouldn't tell people ``If you get married your taxes are going to go up'' or ``If you get married you will lose Medicare, Medicaid.'' We have to get rid of those things. We have to remove those marriage penalties in our Tax Code and in our programs.

By the way, we should also protect our faith communities. They are an important part of instilling values because you can have all the diplomas on the wall you want, but if you don't have the values of hard work and discipline and self-control and respect for others and respect for the dignity of the life of all people, you will struggle to succeed. No one is born with those values; those values have to be taught by strong families in a strong home, and they have to be reinforced by strong communities. One of the pillars of a strong community is our faith community, whatever faith you choose.

That is why protecting religious liberty is so important.

Last but not least, restoring the American dream isn't just about better jobs and better training and better skills; it is also about dealing with the cost of living. That is why I think in the coming year we desperately need a profamily Tax Code. Instead of all these loopholes that are designed to help big business or the cronies of the people who serve here in Washington, we need a profamily Tax Code. For example, let's increase the child tax credit because it costs money to raise children in the 21st century and these working families are struggling to provide for their children. Let's have a profamily Tax Code like the one Senator Lee of Utah and I have proposed. Let's increase the child tax credit.

We also have to deal with the cost of higher education. It is completely out of control. Do you know who is getting destroyed by that? The middle class.

I had the honor of teaching a course at Florida International University. There are many working-class students there. And here is their frustration, and they are right: Their parents make too much money for financial aid, but they do not make enough money to be able to afford the school. So do you know what they do? They take out loans in the tens of thousands of dollars.

I know about this firsthand because when I was sworn into the Senate here 4 years ago, I owed over $100,000 in student loans. My parents could never afford to pay for my school. I was blessed to be able to receive Pell grants and other assistance, but I still had to use loans.

When we first got married, it was our single largest expenditure. I used to joke with my wife: You didn't just get married to me; you got married to Sallie Mae. Every month Sallie sent us a $1,300 or $1,400 bill.

There are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of young people across America who are stuck with big loan debt and degrees that don't lead to jobs. I hope we will tackle that this year, and there are a couple of proposals that I think will help. The first is we should make income-based repayment the repayment method for everyone unless you opt out of it.

Second, I think people deserve the right to know before they take out a loan how much they can expect to make. Before you take out a loan to pay the tuition of the school, that school should be required to tell you: This is how much people who graduate from our school make when they graduate with this degree. So you can decide whether it is worth borrowing $100,000 to be a Greek philosophy major because the market for Greek philosophers is very tight these days.

Last but not least, I think we need alternatives to traditional student loans. One of the things I have proposed is something called the student investment plan, which allows people to invest in your future. Basically, it is a venture fund in you. Someone will come forward and say: We will give you the money to go to college. In exchange, you will pay us back 1 or 2 percent of your income for your first 10 years.

They are investing in you. It is a student investment plan. It is not for everyone. It is not a panacea, but it is an alternative to student loans.

One of the things that would help, by the way, that would be an alternative to student loans, is what I mentioned earlier--if you were able to package learning and turn self-directed learning into the equivalent of a degree.

There are other big items contributing to the cost of living. Health care I don't need to tell you about. How many people out there today, particularly in the middle class, are starting to find out they have higher deductibles, higher copayments, higher premiums, and are getting less coverage than they used to have. This is not a myth. It is not a rumor. This is happening to millions of people. We get the calls, and so do you in your office about all these things.

One last point on the cost of living is dealing with poverty. Our antipoverty programs don't work. There are antipoverty programs in this Cromnibus--a term, by the way, none of us have ever used before. I don't know who makes these things up. But anyway, there are antipoverty programs in this bill. Our antipoverty programs alleviate poverty, but they don't cure it.

Imagine if you broke your arm and you went to the hospital and they said: Here is a lifetime supply of pain killers. I am not saying you shouldn't help people with the pain from the broken arm, but you have to fix that broken arm.

Our programs don't fix poverty. They do not cure poverty. We need programs that will cure poverty. That is why I believe we need what is called the flex fund, where we take all of our existing antipoverty dollars--I am not saying cut it; I am saying take our existing antipoverty dollars and put them in a flex fund and allow States and local communities to design specific plans that work in their communities.

I can tell you that in the State of Florida, urban poverty and rural poverty have different elements to them. A program that might work very well in the inner city of Miami doesn't work at all with the rural poverty in South Dade. We should allow States and local communities to design programs that help cure poverty.

The ultimate cure for poverty is a good job. That means everyone who is on these assistance programs should either be in school acquiring the skills they need for a better job or they should be working, improving their skills through experience.

Let me just say this about that, and I have talked about one of the aspects of the reforms we want--a wage enhancement. If the only job you can find pays $8 or $9 an hour but you need $15 an hour to provide for yourself, I would rather come up with government money and make up the difference through a wage enhancement than give you $9 or $10 an hour or the equivalent of $7 or $8 an hour in a welfare check. Because while you are working, you are gaining experience, and we are also helping supplement your paycheck so you can pay your bills.

That condition isn't forever. It can't become a way of life. But if you have been unemployed for 5 or 6 years and you show up somewhere to get a job and they ask you what you have been doing for the last 6 years and you say you haven't been doing anything, your chances of getting that job have just diminished dramatically. It is not good for people to be unemployed long term in terms of their long-term job prospects. That is why I have talked about a wage enhancement program as well.

I think if we do all these things I have talked about--make ourselves a globally competitive economy so the jobs are created here, give our people 21st-century skills, help people deal with the cost of living--I think we have every reason in the world to be optimistic about our future.

I will close by saying that I think sometimes we get confused here about how we measure the greatness of our country or the progress we are making. We look to facts and figures, such as the unemployment rate, and we look at the GDP of the country, and these are important figures. We shouldn't ignore them. But let me tell you how I measure the progress of this country.

I mentioned earlier that my father was a bartender. At many of the events I have been involved in through public service over the years, I give a speech somewhere, and there is a bartender standing behind a bar in the back of the room. Almost every time I see that, it reminds me of my father, who stood for so many years behind a bar. He was happy for the work he had, but that is not the life he wanted for us. He wanted something more for us. My father stood behind that bar all those years so that one day I could have the chance to stand here on the floor of the United States Senate and talk about things like the American dream. That journey from behind that bar to where I am standing here tonight is the American dream. That is the American dream.

A few years ago someone heard me give that speech in New York City, and after I was done speaking the employees there came up to me and handed me this name tag. It said ``Rubio, Banquet Bartender.'' It was one of the most touching gifts I ever got from anyone, but it was also a reminder that whether we remain a special nation will be determined by whether people today can do what my parents did; by whether people today can still make that journey my father made from behind that bar to where I stand today. Can the single mother provide her children

the life she always wanted but never had? Can that worker at that hotel open doors for their children that were closed for him? That is how we will know we are still special. If they can, then this new century is also going to be an American century.

We do have real challenges, but we also have real opportunities. And there is no time in history that I would rather be in than right here, right now. I believe technology will allow us to collaborate and reach more people than ever before. I believe innovation will solve problems we once thought were insurmountable. I believe a rising global middle class will provide more prosperity to more people everywhere than we have ever seen. That is what I believe the 21st century can be about.

I believe you and I live on the eve of another American century. All we have to do now is to reach for it and grab it. All we have to do now is do what our parents did for us--whatever it took to leave for their children a better life and a better future. If we do that, then we will leave behind for our children what every generation of Americans before us has left behind: the single greatest nation in the history of all mankind.

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

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

Mr. President, I wish to speak on the bill we are on--the National Defense Authorization Act--by taking a look at the condition of the world today. This is an important time to do it, as we enter the end of this year and begin to look forward to the new year. We should take a moment to take a snapshot of the world and the threats that exist around us and the complexities in the world because I think they are directly on point as to what our military capabilities are going to need to be in the 21st century.

I note that the tendencies have often been on a number of occasions, even in my lifetime, where we have tried to take, for lack of a better term, what is known as a peace dividend--the end of the Cold War, for example, and then again after the events of 9/11--it is the idea that somehow the threats around the world and the challenges we face have somehow ebbed and it is time to nation build at home. I am always in favor of nation building at home. The problem is that today, now, in the 21st century more than ever, there is no such thing as a remote problem. There is no such thing as any issue that is of major importance abroad that doesn't somehow impact us here at home. This has always been true, but it has never been more true than it is today because of the global nature of our economy.

As we look around the world--and I want to take a brief moment to go over some of the parts of the world--we start to see what the need for American leadership is and the need for a strong national defense capability on the part of the United States and how important it is in this new global economy.

Let's begin by looking at the Middle East, the most troubled region of the world, and that has been true for a very long time. We begin by talking about the negotiations that are going on with Iran. Look, I would hope--we all do, I think--to wake up one day to the news that Iran has decided to walk away from sponsoring terrorism, that Iran has walked away from its desire to blow up Israel, that Iran has rejected the human rights violations it commits against its own people, and that they have abandoned their nuclear ambitions. We would all love to see that happen. That is the ideal outcome. It is also, frankly, the least likely.

The truth is, while we shouldn't root against the negotiations that are going on with Iran, we shouldn't be naive enough to believe they have a serious chance at success, and I say this for a couple of very different but simple reasons.

The first is because I think Iran looks at what has happened with North Korea--a country that barely has an economy; it is not even a country in the sense we think of, having a government. It is really an area of land run by a criminal syndicate. Iran has seen how North Korea, because it has a nuclear weapon, has been able to be immune to international pressures, up to a certain point. Then Iran looks to Libya and it looks to Iraq and it says: Look what happens to people who don't have nuclear weapons. So I am convinced the Supreme Leader wants that nuclear capability. Whether he will ever actually build the weapon--it may not be something they have decided yet, but the ability to build that weapon--I have no doubt that is what they want.

I have no doubt--and I believe the administration knows this to be true--that they have gone into these negotiations with a very clear objective; that is, we want you, negotiator, to get rid of as many sanctions as possible without agreeing to any irreversible concessions.

It is an interesting plan because their idea is to get rid of the sanctions, thinking they will do what they need to do in the short term--whatever that may be, as long as they are not irreversible--and at some point in the future they will restart the weapons program. It is going to be easier for Iran to restart the weapons program than it is going to be for the United States and the nations of the world to reimpose sanctions. So I think they have figured that out, and that is what their mandate has been. But even that has its limits because when we look to these negotiators--and there is a history of this, when we look to these negotiators--there have been times in the past when Iranian negotiators might have agreed to something at the table, but then they have to come back and pull the offer because when they take it to the Supreme Leader, he says no.

We have to understand that the Supreme Leader is an isolated individual. This is not a person who travels the world or interacts with other national leaders of other nations. This is a person who is an ideologue, a religious fanatic. And I don't care what the negotiators agree to or what the President of Iran agrees to, ultimately it is the Supreme Leader's decision. I hate to say this, but they are not going to agree to any sort of deal that is good for the national security of the United States. I believe that to be true, and we need to be prepared for that.

I hope one of the first items we take up in this Chamber in the new year, in the new Congress, will be a bill to require congressional authorization for any deal, and I think we should also consider putting in place sanctions for the day when that deal fails.

In the meantime, as we talk about those negotiations that are going on--and Iran has already acquired a concession on the part of the West that they

can leave in place some level of the infrastructure they need to enrich uranium and reprocess plutonium--they are still expanding their missile capability, they are still sponsoring terrorism all over the world, they are still deeply embedded and aligned with Shia militias in Iraq who pose a danger to the United States--and I will touch more upon that in a moment--and they still have plans to one day destroy Israel. So we should not be naive about the situation with Iran, and I hope in the new year more clarity will come to that.

The second issue that directly touches upon our national security is the conflict between Iraq and Syria with regard to ISIL and the speed by which they have spread throughout two countries. Their goals are very simple. The goal of ISIL is to establish an Islamic caliphate that stretches from Europe--literally from Spain all the way through the Middle East, into India and Afghanistan, and in through north Africa. That is their very clear goal. They have said so. That is their plan, and it began in Syria, and it is spreading to Iraq. They made some pretty impressive gains before they started getting hit from the air. But even with that, they are the best funded and the best armed terrorist organization in modern history.

We already are beginning to see the spread of ISIL. One place to keep an eye on is Libya. They control an entire province in Libya. An affiliate of theirs, a group who has pledged allegiance to them, now controls an entire province in Libya, and here is what is dangerous about that. For a group such as this to prosper and grow, they need an ungoverned space. They need a piece of territory where no one is shooting at them, where no one is protesting their presence and they have no one to fight against them. That is why al Qaeda was able to grow so fast in Afghanistan--because the Taliban gave them that ungoverned space. That is why ISIL was able to grow so quickly out of Syria and into Iraq--because they were able to carve out an ungoverned space where the Syrian Government wasn't.

In Libya they have no one to fight. There is no functional government right now. There are no rival rebel groups to shoot at them. And they are going to use that ungoverned space to grow their capability. In fact, it would not surprise me, unfortunately, if in a few months, maybe a year, the hub of ISIL's activities is located largely in that province of Libya and beyond.

By the way, ISIL's presence isn't just a threat to Iraq and Syria; their immediate threat as well is to the Kingdom of Jordan, a critical U.S. ally. And if they are a threat to Jordan, they are a threat to Israel and, ultimately, to Saudi Arabia. They are a threat to Turkey already. They are a threat to Lebanon, and, as I said, they are present in north Africa as we speak. This is a very dangerous development, and it must be dealt with seriously.

We also can't anticipate the alliances that ISIL might make. We have to understand what is happening. As they make these gains--or supposed gains--they have also become very good at propaganda. They are convincing young, radicalized individuals--including here in the United States--that they are the preeminent jihadist group on the planet, that they are the most successful jihadist group on the planet, that they will inevitably succeed, and that they are an unsurmountable force. They are convincing people to abandon other groups and join them. They are convincing donors to stop giving money to other groups and give to them. We don't know what this is going to develop into, but we can foresee in the very near future where other groups begin to align themselves with them just to remain relevant.

By the way, as a side note, there is an additional danger to ISIL's spread, and that is that the other jihadist groups in the world, who are now losing donors and losing recruits, are now feeling an urgency to go out and carry out some spectacular attack, such as here in the homeland against American interests or air travel somewhere. They now have an interest in carrying out a spectacular attack because they need to do something to reattract donors and reattract members.

But back to my original point. The danger is that these new groups, in order to remain relevant and not lose their fighters, may decide they are going to pledge their allegiance to ISIL. The host of groups already exploring that are dangerous--the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Taliban in Pakistan, the Haqqani Network that is in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and there are other groups in north Africa as well that at least nominally have pledged some level of allegiance and support for what ISIL is doing. We need to keep an eye on this threat because a year ago, if I had stood on this floor and said we need to take ISIL seriously, no one would have known what I was talking about. That is how quickly this threat has spread, and we have no idea what it can morph into in the next few years, not to mention the next few months.

There is one additional point I wish to make. The city of Mosul has a university with a significant research capability, and one thing for us to be very cautious about is that ISIL is not using that university and its research capabilities to develop rockets or, God forbid, chemical weapons or even a dirty bomb. That is something to keep an eye on in the months and weeks to come. That is another example of the complex national security threats our Nation faces.

Our ally Israel--their struggles and their challenges are well documented. It begins with Iran. We have talked about the fact that single greatest threat facing Israel today is the prospect of a nuclear Iran and what it would mean to Israel's security in the long term. They face a very difficult challenge with the Palestinian Authority.

There was a poll I read about this morning that talked about a large majority of people--Palestinians--who believe it is morally right to kill Israelis, to kill Jews. I am not saying that I believe all Palestinians think that, but it bears noting what that poll found. It should not surprise us when the educational institutions of the Palestinian Authority--not to mention what is being taught in Gaza-- teaches people that not only is it right, it is heroic to kill Jews and to be an anti-Semite.

Then they are being pressured, including by this administration-- Israel is--to enter into a peace agreement with these individuals, with those so-called leaders. How can you enter into a peace agreement with people who want to destroy you? How could you possibly enter into a peace agreement with an organization that wants to eradicate you? What are you going to negotiate--the terms of your destruction?

I don't know of any nation on Earth that wants peace more than Israel does. What do they have to gain from this constant conflict? How can you have peace with an organization, with a group that is committed to their destruction?

Instead of saying: Israel, your No. 1 problem right now is--we know what it is--the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon, this administration and some political leaders even in this Chamber believe we should be pressuring them that their No. 1 objective should be entering into some sort of peace agreement with an organization that wants to destroy them, that in some quarters won't even recognize their right to exist, an organization that harbors individuals who deny that Jews were ever present on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which is absurd. Of course, I would just encourage them to do a little archeological research to confirm the longstanding Jewish presence in the region.

Suffice it to say that Israel is our strongest ally in the region. It is everything we wish the Middle East was--a prosperous, free enterprise economy, a stable democracy with a vibrant political process, and a loyal friend to the United States in international forums. I wish there were more countries in the world like that. We should do everything we can to support Israel and stop putting pressure on them because every time we put pressure on them on these things, we create daylight between the United States and Israel, we imperil their security, and we encourage their enemies to become even more aggressive.

The last point I will make about Israel: Let there be no doubt that there is a global effort to delegitimize their right to exist as a Jewish state. It has infiltrated throughout Europe, and we are starting to see it rear its ugly head in academia here in the United States.

We should not let that stand. We should speak out against it and condemn it for what it is.

As if the Middle East were not complicated enough, we turn our focus to Europe and the threat Russia now poses. Interestingly enough, a year and a half ago, Mitt Romney, the former Governor of Massachusetts, the Republican Presidential nominee, said that Russia was our most serious geopolitical threat in the short term. He was universally mocked by elitists and the press, even by some here in Washington--many here in Washington. It turns out he was right, as were many of us who were saying the same thing.

The truth is that Vladimir Putin many years ago concluded that the United States was a threat to Russia, many years ago concluded that he wanted Russia to be reestablished as a world power and that the only way he could achieve that was by confronting the United States and being seen as a counterbalance to the United States on the global stage, and we see that in place after place. In international forums, when it comes to Syria, on issue after issue Russia is against us because Putin believes it gives them relevancy on the global stage.

But there is a second issue and do not take this lightly. We don't spend all day obsessed about Russia. We don't spend all night thinking the Russians are going to invade us. But they do. There are leaders in the Russian Government who believe the United States wants to get into a military conflict with them, and they increasingly believe that now more than ever. We can see it in the military moves they are making. These are not just provocations. This is an all-out change to their defense posturing, to their defense theory, a defense theory that is increasingly looking like a Cold War one, a defense theory that is increasingly looking like they need to have the ability to prevent a U.S. first strike or to somehow be able to react to a U.S. first strike.

I know for us it sounds absurd that the United States would ever launch a nuclear attack against Russia. But there are Russian leaders at very high levels that believe that is plausible, and we are seeing it rear its head in every part of the world. Not a day goes by that there is not a report of a Russian intrusion here or a submarine appearing somewhere or an airplane--Russian bombers that have been intercepted by NATO or even the United States. These are not just provocations. They are muscle flexing.

This is a change in their defense theory, and it is a very dangerous change, not to mention the fact that I believe evidence now exists that Russia is in violation of multiple treaties they have signed with the United States, and there needs to be consequences for that.

Then, of course, as part of that strategy they believe they need strategic depth, which means they need all the countries that border them, especially the former Soviet Republics, to be in their camp. They don't want anyone near them turning toward the West. The best example of that is what is happening in Ukraine.

What is happening in Ukraine is easy to understand. As Ukraine turned westward, Russia said that was unacceptable; they invaded Crimea and took it, and they are now engaged openly in a conflict with Ukraine that is, by the way, an outrageous one.

First of all, Russian troops have entered Ukrainian territory. Maybe they were disguised as something else, but Russian troops have made incursions into Ukraine territory and carried out combat operations against the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

The Russians are supplying the Ukrainians with weapons and armored vehicles.

They will claim: No; these armored vehicles are armored vehicles we seized, and they are clever about the armored vehicles they supply them with. They are only supplying them with armored vehicles that look like the ones the Ukrainians already have in their current stockpiles. But they are arming, equipping, and training Ukrainian separatists, and their goal is to achieve one of two things:

Their first objective, plan A, is to force Ukraine, because of the pressure they are putting on them through these separatists, because of the economic levers they hold on a very fragile Ukrainian economy through energy and exports and so forth--their first objective is to force Ukraine into a federation system of government; basically, a system of government that gives those eastern provinces and areas more autonomy because that would keep the country sufficiently divided so it can never turn toward Europe and the West.

If that doesn't work, however, then plan B that they are perfectly comfortable with is to freeze the status quo, to basically freeze the current conflict as the status quo for the long term. After the next 15 or 20 years, there will be armed and trained separatists, supported by Russia, carrying out combat operations against the Ukrainian Government in the eastern parts of the country.

Plan A is the federation; plan B is to freeze the status of the current conflict. That is the reality we are facing.

What is interesting is here is what Russia is banking on. They are banking on the sanctions which have been imposed will not be sustained; that eventually, after a couple of years, Europe will say: OK. It is time to accept what has happened and move on and that sanctions will be lifted. In fact, that is what Putin is probably telling his inner circle and the people around him: Don't worry. We are going to get through this. These sanctions will eventually be lifted off of us, and everything will be back to normal.

But those sanctions are hurting right now. I would hope those sanctions don't fall apart. I would hope the European nations understand what a direct threat this poses to them if Russia could just invade a country and take it over. But time will tell.

I think a strong American leadership is critical. I think a reinvigoration of NATO is critical. That is why it is so important that we focus on our defense capability.

But that is Putin telling everyone around him: Don't worry about these sanctions. They are going to be gone in a while. We will get through this.

Interestingly, to give some insight into Putin, the inner circle around him, the elites who are closest to him, they are being shielded from the impact of these sanctions to a certain point. In fact, one of the people, Igor Sechin, who was specifically sanctioned by the sanctions that were passed here and in Europe--he actually convinced Putin to indict an energy rival of his, take his property and his assets, and give it to Igor Sechin as compensation. That is how cynical this has become.

So the elites that surround and are closest to Putin, they are being protected by the impact of the sanctions. Everybody else is paying a terrible price, not the least of which are the people.

I also think there is clear evidence that Putin is increasingly isolated in terms of whom he listens to, whom he takes advice from, and whom he consults with, and it is going to have a devastating impact on Russia. Next year their economy is predicted to contract. Yet despite this--just to give a true indication of where Russia is headed and to give insight as to where we should be headed--contraction of their economy, despite the collapse of oil prices which has been devastating to their economy, Putin just announced budget cuts throughout every part of their government except for one--the one part of the budget they are holding harmless--military spending. I hope that gives some insight as to where they are heading.

My last point on Russia is they are increasingly present in the Western Hemisphere. They are actively seeking lease agreements in Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba to be able to have naval assets and aircraft stationed in our own backyard, in the Western Hemisphere.

Let's talk about Asia for a moment, another place that poses some very significant national security and military implications for the United States.

I talked about North Korea earlier. I think it bears repeating. North Korea doesn't have a government. It is a nation or is a territory governed by a criminal syndicate run by an insane and erratic leader-- but an insane and erratic leader with nuclear weapons, an insane and erratic leader who is developing long-range missile capabilities, and an insane and erratic leader that may end up overestimating his military capabilities, miscalculating, and

trigger a dispute with South Korea that could quickly escalate and implicate the United States, which has a very strong and important military and defense agreement arrangement with South Korea and our allies in the south. It bears watching.

Let's focus for a moment on China. First of all, we cannot ignore their aggressive territorial claims against both the Philippines and Japan. Interestingly, they picked on the Philippines first, a nation that doesn't have much of a military to speak of. This is the first nation they have gotten into a sort of conflict with, but they have them also with Japan and with Vietnam, and they have been pretty aggressive about it. To understand that, we have to understand a little bit about history.

For thousands of years, China was the dominant nation in that region. For them, the last 200 years is an aberration, and their increasing assertiveness is an indication that they believe it is time to go back to normal, which is their dominance of the region. Their dominance, by the way, doesn't mean they are going to invade these countries and take them over. They are not going to invade the Philippines. They are not going to invade Japan.

What they believe is that all these countries should be tributary stakes, that all these countries should fold underneath China's leadership, that all these countries should recognize China is big and they are small, and they should listen to China's directives and orders.

So we see the silk road initiative. We see them trying to come up with an alternative to the other global institutions that have served the world so well since the end of World War II. They want to displace the United States and the global order that existed since the end of World War II with their own order, run by China to China's advantages, and that begins with territorial claims.

The next time you have a chance to see in some Chinese passports, they have a map that indicates the nine-dash line. The nine-dash line is what they think the world looks like in terms of territories. If we look at what that means, they basically believe the entire South China Sea is their territory. That is why they have made these aggressive moves against these islands. Let me tell you how the strategy works.

They send fishermen to these areas to fish or others to exploit resources. The other countries send out their coast guard to defend it. They send out their coast guard or navy to push back. They basically show you: Even if you wanted to fight against us, there is nothing you can do about it.

Eventually what they want these nations to conclude is: There is no point in fighting China because we can't win. The United States is not going to come to our defense. So we might as well cut a deal with them and accept their dominance.

That is their plan, slowly but surely to change the facts on the ground, to assert themselves, to convince these other countries there is nothing they can do about it. They can't count on the United States anymore, and eventually these countries will say: Fine, China. We will do whatever you want and cave. That is their plan and they are carrying it out.

They have also shown their true colors in Hong Kong. When the agreement was signed to turn Hong Kong over from the United Kingdom to the Chinese, one of the things that was important in that agreement was autonomy; that Hong Kong couldn't have its own foreign policy, but it could have its own domestic system of government autonomous from the Chinese system.

But now things have changed. Now the Chinese basically want to have veto power over who can run for office and who can lead Hong Kong. In fact, the criteria they have established is: You have to love the nation. But I will translate what that means: You have to love the Chinese Communist Party and do what they want you to do. So this is an important development that we need to keep an eye on.

Beyond that, going back to military affairs for a moment--because we are on the NDAA--just look at what China is doing in its military expenditures: dramatic increases in military expenditures, the true nature of which we don't know because China doesn't pass a budget like ours for public knowledge. We know what they have spent, but we don't know how much more they have spent than what they have declared. But we can tell you they are developing anti-access/anti-area denial weapons, anti-access weapons. They have tested supersonic missiles fired off their ships designed to penetrate U.S. missile defense.

Here is why they develop these: They want us to know that if we were to somehow encroach upon these territories, if there was a conflict in Asia and the United States responded militarily, the Chinese can destroy one of our aircraft carriers. The Chinese could destroy one of our expensive naval capabilities. That is what they want to be able to prove to us. What they hope the calculation will be is that the United States goes: Look. If one day China invades Taiwan, there is nothing we can do about it because we are not going to lose two aircraft carriers over a conflict.

So that is why they are investing so much in these denial capabilities.

They are also investing in space warfare, the ability to blow up our satellites because they know how dependent American national security is on having technological advantage. So China is racing to militarize space. It is a very serious threat to keep an eye on.

A couple more points on the military. I will close by talking about the Western Hemisphere. The Western Hemisphere poses its own set of challenges as outlined earlier.

Let's start with Venezuela. We took up a bill this week on Venezuela. It was an important bill and I am glad we passed it. It is on the way to the President's desk. It sanctions human rights violations.

The Government of Venezuela is not an ally of the United States. They vote against this country in every international forum they can. They actively undermine U.S. national security interests. They are serial human rights violators at home, and we passed a bill that is going to sanction the human rights violators. The President has indicated he is going to sign it, and I think they are going to have a real impact.

But Venezuela is headed for catastrophe. This is a rich country, by the way, headed toward economic catastrophe. Basic goods such as toothpaste and toilet paper are unavailable in Venezuela. The Venezuelan economy today resembles the Cuban economy. By the way, there is no embargo against Venezuela. It just shows socialism doesn't work. They have run out of things to give away.

It is not a democracy. Venezuela is no longer a democracy. They have something called the National Electoral Commission, and they are actively, as we speak, trying to replace people not loyal to the government on that commission with people loyal to the governing party.

The second thing I predict you are going to see is that the current President of Venezuela, Maduro, is going to move up the elections to July or June of this year because he knows the longer this crisis goes on, the less and less popular the government party is going to be. So I predict that the Venezuelan elections are going to be moved up, but I also predict financial disaster.

In fact, here is a curious thing that we received calls about in the last few days. Venezuela is now begging the Petrocaribe nations, the Mercosur nations, and the Alba nations to buy Venezuelan products. In fact, they are going to the Petrocaribe nations and saying: Instead of paying us back in cash, you can pay us by buying our products.

There is going to be a financial disaster in Venezuela. The price of oil and its collapse is not helping them.

What I predict is not just financial disaster but severe depression, and I predict that in the year 2015 we are going to see severe human rights violations, severe repression on the part of the Maduro Government and everything that goes with it, all the impact that it is going to have on the region. It is something we need to be beginning to think about because that will lead to mass migration into Colombia and into the United States. That is going to lead to instability in the region that could potentially lead to armed conflict between the professional armed services of Venezuela and the Cuban agents who now for all intents and purposes run the Cuban Government.

Talking about Cuba--a nation I talk a lot about because my parents came from there--I live in a community of people who came from there and had to leave for a free economy.

Let me begin by saying that Alan Gross is still a hostage. Alan Gross committed no crime. He did nothing wrong. He is a hostage in a Cuban prison, a hostage the Cubans are holding because they want to exchange him for five Cuban spies convicted in the courts of the United States. Alan Gross is not a spy. All he wanted to do was help a small Jewish community in Cuba, and for that he was jailed. It is outrageous. It shows the true nature of this government.

We shouldn't be surprised. They still detain as a matter of course innocent people who disagree. Every Sunday they beat up and harass the Ladies in White, which is a group of mothers who have sons in jail or fathers who have been killed or husbands who have been killed or jailed, who every Sunday march and dress in white to protest the government, and every Sunday the government thugs come after them. It is shameful that the people know this and look the other way, but that is the reality that is happening every single day in Cuba. It is still going on. It is the most repressive government in the Western Hemisphere and one of the most repressive governments in the world.

They are also a violator of international agreements. We know for a fact that a ship going through the Panama Canal from Cuba to North Korea was carrying equipment and material in violation of the U.N. sanctions on North Korea. The U.N., which is not an easy place to get to condemn Cuba, found the exact same thing. And our response to that has been nothing--absolutely nothing. The Cuban Government assisted North Korea in evading U.N. sanctions, and we have done nothing about it.

On the contrary, we have people who are saying: Let's lift the embargo and normalize relations--which leads me to a point directly related to this, which is the nomination of Tony Blinken that is before this Senate. I would use every procedural method available to me to ensure that this Senate will have to take as long as possible to confirm him, and I will tell you why. On three separate occasions I asked Mr. Blinken: Is your government going to ignore U.S. law and unilaterally change policy toward Cuba? And he would not answer my question. So until I get a clear answer on that, I intend to hold his nomination as long as the rules allow me to.

I would like to make one more point about Cuba. In addition to being the ally to every tyrant on the planet--from Assad, to Iran, to Qadhafi before he fell and died--by the way, Cuba is the home of a significant number of Medicare fugitives, people who have come to the United States and stolen money from Medicare. That is a subject for another day, but Medicare fraud in South Florida is rampant. It is out of control. In fact, law enforcement officials in South Florida will tell you that if you are only willing to steal $200,000 a month, they will never catch you. An inordinate number of people are coming from Cuba, stealing from Medicare, and then when they are about to get caught, they go back to Cuba with all that money. There are numerous Medicare fugitives in Cuba. It is hard to believe that they came here and were able to mount such operations so quickly without assistance from somebody.

Now we see signals from the White House that we are going to invite Cuba--that we are open to them being invited to the Summit of the Americas--the Summit of the Americas is a forum for democracy, not for 20th-century relics such as the Cuban Government. And now there is talk of unilateral policy changes. I want us to change policy toward Cuba, but the first step that has to happen is from the Cuban Government. They have to change first.

Let me tell you what would happen if we lifted the embargo on Cuba tomorrow. What would happen is what is happening now with China. We passed a bill today out of Foreign Relations on the issue of Hong Kong, and I am getting phone calls in my office from American companies that do business in China that are saying: Hey, why don't you guys drop that? What they are really saying is: Hey, why don't you guys drop that? It is bad for the deal we have going with the Chinese.

That is the same thing that will happen. If we lift the embargo, American companies will become invested in whatever deal the regime gives them, and they will come to DC and lobby on behalf of the interests of that regime without any interest of the freedom and liberty of the Cuban people.

I will fight with all the marrow in my bones against any sort of unilateral change in U.S. policy toward Cuba.

From a military perspective, Cuba is not a benign country, although they don't have the military they once had. In fact, there have been open source reports that Cuba is looking to restart, with Russian cooperation, an intelligence-gathering station in the city of Lourdes in Cuba whose sole purpose is to collect intelligence against the United States, particularly Southern Command in South Florida. So as we look at the NDAA, that is something to keep in mind.

I would close with four points that we should think about as we get into the new year and we debate this bill on national security and national defense.

The first is this: We should stop confusing tactics with strategy. We had a debate today in the Foreign Relations Committee about authorizing the use of military force. Everyone wants to debate tactics: Should it be 3 years or 1 year? Should we have ground troops or no ground troops? Should we define the geography of where it is and where it isn't?

Tactics are not the same thing as strategy, and time and again around the world with many of these problems, this administration has not articulated a strategy. They are telling us what we are tactically doing. We are doing airstrikes, imposing sanctions. But they don't tell us what the strategy is. What is the strategy behind all these things? The strategy should be clear.

We are in favor of a world that is free and a world that is prosperous, where more people than ever live in a prosperous middle class so they can buy the things we sell and invent and innovate and make and the services we offer. We want there to be peace and prosperity throughout the world, and we believe the best system for that is an international order that respects human rights and democracy and freedom and the dignity of every individual. That is our overlying aim, and of course the security of the United States is deeply tied to all of this.

In each region of the world, we would have a strategy--a strategy that, because it is backed up by strong national defense, tells our partners in Asia that we are here for the long haul. And not only are we here to pivot to Asia, we have something to pivot with through our military capability that tells NATO: You still do have a purpose, and that purpose is to ensure the territorial integrity of the nations of Europe; a military strategy that tells our partners in the Middle East: We stand with you, and we will do what we need to do to defeat radical jihadists and prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon. So that is important.

The second thing is that we have to spend money on these things. The sequester cuts to the military are unsustainable. At a time when the world has gotten more complicated, where the threats that this Nation faces have gotten more complicated and more difficult to deal with than ever before, we are severely cutting back our military spending in an unsustainable way. In fact, no one believed that the budget cuts we are facing in the military now were realistic or sane, for that matter. That is why they put them in that bill I voted against--because they thought these budget cuts were so bad, they would force them to actually do something about the debt. They underestimated the willingness of this Congress to do bad things, because those cuts are here to stay, and we have the smallest Air Force and Navy at least since the end of World War II, while our potential adversaries are ramping up military spending and their military capabilities.

My third point is directly related to national defense and national security. We cannot continue to try to erode our intelligence-gathering capabilities. The threats we face around the world are real and they are significant. They are threats from nation states such as Russia and China. They are threats from rogue states such as Iran and North

Korea. They are threats from nonstate actors such as al Qaeda and ISIL. They are threats from transnational criminal groups who steal the personal data of Americans and who could potentially conduct other cyber attacks against our infrastructure.

These threats are real, and I hope the day will never come, but if it does and if another major attack occurs here in the homeland--perhaps one even worse than 9/11--the first question people are going to ask will be, Why didn't we know about it and why weren't we able to stop it? And the answer cannot be because we took apart our intelligence- gathering capabilities, because we took down our ability to identify these threats, and we took them down because of conspiracy theories, because we have people running around telling people that all their phone calls are being listened to, that all their cell phone calls are being tracked. That is false. That is categorically and patently false. That is not true. Yet we are prepared to dismantle our ability to acquire information that could prevent those sorts of attacks.

By the way, these are intelligence capabilities that also give us a strategic advantage over potential adversaries and intelligence- gathering abilities that also inform our diplomacy. Yet there are people advocating taking that apart. In fact, just today we had someone come to the floor of the Senate and divulge classified information on the floor of the Senate. Unprecedented, outrageous, irresponsible, and unacceptable.

Last but not least, we have to truly believe with all our hearts that the world is a safer and better place when America is the strongest military power in the world. No nation is perfect. Ours never has claimed to be. But I know of no nation that has used its power more benevolently than we have. It is Americans who have sent their sons and daughters abroad to fight for the freedom and liberty of other people. It is America that has gone abroad to fight against communism and radical Islam and nazism and Imperial Japan and other threats to human dignity and the survival of mankind, and we did so without taking a single inch of territory. We didn't turn Iraq into the 51st State. We didn't turn Afghanistan into a U.S. territory.

This is a nation that, after we defeated Japan and Germany in World War II, helped to rebuild those countries. Today they are among our strongest allies. This is the country that, even after a ceasefire in the Korean war, still stands so many years later on the frontlines of South Korea protecting her freedom and territorial integrity to a point where South Korea--a nation that just two decades ago was a beneficiary of global aid--is now a donor; a country that has gone from having an economy smaller than North Korea's to now having one of the top 10 economies in the world. This is the Nation that did that.

We are not perfect, but I challenge you to find another nation in human history that has used its military power for the good of mankind more than we have. The world knows that too. When you talk about national defense, it is not just about bombs and bullets.

Let me close with a story I picked up earlier this year when I traveled to Asia. I went to the Philippines, an area badly hit by the storm last year. This area was devastated. These people were already poor to begin with, and the typhoon made things even worse.

I got to speak to some of the people. I asked them: When did you finally know there was hope? Was it when the humanitarian aid groups showed up or when the U.N. got here? When was it that you finally thought that there is hope here?

A gentleman turned to me and said: Do you know when I knew there was actually some hope? When I woke up one morning and looked to the horizon and there was a U.S. aircraft carrier. That is when I started to believe that maybe we are going to make it, maybe things are going to be OK.

That aircraft carrier didn't stay long, but it stayed long enough to make a difference in those early days after that storm, and it stayed long enough to give people hope. It is the same aircraft carrier they saw off the coast of Haiti after the terrible earthquake. It is the same aircraft carrier they saw off the coast of Japan after they had a nuclear accident. That is also America's military power. That is also what we have done with our national defense capabilities.

We have not been perfect, but America has been a source for good in the world. No nation in the history of mankind has ever done more good for the planet and for the people of this Earth than we have, and we should be proud of that. Now is not the time to dismantle that capability. The world needs a strong America today and now more than it ever has.

With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, today I recognize Carter Adams, a 2014 summer intern in my Washington, DC office, for all of the hard work he has done for me, my staff, and the people of the State of Florida.

Carter is a junior at the University of Central Florida, currently majoring in political science. He is a dedicated and diligent worker who has been devoted to getting the most out of his internship experience.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Carter for all the fine work he has done and wish him continued success in the years to come.

Madam President, today I recognize Madeline Ahern, a 2014 spring intern in my Washington, DC, office for all of the hard work she has done for me, my staff, and the people of the State of Florida.

Madeline is currently a rising senior at the Madeira School in McLean, VA. She is a dedicated and diligent worker who has been devoted to getting the most out of her internship experience.

I extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Madeline for all the fine work she has done and wish her continued success in the years to come.

Madam President, today I recognize Natalie Barrero, a 2013 fall intern in my Washington, DC, office for all of the hard work she has done for me, my staff, and the people of the State of Florida.

Natalie is a graduate of the Catholic University of America, having majored in international business. She is a dedicated and diligent worker who has been devoted to getting the most out of her internship experience.

I extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Natalie for all the fine work she has done and wish her continued success in the years to come.

Madam President, today I recognize Moises Benhabib, a 2014 spring intern in my Washington, DC, office for all of the hard work he has done for me, my staff, and the people of the State of Florida.

Moises is a graduate of the University of Tampa where he majored in government and world affairs. He is a dedicated and diligent worker who has been devoted to getting the most out of his internship experience.

I extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Moises for all the fine work he has done and wish him continued success in the years to come.

Madam President, today I recognize Barr Benyamin, a 2014 spring intern in my Washington, DC, office for all of the hard work he has done for me, my staff, and the people of the State of Florida.

Barr is a graduate of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA, having majored in political science and business administration. He is a dedicated and diligent worker who has been devoted to getting the most out of his internship experience.

I extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Barr for all the fine work he has done and wish him continued success in the years to come.