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FIRE GRANTS AND SAFETY ACT
Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 28, S. 870.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The bill clerk read as follows:
A bill (S. 870) to amend the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974 to authorize appropriations for the United States Fire Administration and firefighter assistance grant programs.
Cloture Motion
Mr. SCHUMER. I send a cloture motion to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
The bill clerk read as follows:
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to proceed to Calendar No. 28, S. 870, a bill to amend the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974 to authorize appropriations for the United States Fire Administration and firefighter assistance grant programs.
Charles E. Schumer, Gary C. Peters, Christopher Murphy,
Catherine Cortez Masto, Tina Smith, Jack Reed, Brian
Schatz, Jeanne Shaheen, Jeff Merkley, Sheldon
Whitehouse, Patty Murray, Mazie K. Hirono, Cory A.
Booker, Benjamin L. Cardin, Chris Van Hollen, Margaret
Wood Hassan, Alex Padilla.
Mr. SCHUMER. I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum call for the cloture motion filed today, March 27, be waived.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, just to inform the Members, I am moving to file cloture on this bill, which would make sure that both the SAFER grants and the AFG grants, which protect and help our paid and volunteer firefighters, continue. It expires in a few months if we do nothing.
Our firefighters, both paid and volunteer, are brave; they risk their lives for us; they run to danger, not away from it; and they need both equipment and personnel so that they can continue to do their jobs, particularly in smaller, more rural, and more suburban areas where there is not the tax base to support the stuff that they need. So I hope we can move forward quickly on this legislation.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk called the roll.
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
S. 316
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, this week, the Senate is expected to vote on legislation that would repeal the authorization for use of military force in Iraq.
The bill before the Senate would repeal two separate authorizations--
one from 1991, which authorized U.S. intervention in Iraq, better known as the Gulf war, to stop the dictator, Saddam Hussein, from invading and terrorizing Kuwait. The second one passed in 2002 in response to Saddam's persistent violations of the peace agreement that came out of the Gulf war, including intelligence that he was pursuing weapons of mass destruction.
In the decades since these authorizations passed, America's relationship with Iraq has changed dramatically. Iraq has gone from a hostile and unpredictable authoritarian government to become a strategic partner with the United States. In recent years, our countries have worked together to end the occupation of ISIS in Iraq.
In December of 2017, Iraq declared victory, though we have seen a resurgence of some of those terrorists recently. Two years ago, President Biden welcomed the Iraqi Prime Minister to the White House, a friendship that would have been unimaginable 20 or 30 years ago.
Put simply, Iraq is a key partner in the Middle East. Our governments and militaries cooperate to promote security and prosperity for the Iraqi people. More broadly, we work together to counter Iran's malign influence and continue to root out terrorism in the Middle East.
While there is still an American military presence in Iraq, it looks dramatically different today than it did 10, 20, or 30 years ago. Today, our soldiers serve solely in an advise and assist role. They are there at the invitation of the Iraqi Government to support Iraqi troops and military leaders as they defend their own security interests.
In short, American forces are no longer there to counter threats from Iraq. We are now there to counter threats to Iraq. That includes threats from Iran, the No. 1 state sponsor of international terrorism, with its hired henchmen, terrorist groups, or other adversaries that could disrupt peace and stability in Iraq.
Those who support repealing the Iraqi military authorizations point to this evolution in our relationship as evidence that the AUMFs are no longer needed. It has been 20 years since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and they say the authorizations are outdated. Our relationship is shifting, they argue, so it is time for those AUMFs to go.
Unfortunately, it is not that simple. Despite the fact that Iraq is now our partner, that doesn't mean it is time to abandon our security interests in the region. America still has very real adversaries in the Middle East who would do us and our allies harm if they got the chance. Today, Iran-backed militias operate in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and other countries throughout the Middle East. They are proxies of the Iranian military, with the goal of spreading Iranian political influence far and wide.
This isn't just some warmonger conspiracy theory. There is clear and absolute linkage between the Iranian regime and the militias operating throughout the Middle East. They are, in effect, hired guns, which are fighting to take territory that has been no-man's land since the drawdown of U.S. forces in the Middle East. And in many cases, they continue to target U.S. troops.
Just last Thursday, an Iranian drone targeted a U.S. facility in Syria, killing an American contractor and wounding five American servicemembers. The U.S. responded the following day by conducting an airstrike against an Iran-backed militia in Syria. And then, within hours, Iran's proxies launched another attack on a U.S. military base in Syria.
Despite the fact that we know a great deal about these groups and their capabilities and the threat they pose to the Middle East, we are relatively limited in our efforts to counter their aggression.
Counterterrorism missions rely on the 2001 authorization for the use of military force, which was passed in the wake of the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Since many Iran-backed militia have not been designated as terrorist organizations, the 2001 AUMF doesn't apply to them. That means we can only use the 2002 AUMF to counter Iran-backed militia and other groups that pose threats to the stability of Iraq and to U.S. national security interests.
If we were to repeal the 2002 AUMF, we limit the President's ability to target these groups. We, in effect, have withdrawn congressional consent. That applies to President Biden today, and it would apply to future commanders in chief as well. In effect, this would tie their hands when it comes to countering threats posed by Iran and its proxies.
To state the obvious, we can't dispose of any tools that could be used to protect the United States or our partners.
Three Presidents have cited the 2002 AUMF as an authorization for the use of military force. In 2003, President Bush used his authority to justify the invasion of Iraq. In other words, this was with congressional consent. In 2014, President Barack Obama cited the 2002 AUMF to justify strikes against Islamic state terrorists in Iraq and Syria. Then, in 2020, former President Trump relied on this authority to justify the strike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad.
Given the growing threats from Iran, it would be absurd to toss this authorization out the window today. If Congress repeals the Iraqi war authorizations, it prompts a lot of questions about what comes next. Without the 2002 AUMF, the President would lose the ability to contain Iran and its aggression. Iran's influence in the region would swell and Iranian-backed militia would terrorize Syria and Iraq with impunity. Iran would be free to focus on its maniacal desire to destroy Israel. And without having to contend with the United States, it would be free to spend even more money financing terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
Russian influence in Syria would grow, giving Putin a launch pad to further project power into the Middle East. Our friends and allies, no longer safe with America at their side, could succumb to coercive partnerships with China, giving Xi Jinping another region in which to compete with the United States for global primacy.
In short, passing this legislation would create a power vacuum in the Middle East that could be filled by Iran, Russia, and China. We would be ceding the region back to competition after working for years to promote stability.
Of course, there are costs to maintaining our position in the Middle East, but the cost-benefit analysis clearly shows that we have to leave every authority in place to defend American and allied interests in the Middle East.
Over the last few decades, as I said a moment ago, America's relationship with Iraq has changed for the better. It is a valuable partner. We work together to support security for Iraq and the region as a whole. The U.S. military works with Iraqi forces to counter threats from Iran and to reduce its influence in the region. These authorizations for the use of military force are key to our continued success.
It also means that we will continue to work with the executive branch, rather than have the executive branch rely strictly on the President's constitutional powers. They give the President of the United States the flexibility needed to counter these threats and the threats that they pose from Iran. We would be doing Iran a huge favor by repealing these AUMFs.
Suffice it to say, I oppose the effort to repeal these Iraqi war authorizations, and I encourage my colleagues in the Senate to join me in that opposition.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. GRAHAM. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Hirono). Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. GRAHAM. Madam President, we will be voting about 5:30, about 30 minutes from now, to end debate and tomorrow have some amendments, then go to final passage on legislation to repeal the authorization to use military force for 2002 directed against Iraq and Saddam Hussein.
The problem I have with what we are doing is that we are repealing the authorization to use military force because Saddam is dead and that threat is gone, but we are not replacing it with an authorization that our troops desperately need, which is to create an AUMF to allow our military to go after Shiite militias that are attacking them routinely inside of Iraq. There have been over 78 attacks since 2021 directed at U.S. forces by different groups, mostly Shiite militias controlled by Iran, in Iraq and Syria. A couple days ago, there was an attack on an American base in Syria. An American contractor was killed. God bless him and his family. And we retaliated, and they retaliated back. The bottom line is that our response to aggression against U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria is woefully inadequate. Seventy-something attacks since 2021. Clearly, nobody feels afraid to attack our troops over there, and we need to create some deterrence that we don't have today.
So I had an amendment that failed that would allow authorization to use military force to exist where the Congress blesses the use of military force against Shiite militias that are operating in Iraq because they are a threat to about 2,500 troops that we have stationed in Iraq.
The forces in Syria--about 900--are there to finish the counter-ISIS mission, and I hear people, particularly on my side, say that we shouldn't be in Syria.
You know, doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is insanity. The last time we pulled all of our forces out of Iraq, it was President Obama with the support of then-Vice President Biden, the ISIS JV team became the varsity team. They took over great parts of Syria and Iraq. They destroyed the city of Mosul. They set up shop in Raqqa, Syria, and they launched attacks from Syria, ISIS directed, at United States and Europe throughout the world, killing thousands of people.
President Trump authorized our military to take down the caliphate. And this idea that if you leave, they won't come back is stupid. You know nothing if you believe that. You may be tired of fighting radical Islam. They are not tired of fighting you. I would rather fight in their backyard than ours. They are going to destroy us if we don't destroy them.
Here is the good news. They are on the run. As long as we keep some of our forces in place, working with people in Syria and Iraq who do not want to live under ISIS rule, we will be relatively safe. If you pull all the troops out, you are going to get the same outcome. People who keep arguing this, you really are doing a great disservice to the country, and your arguments make zero sense. You don't understand the enemy. You have no idea what this war is about.
This is a religious struggle. They have declared war on every faith but their own. They want to purify Islam in their own image--ISIS and al-Qaida. They want to destroy the State of Israel and eventually come after us. Leaving them alone doesn't guarantee you much. In 2001, before 9/11, we didn't have one soldier in Afghanistan. We didn't even have an embassy. We totally abandoned Afghanistan, and the attack against our country on 9/11 originated in Afghanistan.
When will you learn that these people are out to get you? And when I say ``you,'' I mean Americans. Anybody who believes in diversity in faith, they have a world view that has no place for you. The good news is most people in the Mideast are not buying what they are selling, but they are very lethal and dangerous left unattended.
Now, when you create the right mix of U.S. forces and local forces, you pretty well keep them on the run and keep them at bay. So to those who suggest we shouldn't be in Syria with 900 U.S. forces to prevent ISIS from coming back, you are setting the stage for a reemergence of ISIS, and once is enough, folks.
They destroyed the Yazidi population, raped women by the thousands and created carnage all over Syria and Iraq and projected attacks against American Western allies from a safe haven in Raqqa, Syria.
Now, the theory of the case here is that we as Congress need to take back authority, and this authorization to use force no longer needs to be in place because the war against Saddam Hussein is over. We can argue about Iraq being a good idea or a bad idea. We did have bad intelligence. But here is what I would say 20 years later. Saddam being dead is a good thing, from my point of view, because he was a thug and a dictator on steroids. And the people of Iraq are on their second or third election. It has been messy, but they are moving in the right direction. And we have 2,500 troops back in Iraq to make sure ISIS doesn't come back and destabilize the region and try to have some influence against the Iranians.
So if you want to repeal the AUMF, I think you owe it to the troops to follow it with something. So the people who want to do this say: Article II, which is the inherent authority of the Commander in Chief, allows President Biden to protect our troops in Iraq. There is truth to that. But the whole idea is for us as a Congress to have a say in foreign policy and not sort of give a blank check. So if you want to cancel the check to go after Saddam because he is not around, I think you owe it to the troops to lend your voice because the enemy sees this as retreat.
No matter what you want the enemy to believe about what is going on here, all they understand is the American Congress is making a step to get out of Iraq, and that is good news for them.
After Afghanistan--the disaster there--don't you think we should be more clear in our thought?
The Biden administration was wrong to take troops out of Afghanistan. They are right to have troops in Iraq and Syria, but the Congress is trying to be a bit hypocritical here. We want to cancel one authorization to use force, and we don't have the courage, apparently, politically, to say the military has our approval, as a Congress working with the President, to go after Shiite militias that are killing our forces in Iraq and attacking them regularly.
What does Iran want?
Now, this is not an authorization to go after the Iranian regime. It is an authorization to protect American forces in Iraq from attacks in Iraq coming from Shiite militias loyal to Iran.
What are they trying to achieve?
They want to drive us out. If the 900 troops left Syria tomorrow, Assad would eventually conquer what is left of Syria and ISIS would fill that vacuum and you would have a conflict with Turkey and the Kurds. And all the people--our chairman of the Armed Services Committee is a very smart guy and a very great friend--all the Kurds who fought with us, they would be wiped out.
So I am glad the Biden administration is going to stay in Syria because we need those troops to keep ISIS from coming back and to work with our Kurdish partners.
But when it comes to Iraq, they are trying to drive us out because Iran wants us out of Syria so their buddy Assad can run the place. They want us out of Iraq so the Shiite radical elements in Iraq can topple the Iraqi Government, and the Shiite militias would take authority away from the Iraqi Army, and they will have influence over Iraq and Syria.
It is not in America's interest to allow the Ayatollah in Iran to have more influence and more spaces to govern and more oil to generate revenue from. So if you don't get that, you are not really following what is going on.
So no matter what you say about article II, I hate to tell you, ISIS probably doesn't follow our Constitution that closely. The best thing we could do, if you want to repeal the 2002 AUMF that was generated to get rid of Saddam, replace it with something new--an authorization to use force to protect our troops that we all agree or most of us agree should be in Iraq to protect America from attacks from Shiite militias. That amendment was rejected.
Here is what you are doing. You are sending a signal by doing this that we are leaving, we are withdrawing, and that we don't have the will as a nation to see this thing through. There is nothing good comes from this. You are openly admitting the President has authority to use force to protect our troops, but you are not going to lend your voice to that cause, and I don't understand that.
If the Congress, working with the President, said: No matter who is President, you have the ability to use military force to protect our troops against Shiite militias in Iraq, that would make us stronger. The enemy would understand it better. Our allies would understand it more clearly. And they have got to be wondering, What the hell is going on here?
So the bottom line is, you are setting in motion, by not replacing the AUMF with something specific to Shiite militias that are attacking our troops regularly--you are setting in motion more danger for those in Iraq and eventually Syria.
And I don't question your patriotism. I do question our judgment as a body. This is a very ill-conceived idea. It is going to juice up the enemy. It is going to confuse our allies. And it could be easily fixed, but we choose not to.
I don't know what the political environment is in America today, but the idea that the war is over with radical Islam is insane. I have listened to people--some on my side--come down here and want to repeal the authorization to go after al-Qaida and affiliated groups after 9/
11. General Kurilla, the CENTCOM commander in charge of the region, said, last week, because of our withdrawal from Afghanistan, ISIS in Afghanistan has the ability to strike us in this country within 6 months without warning.
So can you imagine the damage to be done to national security interests if we repeal the 2001 AUMF?
So I will close with this. While I understand theoretically why we want to replace--get rid of the 2002 AUMF because Saddam is gone, I don't understand why we are leaving this vacuum and this doubt. This is easily fixed.
You are creating a narrative that is going to come back to haunt us. You think it is an accident within 2 days of introducing this idea that they hit us in Syria again? They are going to test us.
And here is what I think. The Biden administration is doing a lousy job, quite frankly, of instilling fear in the enemy. Whether you like Trump or not, people were afraid of him. And there is no fear. And here is what I would like to have established: Working with the administration, not against them, to send a clear signal: You kill Americans at your own peril. We are not leaving. We are not going to let radical Islam come back and do it all over again.
So I will be voting no. This is one of the most ill-conceived ideas after 9/11.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. REED. Madam President, I rise today to express my support for S. 316 and the repealing of the 1991 and 2002 authorization for the use of military force, or AUMF. I commend Senators Kaine and Young for their relentless work on this bill, and I am glad to be a cosponsor of it along with 43 of my colleagues.
I voted against the 2002 AUMF when it was introduced more than 20 years ago. And I can assure you that as we debated that bill at that time, no one would have believed that 20 years later we would be on the floor debating its repeal. The war against Saddam Hussein is long over, and our bilateral relationship with Iraq is fundamentally different today. In our current fight against violent extremists, the Biden administration has clearly stated it does not rely on the 2002 AUMF as the basis for any ongoing military operations.
Let's remember what the 2002 AUMF authorizes. The United States went to war, ``to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq.'' The Bush administration alleged, falsely, that Iraq had amassed an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Bush administration officials also alleged that the Iraq Government had ties to the al-Qaida terrorists that attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. These false pretenses and cherry-picked information provided the basis for Congress to authorize the war in Iraq in 2002--again, an authorization I opposed.
And this costly war of choice caused the United States irreparable harm. It caused us to take our eyes off violent extremist groups throughout the region and resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. It also forced us to take our eyes off Russia and China as they became peer competitors. As we spent billions of dollars investing in tactical vehicles to protect our troops in a counterinsurgency, as we spent billions of dollars to try to train Afghan forces, the Russians and the Chinese invested in hypersonic vehicles, in very sophisticated long-
range precision strike weapons. And the Chinese have been building an entire navy since then. We paid little attention because we were preoccupied with Iraq.
And finally and ironically, our war in Iraq allowed Iran to become one of the most powerful and dangerous forces in the region, because we took out a block against their ambition, which had been Saddam Hussein and Iraq. As a result, we are paying, today, for those errors in judgment, and I think it is only fitting that we recognize it and repeal those AUMFs.
We have ongoing operations to suppress violent extremists. Beginning on 9/11 and going forward, we have been fighting anyone who has aspirations to use terror attacks against the U.S. homeland or our allies. That is as a result of the 2001 AUMF that essentially empowered our government to find and defeat terrorists, anywhere they are, who pose a threat to the United States and to our allies. Retaining the 2001 AUMF or an appropriate successor to that statute remains essential for the Defense Department's current counterterrorism operations, and Congress must continue to exercise robust oversight over its use.
Further, the Biden administration has drawn a clear distinction between the two Iraq AUMFs that would be repealed under S. 316 and the 2001 AUMF. The repeal of the two AUMFs would have no impact on our current operations, and as a domestic legal basis, no ongoing military activities rely solely on either the 1991 or the 2002 AUMF.
Leaving the 2002 authorization in place sends a harmful signal to Iraq, where our forces remain at the invitation of the Government of Iraq. Iraq is a critical partner now in our fight against ISIS and in our fight against Shia militias that are transiting Iraq and attacking our forces in Syria. We should not communicate to the Iraqi Government that the United States reserves the right to use force against its nation in the future. This is contrary to the cooperation that our military forces need to counter ISIS operations.
Further, keeping the 2002 AUMF provides a propaganda tool for Iran. The Iranian Government is constantly seeking to convince the Iraqis that Tehran, not Washington, is a more reliable partner. We face a real and growing threat from Iran, but the 2002 AUMF does not authorize the use of force against Iran, and it must not be relied on for that purpose now.
Finally, as laid out in the Constitution, Congress has the sole power to declare war. We must exercise that responsibility with the utmost care when it comes to matters of the use of military force. Repealing AUMFs that have served their intended purposes and are no longer applicable to current military operations is fully consistent with the careful exercise of the Senate's constitutional responsibilities.
On that basis, I support S. 316 and the repeal of the 2002 and 1991 AUMFs. Again, I commend Senator Kaine for his leadership, and I urge my colleagues to vote yes on this bill.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to complete my statement before the vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Madam President, the vote the Senate is about to take is about what is right for our Nation. It is part of exercising our most solemn duty as elected officials. It is a recognition that Congress not only has the power to declare war but also should have the responsibility to end wars, and it is a decision to turn the page on one of those chapters in our country's history.
With today's vote, we can move closer to repealing two obsolete and outdated authorizations for the use of military force against Iraq. Repealing these authorizations will demonstrate to the region--and to the world--that the United States is not an occupying force; that the war in Iraq has come to an end; that we are moving forward, working with Iraq as a strategic partner. So I commend the Senate for moving forward to take this critical step.
I hope the Senate will speak overwhelmingly in support of preserving congressional prerogatives as to when and under what circumstances we send our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters into harm's way and clawing back authorities that have clearly outlived their purpose and scope.
Some of my colleagues have argued that repealing 20- and 30-year-old authorizations will weaken our ability to confront Iranian aggression. Some have offered amendments that would alter these authorizations. Others have offered amendments that would expand these authorizations. And a few have offered amendments that have, well, quite frankly, nothing at all to do with these authorizations. So let me address that point briefly.
Just in the last few days, the President directed targeted strikes against groups affiliated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria. This was in response to Iranian-backed drone attacks that killed a U.S. contractor and wounded five American servicemembers at a maintenance facility in Syria. The President looked at the intelligence, he consulted his advisors, he ordered the strike, and he committed, publicly, to continue to defend against Iranian aggression and to respond to attacks against U.S. forces. He did so without--
without--relying on the 1991 or 2002 authorizations for use of military force against Iraq.
This President has been clear in his view that he has sufficient authority to defend against threats to U.S. personnel and interests. If we are going to debate whether to provide the President additional authorities, then we should have that debate separately. But it should not be under the cloak of keeping old authorizations on the books, authorizations that are not needed to meet any current threat. They are not about the current threat; they are about a regime that is no longer alive and has been gone for the better part of those 20 years. This is just a tactic to delay this repeal from going forward. Nor should we turn a debate about repeal and a chance to take a historic step forward into a new backdoor authorization for the use of force against another country.
So I urge my colleagues to stay focused on the facts, repeal an authorization that is no longer used or needed, and close this chapter on American foreign policy. Let's finally--finally--repeal the 1991 and 2002 authorizations for use of military force against Iraq. I urge my colleagues to vote to move forward with repeal of these AUMFs.
I yield the floor.
Cloture Motion
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, do hereby move to bring to a close debate on Calendar No. 25, S. 316, a bill to repeal the authorizations for use of military force against Iraq.
Charles E. Schumer, Robert Menendez, Tim Kaine, Tina
Smith, Benjamin L. Cardin, Jeanne Shaheen, Sheldon
Whitehouse, Tammy Baldwin, Patty Murray, Michael F.
Bennet, Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Duckworth, Robert P.
Casey, Jr., Christopher Murphy, Catherine Cortez Masto,
Jack Reed, Brian Schatz.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum call has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on Calendar No. 25, S. 316, a bill to repeal the authorizations for use of military force against Iraq, shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Coons), the Senator from California (Mrs. Feinstein), the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fetterman), and the Senator from California (Mr. Padilla) are necessarily absent.
Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Barrasso), the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell).
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 65, nays 28, as follows:
YEAS--65
Baldwin Bennet Blumenthal Booker Braun Brown Budd Cantwell Cardin Carper Casey Cassidy Collins Cortez Masto Cramer Daines Duckworth Durbin Gillibrand Grassley Hassan Hawley Heinrich Hickenlooper Hirono Hoeven Kaine Kelly King Klobuchar Lee Lujan Lummis Manchin Markey Marshall Menendez Merkley Moran Murkowski Murphy Murray Ossoff Paul Peters Reed Rosen Sanders Schatz Schmitt Schumer Shaheen Sinema Smith Stabenow Tester Van Hollen Vance Warner Warnock Warren Welch Whitehouse Wyden Young
NAYS--28
Boozman Britt Capito Cornyn Cotton Crapo Cruz Ernst Fischer Graham Hagerty Hyde-Smith Johnson Kennedy Lankford Mullin Ricketts Risch Romney Rounds Rubio Scott (FL) Scott (SC) Sullivan Thune Tillis Tuberville Wicker
NOT VOTING--7
Barrasso Blackburn Coons Feinstein Fetterman McConnell Padilla
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. King). On this vote, the yeas are 65, the nays are 28.
Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Remembering Gladys Kessler
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here this evening to commemorate the passing of a remarkable individual. I only met her once when I went over to speak at a gathering of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. But on March 16, at the age of 85, Her Honor Judge Gladys Kessler passed away.
She had been quite a trailblazer before she went on the court. She cofounded the Women's Legal Defense Fund, now known as the National Partnership for Women & Families, and she served as the president of the National Association of Women Judges.
In her career, she rendered a lot of very good decisions, but the most memorable one and the one that exemplified some of the characteristics I admired the most about her was the decision that she rendered exposing in detail a conspiracy by the tobacco industry to deceive the American public about the safety of tobacco.
The Big Tobacco scheme is one that we are, I think, pretty familiar with. You pay a lot of phony-baloney for-hire scientists to produce studies making false claims about your product, you hire a web of PR experts and front groups to spread doubt and critique the actual real science that you don't like, and you have paid intermediaries to relentlessly attack and try to smear your opponents.
In the face of this behavior, we had a remedy: the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the RICO Act.
In 1999, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a civil RICO lawsuit against the major tobacco companies and their associated industry groups alleging that the companies, and I will quote the complaint here, ``engaged in and executed--and continue to engage in and execute--a massive 50-year scheme to defraud the public, including consumers of cigarettes, in violation of RICO.''
The case took 7 years, but in 2006, Judge Kessler wrote one of the most impressive opinions I have ever seen from a U.S. district court judge. It was 1,683 pages long. She went through the evidence that the U.S. Department of Justice had marshaled, and she organized it and laid it out in a way that was completely compelling, that completely crushed the defendant tobacco companies, to the point where, when it was on appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit very powerfully upheld it. It is one of the powers of a district judge that, with the authority to find the facts and marshal the evidence properly, you can make virtually bomb-proof opinions, and in 1,683 pages, Judge Gladys Kessler did just that. She found the defendant--here is her quote:
Defendants coordinated significant aspects of their public relations, scientific, legal, and marketing activity in furtherance of a shared objective--to . . . maximize industry profits by preserving and expanding the market for cigarettes through a scheme to deceive the public.
She added:
In short, [they] have marketed and sold their lethal product with zeal, with deception, with a single-minded focus on their financial success, and without regard for the human tragedy or social costs that success exacted.
It was a testament--this opinion was--to judicial diligence, and it left a permanent, solid record for history of the campaign of fraud that the tobacco industry had run until that point.
Of course, in order for her to be able to render that decision, there had to be a plaintiff willing to bring the case. So kudos also to the U.S. Department of Justice back then for being willing to take on a defendant as powerful as the tobacco industry. We forget, now that smoking is so much less of a thing, how enormously powerful the tobacco industry was, how its network of suppliers gave it footholds in every State, how its enormous revenues allowed it to cut into this building and manipulate the politics of the U.S. Congress to the great detriment of the health of the American people.
It goes without saying that there is an obvious parallel between the conduct of the tobacco industry leading up to Judge Kessler's decision and the conduct of the fossil fuel industry.
In fact, experts point out that when Judge Kessler's decision shut down the fraud of the tobacco industry, some of the individuals and some of the organizations that had been involved in that fraud simply rebooted themselves as new experts in how to deny climate science.
I hope that we come to a point where today's Department of Justice has the diligence and the fortitude to go ahead with a similar action. But today, this is about Judge Kessler--a woman who saw something going very badly wrong and sat down and wrote a 1600-page decision to put it right. I think it is a pretty terrific example.
And I have a few bits of business, if I may, and then we will open the floor to the other speakers.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 169, No. 55
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