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EXECUTIVE CALENDAR
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will proceed to the consideration of the following nomination, which the clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read the nomination of Amanda Bennett, of the District of Columbia, to be Chief Executive Officer of the United States Agency for Global Media.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Treaty Document No. 117-1
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, this is a very good day. We have just passed the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol on a strong bipartisan basis. This is a win-win-win: win for U.S. jobs, win for U.S. investment, and win for U.S. leadership in the fight against climate change.
We have talked a lot about how this amendment will help U.S. businesses, U.S. jobs, and U.S. competitiveness overseas, but let's talk about how important this amendment will be for protecting our planet.
Ratifying the Kigali Amendment, along with passing the Inflation Reduction Act, is the strongest one-two punch against climate change any Congress has ever undertaken.
Let me say that again: Ratifying the Kigali Amendment, along with passing the Inflation Reduction Act, is the strongest one-two punch against climate change any Congress has ever taken.
In fact--amazing statistic, folks--people don't pay attention to this one, but it is vital. Experts say that phasing out our use of HFCs will help prevent up to half a degree Celsius of warming by the end of the century.
That is worth repeating as well. Experts say that phasing out our use of HFCs will help prevent up to half a degree Celsius of warming by the end of the century.
It is an easily overlooked victory, but a massive one, all coming from eliminating this family of dangerous chemicals, which are a thousand times more deadly per molecule than carbon dioxide.
And on top of it all, ratifying this amendment will give U.S. businesses a huge leg up. It will open exports to new international markets, generate tens of billions in new investments and help create tens of thousands of good-paying jobs, and we will get a much needed edge against Chinese businesses that still lag behind in developing viable HFC alternatives.
Under Kigali, our exports will increase while China will lose out. So, once again, ratifying the Kigali Amendment is a win-win-win: a win for U.S. jobs, a win for U.S. investment, and, most of all, a win for our global campaign to defeat the climate crisis and preserve our planet for future generations.
I want to thank my colleague from Delaware who has been such a persistent advocate on this legislation. And there are so many others--
the Senators from New Mexico and Hawaii and Delaware--who have worked so hard on it as well. I thank them for their steadfastness. The globe, our globe, is rejoicing today because of this legislation.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I want to thank our leader for his leadership.
None of this would have happened without your leadership. I want to thank your staff.
I want to thank the relative respective staffs on our side here and the Senators especially on the Environment and Public Works Committee.
I want to especially thank our friend John Neely Kennedy from Louisiana, who has been a great partner, and his staff and other folks on the other side of the aisle.
My mother used to say to my sister and me when we were kids, she would say that things happen in threes. I remember she would say things happen in threes, and given what the leader just said, I am thinking about threes and especially with respect to making sure that this planet is going to be around for our children and grandchildren.
But if you go back to the bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law roughly 10 months ago by the President, we did a whole lot there, you will recall, with respect to roads, highways, bridges, water, wastewater, water infrastructure, flood control. But that legislation had the largest--at that point the largest climate title that we had ever put in a bill of any consequence here in the U.S. Senate. That is No. 1.
No. 2 would be the IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act, that was signed into law just last month by the President and championed by any number of folks, including our colleague from West Virginia, Joe Manchin. I want to thank him and the majority leader for their good work. That was No. 2 because the investments, the clean energy investments we make in the Inflation Reduction Act, are just extraordinary--extraordinary.
Then, today, to pass the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol--
people might be wondering, who are watching, and say: What in the world is that? And I will just walk you back in time.
People might remember that I was a naval flight officer in the Vietnam war, and near the end of the Vietnam war, maybe after I had moved to Delaware, I remember hearing something about speculation about a hole in the ozone and there might be a hole in the ozone. At first, people dismissed it. I dismissed it. But over time, the concerns persisted, and the hole in the ozone grew and grew.
Somewhere along about 1985, some updated scientific information, evidence, emerged that said there is a hole in the ozone, and it is big, and it is getting bigger.
Our President at the time, as I recall, was not a Democrat; he was a Republican--Ronald Reagan. Under his leadership, we as a nation joined in the Montreal Protocol. It was finalized in 1987, where we actually say that what is happening here is exactly clear, and what that is, is there is a hole in the ozone. It was being created by materials that are in our air-conditioners or refrigerators and our coolers. We call them refrigerants, and when they leaked out of the air-conditioners, refrigerators, and coolers, they actually created the hole in the ozone.
So the question is, Do we have to give up our refrigerators, our air-
conditioners, our coolers, our freezers? Do we have to give those up in order to take care and address the hole in the ozone? As it turns out, we did not, but what we had to do was replace something called CFCs, chlorofluorocarbons, which were refrigerants at the time and contributed to the hole in the ozone. What we had to do was replace those CFCs with something new. Science and the scientists came up with that something new. What they came up with was not CFC plus 2; they came up with HFCs, hydrofluorocarbons.
What I know about chemistry you can fit on a fairly small thumbnail, but HFCs came along, and, guess what, the hole in the ozone started getting smaller. We stayed cool. The air-conditioners worked, freezers worked, refrigerators worked, and the hole in the ozone started getting cooler.
What didn't get cooler was our planet because HFCs, as Senator Schumer suggested, are about 1,000 times worse than carbon dioxide with respect to global warming. We finally have realized that, and the question is, Can we do anything about it? If so, can we do it to make sure we stay cool or cold, if you will, and at the same time address climate change?
Some people say: You know, we can't do good things for this planet or we can't clean the air, clean the water, address the climate change, and create jobs and economic opportunity. But, as Senator Schumer suggested, that is just not true. This is sort of like having our cake and eating it, too, because we can create jobs.
A lot of them we are talking about creating with the phasedown of HFCs and for the next 15 years talking about creating literally tens of thousands of jobs not in some other country but here. We are talking about creating these jobs using technology developed here, and we are talking about the ability to export this technology and sell products using this technology all over the place.
I forget exactly what the economic value is from these activities, but it is in the tens of billions of dollars here, with American technology, created by American workers. Who wouldn't be for that? Who wouldn't be for that?
Some of our Republican colleagues offered an amendment today. Senator Lee and, I think, Senator Sullivan joined together on an amendment. I think most of us voted for that, and it has been adopted and added to this package.
The other thing I would mention is that about a month ago, you may recall, we stayed up all night during a vote-arama, working on the reconciliation legislation that led to the IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act.
I remember the next day going home. I was just dog-tired. I went home on the train and got off the train, and before I went home, I drove to Wawa, which is a convenience store. We love Wawa. They are all up and down the east coast, especially in Delaware. I stopped at Wawa to get a cup of coffee. I got a small cup of coffee and went to the cash register, the cashier, to pay for it, and the lady at the cash register said: Your money is no good here.
I said: No, no. I want to pay. I want to pay for it.
She said: No, no. I am mindful of what you have been up all night doing. Your money is no good here.
I said: Could I get a larger cup of coffee?
She said: No, but your money is no good here.
She also went to say--she said: I have a son. I have a daughter. I want to make sure they grow up on a planet that is fit to grow up on and that they can grow old on.
I think that is a sentiment that almost any father or mother or grandfather or grandparent would feel and have. I would just say to them today: I know sometimes you look at what is going on here and our inability to work together. We have come together. We have come together on something that is extremely important for us, my generation, but even more important, for those who follow us.
Bipartisan solutions are lasting solutions. This is a good bipartisan solution, and for everybody who has been a part of this, I want to thank you. I want to convey our thanks as well to the President and his administration for their help in getting this done.
This is a day, as my colleague from Delaware, Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester, would say--she would say: This is a day the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Amen.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Unanimous Consent Request--S. 1950
Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, while we are standing here right now in Washington, DC, in the middle of an afternoon, protests are happening all over Iran right now.
The latest news reports coming out from social media and the very limited media that can get out of Iran--massive protesters are in the streets of 20 different cities in Iran right now. The latest count is nine people have been killed in those protests by Iranian forces trying to be able to shut down the protests that are now breaking out all over the country--including, by the way, protests in Tehran.
What is going on? This has been a simmering issue for a long time in Iran. As I have stated several times on this floor and in committee hearings, our opposition with Iran is not with the Iranian people. The Iranian people live in oppression underneath the Iranian regime, which pushes their thumb down on them and limits their progress in the world and in their own country.
The spark of this latest group of protests that are happening in the streets all over Iran is a young lady who was murdered in police custody in Iran named Mahsa Amini.
Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman, died in custody because she broke Iran's hijab law. In other words, she wasn't wearing her head covering, and so--brace yourself--the morality police arrested her. The morality police in Iran detained her, where she was apparently beaten to death while she was in prison. Now, the police and the regime have come out and said she had sudden heart failure, but with multiple injuries around her head, that is not sudden heart failure.
The nation--once again--of Iran is rising up to say: This has to stop.
Americans would be surprised at the number of social media posts that are getting out of Iran right now, where large crowds--large crowds--are gathering in cities, tearing down the pictures of the Ayatollah, and chanting in the streets of Tehran,
``Death to the dictator.''
I have friends in Iran who have actually sent me some of the social media posts to be able to show me that this is what the street looks like today. This is breaking out across Iran.
Now, what is interesting is that, at the same time, the President of Iran has been allowed to be able to come into the United States to be at the U.N. General Assembly to be able to speak out for the regime's benefit to the rest of the world. It will be a remarkable side-by-side of what is happening in Iran on the streets right now and the Iranian leadership at the U.N. General Assembly.
At this same moment as well, Iran is working with Russia and has delivered hundreds of unmanned aerial vehicles that are weaponized, little kamikaze drones that are literally taking out Ukrainian artillery right now in the field in Ukraine. The Iranians haven't just supplied these weaponized drones to Russia; they have brought Russian leaders into Iran to be able to train them on how to be able to attack Ukraine with these weapons.
Right now as well, the Russians are calling up additional reservists to be able to fight the Ukrainians and to be able to continue to take the fight to them. Protests are also erupting in Russia right now from Russian moms who are furious that their husbands and their sons are being called up to be able to fight in Ukraine to replace the thousands of casualties that Russia has suffered in Ukraine.
Now, why do I connect the dots in all of these--what is happening in Iran on the streets, what is happening on the streets in Russia, and what is happening right now in Ukraine? Because in the middle of that moment internationally that is happening, the U.S. Government has partnered with Russian diplomats to negotiate with Iran a restart of the nuclear deal with them. I can't make this up. So the United States is using Russia as its proxy to negotiate with Iran to be able to restart a nuclear negotiation with them.
Listen, the JCPOA, this nuclear deal, as it is commonly called, when it was put in place in 2015, was then set aside to say: It is not accomplishing its purposes.
In 2015, when it was put in place--let's just review real quick what happened in the days after that.
Planes full--literal planes full--of pallets loaded with cash were sent to Iran as soon as this deal was signed. It was a government suddenly flush with cash. How did that regime use that cash? They bought munitions to be able to fight against Americans in Iraq.
From 2015 to 2017--that period immediately after the JCPOA was signed and planes full of cash were sent to them--munitions fired against American troops in Iraq increased 341 percent. During that same time period, terrorist incidents increased 183 percent. There were 58 incidents involving Iranian vessels in the gulf that put American troops at risk. Iran used its money not to be able to help the Iranian people but to attack us and to attack our allies.
Our Nation withdrew from this nuclear negotiation 4 years ago. After that happened, Iran's exports of crude oil declined by more than 2 million barrels a day, cutting off a major supply of money into the regime. Iran's defense budget was then cut 28 percent because of those revenue shortfalls. Iran's currency lost 70 percent of its value as the pressure was applied to Iran to actually join into nations around the world, to actually become a nation like the rest of the world.
I am bringing this into the Senate today. It is an issue that I have brought multiple times. We should have ongoing dialogue with Iran. They are ambitious to become a nuclear weapons-capable nation. They are the single largest State sponsor of terrorism in the world. They are the destabilizing force in all of the Middle East. Every nation in that entire region has to prepare themselves for an inevitable, erratic, irrational attack from Iran; and every nation fears the day that they gain a nuclear-capable weapon.
But the gaps in the nuclear negotiations are large. Let me list some of them. The nuclear negotiation excludes any conversation about their terrorist activities. It is just simply not limiting their terrorist activities, just limiting their nuclear capability. They are building long-range weapons capable of carrying a nuclear weapon. Why would you need to build a long-range heavy missile unless you are carrying a nuclear tip? The two are connected--their terrorist activities, their missile ambitions, and their nuclear ambitions. We should connect those in all of our relationships.
My amendment in my sense of the Senate that I bring is very clear today. One is to acknowledge what we all know is actually happening. The second is to say, we can't have any kind of sanctions relief, especially preemptively in negotiations on lifting energy petroleum sales coming out of Iran. The next section of it, the third section of it, is simply not releasing any of the sanctions on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. They are the core of the terrorist activities in the area. They are the trainers for those who actually attacked Americans in Iraq. We should not lift sanctions on them. The fourth on this is not providing relief to the financial institutions in Iran so they can't continue to extend their terrorist activities and their financial activities behind the scenes. The goal of this is to be able to put pressure on the regime but to protect the Iranian people as much as possible.
The final statement that is in this sense of the Senate is to affirm our long-term friendship with the people of Iran and our understanding that they are living under the thumb of this regime.
My friend that I had mentioned before who is from Iran has reached out to me in the last 24 hours with this simple question. The Iranian people are on the streets, trying to gain their freedom, trying to be able to speak and live their faith as they choose to. And here is this question: What are the Americans going to do to stand with us? That is a fair question for this body.
The Iranian people who are begging for their own freedom do not want the American response to be sending cash to the regime so they can oppress their people more or lifting the sanctions at this moment so that the regime can continue to advance its terrorist activities or just disengaging from its missile ambitions that destabilizes the region or to continue to be able to use Russia as a proxy for the United States of America while Russia is literally using Iranian drones to attack the Ukrainians.
Let's speak with a clear voice to the Iranian people on the streets. They want to hear the United States say: We stand with your passion for freedom, and not: We stand with the regime in what they are trying to do to you.
So saying all that: As if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be discharged from further consideration of S. 1950 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; I ask further that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object. I have such respect for my colleague from Oklahoma. We are often on the same side of issues related to matters of national security and the Middle East, but I disagree with his analysis that he has presented here today. Let me make just a remark or two about his immediate request and then make a few remarks about the broader work to try to protect the world from a nuclear weapons-armed Iran.
First, as I understand it--and I just had a few days to take a look at the underlying legislation--it would significantly remove the administration's discretion to waive sanctions or to enter into certain oil sales or authorize business with Iranian financial institutions in that only a treaty entered into by the United States would provide that authority to the administration.
I think that is generally bad policy.
We can imagine a whole set of diplomatic engagements with any nation, including Iran, in which an executive may wish to toggle sanctions or licenses in order to provoke some behavior beneficial to the United States. That is, in fact, why we regularly build waivers into our sanctions statutes. So to suggest that on Iran policy, the President is going to have no ability to impact sanctions or licenses until a treaty is entered into ties the administration's hands--both Republican and Democratic administrations--in a way that I simply don't think is helpful.
I understand my friend's argument.
He is not a supporter of the JCPOA, and he does not desire for the United States to enter back into a nuclear agreement with Iran. And at the heart of this request is the essence of President Trump's Iran policy--the idea that if we just keep hammering Iran with sanctions that either their behavior will get better or they will at some point choose to come to the table and do a comprehensive deal--the nuclear program, their ballistic missile program, their support for terrorism.
Now, I think that was a credible argument back during the Obama administration. Many people said Obama shouldn't give Iran anything until Iran comes to the table on everything.
This Congress went a different way. We ended up taking a vote that, by our rules, allowed for the nuclear agreement to go forward. But we now have the benefit of the opposition's argument to the JCPOA having been tested for 4 years. Trump basically took that philosophy--keep sanctioning Iran; don't worry about the fact that it is unilateral, and eventually Iran will come to the table on everything. He tested that for 4 years, and it was an unmitigated disaster--an unmitigated disaster. Not only did Iran not come to the table on everything, they came to the table on nothing. Their behavior in the region got much worse and much more adversarial to U.S. interests.
Just look at the reality on the ground in a place like Lebanon or Yemen or Iraq or Syria. At the end of Trump's term, did Iran have more or less influence in those places? Unquestionably more. More integrated with the Houthis--by the end of Trump's term, they were in charge of the Lebanese government. There was less separation between the Iraqi power structure and Tehran.
At the end of that 4-year period of time, testing maximum pressure, Iran was more deeply involved with its proxies than ever before. They were not negotiating with the United States on any of the conditions that the Trump administration laid down for us, and they were shooting at us.
There was not a single attack on U.S. servicemembers by Iranian proxies while the United States was in the JCPOA. Let me say it again: Not a single attack on U.S. servicemembers by Iranian proxies when the United States was in the JCPOA. They occur with regularity today. Attacks against U.S. forces in housing and on bases in Iraq and Syria restarted once we withdrew from the deal. In this year alone, there have been attacks in February, March, April, May, June, July, and August.
And so, I am not sure why we have to do a lot of guessing now as to whether we are better off with or without a nuclear agreement with Iran, because here's what we got for maximum pressure: American troops under fire, more support for proxies, no hopes of negotiation, and--the icing on the cake--an Iranian nuclear program that is now weeks away from having enough fissile material to produce a nuclear weapon. Compare that with a year away during the time of the agreement.
So we tested this theory that we just hit them with sanctions, hit them with sanctions, and, eventually, they capitulate. It didn't work by, I think, all objective measures. It didn't work. And so it makes sense that the Biden administration wants to engage and try to put back together a deal that was good for the United States and our allies.
And, lastly, I will say this. The Senator from Oklahoma is right. The Iranians are bad people. You can just see what they are doing right now in the streets of Tehran in brutally repressing another wave of protests. Listen to what the President said on TV just this week--
denying the Holocaust. These are our adversaries. This is an enemy. But all throughout American history, we have understood there are times when it makes sense to sit down across the table with your enemy and adversary and engage in diplomatic conversation that is good for you and good for the world. It is true that if Iran was further away from a nuclear weapon, it would be good for us and it would be good for other countries in the world, including Russia, which is why Russia is sometimes part of these negotiations. But I don't know that because something is good for everybody, it shouldn't be acceptable to the U.S. Congress.
And so I am going to object to this request because I believe that the JCPOA is the right thing for the security of this Nation; because I believe in diplomacy even with your adversaries; because I think we have tested the proposition that maximum pressure will work better than a nuclear agreement, and we now know the results; and I also believe that some of the details of this resolution would ultimately bind the hands of American Presidents in a way that, you know, probably isn't good precedent for the long-term security of the Nation.
So, again, I think my colleague comes to the floor with good faith objections and longstanding objections. I come down in a different place, and for that reason, I would object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague. We have a lot of agreement in areas in Lebanon and other areas in the region that we work diligently together to be able to resolve--very, very difficult areas in this region.
But I do want to say: Facts are stubborn things. When my colleague makes a statement that we can see what happens during the time of the JCPOA and we can see what happens during the time of sanctions, I am welcome to be able to look at those facts. During the time of the JCPOA, as I mentioned before, from 2015 to 2017, munitions fired against American troops in Iraq increased 341 percent. Many of those munitions were Iranian-provided. So to be able to say that there were no attacks on Americans during the JCPOA is just factually not correct.
I can take you to a multitude of members of the U.S. military that will speak specifically of munitions that were fired on them and all kinds of improvised explosive devices created by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and shipped into Iraq to be able to attack them specifically during that time period. So it is not factually correct there were no attacks on Americans during the time of the JCPOA. In fact, all the folks that look at these issues saw that terrorism increased 183 percent during that time period.
During the time of the sanctions, Iran suffered real consequences in their economy, including a dramatic drop in their own defense spending by 28 percent during that time period. I received a personal outreach from an individual who is a leader in Lebanon, who my colleague and I both know well, who reached out to me personally and said whatever the United States is doing right now to cut off funding to Iran, keep doing it because it is also cutting off funding to Hezbollah and to Lebanon. They are not getting their paychecks right now, and that is helping the stability of our government.
So there was a real effect during that time period. We can discuss strategic aspects of which one is more effective, the agreement or the heavier sanctions, but we can't just ignore it and say there was no benefit during that time period in the last several years on the pressure that was put on Iran during this time period.
The fact still remains, the people of Iran are asking the question. They are on the streets chanting for freedom. What is the Senate going to do to stand with them? And, currently, it is nothing. I would like for it to be something, to stand with the people of Iran as they speak out against the repressive regime that they are under the thumb of.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island, Mr. Whitehouse.
Unanimous Consent Agreement--Treaty Document No. 117-1
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that with respect to the resolution of ratification, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Unanimous Consent Agreement--Treaty Document No. 117-1
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I also ask unanimous consent that the Secretary of the Senate be authorized to make grammatical, technical changes to the resolution of ratification with respect to Treaty Document No. 117-1 in order to reflect the addition of material.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 168, No. 152
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