Marco Rubio

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, today I recognize Victoria Scott, a 2018 fall intern in my Orlando office, for all of the hard work she has done for me, my staff, and the people of the State of Florida. Victoria is a student at Rollins College, where she is majoring in political science and international relations. She is a dedicated and diligent worker who has been devoted to getting the most out of her internship experience. I would like to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Victoria for all the fine work she has done and wish her continued success in the years to come.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, today I recognize Caroline Husebo, a 2018 fall intern in my Orlando office, for all of the hard work she has done for me, my staff, and the people of the State of Florida. Caroline is a graduate from Circle Christian School and interned during her gap year. She is a dedicated and diligent worker who has been devoted to getting the most out of her internship experience. I would like to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Caroline for all the fine work she has done and wish her continued success in the years to come.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, today I recognize Ryleigh Wogoman, a 2018 fall intern in my Orlando office, for all of the hard work she has done for me, my staff, and the people of the State of Florida. Ryleigh is a student at the University of Central Florida, where she is majoring in political science. She is a dedicated and diligent worker who has been devoted to getting the most out of her internship experience. I would like to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Ryleigh for all the fine work she has done and wish her continued success in the years to come.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, in a few minutes here--in 45 minutes or so--the Senate is going to vote to decide whether we want to begin debate on the bill that is before us, S. 1, Strengthening America's Security in the Middle East Act of 2019. I remind everybody of why we began with this bill. I don't know what the number is, but I would say the overwhelming majority of the Members of the Senate did not agree when the President decided to pull us out of Syria for various different reasons. Everybody was asking us: Well, why don't you guys do something about it? As you know, it is difficult. The Congress cannot order the President to take military action. It can authorize it, it can fund it, and it can defund it, but it cannot compel it. That is the role of the Commander in Chief. There are some things we can do. However, because there are things we were concerned about with his decision, there are things we can do to sort of deal with the consequences of what, I believe, would be a mistake, and this bill endeavors to do that. We went through and said: Let's find some bills that would help our allies in the region--Israel, Jordan--and that deal with the human rights catastrophe in Syria. Let's find things that are bipartisan and have widespread support so that we are not starting with something controversial. Then let's put it all together in one bill so that the country will be able to see that the Senate is engaged in the foreign policy of this country and is acting out its constitutional role as a check and balance on the Executive. That is what we did. No good deed goes unpunished, though, because as that bill was filed, apparently, the Democratic leader and others in the leadership asked their Members to vote against even beginning debate on a bill that an overwhelming number of them supported, that a majority of the Democrats supported. They asked them to vote not to proceed on the bill, and the argument is because of the government shutdown. I still don't know how it makes any sense to respond to a government shutdown by shutting down the Senate. In essence, why did we even come up here this week? It appears they are not making any progress on the negotiations, and we are not moving on any bills or legislation. I don't know if it gives people any comfort to know that at least the Senate is shut down too. I don't know how that fixes the government shutdown situation. This should be a place that can walk and chew gum at the same time, meaning a place that works on solving and ending this shutdown, which is bad for everybody, that works on securing our borders, which is something we need to do for our country, but that also works on dealing with something like this, especially as timely as the decision is that was just made last month and the threats that are facing our allies in the region. That is what this bill is about. We are going to have another vote here for the second time this week. So that everybody understands, this vote is not even in favor of or against the bill; it is just to the question of whether we can start debate on this bill. I hope a few more Democrats will join us so that we can get the 60 votes we need just to begin debating the bill. If you still want to make your point at the end of the day, then go ahead and vote against it or whatever. I hope you don't, but let's at least begin debate on it. We will see what happens here in about 30 minutes. My sense is that we still won't have the votes to do that, and it is unfortunate. I do want to address two things that have been brought up with regard to this bill--one thing that has been brought up and one element of the bill that I hope will change people's minds in terms of beginning the debate on it. First, let me talk about a provision in this bill that deals with BDS. BDS--boycott, divestment and sanctions--is an international effort to wage economic war on Israel in order to punish it for its supposed treatment of Palestinians. It boycotts companies that do business in Israel until they cut ties. It boycotts or pressures banks and investment firms until they divest of any investments that help Israel. It then asks governments to impose sanctions on Israel. That is BDS. Some people support it. There are two newly elected Members of the House who openly support it. I assume that is their right. I think they are wrong, but that is their right. The vast majority of people do not support it. What has happened across America is that there are States and counties and cities that have decided they don't support BDS. It is not illegal and we are not going to make it illegal if you want to be a company that participates in BDS. Yet we--the government, the cities, and the States--are not going to buy services or goods from any company that is boycotting Israel. All this bill does is protect them from lawsuits if they make that decision. The argument against this has been--and I have seen this now in numerous statements from those on the other side of the aisle--that it infringes on the First Amendment rights of individuals. I don't know what bill does that, but it isn't this one. To begin with, this bill doesn't even apply to individuals. Individuals can do whatever they want. If you don't want to buy stock in a company that does business in Israel, I think it is shortsighted, but no one is stopping you from doing that. If you want to divest your investments from companies that do business in Israel, no one is stopping you from doing that. If you don't want to shop at or buy from companies that do business with Israel, that is not illegal. This doesn't apply to any individuals. By the way, it doesn't even make it illegal for companies to make that decision. This is not banning participating in BDS. You have every right to support it. You are wrong, but you have every right to support it. You have every right to carry it out if you are a company or an individual. This bill does not apply to individuals. Any time people say they are protecting the individual First Amendment rights of Americans by opposing this legislation, I don't know what they are talking about because this does not apply to individuals. All this says is to go ahead and do it. If you, company X, want to boycott Israel or divest investments from Israel, you can, but the people who disagree with you can boycott and divest from you. You see, free speech is a two-way street. If you want to proclaim something or say something, you have every right to do it, but the people who disagree with you have a right to do that as well. If there is a First Amendment right to companies to boycott or divest from Israel, then there has to be a First Amendment right to boycott or divest from those companies. If you oppose this bill, then you are in favor of shielding from counter-boycotts anyone who decides to take these actions. That is what you are for, which is de facto support for BDS, because what you are basically saying is to go ahead and boycott Israel and divest from Israel, but no one can do that to you. That is not what the First Amendment is. The First Amendment protects your right to speech, and it protects from government infringement an individual's right to speak. It does not protect you from people who disagree with you. It does not protect you from people who speak out against you. So if you are a boycotter, you yourself can be boycotted. If you are a divestor, people can divest from you. I am talking about the elected representatives of our cities and counties. If the members of that community do not agree with that decision, they can vote them out of office. Why does a city or a county have to be forced to buy products from companies that are undertaking a foreign policy action, which is what this is? This is not an effort to influence domestic policy; this is an effort to influence the policies of a foreign country. Why should a city or a county be forced by law to have to do business with those that a city or a county or a State disagrees with? That is all this bill is. When people go around talking about how this infringes on the First Amendment rights of individuals, it is just not honest. It is just not true. This doesn't even apply to individuals. In fact, the bill says very clearly in writing--right there--that nothing under this act shall be construed to infringe upon the First Amendment rights of any American. As they continue to say that, just know that this bill only applies to cities, counties, and States being able to not buy things from companies. This doesn't give you the right to fire an employee who posts a pro-BDS thing on Facebook. This doesn't give you the right to refuse to sell a home to or provide housing for or discriminate in any way against individuals who support BDS. This doesn't give anyone the right to put you in jail for supporting BDS. It doesn't do anything to infringe on anyone's First Amendment right. All it does is protect the First Amendment right to be against BDS and to do to the boycotters what the boycotters are doing to Israel. It is a two-way street. Those are the facts. If you are hiding behind that in order to oppose this bill, you are not being frank about what the bill does. The second part of this bill that I wanted to talk about today shouldn't be controversial at all because we are all now painfully familiar with the grave humanitarian crisis we have seen in Syria. I would say and most would agree that what we have seen over the last 8 years of this conflict is the worst humanitarian crisis since the end of the Second World War. It began as anti-government protests, but it led to the fighting for political freedoms that has now escalated into a bloody civil war with a bunch of foreign fighters flowing in. It is a mess of all kinds of different groups from foreign countries and of radical jihadists. Caught in the middle are innocent people who have been bombed and gassed. In fact, this administration has had to take action to punish militarily the Assad regime for dropping chlorine bombs and chemical weapons on civilian populations. We have seen these images of children, babies, and everyday people--bakers and plumbers and small business owners and professionals--who 1 minute were walking around and the next minute were choking to death because their own government, with the support of Russia and Iran, dropped chemical weapons on their communities and killed countless people. Not only is this sort of activity horrifying, it is a war crime. It is a war crime to deliberately target civilian populations, and it is particularly cruel to do it with a gruesome form of death--that is, death by chemical weapon. That is what we have seen. That is what we have seen supported, by the way, by Vladimir Putin. He knows for a fact what they are doing and doesn't care. He gives them cover, and he makes up these ridiculous stories about how it is the opposition that has done it. Everyone knows who has done it. There is zero doubt about it. That is why they don't allow inspectors to go in and find evidence and point it out. But it is abundantly clear who is doing it, and they have done it. Even as this administration is deciding to pull out, the prospects grow and the likelihood grows every day that the people who have made these decisions will never be held accountable for what they have done. These war criminals--these savages--will never be held accountable for what they have done if trends continue the way they are going. This bill tries to address that. The now chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, the Senator from Idaho, Mr. Risch, filed a bill last year, called the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, that is now included in this bill. I believe he will be here shortly to speak about it. It is called the Caesar bill--it has nothing to do with Rome--because it is named after a Syrian military defector. It is named after someone who was in the Syrian military whose code name was ``Caesar'' who smuggled out tens of thousands of pictures of what was going on inside of Syria, the images of the thousands of people who were killed while being detained in Syria. They were images of the torture, of the brutalization of women and innocent men and even sometimes children by the Assad regime and by those who supported them. The pictures show the true face of what we are dealing with here--the face of an evil and criminal regime, a regime that needs to be held to account. All those who support them and are allowing them to do it should also be held accountable. What Senator Risch's bill does is it provides the Trump administration new legal authority to bring some accountability for the people who have done this. First, it requires a determination and a report by the Treasury on whether the Central Bank of Syria is a financial institution of primary money laundering concern. Why does that matter? Because they are using that bank to clean and launder money to fund their operations, to remain in power, and, ultimately, to gas and kill their own people. The other thing it does is it imposes new sanctions on anyone who does business with or who provides financing to the Government of Syria, including Syrian intelligence and security services, or the Central Bank of Syria; who provides aircraft or spare aircraft parts that are used for military purposes in Syria; who does business with transportation or telecom sectors controlled by the Syrian Government; or who supports Syria's energy industry. These aren't just about punishing them. It is about hurting them in their pocketbooks so they can't afford to put those planes up there to drop these bombs on innocent people. It gives the administration the authority to do this. By the way, this bill also requires the administration to brief Congress. You hear them talking about holding the administration accountable and conducting oversight. This bill requires them to come before us and tell us what their plan is to deliver humanitarian aid. By the way, I want to know how we are going to deliver humanitarian aid if there is no U.S. presence on the ground and the only people left are the Russians, the Turks, the Iranians, and the Assad regime. It would be interesting to be briefed on that plan with us not there, but it requires them to come forward and either tell us what their plan is or admit that there isn't a plan because we are not there anymore. That is what this bill does. I would love for everyone here to support it, but before you can even vote for it, we have to start debate on it through the rules of the Senate. In about 15 minutes, we are going to vote on this thing, and there are going to be people who vote against even starting a debate on it, and the argument is that it is because of the shutdown. I hope people reconsider. I don't understand the logic of it, but when you talk about the threats that are facing Israel, which the overwhelming majority of the Senators here say they are strong supporters of, and when you talk about the importance of Jordan and our alliance with Israel, something that every single person here basically agrees with, for the most part, and when you talk about these horrifying war crimes for which there should be some accountability, which I believe everybody here was outraged by, how does stopping a bill or refusing to move on to debating a bill that deals with those things help end the shutdown? It doesn't. It makes no sense, but, apparently, that is what some are willing to do. They probably aren't watching at this point. They are probably off at their caucus lunches or doing something else, but I hope that over the last 48 hours, some of my colleagues on the Democratic side have thought about it and have said to themselves that it really doesn't make any sense to deal with the government shutdown by shutting down the Senate. I hope they will reconsider and vote differently this time. If they don't, then, I am just not sure how we can explain to people why it is that we will not agree to even begin debate on something almost all of us agree on for reasons completely unrelated to it. In essence, that is what happened earlier this week and what could potentially happen here very shortly. I actually, oftentimes, wonder what must go through the minds of visitors to the Capitol. I understand most people in America aren't watching this. Very few people probably are. I wonder. You come up here, and these groups from Close Up were here. It is a great organization. It brings high school kids up here. You try to explain to normal, regular human beings that there is a bill that 90 of the 100 Senators support, but we are not even going to be able to debate it because they are voting against debating it. They would look at you like you have three heads and say: What are you talking about? They support the bill, but they don't want to have a debate on the bill yet? Why? Because of the government shutdown. Well, what does that have to do with it? There are no other aspects in our lives where we would do that. I have never heard that in my life. I have never heard someone say: I am not going to work today because I am upset that my favorite team lost the game yesterday, or I am not paying my bills this month because I don't like the fact that they charged me too much for changing my tires. If you did that in any part of your life, people would think you were crazy. Yet that is what is happening here. What kind of leverage is this--that you are going to hold up a bill we all agree on as leverage to force us to negotiate? The Democratic leader and the Democratic Members know that in order for a bill to become law, it needs the support of the House, which their party controls, 60 Senators, which they can keep us from getting, and the President who will sign it. They know full well that this has nothing to do with that, but, nonetheless, a majority of them seem to be prepared to vote against even debating it. I don't know how to explain that. I certainly don't know how to explain it to high school students up here visiting from Close Up or to anyone else, for that matter, but that is what happened earlier this week, and that is what might happen today here in a few minutes. I hope I am wrong. I hope people have reconsidered because, honestly, this is an issue that deserves our earnest attention. I will close with this. Please do not go around saying that Congress needs to do more to hold the administration accountable or to conduct oversight of our administration policy, when we started this Congress trying to do that and you decided to keep us from doing it for some other reason. Don't say that Congress needs to be more involved in the foreign policy of the United States, when this is exactly what we are trying to do here today and you will not let us for reasons unrelated to it. This country needs a strong Senate more than ever before, not one that is shut down. I hope people will change their minds so we can get to work on this right now. The Senate should be able to walk, chew gum, write, and read at the same time--or a lot of us. There are 100 people here. We should be able to do multiple things at the same time. We do it all the time. You don't need to shut down the Senate, and you don't need to stop debate on this bill to solve the government shutdown. One has nothing to do with the other. Everyone knows that. Americans understand that. Normal people recognize that. Let's act normal. Let's stop being weird about these things, and let's move on something like this and get the debate going, even as we work on the government shutdown and on border security. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, today I recognize Tatum Ashby, a 2018 fall intern in my Orlando office, for all of the hard work she has done for me, my staff, and the people of the State of Florida. Tatum is a student at Southeastern University, where she is majoring in political science. She is a dedicated and diligent worker who has been devoted to getting the most out of her internship experience. I would like to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Tatum for all the fine work she has done and wish her continued success in the years to come.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, today I recognize Charlie Gray, a 2018 fall intern in my Orlando office, for all of the hard work he has done for me, my staff, and the people of the State of Florida. Charlie is a student at Rollins College, where he is majoring in environmental studies with a minor 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 Charlie for all the fine work he has done and wish him continued success in the years to come.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I wish to recognize the first Small Business of the Week of the 116th Congress. Each week this Congress, I will honor a small business that exemplifies the hard work and perseverance of the American entrepreneur. The great State of Florida is home to businesses of all types, from family-run farms in Ocala to aerospace machinists in Cape Canaveral. Today, it is my distinct pleasure to honor a small business with a strong commitment to the quality of its products and a desire to give back to its community. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, it is my pleasure to recognize Oceana Coffee Roasters as this year's first Small Business of the Week. Amy and Scott Angelo founded Oceana Coffee Roasters in 2009 with only a $35 coffee roaster, converted from a popcorn machine, and the goal of bringing freshly roasted coffee to their area. Located in Tequesta, FL, Amy and Scott founded the company after they were unable to find a local coffee roaster that produced fresh, small-batch coffee. Seeing an opportunity, the Angelos began by roasting just a quarter-cup of coffee at a time, experimenting with different types of beans and roasting techniques. From a popcorn popper in their kitchen, to roasting 50,000 pounds of beans a year, the Angelos have remained focused on the details of producing high-quality, small-batch, whole bean and ground coffee. In order to meet their high standards, Scott and Amy learned all they could about how coffee beans are grown, where the best beans originate, and how to bring out the best flavor in each type of bean. They also researched the fair trade coffee process, how coffee is harvested and transported, and the logistics of importing beans to their Florida small business. Through their diligent study and a trial and error process, the Angelos harnessed their entrepreneurial spirit to understand their customers' desires and make a product they are proud of. In 2016, the Palm Beach North Chamber of Commerce recognized Oceana Coffee as the Small Business of the Year and SCORE of Palm Beach County recognized them for entrepreneurial excellence. Also in 2016, they were the overall winner for the Golden Bean North America Award, which is the world's largest coffee roaster competition. As the business has grown, the company has periodically added new coffee varieties from around the world to its product line. Instead of focusing on large production runs of one type of coffee, Oceana produces small batches of shade-grown, Guatemalan, Ethiopian, and Costa Rican coffee for all types of coffee consumers. Their success has also led to expansion, with Amy and Scott adding a second location in Palm Beach County while increasing e-commerce sales and direct shipments to reach approximately 100 wholesale customers. The Angelos are committed to their community and doing right by the people they do business with. Every quarter, Oceana makes a donation to a charitable organization voted on by its customers under an initiative they call Cup of Kindness. Oceana Coffee also gives back by offering internships to adults with autism by partnering with Jupiter, FL-based Els for Autism so that affected individuals can gain workforce experience. Additionally, the Angelos provide a platform to local artists, authors, and other small businesses in the area. Each month, the shop hosts a showcase to help these entrepreneurs gain exposure. The Angelos care about the community of growers they work with, as they purchase their coffee beans from small, fair-trade farmers that they interact with directly and visit regularly. They have also made a commitment to reduce waste through the use of reusable straws and recyclable cutlery and containers. Oceana Coffee Roasters has found its niche and expanded as a company, while keeping its commitment to quality and principles. The Angelos' love of quality coffee, commitment to their community, and painstaking review of the coffee making process has made the company a leader in its community and created a loyal customer base. Again, I would like to congratulate Scott, Amy, and all of the employees at Oceana Coffee Roasters for being named the Small Business of the Week. I wish you continued success in your future endeavors.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, what is before us right now is S. 1. For those who are here today watching or who are at home or will watch this later and are wondering what the Senate is doing, other than coming down here and giving speeches, what we are trying to do is start debate on a bill, on S. 1. S. 1 is the Senate effort to respond specifically not just to general events that are happening in the Middle East but, in particular, the decision made a few weeks ago that the United States would be leaving Syria and our presence there. At the time when the decision was made, I told everybody I thought it was a bad idea. A lot of people agreed, and there are a lot of reasons why it was a bad idea. Although I do think it is important anytime we ask the American people to send their young men and women abroad--in the case of Syria, it is about 2,000 special operators working alongside tens of thousands of Kurdish and Syrian democratic forces. Anytime we spend money or send Americans abroad to risk their lives, the American people deserve for us to go to them and justify why it is we should be doing it or continue to do it. That is certainly the case with Syria. So I don't agree with the decision, but I do think it has given the Senate and those of us who disagree with that decision an opportunity to go out and tell people why it is that it is important. That is a broader topic, and I will have more to say about that in the days to come, but one of the reasons why it is important is because the U.S. withdrawal from Syria will have a dramatic impact on the security of Israel. Now, again, anytime we ask the American people to support another country with money or diplomatic support or anything that it might be-- weapons--we should justify it. We should never take for granted why it is that it is important that we support that other country. In the case of Israel, at a time when very few things enjoy bipartisan support, support for Israel has wide bipartisan support in Congress and across the country, and rightfully so. Our support of the State of Israel is founded both on morality and our national interest. On the issue of morality, the State of Israel is very unique. It was founded for a very specific purpose in the aftermath of the holocaust, in which millions of Jews lost their lives. It was vowed that never again would the Jewish people not have a place to go and seek refuge or live in a place of peace and security. The State of Israel was established to be that homeland for the Jewish people. It is unique in the fact that it was given birth by an international organization. It is unique in the world in that regard. The second reason we should support Israel is because it is in our national interest. Israel is everything we wish more countries in the Middle East and around the world were. They are a pro-American, free enterprise democracy. I would ask you, for a moment only, to imagine what the world would be like, how much easier our foreign policy would be if there were more countries in that part of the world that were pro-American, free enterprise democracies. We have one, the Jewish State of Israel. That is why we should support it. From its very birth, Israel has faced threats to its very existence, but I would say today that the threats it faces are the greatest ones it has had to confront in almost a half century. The impetus for much of that threat comes from one place, and that is Iran, a country which almost as a matter of course as a government chants ``Death to America'' and ``Death to Israel'' on a regular basis. It is one of the stated purposes of that government, to destroy the State of Israel, but they aren't just words; they are actions. I have a map of Iran and Israel. Of course, notice that Israel is the tiny little area on this map. At its narrowest point, Israel is 9 miles wide. This is not a large country in terms of the map area. It is unreal how much of the world's attention, both from international organizations and international debates, focuses on this one tiny country, but there it is, the very small nation that you see right there in yellow. There is Iran. It is, clearly, larger in terms of on the map and in reality. Iran isn't simply a rhetorical enemy of Israel; it is taking action to encircle Israel and to threaten its security. It begins with engagement in its missile program. Iran is developing and has developed ballistic missiles with a range that reaches every part of Israel. Here is the bottom line: Iran can lodge ballistic missiles that reach any city in Israel right now, which is why their nuclear ambitions are so dangerous. Imagine that at some point in the future, Iran is able to attach a nuclear warhead to one of those ballistic missiles--a country whose leaders on a regular basis chant ``Death to Israel'' with a nuclear weapon that can reach Israel. Well, that is a proposition nobody wants to see come about. That is why the Iranian ambition to have nuclear weapons is so dangerous. They already possess that as it is today. But they don't simply directly target Israel; they also--I believe directly--they hide behind surrogates in the region, who do their bidding. These surrogates have for many years been found in southern Lebanon among Hezbollah. We will talk about them in a moment. They are a surrogate that works at the behest of the Iranian Government. There have been conflicts--in fact, wars--between Israel and Hezbollah in which there have been massive military attacks coming from Lebanon, rocket strikes into Israel and Israel's response. The last one was in the 2005-2006 time period, and it could happen again. In fact, I believe the conditions are ripe for it to happen again. It could happen at any moment for a variety of different reasons that will have to be part of another speech because time doesn't permit. Suffice it to say, it is a dangerous proposition. How does Hezbollah get this weaponry? They get this weaponry from Iran. It is shipped through Syria. The U.S. disengagement from Syria will make it easier for Iran and the IRGC and Hezbollah to bring those weapons into southern Lebanon to strike at Israel at some point in the future. In addition to that, Iran is also present on the ground in Syria, which, as you see, borders Israel. So not only does Iran help Hezbollah, but Hezbollah and Iran are in Syria, on Israel's very border in the same region in the south, and a U.S. withdrawal will make it easier for Iran to grow their presence there. So now Israel faces a threat from Hezbollah, from southern Lebanon, and a threat from Iran and Hezbollah in Syria. We also see that the Iranian influence has grown in Iraq. The second leading political movement in the current Iraqi Parliament is a Shia group, directly aligned in Iran, with growing political influence. They want to kick America out of there. Believe me, they want to turn Iraq into another base of operation from which Israel can be targeted. Down here in Yemen, the Houthis are an agent of Iran. You may say: Well, that is kind of far. It isn't in the sense that those missiles and rockets could reach there as well, but it also allows them the opportunity to shut off transit here at this chokepoint on the bottom of the Red Sea, which could directly impact, ultimately, the ability for trade and commerce for Israel and for the region writ large. Obviously, we see a growing Iranian presence in Bahrain and Kuwait. Suffice it to say that Iran is carrying out an effort to grow its influence and encircle who it views as its enemies--the Sunnis in Saudi Arabia but more than anyone else, the Israelis. This is not the only threat, by the way, that Israel faces. It also faces growing violence and resistance in the Judea-Samaria region-- often called by some the West Bank--and Gaza, where there have been upticks in violence. I failed to mention that in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah routinely builds tunnels from Lebanon into Israel. The purpose of that is to be able to sneak fighters right into Israel through those tunnels so they can conduct commando raids and kill civilians--not military personnel but civilians. The threats Israel is facing are growing every single day. I want to talk specifically for a moment about the missile threat to Israel. Here are the ranges of these rockets. There was an Israel- Hezbollah war. The next one will be far deadlier. It will be far deadlier for a couple of reasons. The first is that Hezbollah can build these rockets; they no longer need to ship them in. Over the last decade and a half, they have built the capability to construct these rockets themselves. The second is that they have more of them. That matters because Israel has a very good missile defense system, but you can overwhelm a missile defense system with volume, meaning 100 rockets are launched, and you knock down 99 of them, but 1 of them gets through and hits a population center and kills 10,000 people. Hezbollah now has that capability. These rockets are also precision-guided. They are not just lobbing them over and they hit what they hit. They can launch precision-guided munitions to target specific areas within Israel. The ranges of these rockets they now possess are stunning. As an example, if you look at this little ring here, it tells you how many seconds it would take from launch to impact, meaning 10 to 25 seconds before they could hit, for example, the area of Nazareth and Tiberias. Moving farther down, you see 35 to 50 seconds. Farther down, around Tel Aviv, 75 seconds. Jerusalem, just south of that is probably another 10 seconds added, 85 seconds. A hundred and twenty seconds. A hundred and fifty-five seconds. Imagine for a moment that you are visiting Israel or live in Israel or are a student studying there--whatever it might be--and one of these launches comes in, a barrage of 1,000 rockets launched. You literally have 35 to 50 seconds--less than 2 minutes. There is no country in the world that can mobilize people to get out of the way in 2 minutes. These are their population centers. This is the threat that faces them right now, and that is just from Lebanon. Imagine that same capability I just described also existing in Syria. Imagine it all being launched simultaneously from Syria, from Lebanon, and from Iran. Now you begin to see the construct of a plan to destroy this tiny nation and why it is so critical that the United States support them in fighting for their existence. The threat is extraordinary. There is one more element to it. There is now a global effort called boycott, divestment, and sanctions, BDS. It is designed to wage economic war on Israel--in essence, to pressure companies to boycott Israeli companies and people who do business in Israel until they stop, to pressure investment funds and banks to no longer do investments in anything related to Israel, and to pressure governments around the world to sanction Israel. That is what this effort is about. It is to undermine them economically as well. It is economic warfare and being waged at every level. It is working. People are adopting this around the world, and there are some who advocate for it here. We have recently seen in the news a number of companies that decided not to do business in certain parts of Israel because of the pressure from that movement. By the way, I would point out that they are not just boycotting the economy; there are people who won't do concerts, and they won't play the Israeli sports teams. They want the Israeli Government kicked out of the international committee for different sports, including soccer-- the Olympic committee. They boycott cultural events. They boycott universities. They are pressuring universities to cut ties with any university in Israel over all this. It is an effort to destroy Israel culturally and economically in a way that works in combination with the effort to destroy it physically. It is a very real threat. We have tried to confront both of these issues in bipartisan legislation. I have up here a chart, and I will talk about it in a moment. Twenty-six States in this country have tried to do something to condemn BDS. I will get to that in a moment before I tell you the ``what.'' I told you why it is so important that we stand with Israel and the threats that Israel faces. Now I will describe what this bill does. This bill has four components to it. One deals with the human rights violation in Syria. We will discuss that further, perhaps tomorrow. The second component of this bill deals with Jordan, which is one of the neighbors that Israel has that is actually critical to its security. One of the best things that happened to Israel security was the deal with Jordan and Egypt that allowed them, at their periphery, to have countries that at least recognize them and are not out to destroy them. Jordan faces its own threats from some of the same actors, by the way. And add ISIS to that. The other two elements are we took these two bills that have bipartisan support--cosponsored by Republicans and Democrats--we combined them with the other two bills, which also had such support, into one bill. That is S. 1. We viewed it as an opportunity for the Senate and for Congress to weigh in on foreign policy at a time when we believe that all of the threats to Israel that I just described are made worse by the decision to withdraw from Syria. That is the bill that is before us. Today, I want to talk about the two components that impact Israel directly. The first is basically the United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act. That is a fancy title for a bill that I coauthored with my very good friend and another strong supporter of Israel, Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, who sits on the other side of the aisle. Again, I told you this is a bipartisan issue. This bill has 72 cosponsors here in the Senate. It passed overwhelmingly by a voice vote. We didn't even have to have a rollcall vote. It was just voice-voted out, meaning there was unanimous consent--no one objected--on the 1st of August of last year. It passed in the House, with an amendment, on September 12. Then it was hotlined for a potential voice vote here on October 11, 2018. What does this bill do? The first thing it does is it lays out a statement of policy. Let me tell you why that is important. People say: Statement of policy words--why do they matter? They matter in the region because one of the things that would encourage Hezbollah or any of Israel's enemies to perhaps attack it is the belief that the United States is no longer as committed to Israel's security as we once were. They could miscalculate. They read these headlines about one or two people in America saying something negative toward Israel, and they think that somehow we are weakening in our resolve. I know that sounds silly to us, but to people involved in that over there, it is not. They read into this, and they miscalculate it. They make errors. A miscalculation here could lead to an all-out war that could cost the lives of thousands of people and potentially lead to the destruction of Israel, along with other nations in the process. It is important for us to make very clear that our commitment to Israel is unwavering. It is especially important in light of the decision to withdraw from Syria because what a lot of these countries-- including Iran--are reading into this is, U.S. commitment to the Middle East is no longer very strong. Not only are they not committed to being involved in the region, they are actually withdrawing any of the assets they could be using to be supportive of their allies in the region. So these statements of policy are important. What we put in this bill lays out a statement of policy that says: It shall be the policy of the United States to provide assistance to the Government of Israel in order to support funding for cooperative programs to develop, produce, and procure missile, rocket, projectile, and other defense capabilities to help Israel meets its security needs and to help develop and enhance United States defense capabilities. What that means is, this is a cooperation. Israel may be developing some of these technologies because they have an immediate need. We would benefit from that technology too. If Israel develops the next generation of missile defense systems, we would use that as well in the case where we were threatened by it. That is that statement of policy. The bill also authorizes U.S. security assistance in foreign military financing at no less than $3.3 billion a year for the next decade. That, by the way, is simply the language from a memorandum of understanding that was signed by the Obama administration and Israel. We put that in the statute, and we authorized it. This is very important. It extends a war reserve stockpile authority and extends loan guarantees to Israel through 2023. Israel has never defaulted on a U.S.-backed loan guarantee, and this program helps provide rainy-day insurance on Israel's stability given the many threats it is facing. It authorizes the President to transfer precision-guided munitions and related defense articles and services to Israel as necessary for legitimate self-defense. That means this weaponry wouldn't be sent, but it would be put on reserve status--assuming it doesn't impact our readiness--and it would be made available to Israel in case a war broke out and their reserves were quickly depleted. If they start running out of rockets, munitions, and defense apparatus, the United States has set aside weaponry that we are ready to rapidly send to them so they can defend themselves. They pay for this. But at least they know it is sitting there. We don't have to scramble to find it, it takes 2 weeks to get there, and by then, the war is over. It has other requirements. It expresses the sense of Congress that the President should prescribe procedures for rapidly acquiring and deploying what we need to support production of these precision-guided munitions for our U.S. counterterror mission. It requires the President to report no later than 120 days to the appropriate congressional committees on Israel's eligibility for the strategic trade authorization exception to certain export control licensing, including the reasons as to why Israel has not yet been included in the list of countries eligible for the strategic trade authorization exception. This one is also very critical. This is a new threat that is emerging. It authorizes the President to enter into a cooperative agreement--meaning it benefits them and us--to counter unmanned aerial vehicles and the threat they pose. The reason for that is that on February 10 of last year, an Iranian drone was shot down by Israel. Everyone has every reason to believe that these unmanned aerial vehicles are the next threat that will be deployed both in the battlefield and potentially by terrorists. We would work with Israel, which faces an immediate threat, to develop counters to that. Today, we don't have good counters to that. Above all else, it makes one more very clear policy statement that has been the linchpin of our support for Israel, which is that it is the policy of the United States to ensure that Israel maintains its ability to counter and defeat any credible conventional military or emerging threat from any state or possible coalition of states or from nonstate actors while sustaining minimal damage and casualties through the use of superior military means possessed in sufficient quantities, including weapons, command, control, communication, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities that in their technical characteristics are superior in capability to those of such other individual or possible coalition states or nonstate actors. Here is what this means: It is the policy of the United States to ensure that Israel's weapons and systems are better than anyone else's in the region. Whatever anybody else has we will sell to Israel and allow it to access and acquire something better so that it will always have an advantage. If anyone in that region believes it could beat Israel in a war, one will try to beat Israel in a war. That was the history from its very birth, and that was the lesson of 1967 and the lesson of 1973. We don't want that to happen again. That is what this bill does. That is why it has so much support. That is why it is so important for us to move to debate on this issue. It also tackles this economic warfare. What is included in this is a bill we filed last year with Senator Manchin, called the Combating BDS Act. By the way, last year, the Banking chairman, Senator Crapo of Idaho, and the ranking member, Senator Brown of Ohio, discharged this bill from their committee, and they didn't even require a hearing. They did it late last year after running it by all of their members, and we tried to pass it in the Senate by a voice vote but were unable to because of one Senator who blocked it. Let me start by thanking Senators Crapo and Brown for working hard to advance this bill last year, as well as for coauthoring with me last year the new Hezbollah sanctions law, known as the Hizballah International Financing Prevention Amendments Act of 2018. We strengthened the sanctions on Hezbollah that we had passed in the 2 years previous. First of all, let me tell you what it doesn't do. It does not outlaw BDS. If you are an American company and you want to boycott or divest from Israel, this doesn't make it illegal. It doesn't stop you from doing it. It only says that if there is some city or county or State in this country that wants to support Israel, it has a right to say it is not going to buy services or goods from any company that is boycotting or divesting from Israel. That is all it does. It gives cities and counties like these--26 States--the opportunity to have their elected officials who respond to the people of those States or cities or counties who elected them to make decisions that they are not going to do business with people who don't do business with Israel and boycott Israel. In essence, it allows us to boycott the boycotters. Some say that it is an infringement on the First Amendment. First, I will tell you that the First Amendment protects speech and actions that function in the form of speech. This is not an effort to silence speech nor is this an effort, by the way, to defeat an effort per se. It is an effort to defend the right to counterspeak. The First Amendment is a two-way street. You have a right to express your views on something, but others have a right to respond. You have a right to boycott a country, and people have a right to boycott you. That is what this law allows them to do. It is that simple. By the way, this is not some domestic debate. They are not trying to influence some law that we are passing here with BDS. They are not trying to influence your opinions on a topic. They are trying to influence the foreign policy of another country. This is not traditional free speech. The courts have weighed in on this in the past, and the courts have given Congress and the executive branch extraordinary discretion on the setting of foreign policy. When a company weighs in on BDS, it is not trying to influence a domestic debate or a topic of opinion here in the U.S. political system; it is trying to punish a nation-state so that the state changes its policies in another country. There is an open question about whether the First Amendment even covers that. The bill basically says, notwithstanding whatever is in the bill, nothing in the bill shall be construed to invade or to hurt anyone's First Amendment rights. So anyone who hides behind the idea that this is designed to silence speech isn't being truthful. This does not outlaw BDS. If you want to boycott or divest from Israel, you can. It is legal. We are not outlawing that as that would be an infringement. All we are saying is, if you are going to boycott Israel, those who support Israel will have a right to boycott you. That includes cities and counties and States that don't want to buy stuff from you. That is what this bill does. That is why it enjoys this broad bipartisan support. Some have asked me to take it out of this bill and have said it is the reason we are not moving to it. At least, that is what I heard earlier. Now there is another reason. It is absurd. Vote against it and then justify it, but if you are trying to shield the boycotters, that is the de facto support of BDS, in my opinion, and I think it is important for us to pass it. I emphasize again that this was not overly controversial 2 weeks ago. Look at the list of people who supported this bill last year: the majority leader, the minority leader, the Foreign Relations Committee chairman, the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, the Senate Finance Committee chairman, and the ranking member of the Finance Committee. Democratic and Republican leaders on multiple committees and at the very top of this Chamber support this bill. Yet, somehow, we can't even proceed to debate on this bill. You may say, ``Well, wait until the shutdown is over,'' because that is the argument that is being used now--that we shouldn't move to anything until we deal with the shutdown. I don't like the shutdown. I hope it ends tonight or tomorrow morning. Yet this is not just any other issue. There is a credible argument to be made that there is a time sensitivity to this because the enemies of Israel aren't sitting around, waiting. This could happen at any moment. These aren't the kinds of things that build up. Hezbollah's desire to destroy Israel is longstanding, and what they choose to do about it will not wait for the U.S. Senate to deal with other topics. This is an immediate threat. It is right before us, and it deserves our immediate reaction. This could rapidly escalate, but I am not going to take up another 30 minutes to describe all of the scenarios under which that could happen. Yet I will give you one that is not out of the realm of possibility. Now that they know that the United States is going to be withdrawing from Syria, the Israelis could decide--and, I believe, rightfully so-- that for their own defense, they will need to start attacking even more inside Syria. Regarding those supply lanes that Iran is using, every time they see a truck with rockets on it, they are going to blow up the truck. Every time they see IRGC or Hezbollah militias forming anywhere near their border, they are going to hit them. They are now going to step up those attacks because we are not there anymore. Iran is going to fill that void, so they are going to have to step up their attacks. At some point, Iran and/or Hezbollah is going to respond to those stepped-up attacks with attacks of its own, at which point Israel is going to respond with even bigger attacks. Then the cycle of escalation will begin. Then very quickly--before you know it--in this region, we could have a shooting war, not a war of words and not a vote at the U.N., but rockets and missiles being fired at one another from Lebanon or from Syria into Israel, with Israel's responding back into Syria and Israel's responding back into Lebanon. In fact, Israel has said that all of Lebanon is on the target list since now Hezbollah and the current President of Lebanon have created a political alliance. You also have these other countries running around inside Syria, including the Russians now and the Turks up to the north. There is the potential that their troops would get caught in the firefight in their eliciting a response back to Israel. Before you know it, we could have a multistate, multiparty, all-out war in the Middle East. The possibility of that happening is not farfetched. I say this to you today with no pleasure. There will be another Israel-Hezbollah war. It is just a matter of time. Yet the next one will be far more deadly. It is incumbent upon us to do what we can. There are things we cannot do, and there are things we can do. It is incumbent upon us to prolong it and to prevent it for as long as possible. One of the things we can do to help prevent that or to extend the time before that happens is to make it very clear to Hezbollah and Iran and everyone else that if they take on Israel, we will support Israel. That is what this bill is designed to do. It is not just to send that message but to put in place that reality. Given the tinderbox that is the Middle East and given the unpredictability of the various actors involved, particularly those that hate Israel, why would we not move immediately to address something like that? Why are we not capable of voting on something that will probably get 80 votes here and still deal with the government shutdown? The last time we had a government shutdown, we were still voting on bills that had nothing to do with the government shutdown. When the other party was in charge, we were doing that. There is no precedent for doing it. I believe that it is possible for us to do both, and that is what we should do. This isn't tax reform or healthcare reform. This is something that is urgent and immediate and requires our attention because of the unpredictability of foreign events today and because of the unpredictability of this part of the world. I know, at some point here soon, that the leader will bring up for a second time a vote on the motion to proceed. It is not even a vote on the bill. It is a motion to begin debate on this bill. Nothing else is going on around here. Let them continue to meet and have a dialogue and talk about how to get us out of this shutdown. I hope we do. I hope that happens. Yet don't shut down the Senate, particularly on a topic of this importance, because these events will not wait for us. It is important for us to act. Please don't go around asking people to stand up to this administration's foreign policies that we don't agree with--when we at least offer a counter or something to diminish its negative impacts-- and respond with obstruction and not just obstruction because of policy but with obstruction in order to make a political point or to avoid a vote that three or four Senators might not want to take. I don't think that makes a lot of sense. I think, when it comes to the issues of national security and foreign policy, we should try, to the extent possible, to remove them from the daily grind and back-and-forth of American politics because the repercussions are dramatic. That is the one thing that makes national security and foreign policy different from domestic policy. You can always go back and change a bad tax law. You can always go back and change a bad healthcare law. You can always go back and make changes to a bad banking law. You can't undo history. You can't undo wars once they have started. You can't undo carnage once it has occurred. Foreign policy is often irreversible, and once mistakes are made, you have to do the best you can with the hand you have been dealt. That is why I hope that on this one, we stop playing games, that we get on this bill, and that we pass it so that even as this debate about the shutdown continues, we will make clear to the world and we will make clear to her enemies that we stand with Israel. We always have and we always will across party lines. We may bicker and fight about many things, but when it comes to the support of Israel, we are united-- House and Senate Republicans and Democrats and the White House--in the support of our strongest ally in the region and of one of our strongest allies in the entire world. I yield the floor.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, a few moments ago we welcomed our new colleague, my colleague for the State of Florida, former Governor and now U.S. Senator Rick Scott, who will do a phenomenal job here on behalf of the State of Florida. I welcome him to the U.S. Senate, the world's greatest deliberative body--and, on occasion, perhaps the strangest as well. In about 1 hour 15 minutes, the Senate is going to take up S. 1, which is a combination of four separate bills that enjoy widespread support in this Chamber from colleagues on both sides of the aisle, all of them sponsored and cosponsored by both sides of the aisle, and apparently we will fail to get a significant number of votes to get on this bill, nonetheless. So it is perhaps one the few places on Earth where people vote against things they are for because of reasons unrelated to the issue at hand. I don't want to dig too deep into that. That will be a topic for conversation later on, and maybe I will be wrong. Maybe they will change their minds in the next 1 hour 15 minutes, and we will have the votes we need, but I don't think it makes a lot of sense to say: I am upset about the government shutdown--by the way, the Senate voted unanimously to fund the government by a voice vote. We didn't even have a rollcall vote. So this Chamber has already enacted in that regard. At this point, it is incumbent on the leaders of the Democratic Party in the Senate, combined with the White House, to come up with a deal to reopen the government. This government shutdown is not good for anybody. I have never seen anybody win one of these. That said, I don't know why we would shut down the Senate, too, given the issues we face. About 3 weeks ago, the President announced that the United States was withdrawing from our engagement in Syria. I--and I think the majority of the people in the Senate--believed that decision was a mistake and is a mistake. While I was certainly encouraged by some of the comments by the head of the National Security Council, Ambassador John Bolton, on the pace and scale and scope of the withdrawal, nonetheless, there have been conflicting statements since then which put this all in question. At the time he made this decision, we walked through all of the reasons why this was a mistake--not because we want to be in war in Syria forever. That is false. Of course, it has to come to an end, but it needs to come to an end in a way that is in the interest of the United States of America. It is not in the interest of the United States of America to see ISIS reemerge the way they did after 2011, when the United States left Iraq. When the United States left and pulled back its presence in Iraq, it allowed ISIS to reconstitute itself and reemerge. They were called something different then, but they were basically a spinoff of al- Qaida. They started out as an insurgency and grew very rapidly. They are larger today and they are more powerful today than when they reconstituted themselves almost a decade ago. I have no doubt that if this moves forward, ISIS will reconstitute itself, maybe not as a caliphate but as something equally dangerous, and that is an insurgency with the capability not just to create havoc, mayhem, murder, and destruction in Syria and potentially once again in Iraq but also to externally plot and attack us here on Homeland. This raises all other types of possibilities, like the Iraqi troops along with irregular forces sponsored by Iran--the Shia militia that have been on the ground in Iraq--coming across the border and into Syria. We all have read and heard about the Turkish troops that want to come into the Kurdish areas. If Assad is sitting there now with the United States pulling out and all of this is going on, he figures that at this point what does he need a political solution for, what does he need the U.N. or anybody for? The saddest part is that this diminishes the chances that Assad will ever have to face accountability for the crimes committed by his regime against innocent civilians--children, women, and others--not just for the gassing and use of chemical weapons but for widespread torture and murder. We will discuss that more as the week goes on. We are also concerned about Iran's growing influence with the United States leaving, especially in southeast Iraq and on the border of Jordan and Israel, with Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies and Iran itself, or the IRGC and General Soleimani, who is a maven of murder in that area, basically doing whatever they want. They have more freedom of movement, and there is the direct threat that it poses to both Israel and to Jordan. By the way, when the Turks come in or potentially Iraqi troops come in--when ISIS is reconstituted and starts killing people again--you are going to have new refugee flows. Maybe it will be mostly Kurds this time, maybe folks from the Syrian defense forces who had fought alongside us for a while and their families. Where will all of these new refugees go? Potentially, some will wind up in Jordan, further destabilizing or testing that country's ability to deal with all of this. On that last point, both the Kurds and the Syrian defense forces have in excess of 700 ISIS fighters in custody, in prison. Are they going to let them all go? Because without us there supporting them, I don't know how they are going to hold them, and none of the countries they came from want them back. So you can potentially face hundreds of ISIS fighters being released overnight. These are all the consequences--and more. What are we going to do if in a few days, a few weeks, or months from now ISIS decides to deploy chemical weapons against the Kurds or others in these areas? That is the parade of horribles, and the possibilities are extraordinary. We could go on and on for a while. That is why, among other reasons, it was a mistake, and when we came out and said it was a mistake, a lot of people said: What are you going to do about it? Don't just talk; act. It is difficult in an issue like this. Congress can stop wars. Congress can defund them and deauthorize actions, but Congress cannot force the Commander in Chief to stay in a military engagement. We cannot force the President to deploy troops or keep them somewhere. We can keep him from doing it, but we can't force him to do it. Our options in this field are limited. We wanted to do something. We felt so strongly about this. The response is S. 1, which is the item before us here today. S. 1, as I said, combines these four bills that enjoy widespread bipartisan support. You would think that in the midst of everything else that is going on, this would be a really good way to start the new Congress, in foreign policy, in an area that traditionally has not been partisan--or shouldn't have been--by combining these four bills into S. 1, which is what is before us today. I want to briefly outline the four provisions combined in this bill. Two of them deal directly with our ally in Israel. First, it makes very clear that ``it shall be the policy of the United States to provide assistance to the Government of Israel in order to support funding for cooperative programs to develop, produce, and procure missile, rocket, projectile, and other defense capabilities to help Israel meet its security needs and to help develop and enhance United States defense capabilities.'' That last line is important because much of the technology that is being innovated and developed by Israel to defend Israel can also be used by the United States to protect us from rocket attacks there or when we are deployed abroad. The reason why this is so critical is that Hezbollah has a large presence in Syria and has their base of operations in Lebanon. Today, Hezbollah is better funded, better equipped, and has more armaments than at any time in its history. We all recall the Hezbollah-Israel war from about over a decade and a half ago. The next Israel-Hezbollah war will be far deadlier and costly because Hezbollah no longer simply depends on Iran to provide them the weapons. They make them themselves. Hezbollah no longer has a few rockets. It has enough to potentially overwhelm defenses. That means you could have the best missile defense system in the world, but if you fire enough of them, eventually some of them will get through, and when they get through in a small country like Israel--which at its narrowest point is only 9 miles wide--and it hits a population center and kills thousands of people, then, you know we are facing a catastrophe. Israel will respond to that sort of attack with overwhelming force. This could spiral quickly out of control. How could we wind up at that point? We could wind up at that point because now that the United States is leaving Syria, the Israelis are going to say: We are not going to allow Iran and Hezbollah to build up its presence. We are going to step up our military attacks inside of Syria. It is possible, when they step it up, that it is likely that Iran and Hezbollah will respond by hitting back. Then, Israel will hit back even harder. At that point of escalation, you could easily see the missiles start coming out of Lebanon into Israel, and Israel responding with overwhelming force, and then we have a much broader conflict, with thousands--if not hundreds of thousands--of people whose lives are on the line. So making it clear to Hezbollah or to any enemy of Israel that the United States stands ready to equip them in the case of such a contingency is one of the best things we can do to prevent it from happening. If Israel's enemies believe there is any doubt that the United States will step forward and help Israel resupply in case of such conflict, you have increased the probability that they will miscalculate and take such action. But if they know that we are committed to rearming Israel as often and as much as possible and necessary in order to help them defend themselves, then, the chances of them attacking are diminished. That is why this bill authorizes U.S. security assistance in foreign military financing to Israel at an amount no less than $3.3 billion a year for the next 10 years. By the way, this, in essence, is authorizing a memoranda of understanding signed between the Obama administration and Israel. We are authorizing that and putting it into law. We are also authorizing the President to transfer precision-guided munitions to reserve stocks as needed for legitimate self-defense by Israel. The world now knows-- and Israel's enemies now know--that the United States has put aside reserve precision-guided munitions that are there if Israel needs them for us to quickly transport them to them in case they come under attack and run low on the munitions they need to defend themselves. That is the first thing this bill does. Another thing it does, by the way, is the Combating BDS Act of 2019. For those not familiar with BDS, it is boycott, divestment, and sanctions. It is, in essence, by and large, to punish Israel by convincing companies--international companies and others--to boycott doing business with Israel or Israeli entities, to divest of investments in Israel or Israeli entities, and convincing governments to sanction Israel. This provision of the law does not outlaw boycott, divestments, and sanctions. If a United States company caves to this pressure and decides it is going to boycott or divest from Israel, they have the legal right to do so. This doesn't outlaw it. However, it does say if a State or local government decides that it is not going to do business or if the government is not going to issue contracts for goods or services with any company that is boycotting or divesting from Israel, they have a right to do that. I have heard the argument that this is about free speech. First of all, it is not about free speech. It is about foreign policy. We will talk about that more as the week goes on, but there are court cases out there that talk about how this is not an effort to influence a domestic political debate or to speak or take action in the form of speech that influences a domestic political debate. This is about influencing the behavior of a foreign government's foreign policy. The courts give broad discretion to Congress and the President in the setting of our foreign policy. Putting that aside for a moment, as I told already you, this doesn't in any way prevent anyone from participating in boycotting or divesting from Israel. All it says is that if you do, your clients, in the form of State or local governments, can boycott or divest from you in return. Free speech is a two-way street. Beyond that, it makes it very clear in the law that nothing in this law should be construed to violate anyone's First Amendment rights. These are the two provisions that help Israel and to prevent the sort of economic warfare that is being driven against them and to make clear to their adversaries that the United States stands ready to resupply and strengthen Israel's ability to defend itself--not just helping Israel defend itself if it comes under attack but, frankly, in the hopes of deterring an attack against Israel. We do that by authorizing and putting into law the memorandum of understanding that was signed by the Obama administration in September of 2016. In addition, the third thing the bill does is to deal with Jordan. Jordan is a U.S. ally. It is, by the way, a nation that, along with Egypt, has been a linchpin of Israel's security in the region, and it is also a nation that has faced an onslaught of refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria. They face the threat from ISIS, as well. In S. 1, we reauthorize the United States-Jordan Defense Cooperation Act, which passed in 2015. It is an act that, among other things, includes Jordan on the list of countries that are eligible for certain streamlined defense sales, because Jordan itself is facing many of the same challenges, particularly because of our pullout from Syria. If you think the pullout from Syria--especially from southeastern Syria--is a good thing for Jordan, you are wrong. Once the United States leaves that area, the Iranian influence will grow, and potentially, the ISIS influence will grow. It will become harder--not easier--on Jordan. This is the least we can do to strengthen an important ally in this legion. The last piece is one sponsored by the soon-to-be chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Risch--the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act. It does three principle things. It requires the Treasury to determine whether the Central Bank of Syria is a financial institution that launders money for the regime. I am not sure it will take them long to conclude that they are, but that opens the door for the second thing it does, and that is new sanctions on anyone who does business with or provides financing to the Syrian regime. It also, by the way, requires the administration to brief us here in Congress as part of our oversight role on what our strategy is to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian products and humanitarian assistance inside Syria. Hopefully, we will be on this bill, but as the week goes on, I sadly will have to come to the floor and point out the horrifying atrocities that have been committed and that, I believe 50 and 100 years from now, people will look back at as one of the most horrifying things that have happened in this century. The people who have done this should be held to account. This law puts in place not just requiring the administration to tell us what they plan to do in the short term to help people to the extent possible, but it also puts in place the ability to hold those who have done this responsible and accountable for what they did and what they continue to do. I sincerely hope that we can get on this because the American people in the face of all this noise that is out there are in desperate need of reassurance that our Republic still works and that, at a minimum, we can still agree on what we agree on and we don't use the pretext of a shutdown to shut down the Senate. As I remind everyone again--and I know we have some new Members--this body unanimously passed a bill to fund the government. I have my views on this shutdown, and I don't understand the objection. It is $5 billion for spending on border security. By the way, it is not $5 billion on a wall. It is $5 billion to fund the top 10 priorities of the border security plan, and included in those top 10 are those of strengthening existing walls and barriers and building some new ones, but it includes far more than just a wall. I remind many of my colleagues who were here in 2013 that when we sponsored the Senate bill on immigration, we authorized four times as much in that bill for border security. Of course, the politics have changed, and so people's positions on the issue of border security have changed. That said, I am not in favor of government shutdowns. I don't think they make sense. The people have nothing to do with this. They are not responsible for this. Border agents, TSA employees, and Federal employees from these Agencies all across the country are missing paydays now. Their mortgage companies and their credit card companies don't care that there is a shutdown. They want to get paid or they will ruin your credit. I hope we can find a resolution for them--but also for the country--without our abandoning the reality that we need to deal with border security. Here is what I know, though. I don't believe shutting down the Senate and not allowing us to move forward on something as important as a Syria policy is the way to resolve the shutdown issue. You don't solve a shutdown with a shutdown. Shutting down the Senate and saying we are not doing anything here until we resolve this issue is not a constructive approach, and it is certainly not the way to start this new Congress. At a time when, I think, the Senate serves as important a role as it has in two decades, this country needs a Senate that is capable of functioning and agreeing on the things we agree on--on passing bills that have broad support and not allowing them to fall victim to debates that are unrelated to the issues at hand. I remind all of my colleagues who, just 2 or 3 weeks ago, joined me and others in criticizing the decision to draw down from Syria; that there isn't a lot we can do in Congress to force the President to stay there, but there are some things we can do to reassure our allies in the region that at least in the U.S. Senate they have our support--that Israel and Jordan and the innocents who have been tortured and killed in Syria have our support. We have a bill before the Senate, S.1, that does that, and I don't know why we are not looking forward to at least debating it. The vote we are taking in about 60 minutes or 59 minutes from now is not a vote to pass it. It is just a vote to begin debate on it. That is all it is. It is a vote to begin debate on it. To not even allow debate to begin on something we basically largely agree on may make a lot of sense in the hallways here, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to the men and women back home who are already watching the government shutdown with disdain and who then, on top of it, see that not even the Senate can function in the midst of all of this. I hope, whether it is today or later this week, my colleagues across the aisle will reconsider their objection to even beginning debate so we can get on this and get to work on behalf of the men and women of this country for whom we work and represent. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, earlier today, this morning, the administration announced the intent to remove all American troops--not a large presence, but all Americans troops--from Syria. I want to be clear, as I have been all day about this, that I believe it is a catastrophic mistake that will have grave consequences for the United States, for our interests, and our allies in the months and years to come. I want to take a moment to come here and explain why. The rationale behind the decision we were given today by the administration is that there is no longer a need for U.S. presence in Syria because ISIS has been defeated. Just a week ago, the President's own envoy to the global coalition on ISIS said this, and I want to quote from the statement that he gave last week to the press. He said: [T]he end of ISIS will be a much more long-term initiative. Nobody is declaring a mission accomplished. We know that once the physical space is defeated we can't just pick up and leave. This was a quote from the President's own envoy to the global coalition on ISIS--not 6 months ago, 6 days ago. We don't have time here or I could take up all the time of the Senate to outline statement after statement from military and diplomatic officials in the administration basically echoing the same point. The point that we are making is this. ISIS still controls territory, particularly, in the Euphrates River valley of Syria. From the territory they still control, they generate money, they control the population, and they produce propaganda videos. Even if that is taken away, ISIS is on its way to turning into an insurgency--meaning, no longer an organization that controls vast spaces of land or has a capital city--an insurgency like we saw in Iraq, an insurgency like what al-Qaida operated like and continues to operate like. Insurgencies in many ways are even harder to defeat because they don't wave a flag and tell you where they are, because they meld into the population by day and then wreak havoc and suffering by night. I am not here to deny there hasn't been true progress made against ISIS. There absolutely has. If you look at what ISIS had, what ISIS controlled when this administration began and where they are today, this has been a substantial achievement, but we have to finish the job. The job is not finished. Why has ISIS's presence in Syria been degraded? It is because the United States, with a very limited military presence--we are not talking Afghanistan here with tens of thousands of troops. We are not talking Iraq here with a massive surge. We are talking about a very capable but light footprint of American primarily trainers and people there to assist, although they most certainly can fight and have done so in the past. Working alongside a ground force made up of the Syrian Democratic Forces--primarily Arabs--and the Kurdish forces from the YPG, who are highly capable fighters from the Kurds, they have been on the ground fighting with our assistance and our direction and sometimes our direct involvement against ISIS in the Euphrates River valley. They are the reason why in that part of Syria ISIS's control has rapidly degraded. They are the reason, but they are the ones fighting. That has been a difficult thing to achieve because the No. 1 objective of the Kurds is to protect Kurdish cities and towns in northern Syria. There is a longstanding dispute between the Kurds and Turkey. There is a Kurdish organization in Turkey, and then there is one affiliated with them housed in northern Syria and in cities that are Kurdish cities. Their No. 1 priority is maintaining their cities. That is what they care about the most. Getting them to actually take time out from that interest and confront ISIS was not easy. It has been an enormous achievement to partner and colocate with them in fighting and in degrading ISIS in that area. As I said, it has not been easy because ISIS is not their top priority. Their No. 1 priority is maintaining control of the Kurdish towns and cities in northern Syria and, more importantly, preventing Turkey and the Turkish military from taking it from them. They have been threatening to pull out of this ISIS effort for a long time, most recently when Erdogan went around saying: I am on the verge. I am going to invade. I am coming in. Any day now I am going after the Kurds in Syria. We already knew that if that happened, many of these YPG forces--the Kurds--would abandon the fight on ISIS and immediately be pulled into defending the Kurdish cities. Now that are we are pulling out, now that we are retreating, now that we are abandoning this effort, I can guarantee you that the Kurdish forces are going to leave. They are going back to the Kurdish areas to prepare to confront the Turkish military activity that they have announced and that could be coming at any moment. You know what that means? That means that there will no longer be anyone on the ground in the Euphrates River valley attacking ISIS. Let me tell you what comes next. Now the pressure is off from ISIS. Now they can really regroup. This is going to give them an enormous propaganda victory. As they take more and more territory, they are going to brag about it. That is going to help them recruit new fighters and resurrect themselves. It is going to give them more territory. It is going to give them access to more money. All of that is going to allow them to expand their insurgency plan. They are going to have more people, more money, and more territory to do it from because, again, the Kurds are going to leave. Now that we are leaving, they are leaving, and no one will be fighting ISIS on the ground in the Euphrates River valley. In fact, ISIS might even be able to restart its specialized military training in that area. We are allowing ISIS to come back. Before long, we are all going to be talking about ISIS again--producing videos, kidnapping people, beheading people, taking territory, terrorizing people, and doing it as an insurgency, which is even harder to fight, as I said earlier. Why is that happening? Who are the winners of all this? Let me tell you, I think the one winner here has been Erdogan. He has absolutely played us on this. It is truly stunning. He has spent months pressuring the United States to abandon the Kurds--diplomatically and in phone calls to the President and to others. He has spent months doing that. He has been putting pressure on the one side while also threatening military action on the other, in essence, saying: I am coming into Syria--the Turks--and I am going after the YPG--the Kurds--and I know U.S. troops are embedded alongside them, and you should be careful because we are coming in. He has been doing this for months. The goal of it the whole time was to separate the United States from the Kurds, to get us to break up this arrangement that we had with them to fight ISIS, and it worked. He has achieved it. It is truly unbelievable that he has been able to get us to back down. I want everyone to think about this additional complication. Turkey is a member of NATO. Article 5 of NATO says that if a NATO member is attacked, you all have to come to their defense and it is attack on all of us. While there is some wiggle room about what the appropriate response should be, the bottom line is that the Turks have in the past threatened to invoke article 5. Think about this for a moment. Think about for a moment if after being attacked, the Kurds--both in Turkey and in Syria--decide to attack back, as they will to defend themselves. Turkey is going to say: We are under attack from Kurdish forces and the YPG. We invoke article 5. I want you to think for a moment about what position that puts the United States in. We have a choice. We can stand behind our article 5 commitment to NATO, but if we do so, we are going to have to help the Turks defeat--meaning kill--the very people who we were just colocated with today and yesterday and for months. The very people we have been working with to defeat ISIS for over 2\1/2\ years are now people that, if we allow article 5 to be invoked by Turkey, we are going to have to join in trying to defeat them--meaning kill. The other alternative is to not respect article 5 and not come to their defense, and then you have placed the entire NATO alliance in doubt because it will have been invoked for the second time in its history, and the United States didn't respond to it. We lose either way. We either help them kill the Kurds, our partners, as recently as today, or we ignore article 5. That sounds pretty dramatic, and there is some wiggle room as to what the appropriate response would be. Let there be no doubt, Erdogan is the kind of geopolitical hardball player to trigger this sort of response, and he has threatened to do it in the past--truly, unbelievable. Who is the other big winner? Russia. In fact, their embassy in the United States already put out a tweet celebrating the decision. Why? First of all, because America is now out. At some point, people are going to have to sit down and decide what is the future of a post-ISIS Syria. You know who will be at that table? The Turks will be at that table because they are going to have a military presence in northern Syria. The Iranians are going to be at the table because they are the closest allies Assad has. Assad will be at the table, and Putin will be at the table. Guess who will not be at the table? The United States of America. Vladimir Putin, of course, is celebrating this decision because America basically walked away and gave up its seat at the table. We have no presence there any longer, and we have turned over this country and its future and its meaning in the region to Vladimir Putin and Iran and Assad. Also, another reason why Putin is a big winner is because you can just imagine those meetings now when Putin goes to the Middle East and meets with the Egyptians and the Saudis and the Jordanians, and, frankly, even the Israelis. You know what he will say to them? He will say to them: I don't know why you are counting on America. I don't know why you are relying on America. They are unreliable. Vladimir Putin will say: Look at me. I stood by Assad. Even after the whole world came after him, I stood by him. I didn't retreat. Look at America. They abandoned these Kurds to be slaughtered by the Turks and maybe by the regime, and you are going to put the future and the security of your country in the hands of an unreliable and erratic partner like the United States? It is a huge victory for Putin in that regard. By the way, put yourself in the position of the Kurds facing an onslaught from the Turkish military. You have now given them two choices. They can partner up with Russia as their protector against Turkey or they can partner up with the regime in Iran. That is the choice we have left them with. The other big winners in all this are Iran and Hezbollah. For a long time, Assad has allowed Iran to use Syria as a transit point to arm Hezbollah in Lebanon so Lebanon can threaten and attack Israel. They will now be able to step up those efforts. There is no U.S. presence in Syria. There is no U.S. seat at the table, and you can fully expect that Iran is going to step up their engagement in Syria with Hezbollah. Let me tell you why that is a problem. I will get to that in a moment. It has to do with Israel, but here is the bottom line. You can fully expect now that Iran is going to step up its own presence through the IRGC and through Hezbollah and through the militias they have empowered in the region right on the border with Israel. Iran now has the ability to put weaponry and killers right across the Golan Heights, right on the border with Israel. The other big winner in all of this, of course, is Hezbollah. As I said, they now have expanded their area and their supply route. So I would be remiss if I didn't mention that with all this talk of ISIS, there is still an al-Qaida presence in Syria. They were called Nusra Front. Now it is Hurras al-Deen. They can change their name all they want, it is al-Qaida. They have operatives in Syria, and al-Qaida spends a lot of time planning external operations. We thank our men and women in Homeland Security, in the military, in our security systems and intelligence systems for protecting us, but al-Qaida spends all day long plotting and thinking about how to strike the United States around the world and here in the homeland, and the lack of a U.S. presence in Syria means that the Syrian branch of al-Qaida, Hurrus al-Deen, now has the ability to operate in a space that is even more desirable than what they have today. The last winner in all this is surprising because you may ask: What does it have to do with Syria? It is China. You can just imagine the meetings now that China is going to be having throughout Asia. You have all these countries in Asia which see this sort of growing conflict between the United States and China, and they are trying to figure out how do we stay out of this fight, but if we are forced to pick, which side do we pick? They prefer us. We are more reliable. We are more capable. We believe in democracy and human rights and respecting them and that sort of thing, but China in those meetings is going to say: America is a power in decline. America is unreliable. America is erratic. The same argument that Putin is going to use in the Middle East and in Europe is the argument China is going to use against us all over the world and particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. Those are the implications of these kinds of decisions. They will increasingly go to places like Japan and South Korea and others and say: You know, do you really want to put all your eggs in the American basket because they are an unreliable ally. Look at what they did to the Kurds in Syria. Now, of course, there are losers, and obviously Israel, in this part, is one of them. The statement from the Prime Minister of Israel is pretty telling. He said: It is an American decision. We are not going to interfere with it, but we are going to do whatever it takes to protect our interests in this area. Translation? They are going to step up their attacks. They are already conducting strikes inside Syria. Every time they see a dangerous rocket system moving toward Hezbollah, anytime something that looks like it could threaten Israel from Syria pops up, they go in there, and they blow it up. They are going to have to step up those efforts now because as those efforts increase, they are going to have to get more aggressive, and eventually they are going to kill Iranians. They are going to kill a lot of people in Hezbollah, but they are going to kill Iranians, and the Iranians are going to respond. Hezbollah is going to respond, and they are probably eventually going to respond by launching a vast volume of rockets coming over from Lebanon, and Israel is going to have to respond to that. Suddenly, we have the next Israel-Hezbollah war, except this one is going to be much deadlier than the one 10 years ago because now Hezbollah has more rockets, better rockets that have longer range and precision in their guidance. So even if Israel has this incredible defense system, it can be overwhelmed by volume. It is such a small country. What do you think is going to happen when population centers in Israel cannot be protected from these attacks? Israel is going to respond, as they always have had to do in their self-defense, with disproportionate force, and we are going to have an all-out war potentially between Israel versus Iran and Hezbollah, and who knows where that leads. I assure you, the United States is going to be called upon to help in that regard, at a minimum, by supplying Israel and maybe more. Who else could that pull in? This is not a game. There are serious repercussions if you think forward about what could happen next and how quickly this could destabilize the region and how quickly the pullout of a small American presence could lead to a much larger one down the road. Ultimately, Israel is an enormous loser here because by the United States retreating, we have given the green light for Iran to expand its presence right on their border. This is the closest--other than Lebanon and Hezbollah--this is now the closest Iran has ever been to Israeli territory, just across the Golan Heights. So think about it for a moment. You are Israel. You have problems in Judea and Samaria with the Palestinian Authority, you have issues in Gaza, you have Hezbollah in Lebanon, and now you have Iran with a growing presence just north of you in Syria. You are encircled. This is the predicament this helps creates. By far, the biggest loser in this endeavor is the United States of America. We have surrendered our influence in the outcome of this conflict in Syria. At some point, nations are going to sit down and figure out what Syria looks like moving forward, and we will have zero role to play in it. It will be decided by the Turks and the Russians and primarily the Iranians and Assad, and we will have no role to play in it. We have also undermined other nations' trust in the reliability of the American alliance, and the implications of that are extraordinary. If you think about the world today and nations like Japan and South Korea and Saudi Arabia and Egypt, these are countries that either can immediately or may in the future decide they need nuclear weapons to protect themselves: South Korea from North Korea, Japan from China, Saudi Arabia from Iran, Egypt from Iran. The reason many of these countries have been willing not to develop nuclear weapons is because the United States has, in the case of South Korea and Japan, directly assured their security, and that has kept the peace. What happens when more and more nations develop weapons of mass destruction the way India and Pakistan have--about each other. Well, you have more weapons of mass destruction, and then it creates the possibility of miscalculation or, even worse, that a government--for example, in Saudi Arabia or in Egypt--is overthrown and some radical regime takes hold and they have nuclear weapons or they proliferate and sell it to people and that is used. This is far-fetched for some people. This is reality. This is how foreign policy should be made, not just thinking about what is in front of you today but what could happen and the chain of events that could be triggered by a decision. This is not a game. This is serious stuff. On top of all that, losing the trust of our allies and nations around the world, losing our influence in a solution in Syria--ISIS is going to reemerge. It is not going to be the same ISIS it was before, controlling vast amounts of territory, but I will tell you what, al- Qaida never controlled vast amounts of territory. Operating from caves and hideouts throughout the Middle East, they carried out 9/11 and other threats against the United States and the homeland that were thwarted. ISIS is going to reemerge now. They are once again going to be able to recruit people. They are going to have an insurgency that is going to be able to strike and perhaps externally plot. They are going to be able, from that presence they have in Syria, to influence their affiliates everywhere from the Philippines to Central Africa, to other countries in the region. That is why I am here to tell you this is a catastrophic decision. Forget, for a moment, about no one being notified; it was just announced at the last minute. I haven't heard a single member of the administration--not one, not the Secretary of Defense, not the Secretary of State--who is going to own this decision? Who is willing to step forward and tell the American people or Congress, here is why we are making this decision, and here is the strategy it is in furtherance of? Someone explain that. It is important. The American people deserve to know. I haven't heard that today. We haven't heard it before. We thought we had the outlines of some strategy here. All that has been taken away. Why are we doing this? What is the rationale and what comes next? What is the plan to keep ISIS from reemerging? What is the plan to keep Iran from growing its presence in Southern Syria and threatening Israel? What is the plan to deal with the al-Qaida element that already exists there? What is our role? What role are we going to play in a post-ISIS and post-al-Qaida Syria--and particularly as it relates to whether it can be used as a base of operations against our interests and our men and women in uniform stationed in the region. None of that has been outlined. Is anyone in the administration going to own this and explain it? Because so far we haven't heard it, and this is an important public policy decision. I hope I am wrong about all this. I hope this all works out, but it is not going to, and I am telling you, these are the kinds of decisions that define Presidencies. These are the kinds of mistakes that end up haunting a nation for years and years and years thereafter. It is the hard lesson of Iraq. It is the hard lesson of decisions made at other times in our history. I hope this can be reversed. I hope this can be reexamined because I honestly believe--put politics aside-- I honestly believe this is a catastrophic decision for America's national security interests. If this stands, we in this Congress and we as a nation are going to be dealing with the consequences of it for years to come. We will remember this day as the day that started it all. We will remember this day as a major blunder, in which by ignoring the advice of every diplomatic and military official who has spoken about this publicly for the last 2 years, we made a decision, for reasons that have not yet been explained, that triggered--that triggered--a series of events that no one foresaw at the time but proved to be much more dangerous and much costlier than anything we are doing there now. So I honestly and sincerely hope someone in the administration is listening and that there is a chance to reverse or amend this decision before it is too late. I yield the floor.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, we are talking about the subject of justice, and I thought it would be appropriate to take a couple of minutes here, before we get ready to vote, to signify a unique injustice that occurred in the State of Florida 70 years ago. In July of 1949, a White couple was driving their truck when it broke down on a rural road near Groveland, FL. Two Black men, Walter Irvin and Samuel Shepherd, stopped to help the couple. What would follow would be a horrifying injustice that haunts Florida and truly the Nation to this day. Norma Padgett was the White woman in that truck. She was 17 years old. She told police she was abducted and raped by four Black men. Many locals at the time doubted her story. Her estranged husband was known to be a drinker and to become violent with her. Many suspected she made up these accusations to cover up for his abuse. The sheriff's office, nevertheless, detained three men for this alleged crime. Walter Irvin and Samuel Shepherd, the two men who stopped to help the couple, were both World War II veterans. They both denied abducting or raping the woman. Nevertheless, they were detained, and they were brutally beaten in the basement of the sheriff's office, in the jail, until they confessed to a crime they did not commit. A few days later, Mr. Shepherd's family home was burned to the ground. At the time that truck broke down, a third man, 16-year-old Charles Greenlee--so, really, a boy--was 20 miles away, which was a fact that was testified to by a store watchman. He didn't even know Mr. Irvin or Mr. Shepherd. The woman's own husband testified he was not one of the four men whom he alleged had brutally beaten him and abducted and raped his wife. Yet he too was taken to the basement of that jail and was brutally beaten. A fourth man, Earnest Thomas, was never arrested because he was hunted down for over 30 hours by an armed posse of over 1,000 men, including the county sheriff. They found him sleeping under a tree in Madison County, FL, and they shot him to death. Greenlee, Irvin, and Shepherd were tried. The judge who presided over that case denied their attorney access to exculpatory evidence. The judge in that case barred testimony about how they had been beaten until they had confessed. Then an all-White jury convicted them. It sentenced Irvin and Shepherd to death and sentenced 16-year-old Greenlee to life in prison. A young attorney named Thurgood Marshall took up their case. He appealed it to the Supreme Court of the United States, which found they did not receive a fair trial. In fact, Justice Robert Jackson said the trial was ``one of the best examples of one of the worst menaces to American justice.'' The Supreme Court ordered a retrial. A few months later, the same sheriff who was part of that posse picked up Mr. Irvin and Mr. Shepherd from jail in order to transport them from prison to a hearing before the trial. He pulled his car over and pulled the two men--handcuffed to each other--out of the car and shot them. Mr. Shepherd died. Mr. Irvin played dead. The FBI later found evidence that he had been shot while lying on the ground, handcuffed to Mr. Shepherd. By the way, lying wounded, his treatment was delayed. The hospital refused to transport him because he was a Black man. Mr. Irvin was eventually retried. He was again convicted in another sham trial and was again sentenced to death. By 1955, the facts of the case were so troubling that Florida Governor LeRoy Collins took him off death row and commuted his sentence to life in prison. Finally, in 1968, he was paroled by Governor Claude Kirk. One year later, Mr. Irvin returned to Lake County for a funeral. He was found dead in his car. Mr. Greenlee, the 16-year-old, at the time of the manufactured crime, was paroled in 1960. He left Florida and died in April of 2012 at the age of 78. In 2017, the Florida Legislature unanimously voted to issue what is now known as the Groveland Four a formal and heartfelt apology, and they asked the State's cabinet to undertake an expedited review of the case and issue pardons. I come here today to talk about this case because, while there is nothing we can do to give Mr. Thomas or Mr. Shepherd back their lives and while there is nothing we can do to give Mr. Irvin or Mr. Greenlee back the years they spent in jail for a crime they did not commit, we can give these men back their good names. What we can do now in Florida, as a State, is to seek the forgiveness of their families and of them for the grave injustice that was committed against them. This is why I come to the Senate floor today-- to urge the new Florida cabinet to do this as soon as possible, after they take office next month, because after 70 years, it is time for Florida to do the right thing for the Groveland Four. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, before I speak on the topic that I came to the floor to speak about, which is the resolution currently before the Senate, I wanted to just echo the commentary made about our colleague Senator Heller. I have enjoyed our time working together. I spent 6 years of my childhood growing up in Las Vegas, so we have a lot of mutual friends. He knows a lot of the people I grew up with and is a part of our family. He will be sorely missed here. I am sure he will be warmly welcomed back home to the community and to his family. We all look forward to seeing the future endeavors lying ahead for him. I know he still has much to offer the Nation and the State of Nevada. S.J. Res. 54 Madam President, one of the things that makes service in the Senate meaningful is when we get to discuss big issues of great importance. I want to start by thanking the authors of this War Powers Resolution on Yemen because, while I may not agree with it--and I am going to describe why in a moment--I think it is important that the Senate have big debates about big topics and play its rightful role. The Senate and the legislative branch have an important role to play in setting the foreign policy of the United States. I actually don't think the War Powers Act is constitutional. I believe it is an unconstitutional restraint on the power of the Commander in Chief, and even if it were constitutional, I do not believe that our engagement, or what we are doing in Yemen with the Saudi UAE coalition, rises to a level of triggering it. That doesn't mean that Congress should not be involved. Frankly, the one way to be involved if you wanted to, if you wanted to pronounce yourself on a matter of this topic, you should file to cut off the money. I wouldn't support it, but that is where Congress's power really comes from. Shut off the money; say that no money can be spent on this effort. Few people are willing to do that, so we rely on these other mechanisms that exist in our law. But I want to talk more about why I think it is bad idea to vote for this and why I hope more of my colleagues will join me in opposing it. First of all, I understand what is happening. This resolution is not new; it has been discussed before. It existed for a number of months, well before Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi's brutal murder at the Saudi consulate in Yemen. So this is not a new issue, but it has become for many Members proxy--a vehicle by which they can express displeasure at the way the administration and the President have responded to the murder of Mr. Khashoggi. I think what has happened to Mr. Khashoggi is an outrage. I don't need a smoking gun or an intelligence briefing to tell me that the Crown Prince is responsible. If you know anything about Saudi Arabia, if you know anything about how their government works, and if you know anything about the Crown Prince, you know that there is no way that 17 guys close to him get on an airplane, fly to a third country, chop up a guy in a consulate, dispose of the body, and fly back, and he didn't know anything about it. It is just not real. It is also consistent with a pattern of behavior by the Crown Prince. He literally kidnapped the Prime Minister of Lebanon about a year and a half ago. He has jailed multiple members of his family and government because they weren't in support of his being the successor to the King. This is a pattern of behavior that needs to be dealt with. I do not believe dealing with it requires us to shatter the Saudi-U.S. alliance. Foreign policy is hard because it must be infused with our values and the defense of human rights. And I say this with humility--I hold my record up to that of anyone in this Chamber when it comes to fighting on behalf of human rights and humanitarian causes, and we have a lot of great champions of that in the U.S. Senate. But we also have to recognize that this has to be balanced sometimes with realism, and it requires us to make difficult decisions. The interesting thing about foreign policy is that it is often not a choice between a great idea and a bad idea; it is often a choice between two less-than-ideal outcomes, and you are trying to figure out which one would do the least harm and make the most sense. In many ways, that is what we are facing here in this debate about the Saudi- U.S. alliance. I have long recognized and condemned the horrifying human rights violations that occur at a systemic level in Saudi Arabia, and I will continue to do so. But I also recognize that there is a threat in the Middle East posed by Iran and their ambitions that must be confronted, and it must be confronted now, regionally, or eventually it will pull the United States into direct conflict. Saudi Arabia and our alliance is a key part of that coalition, so it would be a mistake to shatter it. In the case of Yemen, this has become a proxy issue for the broader issue of the murder of Mr. Khashoggi. Hopefully later today, there will be a resolution offered by the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and the majority leader--I hope others will join in--that makes very clear that the vast majority of Members in this Chamber condemn what happened to Mr. Khashoggi and hold the Crown Prince responsible for his murder. There is no disputing that what is happening in Yemen is a horrifying humanitarian tragedy. The numbers speak for themselves. Over 57,000 human beings have lost their lives. Half the country's population of 28 million people is starving to death, including many women and children, and 2.3 million people have been displaced from their homes. It is horrifying, and there is plenty of blame to go around, including Iran and their Houthi surrogates. The first question I would ask is, If this resolution passes and were to become law, would it end this conflict? If we pass this and the White House were somehow forced to do what we are asking them to do, it wouldn't end this conflict. This conflict will continue, this fight will continue, and the reason why is pretty straightforward: The Saudis view the Houthis as agents of Iran. They already see agents of Iran via Hezbollah, Syria, and Iraq obviously for a long time in Lebanon, and now, to their west and south, Yemen. They are not just agents of Iran. They have launched rockets and ballistic missiles into Saudi Arabia, at their civilian populations, including efforts to kill members of the Saudi royal family and government leadership. They have threatened global shipping in the region, where over 400 million barrels of oil a day transit--critical to the world's energy supplies. So they are going to have a war. There is no way Saudi Arabia or the UAE or any of these countries are going to allow themselves to be encircled by Iranian agents. This conflict will continue irrespective of what we do, and the Saudis will have no problem buying weapons. One of the sad facts about the world today is that countries have plenty of sources from which they can buy this weaponry and plenty of countries and arms dealers who are willing to sell it to them. Will this resolution, if it passes, end the suffering? The answer, sadly, is no, it will not. In fact, it is the Houthis who have blocked the two access roads that lead to the port, making it difficult to deliver aid. It is the Houthis who have placed mines at the entrance of the port. It is the Houthis, by the way, who are torturing people-- torturing people. We have seen reports of faces being smashed by batons, of people hanging from chains by their genitals and by their wrists for weeks in places, people being scorched with acid. That is the Houthis. That will continue. Will this end the warfare? It will not. It will not end the warfare. In fact, I think it has the potential to trigger broader warfare. First of all, it won't end the warfare because right now they are having peace talks. Put yourself in common sense for a moment, and ask yourself: If you are the Houthis and you just read in the newspaper that now the U.S. Senate has voted to end support for Saudi Arabia--do you know what they are thinking? We don't need a peace deal; we might be able to win this thing now. They don't know that it is not going to become law, that the House is not going to take it up. They don't know any of that. They just read that the United States is weakening in its support of Saudi Arabia, and they think, we don't need a peace deal. It is going to embolden them to not strike a peace deal. But here is where I think it really gets dangerous. The United States stops its support of Saudi Arabia. Houthis establish more control and more stability in their control in areas of Yemen. What are they going to do then? Are they then going to go and rebuild the country, build roads and bridges, and move on to an era of prosperity and peace? They are not. They are going to become what they are but in an expanded way--agents of Iranian influence and of Iranian-sponsored violence. Here is what you can expect to see if the Houthis establish control of key areas of Yemen and are able to reach a stalemate or, worse, are able to solidify their grip on power: You are going to see hundreds of ballistic missiles launched against Saudi Arabia--missiles that, by the way, in a contingency where there is a crisis between the United States and Iran, would also be able to target American service men and women serving in the region. You are going to see these explosive UAVs that they have already used in attacking Saudi Arabia. Do you know what Saudi Arabia is going to do in response? They are going to hit them back even harder. In fact, they may even hit Iran, triggering an even broader war. And it gets worse. It gets worse because you can also see them using explosive boats and anti-ship missiles to cut off shipping lanes in the Arabian Gulf. At that point, you will see the U.S. Navy called upon to go in there and reopen shipping because the global energy supply is relying upon it, and the world looks to the United States as a guarantor of the freedom of the seas. In essence, this could very well lead, in the long run, to an even broader and more dangerous conflict that could involve us and could pull us in. That is the way we need to think about these issues--not just what is before us now. You have to think two or three steps ahead, and two or three steps ahead is that this could become a broader conflict that forces us in. Imagine it for a moment. We know for a fact that Iran's plans are to use surrogates to attack the United States in instances of a crisis. That is why these Shia militias in Iraq are so dangerous. At a moment's notice, they could decide they are going to start attacking American troops in Iraq, and Iran is going to say: It wasn't us; it was the Shia militia. That is why Hezbollah in Syria is so dangerous. That is why Lebanese Hezbollah is so dangerous. That is why they have cells all over the world ready to be activated at a moment of crisis as an asymmetrical way for Iran to attack the United States without direct attribution. And now we are going to give them one more--the Houthis in Yemen to target our service men and women and our allies in the region, and then we will have to respond, and then we will be in a war involving American service men and women. Nothing we are doing now guarantees that won't happen anyway, but I am telling you that if we pull out of this effort, it makes it likely. I think it makes it likely that we will see a broader conflict in the very near future that will directly involve the United States of America. On this final point, I will say that it is important for us to think about these things pragmatically because we lose our influence over the conduct of this war. The Saudi authorities and their military do not do a good job of respecting the rules of war. In fact, they have a military culture in Saudi Arabia where you are more likely to get punished for not taking the shot than for blowing up a bus full of children or hitting a residential project. You are more likely to be punished for not taking the shot than for taking the shot that kills innocents. That has to change, and we have some level of influence now, given the fact that we are engaged with them, to sort of steer them in that direction and explain to them what troubles our alliance here in Washington. We lose that influence if we walk away. I do sympathize with the two points behind this resolution: reasserting congressional authority on foreign policy--I agree we need to have more oversight and engagement, and I agree that the conduct of this war in Yemen is horrifying and that what is happening to civilians there is terrible. I just don't think our pulling out makes it better. I actually think it makes it worse, and I actually think that in the long run, it sucks America into a much broader and more dangerous conflict. That is why I hope more Senators here today will oppose this resolution. We do need to send a clear message to Saudi Arabia that what the Crown Prince did to Mr. Khashoggi is unacceptable, but this is the wrong way to do the right thing. I yield the floor.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, we have just heard the words of the senior Senator from my State, and I wanted to just take a moment because it reminded me of a truism that came to mind as I heard him speak and as I reflected back on our almost 8 years of service here together. Political divisions have existed in our country since its very beginning. What has changed is, there was a time not so long ago when Americans knew each other; when Americans had political differences, but they also served on the PTA board together; when we disagreed about whom to vote for, but we coached each other's kids in Little League or we were members of the same church and worshiped together or we lived side by side as neighbors. When all you know about someone is whom they voted for or what their political positions are, it is easy to dislike them, but when you know them as a fellow parent, as a neighbor, as your children's coach, as someone you live side by side with, then you know them as a person. It is a lot easier to dislike a political opponent than it is to dislike the whole person. I raise that point with you because I am very proud of the relationship, the working relationship, we have had in our 8 years here together. One of the things that made that possible is that I knew Bill Nelson as a person. If all I knew about him was that he and I did not always vote the same way on every issue--that is what most people know about us who serve here. That is one of the challenges we so often face. The men and women we represent in our representative parties and in our representative political leanings usually only know about our colleagues in the 3 minutes they may see us in a television interview, but we get to know each other as people. We get to know each other outside of politics. I knew Bill Nelson, and I know Bill Nelson, as a person and as a man. I am an enormous admirer of his knowledge of Florida. He knows every nook and cranny of the State. He might not remember this, but we were together on a Coast Guard aircraft after one of our storms, and as we overflew the State from above, he was pointing out and identifying down at the street level every corner of the geography of the State. I remember thinking: I have been in Florida politics for awhile. I know the State fairly well, but he knew it down to the street level. So to try to keep pace, I went back and opened up the Atlas and tried to replicate 25, 30 years of State service to try to at least be in the same neighborhood as he is in his knowledge of our State. It is incredibly impressive. It wasn't something he memorized by looking at a book. It was because he had been to all of these places at some point during his time of service to our State. I would say that certainly in the last quarter century, there has been no greater champion not just for Florida's space industry but for the space program; not just for NASA but for all of it, for the belief that great nations do great things; that they explore the heavens. There has been no greater champion for it. His leaving the Senate will be a tremendous loss and will require all of us to work harder to ensure that America remains a nation active and engaged in space. Above all else, I knew him--and know him--as a good man. I emphasize the word ``man'' because I think oftentimes in our modern culture we have developed a warped sense of what it truly takes to be a strong and good person. We live in an era in which we celebrate pride and arrogance, but I have learned, through the example of watching him up close, that Bill Nelson is a man with the kind of humility that our common faith tries to instill in us. He is a man that, at a time when it is so easy to be indifferent to the suffering of others, in his service here, has been a man of compassion. He told you just a handful of stories. There are so many more real human beings with whom he has stayed engaged in cases involving them, without cameras, without press, without bumper stickers, without documentaries, or any sort of recognition that so often people seek in the political process. We live in a time where being crude and abrasive is celebrated as strength, while decency is oftentimes ridiculed as weakness. Bill Nelson has been an example of decency. I cannot recall a single time in our 8 years of service together in which he did anything to harm me, embarrass me, or in any way create unnecessary conflict--in fact, any conflict--on a personal level. In fact, I would say the worst thing he ever did to me was he once, in front of an audience, accused me of being a moderate. It goes further than that. Our staffs would travel together across the State. Sometimes people would be shocked by it. They would gasp when my regional director and his regional director would share a ride to wind up at an event together, as if somehow Republicans and Democrats are supposed to be allergic to each other, when, in fact, in the end, no matter how we view our politics, we are all going to be in this Nation for the rest of our lives, so we better figure out a way to work together on the issues that will impact us all. I will greatly miss the opportunity to continue to serve with him. I know his service to our Nation and our State is not finished. I know he will find new endeavors. I know this simply because he is not one who is going to sit back and rest and reflect. He is going to keep working. I am excited to see what God's plans are for the rest of his years. I believe there will be many more because, despite the differences in our dates of birth--I am not saying he is old; I am saying he is older than I am--he could probably still beat me--in fact, he probably could always beat me--in a pullup contest or a pushup contest. This is actually not an exaggeration. It is true, which is why I have never challenged him to one. I will greatly miss working with him in the Senate, but I look forward to working with him beyond it. I will say this, and I think this is no exaggeration. When the history of Florida politics is written, the name Bill Nelson will be among the giants of Florida's political history, for few who have ever served at any level have done more for a longer period in the service of the people of the Sunshine State than the senior Senator who, moments ago, bid his farewell to a place and a Chamber where he has done so much good for our State, for our Nation, and for the world. I yield the floor.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, today I recognize the Florida State University Women's soccer team on securing its second NCAA National Championship, becoming one of six schools in NCAA women's soccer history to win multiple championships. Head coach Mark Krikorian led the Florida State team to the 2018 College Cup for the ninth time in his 14 seasons at Florida State, including four appearances in the national championship game. FSU defeated each of the last three national champions in the 2018 tournament on the way to the title, delivering a stunning end to Stanford University's 45-match unbeaten streak in the semifinal game. In the championship game against the University of North Carolina, Dallas Dorosy scored the game's only goal on a pass from Deyna Castellanos, in the 60th minute. This NCAA title complements the team's 2018 Atlantic Coast Conference championship win, the sixth in the past 8 years. I extend warm congratulations on their hard-earned national championship to players Caroline Jeffers, Megan Connolly, Kristina Lynch, Anna Patten, Jaelin Howell, Dallas Dorosy, Kirsten Pavlisko, Deyna Castellanos, Gloriana Villalobos, Kaycie Tillman, Taylor Hallmon, Natalia Kuikka, Olivia Bergau, Gabby Carle, Malia Berkley, Macayla Edwards, Kristen McFarland, Alexa Orrante, Bella Dorosy, Makala Thomas, Emily Madril, Clara Robbins, Yujie Zhao, and Brooke Bollinger, as well as head coach Mark Krikorian, assistant coach Mike Bristol, assistant coach Morinao Imaizumi, and director of operations Nathan Minion.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, we saw yesterday that the vote on the Yemen War Powers Resolution has brought to light the broader issue of our alliance with Saudi Arabia. This is an issue that people have heard a lot about, obviously, in the last few weeks with the murder of a journalist, and the Yemen resolution vote has become a proxy over that matter. I have been outspoken in the past about why it matters that we speak out strongly about and against the murder of this journalist, Khashoggi, but also that we talk more broadly about what we need to do about it and how it applies to our alliance with Saudi Arabia. I want to tailor my comments today by briefly talking about exactly what the implications are based on the questions I get from people. Why does the murder of Khashoggi matter, and why should we care about it? First, this is part of a pattern. The Crown Prince, who is effectively governing Saudi Arabia now, has been continually testing the limits of the world's patience and also the limits of our alliance. There is a pattern here. We have seen it. He kidnapped, over 2 weeks, the Prime Minister of Lebanon. He has fractured an alliance that once existed with the Gulf Kingdoms. All of it has implications on U.S. national security. So this is just one more escalation in a pattern of testing the limits of our alliance. Then there are human rights. Why do human rights matter? For a practical reason, human rights matter. From a practical perspective, when human rights are violated, the result is a humanitarian crisis, as we have seen often around the world, which often leads to mass migration. Let me they tell you something else a violation of human rights leads to: radicalization. When you violate a group of people, you mistreat them and abuse them; you leave them ripe for radicalization--for a radical group to come in and basically pull them in and say: We are the ones with the power, the weapons, and willingness to fight. Join us to go after your oppressors. In fact, if you look at what is happening in Yemen, much of it and the Houthis comes from years of abuses against the Shia. It doesn't justify the radicalization, but it explains that, as it does what we have seen in Iraq and in Syria. Here is one other thing that happens with human rights abuses. The abusers often get overthrown. Here is the problem. When an abusive government that violates human rights gets overthrown, the people who take over hate us because we have been supporting their abusers. These are practical reasons why human rights matter. And there is a moral one. Perhaps in the ranking and order, that is the most important one--the moral one. It is because that is what makes us different from China and Russia and other countries around the world. This is what makes America different. In fact, I would say that the murder of Mr. Khashoggi is more about us. When it comes to our debate, it is about us. It is not just about him. It is about us and who we are and about whether we, as a nation, are prepared to excuse, overlook, or sort of brush away this horrifying incident because somebody buys a lot of things from us or produces a lot of oil. Assuming we can mostly agree on that, the question is, What do we do about it? There is this false choice that has been presented to us. This false choice is that there are only two choices: Either ignore it or abandon and fracture the Saudi alliance. That is not true. There are other choices. It is not just either-or, those two. That is a false choice. What I do believe is the wrong thing to do about it is to pull and yank away our support for Saudi operations in Yemen. Let me explain why. The first is, right now, the only hope of ending that is not winning an armed conflict; it is a peace negotiation. And the people who have to be at that table aren't just the Houthis but the deposed Yemeni President, who is in Saudi Arabia. If we yank our support, the chances of that peace happening diminish significantly. In fact, the Houthis probably say: The Saudis no longer have U.S. support; they are not as strong as they used to be; I think we can beat them; we don't need a peace deal. So it actually makes peace less likely. The second thing, from a practical perspective, is that we will have less influence how the Saudis conduct the war, meaning that we will have no standing to have any influence whatsoever who they bomb, how often they bomb, and who they target. Some people argue that they will not have the weapons to do it with. That is not true. If you don't think you can buy weapons from immoral and amoral regimes around the world, you are wrong; they can. If you think that somehow this will end their engagement, you are wrong. The reason they are involved in Yemen is that they feel it is an effort by Iran--and, rightfully, they feel this way--to encircle them. If you look at it today, Iran is their enemy. Iran now controls large parts of Syria and is probably the closest government in the world to the Syrian regime to their northwest. Iraq is closer to Iran than it has ever been in the last 20 years to the north. Iran is to their east. Yemen would be to the south with the Houthis operating from there. They feel that they are being encircled by Iran. They are going to fight, whether we help them or not. We could lose our influence over how they do it. I want to tell you one more thing that will happen. If we pull our support, the chances of a broader, catastrophic conflict increases dramatically. I will lay one scenario out for you. If we pull our support, the Houthis get confident, and they start launching rockets into Saudi Arabia, targeting civilian populations and members of the royal family and killing people. The Saudis respond with disproportionate force or the same level of force, and we begin to escalate. They will not just respond against the Houthis. They may respond against the Iranian interests elsewhere. Suddenly, you have a real live shooting war that extends beyond this proxy fight. In response to that, the Houthis and Iranians use their presence on the coast and that port city to close off an important chokepoint, the Bab el-Mandeb, that choke point in the Red Sea that connects the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, where over 4.8 million barrels of oil a day go through. They start bombing oil tankers. They start hitting those, and all of a sudden, the world has to get engaged to open that up. This holds the real potential for a rapid escalation that could involve a much broader conflict than what we are seeing right now. I know that many of my colleagues yesterday voted for this resolution out of deep frustration. It was a message to the administration that the way they handled this Khashoggi incident is unacceptable. I hope that message has been received. But this is the wrong way to do the right thing, and that is to ensure that we recalibrate our alliance with Saudi Arabia into one where they understand they can't just do whatever they want. The Crown Prince cannot do whatever he wants. We have leverage in that regard. There is legislation that the Senator from New Jersey, Senator Menendez, and others offered. In addition to that, there are things we can do. The leadership of the Foreign Relations Committee asked for the imposition of Magnitsky sanctions. That is a powerful tool. I assure you, there are people in Saudi Arabia around the royal family, around the government, who deeply enjoy being able to invest and spend their wealth in the United States and around the world. They are going to care a lot if, as a result of this murder, they lose access to their money, to their property, to their visas. That is a real leverage point that we have. We have additional tools: religious freedom sanctions and visa bans against other individuals who may not have been involved in the Khashoggi incident but, again, another leverage point. We have leverage points in restricting U.S. investment. One of the biggest proposals the Crown Prince is making is that he wants to diversify their economy and encourage U.S. and Western investment into their economy. Placing restrictions on that investment is a significant leverage point. We should use this opportunity to use those leverage points to achieve real changes in our alliance and real changes in their behavior. For example, the release of Mr. Badawi, an activist in Saudi Arabia who has been repeatedly flogged in the past and unjustly held in prison--he should be released. The release of Saudi women activists who have been tortured and sexually harassed while in custody--they should be released. Education reforms--Saudi Arabia should finally stop publishing these textbooks encouraging and teaching anti-Semitism and radicalization and dangerous religious notions and theologies that encourage violence against others. We should require them to restore the Gulf alliance and restore their relationship with Qatar. If they don't, we will. We should force them to stop funding these Wahhabi schools around the world, in which they are exporting radicalization. All of these things need to happen. There may be other conditions we haven't thought of. These are real consequences that will begin to realign this alliance and make very clear that this is an important alliance, but it is not one that is unlimited or without restrictions or expectations on our part. If we fail to do this, the Crown Prince will take further escalatory and outrageous actions in the future. He will keep pushing the envelope. This is a young man who has never lived anywhere else in the world. He is a Crown Prince, which tells you, not only is he wealthy, he has rarely faced disappointment in his life or ever not had something he wanted. He has never lived abroad. I think he is largely naive about foreign policy and thinks he can get away with whatever he wants because at home, he can. We have to make clear that with us, he can't. You don't have to blow up the alliance to make that message clear. If we don't make that message clear, he will do more of this in the future, and one day, he may pull us into a war. One day, he may fracture the alliance himself because he goes too far. He needs to be stopped now. He needs to understand that there are limits or he will keep testing those limits. If we fail to do that at this moment, we will live to regret it, and its implications will be extraordinary, and it will be a gift to Iran. That is my last point. What happened here has been a gift to Iran. What they have done has been a gift. Instead of weakening their enemy, they have empowered them. We do need to take positive action on this. We do need to take things that change and recalibrate this relationship, but yanking support at this moment from the Yemen campaign is the wrong way to do the right thing. I hope that many of my colleagues, who yesterday voted to discharge this bill to the floor to send a clear message to the administration that they are unhappy with the response so far--I hope they will reconsider an alternative way forward that doesn't lead to these consequences I have outlined but allows us in the Senate to lead the way with the administration to reset this relationship in a way that avoids these problems in the future and lives up to our heritage as a nation whose foreign policy is infused with and supports the defense of human rights all over the world. I yield the floor.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, due to Hurricane Michael's direct hit on Florida's panhandle, I am traveling to northwest Florida to survey the devastation that has occurred in my home State. Yesterday, Hurricane Michael made landfall as a devastating, high-end Category 4 hurricane, near Mexico Beach. Initial reports indicate more than 400,000 utility customers in Florida are without power and areas within the storm's path have been decimated. Therefore, given these circumstances and the fact that my vote would not have been determinative of the outcome of the measures before the Senate, I will survey the damage firsthand and help coordinate efforts between Federal, State, and local officials.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, as a Member of the U.S. Senate, my role in providing advice and consent to the President on his or her nominations to the Supreme Court is among our most important constitutional duties. In fulfilling that duty, I have a pretty clear criteria on how I go about making these decisions. The first is whether the nominee has the character to serve on the Supreme Court; the second is whether the nominee has the intellect and the experience and the academic credentials to serve on a Court that hears complex and difficult questions of law; and the third is does the nominee believe in the proper role of the Supreme Court, which, in my opinion, is to interpret and to apply the Constitution, not to change or manipulate it to reach a certain policy goal. There is broad bipartisan support for the first two parts of my criteria. We can all agree that people who serve on the Court should have the character to do so. We can all agree our nominees and those who serve on the Court have to have the intellect and the experience and the academic credentials to be on the Court. Much of our fights around here center around the third part of my criteria. In fact, it goes to the heart of most of the nomination fights we have. There are some who would like the Supreme Court to become a policymaking branch, a place that makes policy and makes laws, but I believe the job of an appellate court is to decide whether a policy decision of the political branches is constitutional. Appellate courts and trial courts are different. Trial courts are triers of fact. Appellate courts are triers of law. The debate about the proper role of the Court plays out most vividly on some of the most divisive cultural issues, and it always has. For example, on the difficult issue of abortion, the question before the Court in Roe v. Wade was not whether it was good or bad for abortion to be criminalized or constricted, the question was whether the Constitution gave the State or Federal Government the authority to pass laws that banned or restricted abortions. The question before the Court in Obergefell v. Hodges was not whether same-sex marriages were good or bad for America. The question was whether the Constitution allowed States to define marriage as being between one man and one woman. In deciding these kinds of questions, I believe Justices, both on the Supreme Court and appellate-level judges, should apply the strictest interpretation of the Constitution according to its original intent, irrespective of whether the policy result of their decision is something they personally agree with. The reason for that is because if the Constitution can mean whatever people at a given moment want it to mean, then the Constitution doesn't really mean anything at all. We can change our laws. That is why Congress has to respond to the electorate, why we debate laws, and then are held accountable for it, but the Constitution has to be something that is constant, irrespective of the political tides of the moment. Now, you can change the Constitution. The Founders gave us a process to do that through Article V, the constitutional amendment process, and that has been used in this country. They would not have given us that process if it were their intent that the Supreme Court be the one that could change the Constitution. The reason I outline that criteria is because that is the criteria I used to evaluate Judge Kavanaugh's nomination when it was first presented. I found myself with no doubts about his intellectual ability or his academic credentials, and I don't think anyone has raised those. I have seen seven FBI background checks that turned up no issues with his character, and I had 12 years of his service as a Federal appellate judge as proof that he shared my criteria for the proper role of the Court and the proper standard for constitutional review. So it was based on that and on those facts that in August I announced I supported Judge Kavanaugh's nomination. Then, several weeks ago, the allegations, first by Dr. Ford and then by others, emerged. Sexual harassment and assault is something I feel very strongly about. It is, for example, one of the reasons I have been involved for a number of years now in a bipartisan effort to reform and improve how we handle claims of sexual assault on our college campuses. Our Nation is now facing a reckoning for decades of not addressing sexual violence appropriately. While I obviously will not betray anyone's confidence or privacy, I have personally seen how victims of sexual assault often find their claims dismissed and ignored. I have seen how sometimes they are told things like: You are partially to blame for putting yourself in that position. I have seen how so many never came forward and don't want to come forward because they don't think anyone will believe them or they don't believe anything will ever happen. That is why I believe anytime anyone comes forward with allegations of sexual assault or harassment, abuse, these allegations cannot be swept aside, and they cannot be ignored. When these allegations emerged in this case, my immediate reaction was to say these claims should be taken seriously and his accusers should be fully heard. I said I would have no further comment on his nomination until we knew more about these allegations. What that meant was, my support of Judge Kavanaugh was now contingent on the information that emerged from the hearings and the investigation and the work that needed to be done. I will say today what I said at this time last week. I believe neither Dr. Ford nor Judge Kavanaugh have been treated fairly in many instances. Some--I saw you--immediately basically dismissed these claims as a political ploy. Others went on television almost immediately and said they believed Judge Kavanaugh was guilty without any information before them. Despite the shameful behavior of so many, a process did ensue. Through all the noise, that did produce additional information. The Senate's Judiciary Committee and then the Federal Bureau of Investigation gathered and made available to every single Member of the Senate additional relevant information. The committee took sworn testimony from several named witnesses. I know for a fact they chased down and investigated a seemingly endless stream of incoming information every single day, and it provided both Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh the opportunity to give written statements and then participate in hours of public testimony, not just before the committee but before the entire Nation. When that hearing ended last Thursday, the information before us was as follows: The sworn and unequivocal allegations by Dr. Ford, the sworn and equally unequivocal denial from Judge Kavanaugh, no witnesses with knowledge of these allegations, and no independent evidence to corroborate them. After the hearing, a week ago today, some of the Senators on the committee wanted a short delay. I watched that hearing. It was agreed to by everyone there, a short delay, 7 days, so the Federal Bureau of Investigation could gather even more information, and I had no objection to that. Over the last week, the FBI interviewed 10 additional witnesses and gathered additional relevant information for every single Senator to review. First, I was briefed on these interviews and information; then I had occasion to review them for myself. Here is what I know now about the allegations against Judge Kavanaugh. I have the sworn and unequivocal testimony of Dr. Ford and Ms. Ramirez making these allegations against Judge Kavanaugh. I have the sworn and unequivocal denial of these allegations from Judge Kavanaugh. I now have before me the testimony of 10 additional witnesses, including those identified by Dr. Ford and Ms. Ramirez as having been present when Judge Kavanaugh allegedly assaulted them, and not a single one of them had any recollection of the alleged gatherings, much less any knowledge of these allegations, and I still have no independent evidence which corroborates these allegations as well. That is the information before me as I stand here at 1 p.m. eastern time on the 5th of October with regard to the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court of the United States. That is the same information that is before every other Member of the Senate who has access to the exact same information that I saw, that I read, and that I was briefed on. I have listened to the arguments made by some of my colleagues and others urging me to still vote against the nomination. The most direct argument made to vote no is that the FBI did not interview enough people. First, my view is that the only people who could corroborate those claims are those who were there when it happened because anything other than that is hearsay. If you didn't see it happen, all you can testify to is what someone else told you. The only people who could corroborate that something happened are either people who received physical evidence or people who witnessed it. From what I read yesterday, every single person the accuser said was present when it happened testified that they do not know anything about it. By the way, the other point I would make is that these interviews that we saw yesterday, the 10 additional ones--it would be unfair to view them in a vacuum, as if they were the only information we have to go off of. Here is a fact: Over nearly the last two decades, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has interviewed over 150 people, asking questions about Judge Kavanaugh's background and past. Over 150 people have been interviewed about Judge Kavanaugh over the last two decades and across seven background checks, and not a single one of them has ever testified as to any sexual assault against anyone at any time. It struck me that there isn't a single Member of the U.S. Senate, I think--maybe I am wrong, but I doubt seriously that there is any Member in the U.S. Senate who has had the FBI question over 150 people about what they have done throughout their life. In fact, I would venture to guess that there are probably few, if any, Americans who have had the FBI interview over 150 people about what they have done throughout the course of their lives. I believe it is reasonable to assume that if Judge Kavanaugh was someone who had engaged in a pattern of abusive behavior toward women--on a pattern--at least one of these 150-some-odd people would have noticed and would have said something about it. Yet not a single one of them did. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that there is clearly another factor that is driving much of the anger and passion around this nomination, and it has nothing to do with partisan politics or politics at all, for that matter. It is the fact, as I mentioned earlier, that, sadly, far too often, particularly women who come forward with allegations of harassment, abuse, or assault are ignored, dismissed, and even blamed. The fact is, because of this, there are potentially millions of victims who have never come forward and who suffer in silence. I understand that for the victims and for those who love them and for those who are survivors, to hear about these allegations brings back powerful and painful memories of what happened to them, of how they were ignored, how they were not believed, how they were blamed, and how their abuser got away with it. What has happened to these survivors is an injustice. It is wrong. It is something that we as a nation must reckon with and we as a people must fix. But the solution to injustice is never injustice, and it would be unjust to turn this nomination into a proxy fight over the broader, important issue of how we have treated victims of sexual assault in America. As important as that topic is, this debate is about a specific case involving specific people and specific allegations. Fairness and justice require us to make our decision on this matter based on the facts before us on this matter. It was wrong for some to immediately dismiss these allegations almost as a reflex, but it is also wrong to claim that a vote for Judge Kavanaugh's nomination means that you do not care about and do not as a matter of course believe victims of sexual violence. My colleagues and my fellow Americans, this case is about this case, and although the ways in which both the accuser and the accused have been treated are shameful, we must still make our decision based on what we know. I want to make one thing abundantly clear: I do want people on the Supreme Court who believe that the proper role of that Court is to interpret the Constitution according to its original intent, but if I had any evidence--or if any evidence emerges that corroborates these or any allegations of this kind--I would have voted against this nomination in a heartbeat because someone who has committed sexual assault shouldn't be on the Bench, they should be in jail. If you lie about it to Congress, you should also be charged with perjury. But after 7 background checks and over 150 people having been interviewed, we don't have any independent evidence to corroborate these allegations against him--none. So with regard to this specific case, on the basis of the facts that I have before me, that we have before us--on the basis of what facts am I supposed to not just vote down this nomination but in the process of doing so, render what will forever be perceived as a verdict of guilt? On the basis of what facts can anyone say or do that? It is legitimate to vote against him because you don't agree with his judicial philosophy, but it isn't fair to say you are voting against him, as some imply, because we are on the verge of putting someone who is a confirmed and verified sexual abuser on the Bench. That isn't justice, and no matter how just the cause is, a just cause never, never justifies an unjust means. Based on the specific facts before us regarding this specific nomination and this specific case, I already voted to end debate on the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh, and tomorrow I will vote to confirm him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, today I recognize Charlotte Weber for being named the National Breeder of the Year by the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association. The Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association presented Charlotte with this award during the 33rd annual national awards dinner at the Woodford Reserve Club in Lexington, KY. She is the owner and sole operator of Live Oak Stud in Ocala, and for the first time, a broodmare based outside of Kentucky received this recognition. Live Oak Stud is a 4,500-acre thoroughbred farm and commercial cattle operation that Charlotte has guided since 1995. Her breeding and racing operation's distinctive black, red, and white silks have become a nationally recognized racing symbol. Over the years, Live Oak Stud has seen its record of success grow. Charlotte's horse, Win Approval, dam of World Approval, was also named Broodmare of the Year by the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association. This horse has become a central part of Live Oak Stud's success. I extend my best wishes to Charlotte and look forward to hearing of Live Oak Stud's continued success as she brings prestige to Florida horse breeding.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, today I pay tribute to the memory of Frank Bradley, a lifelong Tallahassee, FL, resident who owned a famed local country store and was well regarded as a consummate southern gentleman. Frank Bradley was born on July 11, 1925, in Tallahassee and served his country honorably in the U.S. Navy during World War II. When he came home from the war, he began working in his father's family store, Bradley's Country Store. In 1970, Frank added a packinghouse to the store, with products still made from his grandmother Mary's 1910 recipe. He also began to host the store's annual Old Fashioned Fun Day, which brings in thousands of visitors each year. Frank retired from the store in 2008, leaving it in the hands of his daughter Janet. His lesson for her was to treat their customers with respect as if they are always right. Frank was dedicated to improving his community and worked to address issues affecting residents, including leading the charge to pave a portion of Old Centerville Road. While he sought for the entire road to be paved to the Georgia line, he accepted a compromise of 2 miles. I express my sincere condolences to his wife Lillian, two daughters Janet Bradley Parker and Julie Bradley Obrecht, six grandchildren, and one great-grandson. May God bless his family during this time of loss.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, today I recognize the Sunrise Sting 2000 Girls Soccer Club, who won the 2018 United States Youth Soccer National Championship. Sunrise Sting 2000 is comprised of talented young women from Sunrise, FL. Several of the players have been together since they were 8 years old, under the direction of coach Juan Laureano. Sunrise Sting has existed since 1975; yet this is their first time winning the Southern Regional and National Championship tournaments. After winning the Southern Regional Championship 4-0 against Mandeville, LA, the team entered the final stage of the National Championship series. In group play, the Sunrise club defeated CDA Slammers FC from California 1-0 in their opening match. They rebounded from losing a close contest to Campton United of Illinois with a 3-1 victory over the Scottsdale Blackhawks of Arizona. In the semifinals, they won 3-0 over CDA Premier 00 of Ohio. In the National Championship game, they avenged their previous loss to Campton United by defeating them with a 3-2 victory, despite trailing at halftime. The team considers itself a family and refused to quit in the face of adversity because of their strong teamwork. I extend my best wishes to head coach Aguinaldo Ferreira, coach Juan Laureano, Victoria Burbrick, Stephanie Cuan, Taylor Dobles, Marlee Fray, Liliana Fernandez, Kayla Fernandez, Madison Grushoff, Jordan Horacek, Cassandra Lawson, Chloe Laureano, Elizabeth Matei, Maiya Matos, Megan Morgan, Sylvie Prepetit, Evanthia Spyredes, Amber Tam, Samantha Wald, Sydney Waiters, and the entire Sunrise Sting organization on this impressive accomplishment.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, I will be brief in closing. I note that the manager of this needs to get through some things to get to our vote. There are three quick points I want to make. The first thing is that the Chinese have learned how to work our system and how to play us. They know, for example, that they can just go to American companies, go to Washington, go to the White House, go to Congress, and tell them how bad this is for you, and you will get them to change their minds or they just hire lobbyists, as the Senator from Maryland outlined. One company involved here was Qualcomm. They are the largest seller of chips to ZTE. They were involved in saying: Don't do this. Obviously, they were a customer, they didn't want to lose this customer. Qualcomm had a deal pending in China to purchase a Dutch company. I believe the understanding was if you allow ZTE to survive, not only do you get to keep this company as a customer, but you will probably help yourself get that deal in China with the Dutch company purchase. Guess what. On the day after it was announced that the conference committee had dropped this provision, Qualcomm announced it was dropping its pursuit of that deal in China because they couldn't make headway. The Chinese Government doesn't play. They got ZTE to stay alive, and they still blocked the deal. The second point is this issue: They are a cell phone maker, but the hand-held devices they make are the least problematic part of this. They make servers and cameras, and these are embedded in our telecommunications network. That is the way we communicate with each other on commercial secrets or, potentially, military secrets. If it is unclassified or sensitive information, all of it is potentially vulnerable to a company. They don't even need spies anymore. We brought them into our network and continue to do so, not to mention the role they play in networks around the world, which brings me to the last point. ZTE is a big danger. They are small compared to Huawei, which is a company even bigger than ZTE that poses an even greater systemic risk. If we can't even take on ZTE because they lobby and because of American companies coming here, how are we ever going to take on Huawei or any other dangers they pose to us? It is time we open our eyes. We are engaged in a geopolitical competition, not with some poor agrarian country trying to catch up but with a global superpower that is quickly nipping at our heels and doing so unfairly, with the intent of replacing us in the world as its most powerful country militarily, economically, geopolitically, and technologically. The history of America is short in comparison to the great empires of history and the great countries of history. Some 240-odd years in the scope of history is but a blink of an eye. History is full of examples of nations that became complacent and lost their standing and their way of life. I am not claiming that ZTE alone will be that, but it is a part of a broader problem; that is, we have yet to realize what a significant threat China poses to this country in every realm and every sphere. Until we do, we are going to continue to be in danger of surrendering and forfeiting our way of life and our place in the world. If we do that, the world will be worse off for it. We will have no one to blame but ourselves for failing to act. I yield the floor.

Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, may I inquire how much time I have remaining?