Ed Royce

Mr. ROYCE

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Dold), a member of the Committee on Financial Services.

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. In the past, both Republican and Democratic administrations have recognized that efforts to internationalize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are not a substitute for direct negotiations between the parties. In fact, such an approach can undermine these negotiations. Direct negotiations between the parties, not a U.N. dictate, are the only way, in our view, to bring about a peaceful coexistence. After all, direct negotiations mean legitimatizing the other party, which, unfortunately, is why Palestinian leaders routinely shun them. Other past Presidents have pushed peace initiatives in the final hours of their administrations. Indeed, the Obama administration has pointedly not ruled out allowing the U.N. Security Council to dictate the terms of peace negotiations. That, in fact, is what has given rise to our bipartisan concerns about this process. In the absence of a clear answer from the administration as to whether it will continue to use that veto power at the United Nations, this bipartisan approach here, with this resolution, takes a stand. I strongly urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support the resolution so that the bipartisan policy of encouraging direct negotiations continues and is endorsed loud and clear. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), chairman of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations.

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel), and thank Mr. Brad Sherman of California as well for working with me in a bipartisan manner to bring this important resolution to the floor today. There is a growing concern in Congress--it is a concern felt on both sides of the aisle--that despite established, bipartisan United States policy, the Obama administration may end the practice of vetoing resolutions in the Security Council that strayed from the principle that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be resolved through direct negotiations between the parties. This administration could also end the related practice of vetoing Security Council resolutions that are one-sided or anti-Israel. This is a real concern. Press reports-- including one today--suggest that such a one-sided resolution could be submitted in days. Worse, the Obama administration could support a resolution at the U.N. Security Council setting parameters for a final settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. U.S. policy has long and wisely been that only Israelis and Palestinians can work out a peace agreement between themselves and that efforts to impose one would be counterproductive. Whatever parameters the U.N. established would be unacceptable to any Israeli Government--a government to the left or a government to the right--making it impossible to see any future peace. What on Earth today, at this point in time, suggests that Israel has a willing partner in peace? Not at this moment. Our committee has held hearings to expose the current Palestinian Authority's complicity in inciting violence against the State of Israel as well as against Israelis. Mr. Speaker, Israel is contending with a deep-seated hatred. It is a deep-seated hatred nurtured, unfortunately, by Palestinian leaders over radio and also in direct communication with the population many, many years, whether it was in the mosques or the schools or the newspapers or on television. As one witness told the committee: ``Incitement'' is the term we usually use, but that is not really what we mean. Hatred is what we mean, teaching generations of Palestinians to hate Jews by demonizing and dehumanizing them. That is the nature of the problem. Unfortunately, some Palestinians are lured to terrorism with more than just words. Since 2003, it has been Palestinian law to reward Palestinian terrorists in Israeli jails with a monthly paycheck. The Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Liberation Organization use a so-called martyrs' fund to pay the families of Palestinian prisoners and to pay suicide bombers. This pay-to-play scheme has got to stop, period. In the face of such hatred, the United States must stand firm. The Israel-Palestinian conflict can only be resolved through direct negotiations between the parties. I again thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman), as well, for their work on this resolution. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROYCE. I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ros-Lehtinen), who chairs the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa.

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 165) expressing the sense of Congress and reaffirming longstanding United States policy in support of a direct bilaterally negotiated settlement of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict and opposition to United Nations Security Council resolutions imposing a solution to the conflict.

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous materials in the Record.

Mr. ROYCE

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include any extraneous material for the Record.

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I also want to recognize the staff who have been so instrumental, not only on this resolution but also in maintaining our constructive policy toward Korea, Hannah Kim on Mr. Rangel's staff and our committee staffers, Hunter Strupp and Jennifer Hendrixson-White. Earlier, I noted how happy I was to have worked alongside my good friend and colleague, Charlie Rangel, on this measure. As he is retiring at the end of this Congress, I want to once again recognize him as a true champion of U.S.-Korea relations. He truly is. No one, whether it was fighting for his country or advocating on behalf of so many Korean Americans, has done more for this partnership. As Charlie has often said, since he survived the battle of Kunu-ri and led those freezing soldiers out of that encirclement, he has never, not since that day, never ever had a bad day since. Mr. Speaker, let's hope this streak continues well into the future. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 40) encouraging reunions of divided Korean American families.

Mr. ROYCE

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 6297. This is to extend the Iran Sanctions Act. I want to thank Ranking Member Engel for his assistance in bringing this legislation to the floor. Time is of the essence, as this critical law expires on December 31. Unless Congress acts, as we are doing today, we will not have this on the books. The other body should quickly take up this bill and send it to the President's desk, keeping a critical tool in place for the future. Mr. Speaker, 20 years ago, a bipartisan majority in Congress passed the Iran Sanctions Act. It was then known as the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act. The goal was to stop significant foreign investment in Iran's energy sector, denying the Iranian regime the ability to financially support international terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and, frankly, missile proliferation as well. Since then, this legislation has been reauthorized and expanded on several occasions. After years of bipartisan work in the Congress, the Iran Sanctions Act has served here as the statutory foundation of the Iran sanctions regime. Of course, President Obama developed his nuclear deal with Iran; and in doing so, that dismantles part of that regime. I would just point out that, just last week, we heard that a major European energy firm is close to investing $6 billion in Iran to develop natural gas, which will, in turn, frankly, enrich the regime. The difficulty is in terms of enforcement. What if--and I would assert ``when''--Iran is found moving towards a bomb? How will we respond to that? The Obama administration has long said that sanctions on Iran would snap back if this were to happen. For that to happen, we need this legislation because, if the law expires, as the Iran Sanctions Act is set to do at the end of next month, there is nothing to snap back to. The Obama administration has struggled to answer that question. Here is the bottom line: if we let the clock run out on the Iran Sanctions Act, Congress will take away an important tool to keep Tehran in check, and that, in turn, will only further jeopardize America's national security. I urge all Members to support this. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means, Washington, DC, November 15, 2016. Hon. Edward R. Royce, Chairman, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Washington, DC. Dear Chairman Royce: I am writing with respect to H.R. 6297, the ``Iran Sanctions Extension Act.'' As a result of your having consulted with us on provisions in H.R. 6297 that fall within the Rule X jurisdiction of the Committee on Ways and Means, I agree to waive consideration of this bill so that it may proceed expeditiously to the House floor. The Committee on Ways and Means takes this action with the mutual understanding that by forgoing consideration of H.R. 6297 at this time, we do not waive any jurisdiction over the subject matter contained in this or similar legislation, and the Committee will be appropriately consulted and involved as the bill or similar legislation moves forward so that we may address any remaining issues that fall within our jurisdiction. The Committee also reserves the right to seek appointment of an appropriate number of conferees to any House-Senate conference involving this or similar legislation, and requests your support for such request. Finally, I would appreciate your including a copy of our exchange of letters on this matter in the Congressional Record during floor consideration thereof. Sincerely, Kevin Brady, Chairman.

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Once again, Mr. Speaker, I want to recognize Mr. Engel for his help in bringing this bill to the floor during the 114th Congress. The ranking member and I have been to this floor debating Iran many, many times. For most all of it, we agreed. For some of it, we didn't. But we never doubted each other's sincere views or motives and always conducted the debate in the tradition that is befitting of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and this House. Mr. Speaker, since it was first passed 20 years ago, the Iran Sanctions Act has been at the center of the U.S. response to the threat posed by the Iranian regime. Despite the Obama administration's dangerous nuclear deal, this law remains critical to U.S. efforts to counter the full range of Iran's malicious activity. This law will expire at the end of the year if Congress does not pass an extension, denying future administrations a critical tool. Its expiration would compound the damage done by the President's dangerous nuclear deal and send a message that the United States will no longer oppose the destructive role of Iran in the Middle East; and that is why we are acting today to provide clear statutory authority to reimpose or snap back many of the most powerful sanctions on Iran's energy industry if the regime rushes toward a nuclear weapon. I look forward to putting this bill on the President's desk for his signature before the end of the 114th Congress and then returning next year to work with Mr. Engel, to work with a new administration, to work with all the members of the Committee on Foreign Affairs as the United States and our allies confront the growing aggression of the Iranian regime. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I will reserve the right to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 6297) to reauthorize the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996.

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include any extraneous material in the Record.

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith). He is chairman of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations.

Mr. ROYCE

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank, first of all, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel). He is the ranking member of this committee, but he has also been the leader in authorizing this critical legislation and also has been such a prophetic voice on this subject of Syria policy from the beginning, from that first day when we saw people out, on CNN, out on the streets in Damascus, saying, ``peaceful, peaceful,'' only to see the automatic weapons of the regime open up on those citizens. From that day forward, he has tried to focus us on this issue. I wish this body and I wish the White House had done more to heed his calls, for what we have now is a grim lesson, a grim lesson in human suffering. The Syrian regime has launched wave after wave after wave of unrelenting destruction, and I am talking about the airstrikes, the chemical weapons, the starvation, the industrial-scale torture, and the deliberate targeting, as we have seen time and time again, of hospitals and of schools and of marketplaces with precision bombs, and then with crude barrel bombs, and then with chemical weapons. These are the hallmarks of life for millions of people in Syria. The number of dead from this alone exceeds 450,000, and another 14 million souls have been driven from their homes. ISIS plays a role, also, for the people of Syria in the violence that they face there, and so it is that they face this twin challenge. But it is Bashar al-Assad and his backers that have this instrument of death from the air, this capacity. It is Russia, it is Iran and Hezbollah who now are the primary drivers of the death and the destruction. It is the Russian and Syrian fighter planes, helicopters, that drop these bombs on these hospitals and schools. It is Hezbollah, and it is the IRGC fighters from Iran and the commanders who besiege cities, who burn the crops and prevent food and water and medical supplies from reaching cities. It is Assad's secret police and intelligence groups, the intelligence apparatus of maybe 14 different agencies, who kidnap and then torture and then get new names from those they have killed and then go out to repeat that process and murder civilians from every ethnic group and every political party. Whether Sunni or Shia or Christian or Alawite, none are safe. We have gone through, in the committee, some of the--well, there were tens of thousands of photographs, but I think we have identified 11,000 souls, people in these photographs that were individually killed, tortured and killed in the prisons, Assad's prisons. And there is this bizarre--I have never understood it--this bizarre focus on recording every death. That is why we know the numbers, recording the death and putting a number on that body and cataloging this. For some reason, totalitarian regimes have done this from the Soviet era to the Nazis to Pol Pot; and for whatever reason, this practice continues. The Foreign Affairs Committee heard the agonizing testimony from Syrians caught in this horror, including the brave Syrian defector known to the world now as Caesar and for whom this bill is named, who testified to us of the shocking scale of torture being carried out within the prisons of Syria. It was his job for the regime to document this with his camera. Throughout all of the suffering, the administration has failed to use the tools at its disposal. Time after time, when given the opportunity to take steps to stop this suffering, the administration has decided not to decide; and that, itself, unfortunately, has set a course where here we sit and we watch, and the violence only worsens. Mr. Speaker, America has been sitting back and watching these atrocities for far too long. Vital U.S. national security interests are at stake, and from increased humanitarian aid to serious, increased assistance to the moderate opposition, to safe zones, to the application of U.S. economic power, there are options available. These options are available to us. This particular legislation is designed to increase the cost to Assad and to his outside backers by targeting the sectors of the economy that allow Assad to murder with impunity. Under the bill, foreign companies and banks will have to choose between doing business with that regime that is carrying out these kinds of practices or with the United States. For there to be peace in Syria, the parties must come together. And as long as Assad and his backers can slaughter the people of Syria with no consequences, there is no hope for peace. Mr. Speaker, this bill is long overdue. I urge all Members to support this legislation as we seek to ease the suffering of the Syrian people. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Washington, DC, September 15, 2016. Hon. Jeb Hensarling, Chairman, Committee on Financial Services, Washington, DC. Dear Chairman Hensarling: Thank you for consulting with the Foreign Affairs Committee and agreeing to be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 5732, the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2016, so that the bill may proceed expeditiously to the House floor. I agree that your forgoing further action on this measure does not in any way diminish or alter the jurisdiction of your committee, or prejudice its jurisdictional prerogatives on this resolution or similar legislation in the future. I would support your effort to seek appointment of an appropriate number of conferees from your committee to any House-Senate conference on this legislation. I will seek to place our letters on H.R. 5732 into the Congressional Record during floor consideration of the resolution. I appreciate your cooperation regarding this legislation and look forward to continuing to work together as this measure moves through the legislative process. Sincerely, Edward R. Royce, Chairman.

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. In closing, I want to once again recognize our colleague, Ranking Member Eliot Engel, not only for authoring this bill, but, over the years, for raising this issue with his colleagues, with the President of the United States, with the media, and with the NGO community in order to try to get action. And I thank, also, other Members who contributed on this bill. Our committee, as Eliot has shared with you, has heard firsthand accounts of the suffering. I guess the one thing I would say is that the EU has finally been moved to take steps recently. We welcome those steps to sanction those within the Assad regime responsible for the brutal air campaign against innocent civilians in Aleppo. We heard firsthand accounts not only of the suffering, but we heard the testimony from Raed Saleh of the Syrian White Helmets. These are the doctors and the nurses and the volunteers who actually, when the bombs come, run toward the areas that have been hit in order to try to get the injured civilians medical treatment. They try to provide relief for these victims. They have lost over 600 doctors and nurses. Doctors and nurses come from all over the world to try to assist. When Mr. Engel told you about these bunker-buster bombs that are being dropped from the air, they are being dropped on civilians, but they are also being dropped on the hospitals. In Aleppo, there are six hospitals. Four of them have been destroyed. Last week, four of those last six were utterly destroyed by bunker-buster bombs dropped by Russian planes and by the Syrian Air Force. But there are two that are partially left. In these two, there is, no longer, morphine and there are, no longer, medical supplies. They bring those injured who have some chance of survival in there to try to treat them. In the meantime, the bombs rain down every day. They were nominated, the organization, the White Helmets--the volunteer group, doctors and nurses--for a Nobel Peace Prize, but so many of them now have gone to their graves. We have heard of the terror. Dr. Mohamed Tennari of the Syrian American Medical Society described for the committee the sound of those helicopters overhead, the thump of exploding bombs and the overpowering smell of bleach in the area, that bleach that is dropped as part of chemical weaponry, and then the effects of the toxic gas on the human body: foaming at the mouth, gasping for breath, dying slow, agonizing deaths as the chlorine gas turns to hydrochloric acid in the lungs of the victims. Many of those victims--so many of those victims--are children, and so many of those attacks come in the dead of night. And again, these are the broad civilian areas of that country that are not presently controlled by the Assad regime. We are not talking about the attacks on the front lines. We are talking about the attacks on hospitals in the civilian sectors. Mr. Speaker, for 5 years, or nearly that, international diplomats have debated ways to protect the civilian populations targeted by the Assad regime and its backers. Listen, we can see the ethnic cleansing going on. There is a reason why you have got 14 million people fleeing. It is this aggressive campaign, when we talk about ethnic cleansing, aggressive campaign now by the Russian Air Force that has joined the Syrian Air Force in hitting Aleppo and other parts of the country. Even the United Nations calls this crimes of historic proportions--crimes of historic proportions. Enough is enough. Today we send a message that this will not stand and that the United States will work to ensure that war crimes committed by Assad, that the war machine cannot rain down on the people of Syria unrelentingly. It is not too late to act. We have to cut off their ability to have this capacity, and we have to put those sanctions in place on this. I urge all Members to support this legislation. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ros-Lehtinen). She chairs the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa.

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to enter any extraneous material into the Record.

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Curbelo).

Mr. ROYCE

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 5332) to ensure that the United States promotes the meaningful participation of women in mediation and negotiations processes seeking to prevent, mitigate, or resolve violent conflict, as amended.

Mr. ROYCE

Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.