Resolutions to Instruct Conferees

Floor Speech

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Mr. RISCH. Mr. President, first of all, let me say I concur with the good Senator from New Jersey that we should follow regular order.

He, like myself, has spent decades of service in a legislative body, and we both know this system works when the committee system works.

Every legislative body is set up with a committee system. Now, why is that? One of the reasons is because people develop an expertise in a certain lane, and they can use that expertise on the committee.

Most importantly, the issues regarding a bill--whether it is good or bad or whether it should be amended or whatever should happen to it--is best handled in the committee system, where people have an expertise in the area that the bill goes to.

This bill goes to the Foreign Relations Committee, which I chair-- which my good friend from New Jersey previously chaired--and it will be handled in the regular order by that committee, but it is a bad way to do a piece of legislation to draw it, drop it, and then come to the floor and try to pass it unanimously.

This piece of legislation was brought to the committee yesterday, and it is a piece of legislation that certainly deserves consideration but not this way.

I have not had a chance to even read it, let alone study it, and that is true of virtually every Member of the majority party. I frankly don't know whether the other members of the committee who serve in the minority party have had an opportunity to read it or to study it or, for that matter, to prepare amendments to it to make it better and to move it along.

So given that, the committee system is really important here. I don't want to really go into the merits of all this. A lot of it is being debated out in the hallway right now with the national media and that sort of thing.

Look, what has happened over the last few days here is really a poster child for what has happened to the entire Trump Presidency. A fair amount--not all but a fair amount--of the national media and a fair amount of the minority party here have done everything they can to delegitimize this President, not the least of which is taking anything that comes along and attaching to it some nefarious idea, some nefarious purpose.

Let me give you an example. My good friend said: What happened to standing up to Russia? This administration has imposed more sanctions on Russia than the entire 8 years of the previous administration. So what has happened to standing up to Russia? We continue to stand up to Russia.

I think my friend from New Jersey and I would be able to agree on the many sins Russia has committed starting way back, but if you go with fairly recent history, their invasion of Georgia and then their promise to back off and to get out of Georgia--they still occupy two of the regions in Georgia.

Of course, the invasion and takeover of the Crimea, their cause of problems on the eastern border of Ukraine, their interference in Ukraine, their interference in our elections, their interference in all kinds of European elections, and it goes on and on, poisoning people in London--I mean, that is about as far out as you can possibly get.

So we all need to stand together. We all need to stand up to Russia, and this administration has been doing it. They are going to continue to do it. I think virtually everybody here is urging them to do it, and we are going to continue to do it.

Look, the argument that there was some significant delay in moving funds to Ukraine is simply not well-taken, and the reasons for it, with all due respect to my friend, I think, are well known.

In fact, if you read the transcript of this telephone conversation, the President himself raises the important issue that he has raised with all of us from time to time, and that is that any time he sees the United States getting on the short end of the stick with whatever you talk to him about, it raises an alarm with him.

In this particular case, he has been very distressed by the fact that we have been carrying the bulk of the dollars and cents for helping Ukraine. We want to help Ukraine.

Senator Menendez, I think, very clearly laid out many of the problems that have to do with Ukraine. The country has serious problems, not the least of which is corruption, but the first reason he had issues with the spending was the fact that Europe just simply is not doing what they should be doing in helping to fund this, and that is clearly laid out in this transcript.

The second thing is the corruption itself. When money goes into Ukraine, it is a well-known fact that there is tremendous corruption and graft within the country and a lot of the money disappears.

The most notorious institution within the country is the gas company--interestingly enough, the gas company board on which Vice President Biden's son sat and was appointed to and has received $50,000 a month to sit on after the Vice President was tasked by President Obama to look into the corruption and do something about the corruption in Ukraine.

In any event, corruption is a big problem and funds get diverted.

I am just going to close by saying, look, every American that is interested in this talking that is going on back and forth about this call that the President had with President Zelensky should look at that transcript and read it. It will take just a few minutes to read it, and it will not take long to figure out that the mischaracterization of this is off the wall.

It is absolutely amazing to me that people would take this conversation, which was a standard, ordinary, regular conversation that a head of state has with another head of state, and characterize it the way it is being characterized.

It was a congratulatory call. There was a lot of banter in it. My good friend knows--he has met with a lot of heads of state, as I have. Sometimes we even meet together with heads of state. It is common to have bipartisan meetings with heads of state.

I don't know whether people think these things are scripted and that they are focused directly on issues, but there is always a lot of banter. The banter can be in the form of having conversations about family. It can be talking about sports. Frequently, if one of the teams has done well or poorly, one party or the other will raise it and talk about it. These things are very informal, as this phone conversation was.

In my experience, one of the frequent issues that is discussed in these conversations is local politics--what is happening in your country, what is happening in my country--and then also a discussion of mutual issues with friendly countries or, for that matter, countries that are not friendly.

This call that the transcript was released on is very, very rare. If you are looking for a window to see what actually happens in these calls, this transcript is a really good characterization of what happens in these calls.

It is not a good thing to be releasing these calls. I think heads of state should be able to have these conversations--all of us should be able to have conversations with our counterparts, with a head of state, with Ministers in the other countries without having to be thinking about every word we say is going to wind up being analyzed and pulled apart and taken by your political enemies and badly misrepresented.

Look, don't take my word for it. Don't take Senator Menendez's word for it. The transcript is all over the internet right now. It is going to be published in every newspaper probably in America tomorrow. It takes just a few minutes to read it. Read it and take away for yourself the feelings you have about it.

The President of the United States is tasked with being the frontline of foreign policy. Yes, foreign policy is shared by both the first and second branch. It is one of those things the Founding Fathers did not resolve 100 percent for one branch or the other, such as appointments for the second branch or such as appropriating for the first branch.

There is sufficient authority given to each branch of government, but the head of state, in this case, the President of the United States, is tasked with carrying on these relationships with other countries.

This phone conversation that he had is clearly, clearly, part of that. Don't take my word for it. Everybody make up your own mind on this. It isn't rocket science. As you can see, the English is very straightforward. It can be understood. I think everybody will come away with their own belief.

If people hate Trump, they are going to look at that and say that this is terrible, as a lot of people in this town have done. I think most ordinary, good, straight-thinking Americans are going to look at this and say: What is the big deal? It was a conversation between two people talking about various issues they were interested in, and it isn't a problem.

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