Ukraine

Floor Speech

First of all, let me agree with my Republican colleagues. We stand in awe today of the Ukrainian people, of President Zelenskyy, of the Ukrainian military. They have given the Russians more than they thought was coming. They have stood up a defense and are resistant. The world has watched with admiration, and the jury is, frankly, still out as to whether the Russians can make good on their plans, given how fierce the Ukrainians have fought.

And I have been proud to stand with my colleagues on this floor as we have delivered additional aid to Ukraine, as we have made sure they have had the Javelins and the Stingers necessary to protect themselves. I have been proud to visit Ukraine with many of my colleagues here today, and we are going to continue to stand with the Ukrainian people.

But I want to make two points today with respect to the effort that has been undertaken by my good friend, the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee.

First, let me make a specific point on the merits of the bill that is being proposed here today.

Passing this bill with no committee process, no amendments, no debate would be a terrible idea. What this bill does, essentially, is to shatter American unity with Europe, with Japan, with South Korea, with all the allies that have stood with us over the course of this past week.

President Biden spent the last 2 months methodically building a never-before-seen coalition of nations to impose the most significant set of sanctions ever seen, and this bill would undo that.

Why? Because this would mandate that the United States impose certain new sanctions over Europe's objection. It calls for the United States to abandon our policy of focusing on multilateral sanctions and start over with unilateral sanctions. Why is that a terrible idea? Well, first, because unilateral sanctions just aren't as effective as multilateral sanctions are. When you are talking about energy policy, you want the Europeans with you because that is where the Russian energy ends up. Without Europe, going at it alone, it makes the United States look weak, and the sanctions just aren't as effective.

But second, this bill is a bad idea because breaking with Europe and our NATO partners right now--that is exactly what Vladimir Putin wants. Yes, he wants to control Ukraine, but what he wants more is to smash the transatlantic alliance to pieces. He sees the invasion of Ukraine as a wedge that will cause America to squabble and break with our allies. Putin is setting a trap for us, and this bill would have us walk right into that trap.

Third, let's be clear. With a couple of small exceptions, President Biden has already done everything that this bill calls for and more. This bill calls for sanctions on those responsible for the buildup of forces around Ukraine. The administration has imposed sanctions on Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Lavrov, 13 other members of Russia's Security Council.

This bill calls for sanctions on Nord Stream 2. Nord Stream 2 is done. Thanks to the committed diplomatic efforts of the Biden administration, the German Government has put an end to Nord Stream 2, and we have applied the sanctions.

This bill calls for sanctions on oligarchs. Biden did that with our allies, and he went further. He launched a task force that is going to identify, freeze, and take from Russian oligarchs their assets.

This bill calls for sanctions on financial institutions. The administration has already targeted all 10 of Russia's largest financial institutions, which hold more than three-quarters of the Russian financial sector's total assets.

This bill calls for a prohibition on investment in occupied Ukrainian territory. President Biden did that on the first day of the war.

This bill calls for sanctioning transactions involving the Russian sovereign debt. President Biden did that on the second day of the war.

This bill calls for sanctions on Belarus. President Biden levied sanctions on 24 Belarusian individuals, 2 state-owned banks, and 13 of the country's industries.

President Biden has put together a sanctions package that is sweeping, that is unprecedented, that is breaking the back of the Russian economy. So why are we down here on the floor engaged in this back-and-forth?

And that brings me to my second point, a broader one. It used to be that the all-consuming politics of this town sometimes would take a break when the crisis was big enough. Sometimes they would stop at the water's edge. This was the case in 2001 when this country was attacked.

Republicans were in charge of the White House and both Houses of Congress, and Democrats certainly had the choice to blame the attack on President Bush to try to score political points. Democrats could have come down to the floor to offer partisan bills. Democrats in the Senate could have used their minority prerogatives to block Bush's national security nominees.

But that is not what happened in 2001. Democrats and Republicans came together because, at that moment, patriotism, the love of your country, the defense of your country was more important than politics or party.

Now, today, the shoe is on the other foot. Democrats control the White House, the House, and the Senate. And while our Nation wasn't attacked last week, I would argue that this moment is the most perilous that the United States and the world has faced, certainly since 2001, but given the nuclear stakes involved in a conflict with Russia, perhaps the most perilous since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Now, I get it. The professional outrage machine that dominates American politics today has deluded a lot of folks in the Congress into believing that unity is weakness; that putting your country over party is an anachronism. But I don't believe that.

I believe that sometimes the stakes are so high that you have got to put aside your politics--at least temporarily--put aside your disagreements and get behind your government.

Now, let's be honest. As this crisis has grown in seriousness, over and over again Republicans have had the chance to do what Democrats did in 2001: elevate loyalty to country.

But all through 2021, even as Senators were made aware of Russia's plans to invade Ukraine, Senators Cruz and Hawley and a few others continued to put politics first by blocking every single national security nominee who came before this body, including those nominees who would have been working to try to help Ukraine and stop the Russian invasion.

Last month, Republicans and Democrats were working on a bipartisan bill to support Ukraine in its time of need. Those negotiations were difficult, but instead of staying at the table, Republicans walked away with virtually no notice to Democrats and introduced this bill, with only Republicans supporting it.

And now, instead of rallying behind a President who has shocked the world by uniting friends and foes behind an unprecedented set of crippling sanctions against Russia, Republicans are down here on the floor, not more than a week since the Russian invasion began, to highlight their grievances with the President's policies.

Russia invaded less than a week ago. We returned to Washington last night, and instead of deciding to sit down with Republicans today and work on agreeing on a package of support for Ukraine, like the one that President Biden has requested, Republicans have instead chosen to spend today, our first day back in the Senate since the invasion, playing politics, trying to force a vote on a bill that they wrote, that not a single Democrat supports, that everybody knows is not going to pass, has no chance of passing.

Now, we could do the same thing. Democrats could just put a bill on the floor that we all negotiated with ourselves and force Republicans to vote on it. We could choose to use this week to highlight the differences between Republicans and Democrats, but we are not going to do that because our priority is to try to work together with our Republican colleagues to find unity--unity--at this moment; to not use the first day that we are back in session since the invasion began to highlight the differences between our two parties.

And, frankly, when I look at what Republicans have been calling on President Biden to do, I don't see a lot of daylight. I don't see a lot of reason for complaint. I don't see the imperative to come down here and highlight the differences.

Nord Stream 2 is gone. It is not happening. SWIFT sanctions, previously opposed by Europe, are now happening. Russian banks are being crippled. Assets of Russian oligarchs are being seized. Vladimir Putin is being personally sanctioned. Embargoes are being put on key technologies sent into Russia.

The set of sanctions that President Biden announced--it goes further than what most all observers and pundits predicted. It is frankly stunning how successful President Biden's diplomacy has been.

And it just strains all credibility for Republicans to suddenly claim that this diplomacy is irrelevant and all these countries are going to impose these sanctions even if President Biden did nothing.

I wish my colleagues could see the seriousness of this moment and the need for us to focus our energies on coming together instead of playing into our enemy's hands and showing our differences at this moment.

Our President has rallied the world to this fight. Vladimir Putin is reeling, but we are forced to spend time today debating a partisan bill introduced by only one party that has no chance of passage because today on this floor scoring political points seems more important than finding a way to come together--to come together with the President, with both parties around our support for Ukraine.

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Mr. MURPHY. First, very quickly, let me make a few final points about Senator Risch's comments.

Senator Risch says that this isn't a partisan exercise. It is. The bill that Senator Risch is talking about was introduced by only Republicans. It was introduced with no notice to Democrats. There was a big showy press conference in which only Republicans were there. In fact, the introduction of this bill was a messaging point for Republicans to announce that they were no longer negotiating with Democrats.

And so I appreciate that Senator Risch often is working very industriously with Democrats, but in this case, it is a partisan bill. Only Republicans support it.

And offering it today is not helpful to the process because it had no chance of passage. Instead, today, we should be working on getting additional funding to the Ukrainians.

President Biden has requested our help, has requested Congress to step up and provide humanitarian assistance and more lethal assistance to Ukraine. Right now, with the time that we are spending arguing over a bill that is supported only by Republicans that is never going to pass this body, we could be using that time to come together around a bill that can pass, that will pass.

So that is why there is anger on our side about this exercise. There are these moments in American history and world history where our focus should be on unity, where our focus should be on coming together and finding what we can do together; and, instead, the piece of legislation that was just offered was a bill that was specifically introduced to highlight the Republican position in contrast to the Biden administration.

As for Senator Barrasso's bill, it suffers from the same problem, which is it separates us from Europe. It separates us from our allies.

There is a lot of wisdom on the Republican side of the aisle, but it mystifies me why so many of my friends who know so much about Russia don't understand that Putin's primary objective is to break NATO into pieces, is to smash the European Union, is to create tensions and fissures within the transatlantic alliance, right?

Putin sees the greatest catastrophe of the last 100 years as the breakup of the Soviet Union, and he blames the United States and the West for that breakup. So, while the invasion of Ukraine is part of his process of remedying that grievance, the real crown--the real cherry on top for Vladimir Putin--is the splintering apart of NATO and the United States from Europe. Now, we almost got there during the Trump administration. Relations were never worse; threats of pulling out of NATO or refusing to honor our article 5 obligations.

I would argue that this invasion is happening in part because the Biden administration made clear that there wasn't going to be a natural disintegration of the transatlantic alliance, and so Vladimir Putin is using this invasion of Ukraine, first and foremost, to get control of the territory he wants but also to try to split us from each other. And our fear is that bills like this essentially step into the trap that Vladimir Putin has laid for us because secondary sanctions on European entities against the wishes of European governments splits us from each other. Had Joe Biden gone this route, you would have never had the Europeans working with us on swift sanctions. You would have never had the Europeans working with us on the seizure of Russian assets.

But because Joe Biden made the wise decision to do these sanctions in concert with Europe, we got more than we could have ever imagined. And this bill would walk us backwards, undo that unity with our colleagues.

It may be that there will be a moment in time where we can convince our European colleagues to move with us on sanctions against certain elements of Russia's energy economy, but we must do that together. We have to do that together because you need to understand what Putin's larger game is. It is the breakup of the transatlantic alliance.

I wish my colleagues were on the floor today, celebrating-- celebrating what President Biden has done. Nobody thought that he could keep the alliance, that he could keep us together with Europe, that he could get Europe to agree to what they have already agreed to. I wish we were rallying behind our President right now.

I get it that there are always differences between the Republicans and a Democratic President, but, boy, this would be a great moment for us to be on the floor, supporting the breakthrough that President Biden has achieved on crippling sanctions against Russia and spending this day working together to try to deliver billions of dollars in additional aid to Ukraine. Instead, we are engaged in a partisan squabble over bills that have no chance of passing, that are literally just as valuable as the pieces of paper that the press releases from the Republicans will be written on.

I hope that we can get beyond today and get down to work on serious business--the serious business of coming together, Republicans and Democrats, and providing Ukraine the assistance they need, in a bipartisan way, through a package of support that can be supported by both parties and signed by this President.

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