SUPERCUT: JD Vance—2024 GOP VP Nominee—Discusses The Russia-Ukraine War

SUPERCUT: JD Vance—2024 GOP VP Nominee—Discusses The Russia-Ukraine War

Senator Kennedy uh Corner uh Senator Vance of Ohio is recognized all right thank you Mr chairman um and uh Mr Sing I want to direct my questions to you I just want to ask about the the Russian sanctions in particular whether they’ve been effective or ineffective and I want to just as a backdrop here offer a few a few pieces of of information so last March a month into the war in Ukraine President Biden went to the royal castle in Warsaw and enveil a sanction regime that he said represented a quote new kind of economic statecraft with the power to inflict damage that Rivals military might um I certainly hope he was wrong because if he wasn’t then I’m a bit more worried about our military might than I was before I just read this quote because look the the issue here is that the sanctions if you look at the numbers have clearly not matched up with what the Biden Administration predicted so a couple of pieces of information Biden swore that the Russian economy would be quote cut in half the White House predicted that last year the Russian economy would shrink by 15% or more in in fact it shrank just 2.2% uh Biden I believe said that the Russian Ruble would be reduced to Rubble in fact the Russian Ruble is one of the best performing international currencies in the world today and is worth uh compared to our dollar is worth the same that it was when the invasion began a little over a year ago um you know you were the architect of these sanctions and so I’d like to better understand the approach that you advise President Biden to take but first I I would like your candid assessment do you think that these sanctions have been effective thank you Senator I think sanctions are doing their job they’re not the only tool we’re deploying the most important ones are helping Ukraine fight for its freedom enlarging and fortifying NATO’s Eastern flank helping the world get off of Russian energy welcoming the millions of refugees flowing into Europe uh and and you know these are these are the tools that in tandem can make a difference but when it comes to sanctions yes I think they’re doing their job you are correct sir that the decline in Russia’s GDP 2.2% last year is lower than what many expected including me but as I as I mentioned uh previously I think what Putin has done is created a patkin facade he has propped up this year’s growth by sacrificing his long-term growth potential how Capital controls if you have a Ruble in Russia it’s very difficult to convert that to a dollar if you can’t access dollars you can’t import anything without Imports Russia can’t modernize or diversify its economy Russia weaponized energy that of course pushed up Energy prices that flattered net exports that flattered GDP growth but he’s lost half of his energy customers and oil and gas revenues are down 50% year-over-year and then the last thing he did is he spiked government spending by 60% um you can do that to prop up GDP growth but you’ll deplete National savings you’ll drive up inflation you’ll drive up interest rates we’ve degraded his military-industrial complex we’ve cut off Russia from its its major energy consumer in in Europe so Mr want to just unpack a couple of points there so so certainly take the point that perhaps the Russian long-term economic damage has been there uh but it’s a little concerning for us as policy makers when the administration says that these sanctions are going to be effectively a a military grade deployment into the Russian economy and then you look at the Topline data and that just hasn’t been borne out uh and I and I worry about that I also worry I I spoke to an international relations scholar yesterday who who really expressed some concern about whether America’s deployment of sanctions in this particular context and the failure to see obvious short-term benefit to the Americans uh obvious short-term damage or at least nearly as significant as short-term damage to the Russians uh actually causes some credibility issues with our with our own government um one just a couple of of other questions here so I I wonder when you guys were thinking about designing these sanctions if you maybe underweighted and under um understated the importance of Manu facturing mining the sort of real sectors of the economy that are much more important when you’re developing a war economy than let’s say uh Finance or technology um or at least digital technology I’m I’m sort of curious there sort of how you think about that because you mentioned the Russian industrial base being degraded uh but when I look at Russians you know having a 6 to1 artillery advantage against the ukrainians and being able to is apparently as far as the eye can see deel develop artillery Munitions in a way where already America’s stocks are being depleted uh it looks in in in on the ground as if the Russians continue to have not just an artillery advantage today but we’ll plausibly have an artillery Advantage 6 months in the future um did you guys underweight the importance of manufacturing mining um the the sort of the the the the the older economy according to a lot of people but the economy that actually matters when you’re fighting a war uh thank you Senator it’s a good question uh you know look so we design the sanction to apply pressure where we have uh a strength that intersects with Russia’s vulnerability so foreign Capital was one of those areas Cutting Edge technology was a second and yes we have gotten into Supply chains where we feel like we had Collective leverage over Russia but you know look I think as it relates to the battlefield impact uh we’ll never know because the Intelligence on the ground in Russia is so sparse but every indication that I’ve that I’ve seen is that he’s running out of prec precision guided Munitions running out of avionics night vision goggles satellites tank production car production uh and he’s having to rely on industrial goods like dishwashers and breast pumps to actually uh function his his equipment in his military he’s relying on North Korea and Iran to substitute for uh the kind of Technology you need to prosecute a war of this scale Meanwhile we’re supplying the most sophisticated Weaponry that we can uh to Ukraine so I think we’re giving Leverage to Ukraine on the battlefield that’s really where it matters most sanctions will never be a substitute for that kind of support thank you thanks all right thank you and I’ve been left with first let me say thanks to to Adam uh who’s been a good friend and an adviser throughout the entire primary and general election process and his organization is doing a lot to bring basic conservative values back to our culture back to our young people uh and back to the institutions of Education where they’ve been banished for far too long so Adam thanks for all that you’ve done for me personally and for the movement uh I want to thank all of you for being here and I want to thank especially Kevin Roberts and all of the Heritage Foundation for 50 years of incredible work on conservative policy uh you know the old famous story of course is that when uh Ronald Reagan took over he went to the Heritage Foundation to identify all the things how could he translate his campaign promises into reality and I really believe that we are on the Forefront of a new conservative majority in this country and we are going to hopefully in 2024 take back the White House and this organization is going to play a major role in helping us figure out how to govern at the White House at the Senate at the house and all across our great country so Kevin thank you for your leadership and thanks for being at the Forefront of the things that [Applause] matter I have 17 minutes here which for a US senator is actually not that much time when you put a microphone in front of a US senator and you don’t have security about to escort them off State page they can get a little a little long tooth or a little uh a little long winded here but let me let me talk about something um that is is is maybe not as inspiring as some of the remarks you’re going to hear today but I think is is so important because we are in 2023 faced with an incredible fork in the road in this country and this organization and every single one of you in this room will play a big role and which pathway we choose and that fork is about the foreign policy that we will choose as a country and whether we will have a foreign policy that ruthlessly and rationally pursues our own interest or whether we have a foreign policy that sends American troops American blood and treasure to where it simply doesn’t belong and will do no good in the process now I’m 38 years old I graduated from high school in um in in June of 2003 before I graduated from high school in April of 2003 just few weeks after we invaded Iraq I I I enlist in the United States Marine Corps my entire life has been influenced and affected by the decisions that we made a month before I enlisted in the Marine Corps and just a few months before I graduated from high school and let me tell you I changed my mind on this when I was a young High School student I read books I consumed information I watched Shan Hannity debate Allan Colmes back in the day if any of you remember that um and and I and I remember thinking to myself that what we would do in Iraq was transform it from a horrible dictatorship into a flowering democracy and I hate to say that didn’t happen and I also hate to say not just that it didn’t happen not just that some of us were wrong myself very much at the top of the list even though I was only a high school student but the people who were most wrong suffered no consequences and the American foreign policy establishment has learned zero lessons from what what is perhaps the most unforced and catastrophic error in the history of this country trillions we spent trillions of dollars we killed thousands of Americans and more Iraqis we eradicated the oldest Christian population in the world all in the service of increasing the power of Iran and putting our Ally Israel under greater threat and yet the people who pursued that policy the people who pushed it still have cushy Think Tank jobs thankfully not here they still have great media consultantship they make a lot of money and they have a lot of prestige I think it’s time to throw those ideas on the ash sheep of history and tell the people who made the mistakes of 20 years ago we’re not going to let you make them again in 2023 I mean just think about this people that I mean I know a lot of you in this room and I’m sure a lot of lot of you um have different views on foreign policy but think about all the people that 20 years ago 10 years ago we thought of as friends and allies in the conservative movement people like Bill Crystal people like David from right now maybe all of you knew more than I did at the time but these guys were people who I thought knew everything they knew exactly what we needed to do in American foreign policy it doesn’t bother me that they were wrong what bothers me is that they’ve suffered no consequences think about about this if you had been put in a position of power where you had advocated for a catastrophic decision in your company and your personal life in your business certainly at the height of American foreign policy don’t you think you should suffer some consequences when you screw it up that Common Sense this is maybe the most important lesson of Iraq is that the people who drive our foreign policy very often don’t know what they’re doing but they suffer no consequences when they’re wrong we in this room need to change that we need to make sure that the people who have made catastrophic mistakes at the very least have to apologize for it before they Advocate the next catastrophic mistake for the Next Generation how about that but if lesson one from Iraq is that we should stop rewarding people who get us into the wrong situations again and again lesson two is that there is something I think in the heart of every American an admirable thing in the heart of every American this love of Freedom this love of democracy this love of Liberty and ladies and gentlemen we have to recognize that while I believe that that fire is alive in the heart of every American that doesn’t mean it’s alive in the heart of every other person all across the world we cannot take American values and force them on people who don’t want them and we have to stop running our foreign policy based on moral slogans instead of on cold hard reality remember Iraq was all about Freedom Liberty and democracy it was all about bringing the American way of life to Iraq and yet what we actually got out of it was was Iran Iran becoming even more powerful than they were 20 years ago that is what happened because we weren’t thinking we were too busy talking about moral slogans it was a disaster now let’s go back let’s move forward a little bit because I think we need to apply these lessons importantly to a new conflict in a new war that a lot of people in this town think America should get more involved in and frankly we’re learning apparently that America already maybe has troops on the ground in Ukraine ladies and gentlemen get America out of Ukraine get American troops out of Ukraine it is a disaster for this country now why is a disaster for this country because I want to be clear and I want to be specific look I admire the brave ukrainians as much as any person in this room or any person in this town they have against incredible odds fought a very terrible enemy and they have fought bravely but let’s not mistake the courage of the Ukrainian troops on the ground with the fact that they have the most corrupt leadership and corrupt government in Europe and maybe the most corrupt leadership anywhere in the world can any person here I’m a US senator and I don’t know the answer to this question where have the $130 billion that we spend in Ukraine where where have they gone we don’t know it hasn’t been properly tracked and when US senators and congressmen try to find out the answer the Biden Administration shuts us down but here’s where set it aside the fact that we don’t have enough money in this country why are we spending $130 billion on Ukraine when we can’t even pay our own bills at home set that to the side and let’s talk about the most important part of this war now I have been an advocate for a very long time that America we need to make more of our own stuff we need to manufacture our own weapons our own Technologies right here in the good old us OFA we made a mistake ladies and gentlemen to Offshore all of our important manufacturing technology to China to Mexico to other countries but now what that means is that we don’t have the manufacturing capacity here to support America’s military goals of the future let me highlight this with one very extraordinary statistic right now as we speak the Russians are firing 20,000 artillery shells a day in Ukraine Russia has one tenth the size of the economy of the United States do you know how many artillery shells we’re sending to Ukraine how many we’re able to manufacture in our country about a thousand a day so an economy that is 10 times smaller than our own is able to manufacture weapons 20 times more than we can how did we let this happen but since we let it happen let’s deal with the reality there are missile systems there are artillery systems there are bullets basic weapons of war that we are sending to Ukraine right now that the real enemy is watching because the thing that we need to prevent more than anything is a Chinese invasion of Taiwan it would be catastrophic for this country it would decimate our entire economy where the computer chips so much of those are made in Taiwan it would throw this country into a great depression and right now do you know that Joe Biden is not sending weapons to Taiwan weapons that we promise the Taiwanese because we’re sending those weapons to Ukraine or elsewhere how does that make any sense now here’s the thing that I here’s the thing that I’m often confronted with when people tell me that we can focus on Ukraine and Taiwan at the same time they say that we have to show Putin that we mean business so that she in China will know that we mean business too but the unfortunate fact is that Putin and she they don’t care about our chest thumping they don’t care about what we say they care about whether we can make enough bullets to fight the war that we may have to fight that is all that matters it’s time to bring our manufacturing home it’s time to manufacture our weapons in the United States and it’s time to send a message to the world that America is the arsenal of democracy but we cannot do that unless we get out and stop the focus on Ukraine we got to focus on China because that’s where the real enemy [Applause] is this is hard for a lot of us to accept it’s hard for a lot of us to accept that the arsenal of democracy in World War II is making 12th the artillery shells that Russia’s making but that is the reality and let me close this question of foreign policy this argument on foreign policy with what we need to do to rebuild our own country yesterday I I I stood on the senate floor my first speech on the senate floor actually and I objected to a Biden Administration I I sometimes say the Obama Administration and I confused myself and then I said well it’s actually the same thing so who cares but a bid Administration Ambassador a bid Administration Ambassador who went to the very conservative country of Ghana where she was the Ambassador and decided that it would be in America’s best interest to hang up the trans pride flag in the American Embassy in Ghana okay we are led by unserious people ladies and gentlemen we’re led by a bunch of fools if we’re being honest uh let’s be more direct now here’s the thing the Chinese Larry Summers the Obama Administration Economist once said when the Chinese come to Africa they want to build you an airport when the Americans come to Africa they want to lecture you they want to lecture you about Progressive politics ladies and Gentlemen let’s get progressive politics out of our foreign policy if a majority of Americans don’t believe something we shouldn’t be forcing it down the throat of somebody else but this is what American foreign policy has become we ignore the fact that we don’t manufacture enough of our own weapons and we send woke gender studies professors to Africa when the Chinese are building roads and bridges and hospitals and you know why this matters it matters because Africa has an incredible future in the economy of the 21st century and if all the minerals and all the resources and all the possibilities of Africa in the 21st century uh are controlled by China we are going to suffer you can’t manufacture computer chips without some of those minerals you can’t manufacture weapons without some of those minerals so let’s get the woke stuff out of our diplomacy and let’s get back to an American foreign policy based on our national interest it’s really that simple now let me just thank you now let me just let me just finish with this one final thought here uh you heard this from Tim Scott great colleague you he you’ll hear this from a lot of other people in the future we live in an incredibly dangerous world and a very new world I talked earlier about how it’s hard for a lot of us especially you know kid 38 years old I grew up in the in the era where America was the sole foreign policy power in the world what will determine whether we win the battle against China I really don’t believe it’s it’s it’s not a question of whether we have the best people of course we have the best people it’s not a question of whether we have the best economy of course right now we have the best economy it’s not a question of anything other than of leadership and of whether we are willing to trust and believe in the American people to support their values instead of trying to destroy them in other words if you have an American leadership that is trying to destroy the American family if you have an American leadership that is convincing 12-year-old kids that they were born in the wrong body and we’re going to impose crazy surgeries on them to fix this if you have an American leadership that teaches Americans not that we have a common history and a common future together but that they should hate one another based on the color of their skin that is what the modern left is doing to this country and that’s what we have to fight against if we are strong here at home if we build things here at home if we have the self-confidence and the will to say we are all Americans we believe in an American past and importantly in an American future we will win the battle of the future but that’s what this is all about don’t give up the culture don’t give up our economy don’t give up the very things that make us who we are because whether we beat back the Chinese it has nothing to do with China and it has very little to do with the rest of the world it has to do with we we allow American leadership to disgrace us and Destroy what makes this country special or whether to build on what comes from the past I believe we ought to build on what comes from the past and I believe we will and let me leave you with one final thought you know I I’m a new Senator I’m a new politician I ran for office actually I hate calling myself a politician it sort of feel like I need to go take a bath or something um but I guess I am when you run around asking the people of Ohio to vote for you you become a politician I I i’ I’ve been doing this for all of two years but let me say something um Adam talked about I think you know you don’t hear people in a America talk about their their faith anymore you don’t hear people in America talk about the fact that we were as John Adams said a foundational Republic created for moral and religious people well I’m I’m going to talk a little bit about God when I was I was actually talking to a good friend about two years ago actually when I was thinking about running for Senate and you know there was a lot going on in the country at the time there were a lot of bad things that Joe Biden was doing this was when remember Delta and some of the big corporations in Atlanta were going after Georgia for passing Common Sense voter ID you remember that that was about two years ago and I remember thinking to myself well if the corporations are teaming up with the left what can we really do here and I was doing something there’s a technical term for what I was doing when you sometimes talk to a friend and you’re not feeling great about things I was whining was whining to a buddy about how things were going and he kind of stopped me dead in my tracks he’s a person who’s very influential to me returning to my own Christian faith and he said JD despair is a sin I thought a lot about this cuz I talked to a lot of people from all walks of life in the conservative movement I see a lot of despairing right now in our movement and I I’d encourage you to think despair is not just bad because it allows the other side to take advantage of us it’s not just counterproductive despair really is a sin Our Hope in this country is not that everything has been going perfectly in the last 10 years because it hasn’t Our Hope in this country is that we have the best people in the world world we have the best Republic in the world we have the best constitution in the world ladies and gentlemen despair is a sin let’s fight for this country and take it back God bless you and thank you for having [Applause] me ladies and Gentlemen please welcome to the stage Heritage Foundation research fellow in the Devas Center For Life religion and family Delano [Music] Squires well uh good morning and um what a what a great speech by Senator JD Vance uh I have the honor right now of introducing someone that I consider a friend for the next discussion Ali best Stucky is the host of the podcast relatable where she breaks down the latest in culture news and politics from a Christian conservative perspective she’s a frequent guests on Fox News and other uh and other media and the writer and author of the bestselling book you’re not enough and that’s okay today in addition to podcasting writing and making the occasional satirical video Ali Beth speaks to a broad array of gatherings and organizations including colleges about the importance of constructing a Biblical worldview Ali is a wife and a mother vocations that make her one of the most courageous and effective voices in the culture wars she epitomizes the biblical instruction to speak the truth in love she is also my wife’s favorite Blaze personality which is noteworthy because I’ve been a blaze contributor since 2021 so I know you all are in for a real treat and I welcome to the stage now Ali best Stucky thank you Mr chair I I appreciate you for hosting this committee um and I want to focus a little bit on per perhaps the unintended consequences of some of our Russia and Ukraine policy of the last year and direct my question to to you Miss Rosenberg and thank you all for being here um so I’ve known this committee before sanctions policy in Russia has been a complete and total failure we thought that we would shrink the Russian economy by 10 20 30 even 50% yet we’ve Shrunk the Russian economy by very little uh and if you compare it to the performance of other Regional economies and let’s say in terms of the performance of its currency it’s actually doing pretty well relative to other world currencies so the foreign policy establishment claimed that one of the strongest sanctions measures was the disconnection of Russian Banks from Swift Scholars claimed that this would kneecap the Russian economy but while the Washington foreign policy establishment was preoccupied with crafting a sanctions regime they failed to consider that Russia had been developing their own alternative to to Swift which is of course the spfs M Rosenberg I want to ask first has the spfs grown in response to being cut off from Swift and by how much is it grown thank you senator for the question um we are uh aare aware of and looking at the Russian payments uh rail system if you will the spfs um which grew significantly earlier on and the earlier the prior stage of Russia sanctions in 2014 when it s uh when it saw some of the writing on the wall about its inability to access certain International Financial uh institutions or partners and began developing at that time yeah so so my understanding at least the Russian claims are that they’ve integrated about 50 foreign Banks just in the last couple years onto the spfs system and to your point it sounds like they integraded a lot more before uh from maybe 2014 to 2020 uh perhaps 20121 the other really concerning thing of course is that India and Iran seem to be getting closer and closer to the Russian Financial system even as they’re getting further and further away from the American Financial system and in particular India which we should all recognize is the most important geopolitical counterweight to China in the region it’s a very bad thing for them to be getting closer to Russia and China and the Russian Financial system Ju Just for for my edification and anybody else who’s listening could you speak a little bit to the National Security importance so what do what do we get out of uh Co Cooperative organizations like Swift as the dominant global bank power and what kind of access does our law enforcement have that they wouldn’t have if you had major foreign powers shifting off of Swift thank you for the question I have also noted with great concern some of the developments and expanding uh efforts by Russia with several specific Partners to have uh direct and bilateral Financial flows you mentioned uh India and Iran those are not the only ones there are other countries where this is a great concern and as you pointed out this is designed to be an effort to relieve and mitigate its dependency on International Financial systems so the reason why Russia as we see it is seeking to do this is because it has less and less connectivity with International Financial architecture it’s not just Swift it’s also the correspondent banking relationships that have been cut off so significantly by the European and us and British sanctions that have severed designated number of Banks and sever those relationships but I the concern that I hear you expressing is concern we also have we cannot rest knowing that we have designated over 80% of Russia’s Financial system and restricted their access to Swift systems that is insufficient if they are still able to move around them and gain access to International Financial channels yeah I I I appreciate that and certainly agree with the emphasis there my concern I guess is that our Ukraine policy has had this massive unintended consequence and if we had gone into this 18 months ago knowing that we would maybe be pushing India closer to the Chinese not not to say nothing of Russia we’re pushing Russia and India closer to the Chinese we’re encouraging the creation of an entirely alternative Financial system it’s really important that our law enforcement has access to some of these Financial transactions it’s one of the ways we catch interational crime it’s one of the ways that we prevent International terrorism if the consequence of our Ukraine policy is weakening that Financial system and strengthening an alternative Financial system I think it’s one of the many consequences for our country that our policy makers haven’t fully Incorporated uh and frankly that that the American people are not fully aware of because you don’t see the effects of this stuff right away we may be dealing with the consequences for years or even decades to come but I appreciate your work on this and appreciate your answer to the questions thank you m Rosenberg and thank thanks to everybody else I yield ask that it would be reported by number the Senate will be in order and the clerk will report the senator from Ohio Mr Vance for Mr Hol for and himself proposes an amendment number 838 Senators will take uh discussions outside of the chamber Senate will be in order senator from Ohio Mr President I I I propose amendment 830 for the very simple reason that um as as we spend resources uh to support the Ukrainian war effort against the Russians we need to be honest with ourselves and honest with the American people about exactly what we’re spending and how much we’re spending uh we saw recently in a $6 billion Department of Defense accounting error which fails to give the American people and fails Senator is correct Senate is not in order Senators take conversations outside of the chambers to the senator can be heard thank you Senator young and and and look what what what our Amendment does is simple it forces the Department of Defense to use an accurate accounting method if we ask ourselves when the president uses his draw down authority to send weapon systems to Ukraine how do we account for it do we account for it based on an old cost with depreciation or do we account for it on its cost to the American taxpayer I think it’s very clear that the cost of the American taxpayer is the one that we should use and I also think this allows us to more adequately count and account for the resources we’re giving to Ukraine and other nations as well uh I uh M Mr Mr President uh I uh I ask to uh reserve the remainder of my time without objection Mr President senator from Washington Mr President I Rise an opposition to the Senator’s Amendment this amendment actually changes a longstanding definition related to the president’s use of draw down authority to provide critical military support to our partners in times of need it would artificially inflate the value placed on the defense articles things like weapons or military items or technical data we provide to our partners and allies resulting in the administration hitting the cap on its Authority much more quickly that means less Aid to Ukraine less Aid to Taiwan less aid to any Ally who needs this assistance in the future this would undercut our current efforts to support the ukrainians limiting our ability to provide them with critical defense articles they need to defend themselves if this amendment passes it will be a loss for our ability to support our allies I urge a no vote recogn Mr President the senator from Ohio is 47 seconds remaining I I I’ll be brief here so so first of all the Department of Defense recently clarified that it has not used the proper accounting methods in Ukraine so I don’t think that this is a change to a long-standing policy I think that it reinforces proper accounting methods within the Department of Defense the more important Point here is a $6 billion accounting error is approximately the amount of Aid that the United Kingdom has provided to Ukraine if we’re not using an accounting method that allows us to properly account for this stuff we are missing gaping numbers we can’t possibly have a reasonable cost benefit debate if we don’t know the cost of the resources and of the weapons we’re sending to Ukraine we just need to be honest with ourselves and with the American people that’s all this amendment does and I ask uh that it be called up for a vote right Mr President Is there further debate is there uh time remaining senator from R Rees has a minute three uh seconds uh Mr President uh the Army recognizes its mistake they’ve revised their policies they now use something known as Netbook value which is consistent with the foreign assistance acts with the state department uses and reinforcing Senator M’s point the bottom line here is we adopt this amendment we will lower the amount of equipment we can provide to Ukraine which is critically in need of such equipment I would urge a no vote all right the question the question is on the amendment the Y and days have been requested is there sufficient second there appears to be and the clerk will call the role M waldwin Mr Barack thank you Mr Pres president I appreciate my colleague from Kansas making a forceful case for why this package is necessary we have been told by the president we have been told by our Israeli allies we have been told by a number of National Security Experts that Israel is in a fight for its life and it’s in a fight for its life against not just an enemy in Israel but an is an enemy radical islamist terrorism that very often has and is planning as we speak to come to our Shores and to attack us uh this is a common sense package as the senator from Kansas mentioned it gives the president the exact amount of money that he asked for to support our Israeli allies what is different about our bill what is different about The house’s bill that it already passed is from from what the president requested is twofold first of all this is ready to go it is ready to go today if we pass this package today Aid would flow to our Israeli allies immediately that is reason number one to support it the other difference from the president’s 106 billion dollar Behemoth of a supplemental is that this is about a single problem because we should be debating single problems in this country the world is complicated of course the world has intertwined complexities but we should have enough respect for the American people to debate these issues distinctly because they raise separate questions many of my colleagues may forget that a matter of a weeks ago a matter of months ago there were people in this chamber there were people in the United States of America America demanding that the state of Israel give money and weapons to the ukrainians money and weapons that the Israelis are now using this very moment to defend themselves the idea that these policies are not in ttention with one another the idea that what happens in Russia and Ukraine is separate from what happens in Israel is not just obvious it is common sense and it has been borne out by the reality of the last couple of weeks now my colleagues would like to collapse these packages too many of my colleagues would like to collapse these packages because they would like to use Israel as a political fig leaf for the president’s Ukraine policy but the president’s Ukraine policy just like the Israeli policy should be debated we should talk about it we should discuss it we should separate the costs and benefits and analyze them as distinct policies because that is what the American people deserve of their legislature now there are many questions we could ask about the Ukraine policy many issues that have gone completely un answered number one what is our end goal in Ukraine you hear commonly that the goal is to throw the Russians out of every ounce of Ukrainian territory and yet when you talk to the president’s own Administration in private they admit that it is that is a strategic impossibility let me repeat that no rational human being in the president’s Administration believes that it is possible to throw the Russians out of every inch of Ukrainian territory so why is that the public justification offered by many Advocates of indefinite unlimited Ukrainian Aid because this debate is fundamentally dishonest we are not telling the American people the truth because we know that if we did tell them the truth they would not support an indefinite flow of money to Ukraine what are we doing ladies and gentlemen how long is this supposed to go on how much money are we expected to spend what is the Strategic objective what are we trying to do are we monitoring the fact that we have spent nearly $200 billion if the supplemental passage passes $200 billion dollar to one of the most corrupt countries in the world do we have proper assurances that all that money is being spent on the things that we say say tell ourselves that it’s being spent on the answer of course is no because we have not had a real debate in this chamber the American people I think should be ashamed of us for that fact let me offer just one one final uh observation here you’ve heard in this chamber you’ve heard even today that the Ukraine policy was born of a spirit of bipartisan agreement that we had this moment where Democrats and Republicans recognize that it was very very important to help the Russ or help the ukrainians push back against the Russian attack and of course we support and praise our Ukrainian friends they’ve done a lot more than many people gave them credit for but let’s also be honest that for 30 years Washington DC has run on bipartisan foreign policy wisdom and it has run this country to the ground with $1.7 trillion deficits war after war after war that has killed thousands of Americans millions of other people and has not led to the Strategic strength of this country it was great bipartisan agreement after September the 11th that threw Saddam out of Iraq and of course a lot of people celebrated it until we right now realize that Iraq is a client state of Iran we empowered one of the worst regimes in the world with our bipartisan wisdom maybe what we should have is some bipartisan wisdom that the foreign policy of consensus of this country for the last three decades has been a disaster it’s been a disaster for this country it’s been a disaster for our dead Marines army soldiers Navy sailors and Air Force Airmen it has been a disaster for this country’s final finances and it has been a disaster for the entire world let’s have a real debate we haven’t had one in 30 years Mr President I yield to my distinguished colleague from Florida kind of open up this process again or where are we well I do think the president has to get involved in show some leadership here if you think about the political Dynamics Republicans sort of disagree on the Ukraine question but are unified in our belief that we need stronger border security measures uh the Democrats disagree on the border but are unified in their belief that Ukraine needs to get a lot more resources I think that actually creates a real opportunity for some negotiation but unfortunately the president has to participate in that process can you kind of clarify where you are on the Ukraine endgame I’ve seen comments attributed to you suggesting you’d be okay with Ukraine giving up some percentage of its territory in a peace negotiation talk a little bit about what that looks like well I I think if you look at how mismatched the militaries are there’s really no Pathway to peace that doesn’t run through some negotiation I’m not saying that’s a good thing I’m not saying it was good that Russia invaded Ukraine I’m not saying it’s good that Ukraine has to give up territory uh but they have made no significant progress despite hundreds of billions of dollars of American Aid is another 100 billion dollars really going to accomplish anything or will it take Ukraine further down the pathway of becoming effectively a dependent of the United States of America my worry here is the country is effectively being destroyed uh the average age of a service member in the Ukrainian Army is now 43 years of age they can’t pay their pensioners if this goes on another year are we dealing with a country or are we dealing with a rump state that depends on on America indefinitely what message do you think that sends to let’s say Taiwan you know that if you you know if you get invaded and you can only last a year or so if you can’t win in a year you got to give up 20% of your country yeah look I mean I think first of all America Taiwan is a much different priority for America than the Ukraine is why do you think that well in part because they produce such critical economic ingredients of our own economy that if Taiwan was taken over by China it would give the Chinese even more leverage over the United States where I think Ukraine obviously is an important country it’s just not nearly as important to America’s core national interests as Taiwan I think the lesson all of us should take away the Taiwanese the ukrainians but most importantly American policy makers is we do not have the industrial base to support multiple conflicts at once uh you already see evidence that we’re taking shipments of weapons that were planned for Israel diverting them to Ukraine or planned for Ukraine and diverting them to Israel the takeaway from this conflict is actually that America needs to build more of its own weapon systems and while we’re rebuilding that industrial base we can’t pretend we can fuel three conflicts at once we just can’t one more thing one more thing because I think it speaks to the other argument I’ve seen attributed to zinski that he talked about the idea that if Ukraine loses this war you’ll have a migrant crisis of their own right in Europe is that a a European problem did anything in that line of thinking that affect your thinking on this at all that you could have a huge displacement of of people again if Ukraine Lo fully loses this world well it’s it’s actually hard for me to imagine Ukraine losing much more people to migration I think they’ve already lost close to 25% of their country this is a country that had 40 million people now has 28 million people most of those people has most of those people have been refugees uh to to western parts of Europe I I I don’t know how the migrate crisis could get worse than it already is and it’s not just Ukrainian migrants but it’s also the food crisis in Africa that’s putting tremendous pressure on African food prices because they get so much of their wheat and grain from Ukraine I actually think that this thing goes on much longer you could not just have a Ukrainian migrant Pro excuse me a Ukrainian migrant uh crisis you could have a full Continental migrant crisis it’s one of the reasons why I’d like to bring this thing to a close thank you Senator appreciate it senator for Ohio uh thank you madam president I I come um to debate and to make an argument about whether we should continue funding Ukraine indefinitely because this country and this United States Senate has not actually had much of an argument about whether we should continue to fund Ukraine indefinitely um it has become extremely commonplace among advocates for further Ukraine funding to frame this as the courageous against the partisan those who in America’s in Ukraine apparently moment of need are expressing the great spirit of patriotism That animated Us in World War II and other moments of great world conflict and that those who don’t want to send another 61 $ billion to Ukraine well uh we’re just the knuckle draggers we are the people who are listening to the base we are the people who are listening to the media ignoring that so many of us have been criticizing America’s Ukraine policy from the get-go when both the media and the base was much more supportive than they are today one of the most Preposterous arguments that I hear in defense of our policy in Ukraine is that it is bipartisan that the expert know better perhaps Senator JD Vance doesn’t know what the Joint Chiefs of Staff do perhaps the Republican base doesn’t know what the experts in National Security do maybe they with their knowledge and their training and their intelligence briefings access know something that the American people don’t so while the American people have grown more and more skeptical of this conflict perhaps it makes sense that we should actually listen to The Experts and where have we heard that argument so many times in the last many decades have we’ve been asked to listen to The Experts and yet we never actually ask what the track record of those experts is in matters of foreign policy the experts the bipartisan consensus of course got us into Vietnam a war that lasted nearly 15 years that saw the destruction of nearly 60,000 American lives and for what it was the bipartisan foreign policy consensus the experts that got us in to a 20-year war in Afghanistan where American taxpayers for two decades funded things like how to turn Afghanistan into a flowering democracy or how to ensure that the Afghans had proper American thoughts about gender in the 21st century well maybe that was a waste of money and maybe the experts were wrong those same Experts of course counseled us that we must invade Iraq because Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and yet Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and the war led not only to the destruction of 5,000 American lives and many many hundreds of thousands in of innocent people beyond that but also led to the regional empowerment of Iran which now we are told by those same experts is the biggest problem that we face in the Middle East now those experts have a new Crusade now those experts have a new thing that American taxpayers must fund and must fund indefinitely and it is called the conflict in Ukraine now we at least most of us I think in this body nearly all of us I would hope do not think that Ukraine deserved to be invaded we certainly don’t think that what has befallen the innocent civilians of Ukraine was deserved we condemn it as we should but we have to ask ourselves what are we doing there not how we feel about it what is our objective there not how sad we feel about what’s be Fallen the innocent civilians we have to engage in what the bipartisan experts have failed to engage in for 50 years a conversation about strategy asking very specific very discret questions about what it is that we’re doing there what are we trying to accomplish how long will it take to accomplish these things and for how many millions or billions or trillions of dollars are we in for before we can accomplish these things now I’ve heard any number of explanations from my colleagues who support our policy in Ukraine about what it is that we’re trying to do at the beginning of the war especially you hear this argument far less but at the beginning of the war especially you would hear an argument that we had to throw Vladimir Putin back to the 1991 borders well we don’t hear that argument so much anymore why because it was Preposterous then and it’s Preposterous now Ukraine is a country that now has about 28 million people that’s after many hundreds of thousands have died in the war and many many millions have left the country probably permanently beyond that Russia by comparison has 160 million people and has the industrial capacity to make many many more times artillery shells and other critical weapons per day so against that Leviathan in Eastern Europe we are told somehow that the ukrainians can win well again what is Victory we know now that throwing Russia back to the 199 91 borders is preposterous no one not even the inner circle of zelinsky’s own cabinet makes that argument they did a few months ago but they don’t make that argument anymore so what is Victory and when you talk to people both in public and in private the actual thing that you can piece together that we’re trying to do is to send enough weapons and send enough money to the ukrainians until something good happens until maybe the Russians get sick of the conflict and they come to the negotiating table well that that’s one opportunity uh to end this war that we’re told is that if we just keep on going and we show our resolve then Vladimir Putin will come to the negotiating table and yet if you listen to former German Chancellor Gard Schroeder or you listen even to some of the ministers in zelinsky’s government or certainly if you listen to a number of other Western European allies they will say that Russia was willing to come to the negotiating table at the beginning of 2022 after the war had stalemated from the Russian perspective and after the ukrainians had shown some real bravery and some real resolve now it’s not just Vladimir Putin who says this it’s virtually everyone who has ever talked about this moment in the conflict and they will say that British prime minister Boris Johnson backed by any number of leaders within the American Security apparatus basically said tell Vladimir Putin to shove it the ukrainians are winning the Russians are losing so we’ll just keep this war going for as long as it takes so we had the opportunity to negotiate back in 2022 and if we had taken it here’s what would have happened many fewer hundreds of thousands of ukrainians would have died uh many fewer innocent civilians would have lost their lives their homes their livelihoods and a war in Eastern Europe that has put stresses on everything from food supply to Energy prices would have have concluded so we’re trying to get Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table we don’t have a pathway for how to do it by the way we just think that’s a good thing and we’re going to try to do it if we continue to throw money but yet that same negotiating table was on the offer about 18 months ago and we told them to go shove it okay so uh negotiating table that seems to not be a realistic end goal if we just continue to funnel money and resources what so so what is the end goal here it is astonishing that not a single person from Joe Biden on down can actually articulate what another $61 billion can do they’ll tell you what it won’t do they’ll tell you what the absence of $61 billion will do but how weird is it that they want to send $61 billion to America uh to America’s Ally Ukraine and they can’t actually tell you what it’s supposed to accomplish what this will accomplish that the previous $120 billion didn’t so first we have a complete absence of strategy a complete failure for the president of the United States to articulate what we’re going to do I try to imagine what it would have been in as an American citizen if on December the 8th 1941 Franklin Roosevelt stood before the country and said the Japanese have attacked us it is a day that we’ll live in infamy and so we’re going to send money for as long as it possibly takes with no articulation of what we’re going to do of what the battle plan is of where we’re fighting of what we’re going to have our manufacturing base try to accomplish we’re just going to send money and hope that eventually these guys come to the negotiating table that is the equivalent of what we’re doing at this moment in time with this particular conflict now I mentioned just now our manufacturing base so let’s let’s talk about the costs of this conflict that we know there’s no strategy we know there’s no plan to do anything other than just to funnel more and more money and more and more resources what are the costs of continuing our posture in Ukraine well let’s go through them and let me just make an observation about costs about actually thinking about costs and considering the consequences of our actions you know it it used to be common in American statesmanship that we’ hear this phrase speak softly and carry a big stick the idea was be smart in your strategic decisions be willing to hit back and hit back hard if you have to but don’t Bluster don’t brag don’t pretend that you can do things that you can’t and a and a fundamental part of American statesmanship I think is asking ourselves what is it that we are costing ourselves by continuing to fund this war well you’ve heard some of my colleagues talk about this already we’ve got $61 billion on top of $34 trillion in debt can we actually afford to send another $61 billion to Ukraine can we afford to send the hundred billion that will be requested at some point next year can we afford the hundreds of billions of dollars of reconstruction cost that we’ve effectively committed oursel to by funding the war in Ukraine indefinitely you already hear these people like vultures with a carcass talking about how much money they’re going to make on the Reconstruction of Ukraine and I asked myself why are we destroying the country in the first place given that we know the wars at a stalemate and American diplomacy could possibly bring it to a close now here’s another thing that this is costing us something that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough in this chamber but I’m reminded of the only time that I have ever been in the white house with a sitting president of the United States it was about a week before the inauguration of Donald Trump and Mike Pence and so I was there with President Barack Obama I think it’s important never to reveal confidences of private conversations but he said something then said something that was extremely interesting and I didn’t expect to hear from a Democratic president what he said is that the refugee crisis in Europe in 2015 would take down a number of liberal governments now me as a conservative I might not care about Liberal Liberal governments going down but I thought it was interesting that a theoretically pro-immigration guy a guy much more committed to the cause of open borders than almost any Republican I know would say that when you have wideopen borders and when you have uncontrolled migration it destabilizes governments well of course the former president is exactly right Refugee crises do destabilize governments why are we not talking about the fact that in multiple countries in southern Europe right now they are being overwhelmed with people not bad people by the way most of them are just looking for food to feed their family or a job with a decent wage but we are witnessing the beginning of what I will believe will become the biggest Refugee crisis in the history of the world why because in Africa which has 1.5 billion people most of whom have a standard of living much lower than what we have in the United States of America you have grain prices through the roof wheat prices through the roof barley prices through the roof and is anybody who is advocating an endless war in Ukraine asked what happens when 1.5 billion starving people start to move north to look for some food you don’t have to make any moral judgments about the plight that they will go on you should make a moral judgment about the people in this building who ref refuse to think about the unintended consequences of their actions are we really willing to have over a billion people starving trying to pour into the borders of Europe and the United States of America are we really willing to set up a refugee crisis the likes of which the world has never been seen and if we do that what effect will it have on our allies in Europe what effect will it have in our own country what effect will it have for number for millions of American citizens who are already dealing with the consequences of an overwhelmed Southern border and I want to talk about that overwhelmed Southern Border in a second but I want to keep talking about the unintended consequences of the war in Ukraine another unintended intended consequence is what do Energy prices look like all over the world we have no idea who blew up the nordstream 2 pipeline we can have some guesses but it isn’t kind of weird and isn’t an unusual for our European allies to have had their most important fuel artery destroyed and they seem totally uninterested in asking questions about it we already know that governments like those in Poland like those in Slovenia like those in a number of other Allied countries across Europe are under an extraordinary amount of stress because fuel prices are so high the country of Hungary which has 10 million people took in nearly a million Ukrainian refugees and important American Ally by any standard and yet they are facing skyrocketing Energy prices because of the war between Russia and Ukraine what effect does it have on the many millions of people who are living over there what effect does it have on America’s national security when we take down a number of Allied governments because the people there can’t afford food and can’t afford energy that is another unintended consequence and why we’re while we’re talking about the unintended consequence of energy prices in Europe let’s ask a very important question about why we’re here now my Democratic friends on the other side of the aisle act like Ukraine is the most significant issue confronting our country you see the Ukrainian flag lapel pens you see the way that people talk about it on social media there is a species of American liberal who thinks that the Ukraine war is the most important thing confronting our country but it’s not so important that they will pursue Common Sense American Energy policy policies the reason the reason why Russia is so powerful on the world stage today is one reason because of stupid American and European energy policies Preposterous energy policies that drive up the cost of natural gas so while we with the one hand send $61 billion to Ukraine we pursue a set of energy policies that drive up the cost of natural gas and enrich the Russian oligarchs who are paying for the war we are literally paying for both sides of the war the Russian side with dumb energy policy and $61 billion to Ukraine direct with American taxpayer subsidy that is another unintended consequence in my Republican friends who I assume all of them agree with me on the idiocy of our modern energy policies in 2023 and 2024 why are they supporting a conflict that in fact is a cover for those energy policies if they if they really cared about Ukraine as much as they say they did perhaps they should force the president of the United States to stop enriching Russian oligarchs with terrible energy policy but we’re not doing that we’re going to continue to fund both sides of this war and I guess that’s just the way that it’s going to be let’s talk about another unintended consequence of our Ukraine policy we are at this very moment incredibly stressed in how many weapons we can manufacture I tell this statistic to people and they’re sometimes surprised by it the first time that I heard it I was surprised by it America if you measure it by GDP is of course the largest economy in the world and we are 10 times the size of the Russian economy and yet the most important weapon in Eastern Europe today are 155 millim artillery shells it’s one of the reasons why 400,000 ukrainians that’s the best estimate have died during this conflict is because the the Russians have an incredible ADV advantage in artillery so you ask yourself we’re 10 times the size of the Russian economy how many artillery shells do we make in a month and how many artillery shells do the Russians make in a month well we make in a month about 30,000 artillery shells that’s up from about 20,000 artillery shells a month at the beginning of the conflict guess how many the Russians make they make about 25,000 artillery shells a day so in a month the United States stes the biggest economy in the world makes weapons at a rate per month that the Russians are able to meet in a single day one thing that suggests to me is that GDP numbers are awfully fake if you can’t produce weapons to defend your own people then you can’t pretend that your economy is as strong as you might like to think unfortunately for Wall Street we cannot fight Wars with dollars and derivatives we need weapons we need bullets we need artillery shells we need missiles and America doesn’t make nearly enough of those not for our own security and certainly not enough to support both the Ukraine conflict and God forbid a conflict that might Ur occur in East Asia so let’s specify that a little bit more we are right now depleting critical Munitions missiles artillery shells and bullets faster than we can replenish them and then we send them to Ukraine I’m sorry why does that make an ounce of sense for our own National Security shouldn’t we rebuild our own manufacturing capacity before we spend all of it on Ukraine shouldn’t we make more of our own weapons and gain some self-sufficiency in weapons manufacturing before we send all of those resources to Ukraine the answer of the United States Senate is apparently not so on issue after issue after issue Madame President senator from North Carolina I’m inquiring to see if the gentleman from Ohio would yield to a question about this subject matter will the gentlemen yield I’m happy to yield Madam president um thank you Senator Vance Senator Vance um this Appropriations bill that’s before us uh I just want to make sure that I’ve got my facts right I believe that there are 7 or $35 billion to restore US military read Readiness and modernization I also believe that and and please correct me if I’m wrong um that for every dollar we’re sending to Ukraine we’re appropriating about $2.50 to make sure that we backfill and cover there are a lot of bad unintended consequences to this conflict one of the good ones is learning before we have to defend ourselves that we are grievously out of step with manufacturing capacity and it is my understanding that 35 billion about half of the money that’s being appropriated to Ukraine is actually being appropriated back to the industrial base and uh for Patriot missile manufacturing a number of other vulnerabilities that we found we’re trying to address it uh is that is that do I have a correct understanding of that um to my colleague from North Carolina before I answer that question Madam president can I inquire to how much time I have and Madam president I would also like to state that I have un or I have time that I will in response my question I will yield my time uh for the purposes of you allowing uh to have time beyond the answer the question the senator from Ohio has 40 minutes remaining so M Madam president I ask unanimous consent that the only time that that the only time used by the senator from North Carolina be debited to his PO post closure time and that to answer his question we not have time deducted from my account is there objection without objection thank you madam president uh so to my to my colleague and friend uh from North Carolina I want that this legislation contains a lot of resources I think 35 billion is the number but we have to ask ourselves not just how much money is going to rebuild our industrial base but combined with presidential draw down Authority how much of that will then be just redirected to Ukraine my understanding is that given the current authorizations and given the current Appropriations while a lot of this money will go and I’m glad that it will go to places like Ohio and Alabama to manufacture weapons those weapons will then be mostly sent to Eastern Europe because we’re currently spending resources and Munitions in Eastern Europe at a rate that is far faster than our industrial bases ability to um to replenish them so what will happen in effect is that we will make the weapons and literally faster than we can make them they will then go out to the door to Eastern Europe unless of course in the next few months or the next couple of years the conflict in so the gentleman’s question is well taken but it actually doesn’t address the core concern that we’re depleting Munitions much faster than we can replenish them and I I want to just on on one final Point here if I may and I’ll be quick because I know that I’m on uh borrowed time here um the question of whether we should rebuild our industrial base is some something my friend and I agree on I think most of my colleagues here in the United States agree on the more difficult question is what do we do in the interm it will take years to get our industrial base to the point maybe three years maybe five years to get our industrial base to the point where it could support a war in Eastern Europe and a war in East Asia simultaneously we don’t debate the need to rebuild our industrial base the question is what do we do in The Intern and I think in the inter term continuing to support the Ukraine war and definitely is a terrible terrible mistake Madam president I I I I suppose I could go back on my own clock uh I asked I don’t know what I’m supposed to say here but this the senator will was Jone thank you madam president I appreciate your charity and I appreciate you having to sit up there and listen to me um members of our Gallery chose this but uh some of us did not so I appreciate you and and my staff but um let me let me keep on on going here on how we got here I’ve articulated to the best of my ability why I think we don’t have a strategy here and why I think it’s important for us to actually articulate a strategy what it means for us to not have that strategy and importantly the unintended consequences of continued conflict in Eastern Europe backstopped by the American taxpayer but I want to talk about the politics of this not long ago or I should say excuse me uh not long after ukra I made an observation that frustrated a lot of my friends who advocate for continual conflict in Ukraine I said how can we support a war in ukra defend Ukraine’s borders when we’re not even defending our own American border under the presidency of Joe Biden and the response that came back went something like this and I’ll paraphrase it as much as I can America can walk and chew gum at the same same time a great power should in theory be able to support an ally in Eastern Europe while at the same time securing its own Southern border and I think the events of the last week have revealed just how Preposterous that argument is we clearly are not able to walk and chew gum at the same time and in fact if we were able to walk in chug gum at the same time we would secure our border first and we would have done it weeks or months ago but certainly we would have done it this past week now here’s the basic political Dynamic that unfolded and I know my colleague from Kentucky has discussed this so of others the basic political Dynamic that unfolded is the Republicans in the Senate said we want border security that is the issue around which Republicans are unified we want border security and of course the Democrats are in charge uh the the Democratic leader is the majority leader of the Senate we have a Democratic president so what do the Democrats what unites the Democrats that doesn’t unite us and the answer came back Ukraine the Democrats want to send $61 billion to Ukraine the Republicans want to secure the border and there was the root of a potential compromise in divided government sometimes you have to make compromises nobody’s happy but there was a potential compromise that could be made and here’s what the argument here’s how the argument went if we’re going to send $61 billion to Ukraine we should do it first in tears we shouldn’t send it all at once we should stagger it out a little bit and the reason we should do that is to ensure that Joe Biden actually keeps his promise and enforces the American southern Border in other words we tell the president that you don’t get another dime of American taxpayer money for Ukraine unless you bring illegal border crossings at the level they were during the presidency of Donald Trump that to me was the negotiation as it would set up by the Republican conference that was the understanding that me and so many of my colleagues in the Republican conference had and of course that negotiation could go many places it could go a place that might make Democrats uncomfortable could go a place that might make some of my Republican friends uncomfortable in in theory to get a deal it would sort of get everybody a little uncomfortable you be but you be able to get 60 Senators to pass it and send it on to the house well that’s not what happened what was produced instead was a secret negotiation where Republican Senators by and large had very very little input in the process and where had no idea what was actually in the final package we heard it through rumor and through conversations with friends but immigration law is complicated what a colleague even a well-meaning colleague tells you exists in in a piece of immigration law doesn’t matter nearly as much as the text of the actual immigration law so that text finally dropped on Sunday of last week I believe February 4th that legislation dropped a 370 page piece of legislation that would commit many many billions of dollars to Ukraine a few billion dollars to East Asia a few billion dollars to Israel and a few billion dollars combined with the worst let’s just walk through a few of those Number One Parole the last Democratic president Barack Obama paroled approximately 5,000 illegal aliens per year that’s 5,000 per year Joe Biden in three years has paroled between 600,000 and close to a million illegal aliens per year that is not a typo or or an over statement so Joe Biden radically increased Parole Authority and that doesn’t just have the direct effect of making nearly a million illegal aliens legal it also has a secondary effect because if you are in Central America or you’re anywhere in the world and you would like to come to America and not go through the proper channels now all of a sudden the Clarion call has gone out Joe Biden has thrown open the southern border and if you come across illegally he will parole you close to a million times times per year when the last Democrat did it 5,000 times per year that is the first effect of Joe Biden’s parole and our great border compromise did nothing to limit Joe Biden’s Parole Authority number two another problem with our border law is that it has been manipulated so that we turn so-called illegal aliens into soall Asylum Seekers here’s how it works we of course want to be a country that’s welcoming to those who are fearing during persecution so if you come into this country as an economic migrant and you come illegally you come having not followed the laws of this country you can claim Asylum and if your Asylum claim is granted you immediately receive amnesty and you are on the track to becoming a citizen of this country even though you never followed the law to get into the country in the first place the other effect of our jacked up excuse me the other effect of our problematic Asylum laws is that even if the Asylum claim is not granted you can be released into the country for a period of years sometimes even decades before an immigration judge hears your claims so let’s say you’re an economic migrant you show up at the American southern border you say that I am an asylum claimant fearing persecution and an administrative official from Customs and Border Patrol says well we have to adjudicate your Asylum claim you can’t do that right now so what we’ll do is ask an imig immigration judge to hear that claim in 12 years you’re free to hang out in America for the next 12 years well that is an effective amnesty and again it sends a message all across the world that America is open for business and we can have a wideopen southern border that’s what it does this particular legislation actually made that problem worse now on the one hand it tried to increase the standard for granting Asylum from a credible fear standard to a reasonable fear standard but importantly it changed the people who were enforcing that standard from immigration judges to CIS officers at the United States custom and Immigration Services these are people who are widely believed to have some of the most pro- Asylum views within the United States government so millions of people could come across the southern border claim Asylum and have their claim granted unilaterally that would put them on the pathway to citizenship that would put them in a competitive posture with American citizens for jobs and for other important um benefits and yet this legislation trying to fix the Border actually made the Asylum process worse so here we are with a border compromise that actually makes the border security problems in this country worse and let me just say what we would need to do if we really wanted to secure the borders very simple we just have to make Joe Biden do it he has the tools necessary he has the legal Authority necessary to secure the border the real debate whether you’re using Ukraine money as leverage or something else is how do we force Joe Biden to do his job this legislation didn’t do that it didn’t even come close to doing that and so most Republicans rejected it so now here we are an hour after the first foray of border security negotiations the first volley where Democrats give us border security and Republicans give $61 billion in Ukraine and what happens it it doesn’t succeed for the reasons I just articulated the gross majority of my Republican colleagues didn’t like that proposal and so it got dropped and what you might expect happen in a good faith negotiation that was actually about the Border if we were actually trying to secure the Border you might have said this is not the democrat’s best offer let’s go back to the negotiating table let’s continue to push for border security because that is the most pressing crisis that we face as a country and what happened instead is after an hour Senate Democrats and even some in Republican leadership decided that we should move on from border security they had checked the box now let’s move on to their real priority which is sending another $61 billion to Ukraine it stinks to high heaven ladies and gentlemen no one who watched this process unfold believes that Republic leadership negotiated in good faith for border security or that Democrats did the same it was always Kabuki theater it was always an excuse to say we tried on the border now let’s move on to the thing that really matters which is the money for Ukraine and that failure the way that it blew up in the faces of our leadership and the appearance gave lie to the idea that this was ever really about border security and by the way it alienated millions of Republican and independent voters who want their government to focus on the most pressing problem for this country and that is the Border when I go back home to Ohio and I talk to audiences about their views on Ukraine most people agree with me but some people disagree with me but if you go to an audience in the state of Ohio a state that is affected tragically by the fitel problem where you will drive on highways and see Billboards for sex traffi victims to call the hotline because they’re being sex trafficked in the state of Ohio by Mexican drug cartels who have been given free reign at the southern border if you talk to people and ask them what are the most pressing problems the country faces none of them will say Ukraine even those who would like to send more money to Ukraine none of them will say Ukraine so what are we doing why did we give up so easily Why did Republicans stab their voters in the back why did we not fight for border security ladies ladies and gentlemen that’s exactly what we promised we would do many of us did by the way even some of my colleagues who disagree with me on the Ukraine question they at least had the courage to stand and fight for border security but unfortunately too far too many Republicans refused and so we we are where we are now let me just make um let me just make an argument about where we are on this particular border situation we have millions of people coming into the country illegally every single year we have hundreds of thousands dying just in the first three years of Joe Biden’s term of fit and all overdoses we have a president who has invited the opening of the American southern border and now we are living with the consequences the American people know that this was the direct result of Joe Biden’s policies and they know that he could stop it so let’s debate real border security border security that actually forces the president to do exactly that there are a number of options on the table you will sometimes hear some of my Democratic colleagues and even some in Republican leadership say we can’t have a bill because Donald Trump doesn’t want us to have a bill that if we advance Common Sense border security Donald Trump would destroy it that is the furthest thing from the truth in fact just last week Donald Trump proposed a border security bill that would force Joe Biden to secure the southern border you may agree or disagree with the policy but the idea that there is no policy that would get Republican Buy in including at the top of the Republican ticket is preposterous it’s something that does not exist in reality Madam president what’s how much time do I have left the senator has 25 minutes remaining great so I’ve given my Spiel here and I want to get a little bit into the details of what we’re we’re trying to accomplish here and how we might try to accomplish it let’s first start with a conversation about the American southern border I want to read a piece from The Washington Post an argument that I I want to read and then I want to respond to having failed to convince the American people that a blank check to Ukraine president vmir zilinsky is in their interest the Ukraine first caucus now claims the aid primarily benefits American workers Mark atheis who drafted an oped to this point exemplified the pivot this is disingenuous and dangerous and this is partially in response to some of the arguments that I’ve heard earlier we cannot rebuild our industrial Base by building capacity and sending all of it to Ukraine it doesn’t make sense now I support we support increasing defense spending and building up our defense industrial base as expansion of our military manufacturing capacity benefits American workers and bolsters our national security Washington is more focused on sending our limited Military stockpiles to a conflict in Ukraine with no clear path to Victory the Biden administration’s new message fails to account for grave shortages in our stockpiles thanks to nearly two years of mission in Ukraine the United States is perilously unready for any additional contingency anything with solid rocket Motors is in short supply solid rocket Motors are the Rocket Motors that power so many of the critical missile systems that we need and whether it’s javelins or stingers or Patriot missiles we are critically in short supply of not just the missiles themselves but of some of the components that are necessary for building those missiles including the SM sixs that would be needed in this Pacific the high demand for stingers javelins and patriate interceptors in Ukraine means we are desperately short of the weapons that would be needed in Taiwan replenishing them is going to take years and I’m going to pause here to make an observation one of the arguments my friends make in defense of $61 billion to Ukraine is that we need to send a message to Vladimir Putin that if we give up and walk away from the Ukrainian Battlefield even though the leader of Ukraine’s own military until recently said they had no chance of Victory on that Battlefield if we give up then it will send a message to Xi Jinping the leader of China that we are not a steadfast Ally what they’re arguing in effect is that it will weaken American deterrence that process by which we prevent our enemies and our adversaries from doing things that we don’t want them to well in classical foreign policy circles deterrence is the combination of on the one hand um resolve and on the other hand capacity and they’re making an argument about resolve they’re saying that if we show weakness to she we will be showing a weakening of American resolve we’ll show that America can’t stand in there and fight the fight and look I’m obviously a Critic of further Aid to Ukraine but it is true that American resolve is important and we should do everything that we can to show American resolve but you know what’s more important than American resolve you know what’s more important than thumping our chest like eighth graders on a playground and saying we’re tough we’re strong we can do it what’s much stronger than that is to actually have the capacity to defend ourselves and our allies and that is what is so weak Xi Jinping does not care how tough America acts he cares how strong America is and if we use our ammunition our missiles our artillery on a war in Eastern Europe if we don’t even have the bullets to defend ourselves and our allies it doesn’t matter how tough we act she will do whatever he wants all over the world and that’s what this is ultimately about we are trying to rebuild our country what do we do in the inter term what do we actually do when our country is in a weak enough place because of decisions made over 30 or 40 years I find it interesting that so many of the people from the news commentators to my Senate colleagues Republican and Democrat who actively advocated shipping our industrial base to East Asia and me Mexico are now the people who are most fervently advocating for endless war in Ukraine here’s the game they played send all of our weapons manufacturing send all of our defense industrial base send it everywhere but the United States of America and now that America is in a tough spot we should fight every conflict everywhere even though we don’t make the weapons that we need to support those conflicts and why don’t we make those weapons it’s because these guys encouraged us to ship our industrial base overseas those of you who are students of History will hear will have heard the term arsenal of democracy America was the arsenal of democracy we won World War II not because of chest thumping not because we showed the strongest resolve but because we had the strongest people and the strongest economy in the world so at a time when America faces a number of problems including the southern border here at home at a time when we are weaker in manufacturing capacity than we’ve been at any time in the last half century this is the point when these people want to send unlimited weapons to Ukraine this is the point where they want to send weapons not just to Ukraine but to many theaters all across the world let’s have an honest conversation about the decisions that have been made and how they’ve made this country weaker let’s not pretend that weakness doesn’t exist and send an unlimited number of weapons to Ukraine in the interm now I want to move on to another argument but before I do I am mindful of something that’s very close to my heart personally I have a I have three beautiful children I have a six-year-old baby boy named Yan not so much of a baby anymore I have a four excuse me I have a 2-year-old baby named Mirabel who is still very much a baby and I love her very much and I have a little guy named vivate Gabriel Vance who was three year old three years old yesterday but turned four today and I’m sorry VI that I can’t be with you for your birthday dinner but I want you to know that Daddy loves you very much and I’m going to read this into the record because maybe you can watch it at home oh the Places You’ll Go by Dr Seuss oh the Places You’ll Go congratulations today is your day you’re off to great places you’re off in away you have brained in your head you have feet in your shoes you can steer yourself in any direction you choose you’re on your own and you know what you know and you are the guy who will decide where to go you’ll look up and down streets look them over with care about some you will say I don’t choose to go there with your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet you’re too smart to go down in a not so good Street and you may may not find any you’ll want to go down in that case of course you’ll head straight out of town it’s opener there in the wide open air out there things can happen and frequently do to people as brainy and footsy as you and when things start to happen don’t worry don’t stew just go right along you’ll start happening too oh the Places You’ll Go you’ll be on your way up you’ll be seeing great sights you’ll join the high fly who soar to Great Heights you won’t lag behind because you’ll have the speed you’ll pass the whole gang and you’ll soon Take the Lead wherever you fly you’ll be the best of the best wherever you go you’ll top all the rest except when you don’t because sometimes you won’t I’m sorry to say but sadly it’s true that bang-ups and Hang-Ups can happen to you you can get all hung up in a prickly perch and your gang will fly on you’ll be left in a Lurch you’ll come down from the Lurch with an unpleasant bump and the chances are then that you’ll be in a slump and when you’re in a slump you’re not in for much fun unsling yourself is not easily done you’ll come to a place where the streets are not marked some windows are lightened but mostly they are dark a place you could sprain both your elbow and your chin do you dare to stay out do you dare to go in how much can you lose how much can you win and if you go in should you turn left or right or right and 3/4 or maybe not quite or go around back and sneak in from behind simple it’s not I’m afraid you will find for a mind maker upper to make up his mind you can get so confused that you’ll start into race down long wiggled rocks at at a break necking pace and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space headed I fear toward a most useless Place The Waiting place for people just waiting waiting for a train to go or a bus to come or a plane to go or the mail to come or the rain to go or the phone to ring or the snow to snow or waiting around for a yes or no or waiting for their hair to grow or waiting for a vote everyone is just waiting waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for the wind to fly a kite or waiting around for Friday night or waiting perhaps for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil or a better break or a String of Pearls or a pair of pants or a wig with curls or Another Chance everyone is just waiting no that’s not for you somehow you’ll Escape all that waiting and staying you’ll find the bright places where the boom bands are playing with Banner flip flapping once more you’ll ride High ready for anything under the sky ready because you’re that kind of a guy oh the Places You’ll Go There is fun to be done there are points to be scored there are games to be one and the Magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winningest winner of all Fame you’ll be famous as famous can be with the whole wide world watching you win on TV except when they don’t because sometimes they won’t I’m afraid that sometimes you’ll Play Lonely games too games you can’t win cuz you’ll play against you all alone whether you like it or not alone will be something you’ll be quite a lot and when you’re alone there’s a very good chance you’ll meet things that scare you right out of your pants there are some down the road between hither and Yan that can scare you so much you won’t want to go on but but on you will go though the weather be foul on you will go though your enemies prowl on you will go though the hacken cracks howl onward up many a frightening Creek though your arms may get sore and your sneakers May leak on and on you will hike and I know you’ll hike far and face up to your problems whatever they are you’ll get mixed up of course as you already know you’ll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go so be sure when you step step with care and great tact and remember that life’s a great Balancing Act just never forget to be dextrous and deaft and never mix up your right foot with your left and you will succeed yes you will indeed 98 and 3/4% guaranteed kid you’ll move mountains so be your name bucks bomb or Bixby or Bray or morai Ali Van Allen OA or VI you’re off to great places today is your day you’re mountain is waiting so get on your way I love you returning to the matter at hand Madame President or Mr President excuse me how much time remains 13 minutes thank you Mr President I want to read this piece which articulates my argument for peace very well written in responsible statecraft published on July 5th of 2023 we’re now think about it nearly a year since this piece was published and its arguments are if anything more pressing today than they were last summer quote last year referring to the possibility of escalation that the Russo Ukrainian War entails President Joe Biden announced that America and the world are closer to a destructive nuclear war than ever since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 19 1962 perhaps no other statement from the highest level of government could so directly affirm the failure of American Grand strategy and foreign policy in the post-cold war world what seemed to be a Hollywood sci-fi scenario that the average American in the 21st century did not even think about is now a possibility that experts policy makers and world leaders like President Biden discuss regularly as America and the world grapple with the tectonic shifts that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has Unleashed War budgets around the world keep increasing in 2022 Global spending on defense reached an all-time high of 2.24 trillion dollars the US defense budget accounted for almost 40% of the total surpassing the next 10 countries combined including China Russia India the United Kingdom France and Germany yes America’s ever increasing military expenditures have hardly translated into success stories in the 21st century the trillions of dollars pumped into questionable military adventurism abroad such as the invasion of Iraq in 2003 have yielded equally questionable results not only for us interests and National Security but also for Global Security America’s overreliance on the military to achieve policy objectives and the unilateral actions pursued without an international mandate have backfired in the form of growing Coalition of dissatisfied states that refuse to accept a world order that they see as unjust and hierarchical in April of 1953 president Dwight de Eisenhower delivered the famous chance for peace speech in which he compared the enthusiasm for a just and peaceful world after World War II to the unstable hostile and unpredictable environment of the Cold War the eight years that have passed have seen that hope waver grow dim and almost die and the shadow of fear again has Darkly lengthened across the world he said before laying out his vision of a just and peaceful order and warning against the unbalanced political influence of military interests today 70 years later the world faces the same shadow of fear as the unpredictable War Unleashed by a revisionist Russia shakes the International System Biden’s promised end of America’s forever Wars That was supposed to bring stability and predictability back to the realm of international Affairs while also allowing the United States to reorient its resources towards a much needed domestic Revival to not mat materialize while the war in Ukraine poses a significant threat to US National Security interests and necessitates an appropriate policy response including security assistance to Ukraine for self-defense look this guy even believed in security assistance to Ukraine up to a certain point US military spending was growing even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this pattern should raise questions about whether the United States should have increased spending on the military in response to the crisis in Ukraine the war has also turned into a talking point for the those whose direct interests tied to military spending overshadow the actual interest of the American people many are now pushing for the concept of a long standoff with foreign Rivals without accounting for the real costs and implications that will be borne by ordinary citizens both in America and abroad in foreign affairs discourse and reality are sometimes interwoven in complicated and nuanced ways conflict can arise as much from actual strategic disagreements security considerations and national interests as from discourse and perceptions in this context embracing conflict and promoting discourse that emphasizes a long-term confrontation is a dangerous path for America to follow the very cause of World War I has been attributed to the perceptions of threats and the interpretation of actions by States as hostile leading some Scholars to argue that European leaders sleepwalked into a conflict they neither desired nor expected to win easily the question for Americans today especially the new generation that will be inheriting a more unstable and dangerous world is whether they will allow America to sleepwalk into a conflict that the United States neither needs nor can afford to win traditionally American voters do not attach much importance to foreign and defense policy issues yet the citizens of a country that will be spending a record 8 842 billion on the military cannot afford to close their eyes on such critical policy issues that in fact profoundly affect their livelihoods the question is not whether America should abandon its legitimate security needs and interests nor neglect the foreign threats that necessitate spending on the military we must understand how much of the current spending is actually Justified we also need to assess the efficiency of the military to protect the American people and interests abroad without overextending resources wastefully and prompting a dangerous arms race that will paralyze growth development and more importantly the long-term Prospect for peace and a new more just world order this is why Young Americans should be especially concerned with the unchecked influence of special interests that seek to inflate threats install the inevitability of long-term confrontation in the world and justify ever increasing spending on the military the new generation will be the primary bearer of such burdens costs and consequences that decisions taken in Washington today will have ultimately it boils down to a simple question of the kind of vision Young Americans have for their country and the world the question is especially critical given America’s own undeniable internal strife those seeking to downplay the legitimate critique of the overreliance on Military forget or deliberately neglect that foreign policy is ultimately dependent on domestic policy both experts in the general public now agree that the once hiled American democracy is threatened the inflection point for America is serious the country is facing a crisis of identity social cohesion a growing discontent with the economic model that is marginalized an Ever growing segment of the population and what is more concerning a waning belief and Trust in the country’s most foundational institutions those championing a new age of unnecessarily militaristic and confrontational foreign policy that relies on growing and unbalanced defense budgets should rethink the use of those resources a stroll in the streets of Portland OR in the infamous skid Road in Los Angeles could be beneficial to re-evaluate priorities and distributions of limited resources to deal with the most pressing issues America faces ultimately the strength and attractiveness of the United States on the global stage and America’s competitiveness Visa its Rivals depends on the domestic Revival of a country that has been decaying silently for decades in virtually all key aspects this is why a new generation of Americans must step in to seize the new chance for peace before it is too late as the world order continues to fracture only a wave of democratization of the most under de Democratic sphere of policymaking in Washington can trigger the kind of re assessment and accountability the American people should expect from their elected leaders unless we take steps now to usher in an overdue Reckoning in Washington we may miss as President Eisenhower said a precious chance to turn back the tide of events that was by Martin Marion and that again is from responsible statecraft an important argument and an important piece let me address just a couple of points brought to mind by that piece and by that argument you’ll hear especially in the last couple of days after former president Donald Trump criticized NATO you will hear a strong argument about what NATO means to the United States of America and I think it’s important for us and for our citizens to be honest not just about the problems inherent with NATO and the lack of Burden sharing but also the problems that exist in NATO’s own countries countries that most most of us love that most most of us see as important allies but have deep deep pathologies and problems that must be addressed something that is often said is that in this particular conflict Ukraine versus Russia NATO is actually carrying its fair share of the burden you will see charts that make an argument that NATO which has the economy approximately the size of the United States of America is SP spending actually more resources on Ukraine than the United States of America now that argument has a few critical flaws let’s walk through them first of all NATO is providing a a large amount of humanitarian assistance and of course they’re absorbing a large amount of refugees they’re doing it because Ukraine is in their backyard but the critical weapons and Munitions that are being provided are overwhelmingly the responsibility of the United States of America NATO is not carrying its fair share of the burden when it comes to weapons and that’s the most important things the ukrainians need to win second even if we assumed and it’s wrong but even if we assumed that NATO was carrying its fair share of the burden over the last 18 months NATO has failed to carry its fair share of the burden for literally decades ladies and gentlemen look just at how much money the United States has spent on defense since 1992 and compare that to our NATO allies ladies and gentlemen we have been subsidizing European security to the tune of trillions of dollars and it might feel nice when we go to Munich and the Europeans thank us and it might be great to get a pat on the back from a European head of state but the American people demand that NATO carry its fair share of the burden Germany is the largest economy in Europe they have promised for decades and especially over the last years that they would meet the NATO threshold of 2% of GDP spent on defense they are still not there Italy a massive economy still UND spends on defense in fact most of the economies of Europe outside of UK and France and some economies in Eastern Europe most of the economies of Europe massively underspend on defense and that has invited aggression not not just from Vladimir Putin but from other places as well and at the same time that world leaders play armchair General with the Ukraine conflict their own societies are decaying not a single country not a single country even the United States within the NATO alliance has birth rates at replacement level we don’t have enough families and children to continue as a nation and yet we’re talking about problem 6,000 m away we are being invaded by up to 10 million illegal migrants over the course of Joe Biden’s term in office and we have apparently no president with willpower to stop that problem we have a Fint and all crisis that has led to the deaths of over a 100,000 people per year in the last few years of our youngest and brightest people mental health crises are skyrocketing youth suicides are skyrocketing in every single place not just the United States but every single one of the countries in the NATO alliance see similar or in some cases even more troubling Dynamics on most of those metrics from migration to economic malaise what are we doing ladies and gentlemen China and Russia if we want them to fear us we need to rebuild our own countries we need to rebuild a strong Europe and a strong America we need to rebuild a civilization that can support conflicts instead of just run away from them because right now we don’t have that we do not have a country and we do not have a NATO alliance that is strong enough to do the things that need to be done so our message to the European need to be simple fix your own country share your own burden spend more on defense fix your own problems and that will deal with the problem in Russia far more than a $61 billion check to Ukraine well in fact we are sub izing them we are enabling their refusal to spend enough resources on defense and I see that my time is up Mr President thank you senator from Ohio thank you Mr President and uh thanks to my colleague from Nebraska who convited in private to me that he didn’t think he could go for the full hour but I would have welcomed at least another 20 minutes of speaking from uh from my friend from Nebraska but uh it it is 3:15 in the morning and we’re here discussing sending another $61 billion to Ukraine as part of a $95 billion Security Supplemental and I think it’s important uh to at least give some context for the four people across our country who are currently awake uh to how we got here and why we got here and why we managed to fumble I think a great opportunity in this chamber to actually do some real border security so first months ago my Republican colleagues and I discussed the possibility of doing a border security package as a point of negotiation with our Democratic colleagues over Ukraine the basic setup of the negotiation went something like this Republicans are unified at least allegedly in our view that the border is a national security crisis this is allegedly a National Security Supplemental and the border is the most important national security issue that we confront and on the flip side Democrats are united in their view that Ukraine uh must receive another $61 billion or even more of American Aid and there uh were the seeds of a potential deal uh that could be cut between Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans now there are a few problems with this as we learned uh the first is that while our Democratic colleagues uh might agree that the Border has some problems they apparently do not agree that it is quite the same crisis that we do that’s one problem and another problem is that apparently our Republican colleagues are uh not nearly as United as we thought that we were or as we pretended to be in fact the closer we got to an actual resolution of the negotiation the more that we we learned that our Republican colleagues at least a small subset of them cared a hell of a lot more about the Ukraine package than they did about securing the American southern border so it’s negotiation 101 that if you go into a negotiating posture where you desperately want the thing that the other side of the table also desperately wants that you’re not in especially good position if Republicans are as desperate to send $61 billion to Ukraine as Democrats are then it isn’t very shocking that the Democrats were not willing to give us a large amount on border security now this is what of course everyone knew this is what of course everyone now knows because after a mere hour of debating a border security package as part of a broader supplemental Senate Republicans joined with Democrats to immediately move on to a discussion of Ukraine supplemental literally an hour if you had dreamed dump something from the Fever Swamp conspiracy theory of the American conservative movement you could not have come up with something more egregious than this fake negotiation What It produced and how it immediately led to a debate not about our Southern border but about Ukraine now there are a few problems with this particular negotiation a few problems with the way that it unfolded so the first the first is that it was done in secret a border security and by the way this is problems from the perspective of conservatives problems that the Republicans in our conference who are supporting this should have been mindful of if they wanted to actually get to a border security package that could have got a majority of Republican support because after many months of negotiation there was a border of Security package that received I believe four Republican votes and now we have a y Ukraine supplemental that received far less than a majority of the Republican conference if you wanted to get a majority of Republicans to support this border security package you should have observed a few basic rules the first is that you should not have done a secret negotiation many of our voters many of our colleagues are mistrustful of secret negotiations they’re mistrustful of the people who participate in secret negotiations because if you’re not getting the details of a plan out as it unfolds you’re not doing a two things first of all you’re not actually allowing the people who know immigration law best within the conservative movement to understand what’s in it to offer feedback to try to improve the bill to ensure that whatever text is coming together ABS actually matches the terms of an alleged negotiation deal two you’re not in you’re denying the American people an opportunity to actually understand what’s in the border security deal that’s unfolding three you’re denying Senate colleagues a real opportunity to debate the merits as they come together what actually happened was not you know you negotiate for a couple of weeks and this is where the Democrats are and this is where the Republicans are and maybe we can find some you know seeds of a seeds of a of a compromise here what actually happened is that after after months of negotiation Senate Republicans started asking well what’s in this deal what shape is it taking what have the Democrats given what have the Democrats asked in return and this was all mediated through a very very small number of channels and that process bred mistrust before we even knew any of the details of what was in the border security package now if you were a cynic you would say that this is by design that we designed a package that was meant to create mistrust we designed a process that was meant to create mistrust and was never meant to led to any significant border security and I hate to say it I think that’s actually the package that was produced so after months of secret negotiations after months of denying some of the smartest immigration experts in the world the opportunity to critique and offer feedback on this package after months of breeding mistrust within the American uh body politic the details of an immigration Grand bargain started to leak out and the details were pretty troubling there were some good things of course some things that we like some things that we think were necessary but it’s interesting that even in the most generic terms the details of the immigration plan started to create some backlash among most Republicans and again if you can’t pass a border of security package without the support of most Republicans then it’s not actually going to pass so here we are early 2024 with the promise of a grand bargain on border security and n and and a National Security Supplemental uh to boot and yet every single detail turns out to have not been manifested in the text turns out to have not produced something in the text that would have actually meaningfully secured the border so the first thing that you would want to do if you were serious about border security the first thing that you would want to do is to limit the president’s ability to parole close to a million illegal migrants a year if you go back to the Obama Administration the Obama Administration paroled about 5,000 illegal aliens every single year Senate Republicans think that’s too much but 5,000 a year is far less than the 750,000 or close to a million year that the Biden Administration has decided to parole now it’s not just the direct effect that you were taking close to a million people a year who have violated our immigration laws and given them what amounts to effective legal status you were also sending a message all across Central America and all across the world that americ is open for business this is why when you put a camera or a microphone in front of somebody who’s crossing the southern border IL legally and say why are you coming now they will say because Joe Biden KLA Harris invited us in the parole policy has thrown open the floodgates and this Grand border compromise contained almost nothing that would meaningfully reduce the number of paroles that the president of the United States can issue it required a report I believe but nothing that would limit the president’s discretion to Grant parole in mass as he has done for the last three years of administration that was the first problem the second problem is that the grand border compromise did very little on the question of Asylum it pretended to do something on the question of Asylum it changed the Asylum standard it increased that standard from a credible fear to a reasonable fear but it also changed to his enforcing that standard to CIA s agents who are among the most pro- Asylum people in the entire United States government so you change the standard but you make it much easier you create a create a person who’s enforcing that standard that has almost no reason to meaningfully enforce American Asylum laws now why is this problem well because we have fundamentally at the United States Southern border an economic migrant crisis that is pretending to be a massive ass asum crisis people who are traditional economic migrants they come into our country at ports of Entry or elsewhere they claim Asylum they say that they are persecuted they say that they are fleeing persecution and then the Asylum officer usually will tell them you have to come back in 6 years or 12 years or however many years down the road to have your case adjudicated before an immigration law judge and of course for those 10 years maybe more that they’re in the country they effectively have legal uh status they are in our country and many of them never show up for their court date even though the court date is years later so the Asylum process has turned millions of economic migrants into alleged Asylum claimants and I find it interesting that when you look at what’s actually coming at who’s actually coming across the southern border it’s very very often young men between the ages of 20 and 35 unaccompanied by women or children cuz if we know anything about world affairs it’s that when people are politically persecuted it’s always the young unaccompanied men who are the most politically persecuted not the women or children and my colleagues will forgive my sarcasm there why is it that the people who claim the greatest persecution the people who are flooding across our Southern border why are women and children so poorly represented among them because this is not about Asylum and this is not about political persecution this is about manipulating America’s laws to turn an economic migrant ation crisis into an asylum crisis it’s a legal Arbitrage that immigration attorneys in the United States of America have cooked up and oh by the way one of the great things about the grand border compromise is that we decided to pay immigration attorneys who are undercutting our immigration laws massive amounts of legal fees from the American taxpayers because why not have a handout for the immigration attorneys who have helped create a system where we undercut our immigration laws that was the second major problem with the grand border compromise a third major problem with the grand border compromise is that it did not meaningfully increase the president’s Authority or frankly forced the president’s hand into deporting anyone who is currently here illegally just a couple of weeks ago in New York City a group of illegal immigrants violently assaulted a police officer those people as far as I know are still in our country because we we don’t Deport people even those who violently assault police officers we deport an incredibly small number of the people who come into this country illegally a fourth problem with the great with the grand border compromise uh cooked up by my colleagues is that it had an emergency border shut off Authority which was really an effort an admirable effort to force secretary May orcus in the president’s hand and the way it went was basically something like this if border crossings reach a certain threshold 5,000 a day I believe in the text that we received then there’s an emergency shutdown Authority that applies for a certain number of days per year 270 days in the first year Less in the second year and less in the third year now that sounds not too bad right once you hit a certain threshold of illegal border crossings you should shut down the Border I happen to think that number should be close to zero but whatever opinions will differ on how we should on on where we should set that that Authority and yet that Authority set at 5,000 a day which effectively says that you can have nearly 1.9 million illegal aliens come into the country before you trigger that Authority it has multiple Provisions that would allow us to wave it so it has a 45-day emergency waiver Authority for the president it has a 180-day discretionary waiver for secretary mayorcas and for those who are good at math 180 days plus 45 days is 225 days so of a 270-day discretionary or excuse me a 270-day border emergency shutdown Authority 225 days can be waved by the president or the secretary who refus to enforce our immigration laws that’s not much of an emergency Authority if they could only have to use it 45 days in the first year given what’s going on at the American southern border the fundamental problem as so many of my colleagues have recognized and so many of my colleagues have noted is how do we get Joe Biden and secretary May orcus to enforce the Border law when they clearly don’t want to this is a forcing function ISM the real negotiation here as was obvious to anybody from the start was how do we force Joe Biden to do his job and what leverage do we have in order to force that very thing instead we went into it a negotiation where again it was in secret and where our colleagues who were negotiating fundamentally didn’t understand or didn’t enforce this fundamental Insight they wanted to give Joe Biden additional authorities well he might not use those authorities even if you give them to him they wanted to give Joe Biden a number of discretionary get out of jail free cards or even if you create authorities for him to enforce the Border you give him the discretion to get out of it but we don’t need to be granting Joe Biden more disc discretion we need to be constraining his discretion because it’s Joe Biden’s discretion that has led to the Border crisis that we have now a number of my colleagues have mentioned the terrible consequences of the Border problem and what it looks like for so many of our citizens there’s no overstating the catastrophe that’s going on at the American southern border uh there’s fentol crisis that is killing over 100,000 citizens of our country of course the fentol is now transitioning to Other Drugs just as the heroin transition to the fentol just as the prescription pills transition to the heroin uh we one of the many gifts of our wide openen Southern border is a virtually Limitless supply of increasingly more powerful synthetic opioids to kill our citizens uh if you read anything about the history of the Opium War you wonder if we’re witnessing right now the reverse of Opium War where precursors to synthetic opioids come in from communist China the Mexican drug cartels manufacture them and then ship them across the southern border if you were actually serious about addressing this crisis the first thing that you would want to do is limit Joe Biden and secretary mayorcas his authority to open the floodgates and invite millions of illegal aliens into this country limit their discretion that was always the only Pathway to meaningful border enforcement under this Administration as so many of my colleagues have mentioned Joe Biden clearly doesn’t want to enforce the border so ladies and gentlemen how do we force the president to enforce the border and the the the basic deal that was offered by a number of my colleagues and friends went something like this if the Democrats are so desperate to send another $61 billion for Ukraine then what we could do is meter the money based on Border enforcement metrics this is in fact what was discussed in the Republican conference and it received support from Ukraine supporters like Jim rush and Ron Johnson to people who are more skeptical of the conflict like me to people who who who are in the middle like Ted Cruz the basic idea was we are going to force as much as possible Joe Biden to Force the southern border and unless he gets illegal border crossings under a certain level using his existing Authority maybe with some additional tools then we will not provide support to um the Security Supplemental in other words if he wants his $61 billion for Ukraine Joe Biden’s going to have to do a little border enforcement despite the fact that he obviously doesn’t want to that was the deal that we thought was on the table and that unfortunately was not the deal that was actually on the table once once it was Advanced by our once it was Advanced by our leadership team and of course on Sunday Night February 4th we receive the text of the grand border compromise and typically with a field of law as complicated as immigration you would expect days weeks months of Committee markups of debates of negotiation over text of trying to understand how one provision influences another provision how another provision affects the other this this this process of legislative policymaking is what was completely short circuited by this secret negotiation so on Sunday the text dropped and on Wednesday we were expected to vote on it so for three days from February 4th until February 7th my staff and I imagine the staff of nearly every Republican member worked long nights to try to understand what was actually in the board border security package they identified many of the problems that I just uh repeated that actually existed with the policy that even where it looked good on the surface it very often contained Provisions where Democrats had frankly out-negotiated Republicans it reminds me a little bit of the fiscal responsibility act where uh senate negotiators or excuse me where the president’s negotiators uh took to the New York Times to brag afterwards that while then speaker Kevin McCarthy had gotten a lot of concessions out of the White House those concessions had fallen apart when the concessions were translated to legislative text that’s a problem if the legislative text isn’t very good no matter how good the headline Promises of the legislation are then you shouldn’t support the legislation that’s of course what happened on Wednesday Republicans decided as a conference that they would not support an additional uh they would not support the border security package that came out now a Curious Thing happened then if you had really been serious about border security if you really wanted to advance the ball in any negotiation the other party comes with an offer you consider the offer you read it you try to understand it you decide it’s not good enough what do you do if you’re serious about the problem you then go back and say well you know what this just isn’t good enough we need to keep going down this pathway we need to keep on fighting for a way to secure the Border but that never happened and why that never happened is because too many within the Republican conference were desperate desperate for money for Ukraine so desperate that they were willing to Short Circuit any meaningful border security that is the fundamental truth as much as I am frustrated at my Democratic colleagues for not doing more to secure the Border as much as I’m frustrated for Democrats writ large and the president of the United States for not doing his job on this particular negotiation the simple truth is that too many Senate Republicans cared far more about Ukraine than they did about their own country you heard it earlier today earlier this evening when one of my colleagues said this was the most important vote that any of us had ever taken in the United States Senate I can’t imagine what leads a person to think that sending $61 billion to Ukraine at this moment of Crisis for our country is the most important vote that we have taken my God maybe we should take some far more important votes that actually solve the problems that confront this country maybe we should confront the Mental Health crisis in our country the fact that our teenagers seem to have Rising depression rates the fact that our young people have Rising suicide rates the fact that we have a wide open Southern border the fit and all and sex trafficking crisis all of these things are substantially more important than what we are about to vote on in the United States Senate and what we voted on last night but not of course if you’re Main priority is securing Ukraine’s border rather than fixing the problems of your own country and this unfortunately is where we are this is unfortunately the problem that we’re confronting we have a Democratic party that wants an open border and we have a Republican party where most of us don’t want to um most of us want to fight for border security but a few of us actually care more about Ukraine and therein is the seed of the real bipartisan compromise that we have in this country which is constantly focusing on the problems of other countries instead of on the problems of our own so let’s talk a little bit about the Ukraine policy because that’s now after the border of Security deal fell apart now we’re on to focusing on Ukraine and of course this has become the main focus of so many of my Senate colleagues this has become the reason for breathing the reason for waking up in the morning the reason for coming to work in the United States Senate to ensure that we send another $61 billion to Ukraine there are so so many problems with our Ukraine policy and I’m going to start from the most obvious all the way hopefully to the unintended consequences if we have enough time and if I’m still standing let start with the most obvious problem of our Ukraine problem of Ukraine policy there is no strategy a year ago I spoke with secretary blinken and I had a number of private conversations with people in the administration what was the goal of our Ukraine policy and then the goal was to ensure that Ukraine had enough weapons so that they could launch a much anticipated counter offensive that counter offensive would allow them to gain large amounts of territory it may even allow them to push the Russians out of Crimea and then of course you could have peace settlements where Ukraine was from a position of strength and Russia was from a position of weakness we would in other words throw the Russians back to close to the 1991 borders of Ukraine and then we would try to negotiate with them now this leaves out of course an important historical detail that back in April of 2022 as everybody from ghard Schroeder the former chancellor of Germany to a number of our native allies have pointed out the Russians wanted to negotiate back in April of 2022 the negotiation was possible back then but Boris Johnson the prime minister of the UK and of course our own Administration refused to engage in that negotiation we wanted the ukrainians to fight and to fight on of course they have at Great cost to themselves and at Great cost to the American taxpayer now here’s the the problem with this idea that the ukrainians would ever throw the Russians back to the 1991 borders is they are massively outmanned and massively outgunned Ukraine has a population today of about 28 million people Russia has a population today of 145 million people Russia manufactures far more artillery shells not just than Ukraine but than the United States of America an economy that is 10 times as large Russia is not going to lose the war that is a fundamental fact that everybody needs to accept they are not going to lose it is existential to them it is the main focus of Vladimir Putin they are bigger and they have more weapons so the question then becomes how do we preserve as much of Ukraine as possible how do we prevent as much innocent loss of life as possible and how do we ensure that this war comes to a negotiated peace in a way that prevents a number of negative consequences that is the goal here a peace that prevents as much bad from happening but that’s not our strategy our strategy is to throw money and weapons at the problem indefinitely so if a year ago we were praying for a counter offensive we could ask ourselves how did that counter offensive go well the ukrainians Lost tens of thousands of soldiers they gained miles of territory not hundreds of miles miles of territory in a country that’s massive and they lost some of their best troops and some of their best equipment that was the result of the counter offensive that was the Lynch pin of American strategy so having failed to accomplish what we set out to accomplish did we say well maybe our experts are wrong maybe we should revisit some of our assumptions maybe we should design an actual strategy that’s acheval no no we just moved on to the next thing without even blinking an eye without even addressing ing the American people the Biden Administration just went on to the next thing and the next thing is well we’re just going to try to give the Ukraine ukrainians as much as possible to hope that they don’t lose that is now the strategy such as it is of the American president with Ukraine throw resources throw weapons and throw Munitions at the problem and hope against all hope that something good will happen what is that the good thing that happen we have no idea the war is at a stalemate and as I already mentioned Russia has more money more manpower and more weapons so we have no strategy why are we giving $61 billion to Ukraine when we have no strategy for how they’re going to use it we have no sense of how they’re actually going to bring this war to a close and we have no realistic possibility of getting to any reasonable goal within any reasonable time frame we are America’s legislative body our only real role in foreign policy is to a is to approve Nomine nominees uh that the president makes to his own government po posts of course that have importance in foreign affairs that’s number one and number two is we control the purse strings and that point of controlling the pur strings gives us leverage to ensure that the people’s business business is actually being done what are we doing with that leverage here we’re writing effectively a blank check with no guarantee that it will produce a strategy with no demand that the that the president actually tell us what the $61 billion is meant to produce we know where this is ended where this will end ladies and gentlemen we we know exactly where this road ends this road ends at some kind of a negotiated settlement the only question is how many ukrainians die before we get there how many American dollars are wasted before we get there and how many American weapons are spent not for our own National Security but for the National Security of another nation that is it how much death and destruction do we promote on the path to peace and my answer is we should be promoting as little as possible we should be promoting a negotiated peace we should be trying to get there as quickly as we possibly can where I wonder is the anti-war left it’s interesting that in Washington DC in 2023 2024 you hear a whole lot about the bipartisan consensus of Ukraine and yet you never hear people asking where is that bipartisan consensus LED in the past I am 39 years old in the 1970s the bipartisan consensus was lined up behind the Vietnam War a conflict that killed nearly 60,000 Americans over the span of a decade and a half in early 2000 the bipartisan consensus was that not that we just that we should knock out Osama Bin Laden’s terrorist Network in Afghanistan but that we should rebuild Afghanistan into a flowering West style democracy we should put resources into training the Afghan population to think about Americans or to think about gender roles As Americans do in the 21st century to promote the creation of democratic institutions to train an Afghan Army for 20 years American blood and treasure was committed to that project and that project fell apart in a matter of weeks turns out the Afghans don’t want western style democracy it turns out the Afghans don’t want to fight for a country that apparently very few of them actually believed in because it took about 3 weeks three weeks before the Taliban rolled over their country the bipartisan foreign policy consensus got us exactly there that same bipartisan foreign policy consensus got us to Iraq under the pretense of weapons of mass destruction and many of the people in this chamber who supported the war in Iraq are now supporting Limitless supply of arms to Ukraine interesting how that bipartisan consensus works out that same consensus supported knocking out Libyan dictator uh Gaddafi which led of course to incredible chaos and destruction in that country that bipartisan consensus led us to get involved in Syria and yet another Quagmire in the Levant and that bipartisan consensus has found a new passion project Limitless War Limitless weapons and Limitless money to Ukraine why is it that we think that the same people who have been wrong for a half of a century are somehow right about this question why do we not learn the lessons of Iraq one of the most important lessons of Iraq as a great late General Coen poell pointed out is that we didn’t have a defined strategy what is the mission what are we trying to accomplish what is America’s blood and treasure actually trying to do and how long must we be required to spend it never has that question been answered in Ukraine never has that question been tried to never have we tried to answer that question over the last 40 Years of failed foreign policy experiments I I I I look at this country over the time I’ve been alive and I look at what its leadership has accomplished and it’s hard to not think that a bipartisan the bipartisan consensus in American foreign policy has led to effectively graveyard after graveyard after graveyard $34 trillion in debt we have purchased on the backs of our children and grandchildren a number of graveyards all across the world I don’t know what we’ve accomplished beyond that and yet people in this chamber including my friends on the left who used to have a real anti-war sentiment the left used to have a real understanding that war has terrible unintended consequences that it enriches all of the wrong people that it kills many of innocent people there is no meaningful push back on this conflict from the left I find that shocking I find it depressing frankly because those of us on the right who are sick of war and sick of our children and grandchildren paying for it would actually like some allies and pushing back against this latest conflict in fact if you look just to meditate on this point about strategy a little bit longer if you look at the arguments for why we should be in Ukraine they all boil down to unless we send continual resources something terrible will happen the Russians will over overrun the ukrainians when they don’t have enough resources and they won’t stop at Kei we’re told they’ll go on to Poland they’ll go on to other NATO allies and then it will be Americans who are on the front lines of Germany defending against the terrible aggression of Vladimir Putin Putin well it be must be said that first of all this is a fantasy no credible military expert no person with a thinking brain believes that Vladimir Putin has the capacity to March all the way to Berlin he does not have the capacity to March all the way to Kev of course he can’t march all the way to Berlin so the fear mongering just doesn’t work it just that that that dog just doesn’t hunt now of course uh if Vladimir Putin could let’s let’s just entertain this thought experiment let’s just assume that Vladimir Putin could March all the way to Berlin what would that mean about our NATO allies well one thing it would mean is that they’re a lot weaker than they pretend to be another thing it would mean is a fact that we know that NATO needs to step up and spend a lot more resources on their own National Defense if Vladimir Putin could March all the way to Berlin that suggests that the Germans have got to do a lot better at defending their own country and they’ve got to step up NATO was never meant to turn Europe into permanent welfare clients of the American taxpayer it is time for Europe to step up now some of my colleagues give the Europeans far too much credit for doing their part over the last 18 months of conflict in Ukraine they point to charts that say if you include humanitarian assistance and economic assistance the Europeans have actually spent about as much as the Americans maybe even more than the Americans on Ukraine well that chart misses a couple of important facts the first of which is that the most critical thing is not money it’s weapons and the United States has supplied a disproportionate share of the weapons to the ukrainians at Great cost to ourselves and at Great degr degradation of our inde defense capability the other thing it leaves out is that NATO has for decades sucked on the tee of the American taxpayer trillions and trillions of dollars have gone into American defense budgets that have been an implicit subsidy to the ukraini or to to to Nato an implicit subsidy to Nato so forgive me if I’m not impressed if the Europeans are stepping up a little bit for a war that is literally in their backyard the other thing this misses is that the war in Ukraine hasn’t been going on for 18 months it’s been going on for over a decade of course conflict the conflict that brought us to Russia’s largescale invasion of Ukraine has been going on in Ukraine since at least 2014 if the Europeans want to compare who’s spending more the relevant point of comparison is 2014 or maybe 1992 it is not 2022 so we are bailing out the Europeans $61 billion to bail out the Europeans on a Preposterous set of circumstances on a Preposterous subsidy by the way many of our European allies thanks in part of course to our subsidy have managed their own Financial houses much better than we are the Germans have far lower budget deficits and far lower public debt than we do if anytime was the time for them to step up it might be now that wor $34 trillion in debt so every argument for why we should support Limitless war in Ukraine ultimately falls apart It ultimately boils down to fear-mongering fearmongering that doesn’t have any basis in reality and again I would ask if the goal is to prevent Vladimir Putin from overrunning Ukraine the question has to become for how long are the American taxpayers on the hook what if this goes on another 10 years are we on the hook to the tune of $500 billion of security assistance and a trillion dollars of reconstruction at what point is enough enough at what point do we say the war is EST St mate it’s going to end in a negotiated settlement anyway let’s stop wasting lives let’s stop wasting money and let’s get on with the peace that is what American diplomacy could be used for unfortunately the president seems uninterested in that but I’m worried more about the unintended consequences in Ukraine a friend of mine made the observation today actually in a public conf conversation that I hosted that we are seeing the acceleration of an economic and Military Alliance that will challenge the United States over the coming decade and the coming generation the cooperation between Russia and China has accelerated significantly over the last two years we have attempted to set off a financial bomb using America’s Incredible Financial power the rules-based international order has given America’s Financial system great power and we used it to try to set off a bomb in the Russian economy but that bomb appears to have fil the Russian economy has consistently defied growth expectations and forecasts our own leadership has admitted that its sanctions haven’t worked nearly as well as we wanted them to and the Russian economy Now put on a war footing by Vladimir Putin is producing weapons at a faster rate than the United States which of course is an economy 10 times the size of Russia so if the goal was to weaken Russia here we have catastrophically failed what we have done actually is created an alternative Financial system around Russia China and other countries and we’ve created an accelerating military alliance between two of our most dangerous adversaries in the world that is the net effect of our policy that is unintended consequence number one unintended consequence number two is that we are at this very moment destabilizing government governments all over the world with higher fuel prices and higher food prices I made this observation earlier so I for my colleagues hopefully will forgive me for repeating myself but one of the most interesting conversations I’ve ever had was with former president Barack Obama just days before he left the Oval Office about a week before Donald Trump and Mike Pence were inaugurated and Obama made the observation that though he was obviously more a fan of uh call it Mass migration than I am that he knew that if you created too many immigration pressures in a country it could destabilize that country and he made this observation in the context of the 2015 European Refugee crisis telling me and I’m paraphrasing here and I don’t want to violate any confidences that he felt that the 2015 Refugee crisis had actually destabilized a number of European governments and in fact had led to the election of his political adversary Donald Trump in 2016 well I thought that was a smart and insightful observation from the former president of course I disagree with his politics and his immigration policies but it was an interesting and self uh a very uh self self-reflective observation well what I wonder happens if the European Refugee crisis of 2015 destabilized Europe what happens when we apply massive energy and food price increases to the entire continent of Africa 1.5 billion people almost all of whom have a much lower quality of living than the average American or the average European we know exactly what will happen if you take 1.5 billion people most of whom are just good people who want to feed their families and you make it impossible for them to feed their families in their own country they will move and where are they going to move they’re going to move to Europe and they’re going to move to the United States of America can we at a time of a historic border crisis possibly absorb hundreds of millions at the very least millions of starving people moving and why are they starving they’re starving because Eastern Europe is the Bread Basket of the world especially that part of the world and grain prices barley prices wheat prices have skyrocketed over the last two years we are creating the predicate for a refugee crisis that will destabilize Europe and destabilize the entire world we’re also while we’re at it enriching Vladimir Putin while we spend $61 billion in Ukraine we’re enriching Vladimir Putin with idiotic energy policies we’re actually funding both sides of this conflict Putin’s economy depends substantially on natural gas on petroleum and our energy policies our refusal to empower America’s energy producers the Biden Administration just a couple of weeks ago blocked additional exports of liquid natural gas that enriches Vladimir Putin’s Russia every time you take an action that drives up the cost of energy you are enriching Vladimir Putin’s Russia so with the one hand we pursue energy policies that enrich Vladimir Putin and with the other hand we send $61 billion to Ukraine I don’t think we should fund either side of this conflict but it is the height of idiocy to fund both sides of the conflict simultaneously and that is exactly what we are doing thanks to President Joe Biden’s energy policies another unintended consequence we’ve already seen this by the way Allied governments in Slovenia in Poland and other countries are under an incredible amount of pressure because food prices and energy prices are really high food prices and energy prices destabilized governments how many American Allies will have their country’s politics destabilized because we are pursuing policies that ensure higher food and higher energy prices inflation is bad in the United States inflation is bad in part because we are pursuing policies in Europe that inflame the costs of food and energy it’s always funny when I hear my Democratic friends say that inflation is not Joe Biden’s fault it’s the fault of what’s going on in Eastern Europe well if Joe Biden was a little bit smarter and used diplomacy more aggressively perhaps what’s going on in Eastern Europe would not be quite as prolonged and and perhaps we could bring it to a quick close that’s unintended consequence number three we are impoverishing our own people on this conflict $34 trillion in debt we are on the hook now for close to $200 billion to Ukraine but that doesn’t count the Reconstruction assist they will certainly need that doesn’t count the numerous ways energy prices food prices that this conflict is putting pressure on the wallets of American citizens it doesn’t count all of the ways in which we are distracted by a conflict in E Eastern Europe and are unable to pursue smart policies elsewhere in the world we are impoverishing a generation of Americans we are making it harder for them to achieve their American dream and we’re doing it to empower defense contractors and to bring a war to effectively a never- ending stage because that’s what’s happening we know this conflict has no end in sight we know that only America using its diplomatic power could apply The Leverage necessary to bring it to a close we are instead using our financial military and diplomatic power to belong this thing as much as possible there are other unintended consequences and I worry that we have no Statesmen left at the senior leadership of this country for a generation we have been told that the important thing is to thump our chests to talk tough to act tough but not actually do the things that are necessary to strengthen our country and make our country more powerful you hear hear my friends on both sides of the aisle say that if we don’t show resolve in Ukraine that it will invite XI jingping to invade Taiwan and of course I believe that a Taiwanese Invasion by XI jingping would be one of the worst things that could happen on the world stage for our country our colleagues are right to worry about it but the argument is that they will invade the Chinese will invade unless we show resolve in Ukraine but the unfortunate truth is the Chinese don’t care about our resolve they care about our strength and classical foreign policy schools deterrence is the combination of resolve and capacity you have to both want to do something but most importantly you have to have the ability to do that thing and we have no capacity to deter the Chinese in East Asia and help the ukrainians fight a war in Eastern Europe for many Generations our leadership shipped our industrial base our manufacturing jobs overseas and that has left us in a place where we don’t produce enough weapons we don’t produce enough missiles we don’t produce enough artillery shells we don’t produce enough of the critical Munitions that are necessary to fight conflicts all over the world so every time we spend critical resources to on Ukraine we ensure that they will not be available to a contingency necessary for the United States of America that’s not hypothetical and that’s not abstract we even now are sending weapons to Ukraine far faster than we can make them why are we sending cluster Munitions to Ukraine right now and again I’ll ask where is the anti-war left what happened to the left that was worried about sending cluster Munitions to various conflicts all over the world why are we sending cluster Munitions to Ukraine it’s because we don’t make enough artillery shells to send to Ukraine to Israel and to other needed Partners we cannot fight a war on multiple fronts because of the leadership made frankly by some of the members of this chamber we don’t have a strong enough manufacturing base to support both of these conflicts now my colleagues will say that this particular bill this particular legislation has billions of dollars designed to rebuild the American industrial base but you can’t rebuild the industrial Base by making weapons and sending them to Ukraine faster than you make them for your own country and for your own defense purposes the question is if we start rebuilding our def defense industrial base tomorrow how long does it take 3 to 5 years at the very least call it three years if we started tomorrow before we could support contingencies in Eastern Europe and in East Asia so what do we do in the interm when our country by every metric does not produce enough weapons to support a multi-prong conflict what do we do in the interm the solution and the answer apparently of this chamber is we send everything possible to Ukraine we get as much as possible to Ukraine consequences let’s not worry about those let’s not worry about the fact that we do not have enough weapons to deter aggression all over the world right now and we have no viable pathway of getting there for the next three years I think that a lot of my colleagues are living in a boomer Paradise where America can do everything all the time without limits and without constraints and that is not the world that we live in frankly it’s not the world we live in in part because decisions made by people in this chamber and the leadership of this country over the last generation but we are in this situation let’s rebuild our own country before we overextend ourselves any multi-prong conflict I mean this is something nothing out of every history book for how Empires fail countries allow themselves to become eroded they allow internal division to weaken their resolve they allow economic might to degrade and then at the point when they’re weakest they overextend themselves militarily that is where we are right now we are at the weakest point in a generation in the 1980s our relative power and Manufacturing was significantly stronger than it is today my colleagues on the other side will say well you know it’s it’s it’s weaker it’s a it’s a bipartisan problem it’s not just Democrats fault that our manufacturing base is weaker and I would grant that point every day and twice on Sunday it was a bipartisan failure that led our manufacturing economy to grow so weak but it needs to be a bipartisan solution to figure out what to do until we rebuild it no one has offered a solution for how to rebuild our manufacturing base quickly and no one has told me what we’re going to do while we’re rebuilding that manufacturing base we cannot Supply Unlimited arms all over the world when we don’t even make enough for our own purposes yet that is exactly what the United States Senate proposes to do later this morning now one one one final observation here about where we are in Ukraine I going to read just a brief summary here from uh uh from produced by my staff the 60 billion in Ukraine Aid included in the $95 billion supplemental would be the largest single Ukraine Aid package Congress has passed to date nonetheless it was put on the floor with less than a day’s notice and could obstruct future efforts to bring the war in Ukraine to a peaceful conclusion I usion the bill will commit 60 billion for Ukraine over multiple years and it will Pro provide nothing to secure America’s Southern border if an acted it would represent 34% of the total appropriated supplemental Ukraine Aid almost as large as the first three supplemental bills combined it represents a 26% increase over the largest previous supplemental bill at a time when Ukraine’s prospects on the battlefield have grown significantly worse and it has done all this with less than a week of real debate trying to think of any amount of money that we’ve sent where we have not adequately debated reviewed amended and corrected such a large spending package to Ukraine or to any other country I mean normally these bills spending a hundred billion dollar of American taxpayer money normally you might expect a real debate we received text on this on February the 7th Wednesday February the 7th is when we received final text text on the package that we’re voting on today $100 billion and 5 days of debate most of which of course was occupied by the Super Bowl media cycle the American people have been deprived of an actual debate on these matters from their elected legislature the United States Senate has deprived them of the debate and why I you know I don’t know why I think maybe the reason why we are pushing this so quickly is because a few of my colleagues are desperate they are desperate to get to Munich next weekend and tell the leaders of the world that yes they did not secure their own Southern border but they did the most important thing they got the $61 billion to Ukraine it’s shameful it is shameful to conduct foreign policy through blank check writing to NeverEnding war and it is extra shameful to do it while ignoring the problems of your own country Madam president can I ask how much time I have the senator has four and a half minutes remaining great well I hate to keep my distinguished colleague from Utah waiting but I will keep I will keep going here for another uh few minutes I want to make in the in the time that I have remaining a political observation when you craft legislation that is 370 pages long and you deprive the American people and your Senate colleagues of a debate you often times find that there are things in the legislation that were unintended or maybe they were intended but they should have been corrected and taken out in 2019 the United States House of Representatives impeached Donald Trump under a spous and ridiculous argument but the argument went something like this that there was money that had been appropriated under the usia the United uh the Ukraine security system initiative the US aai had appropriated money and Donald Trump refused to spend it as exactly as it had been required in law and the argument is because he had violated this Appropriations requirement and because of some of the requirements of the impoundment Control Act Donald Trump had violated uh the law and had to be impeached it was a ridiculous argument then it is a ridiculous argument now but I find it interesting that given that Ukraine Aid is a hotly contested political item for the 2024 elections and given that Donald Trump was already impeached for the exact same reason that so many congressional Republicans seemed desperate to tie the president’s hands in the next administration because built in to this Ukraine first supplemental is money that will be spent in 25 and 26 money just as in 2019 that was a appropriated and will tie the hands of the next Administration and whether it’s a democrat or a republican I think we ought to empower the next Administration to do diplomacy as they would like to so for my colleagues who are desperate to send $61 billion to Ukraine one request that I would make because this is going to come back from the house the house will not pass this package as it exists one request that I would make is let’s cut off the funding at the end of 2024 for my Republican colleagues it may save Donald Trump a spous impeachment trial for my Democratic colleagues it may save the next president the ability to conduct diplomacy on his or her own terms now we should not be doing this with such little debate and such little consideration there are all all kinds of things all kinds of beautiful gems that I’m sure that we’ll identify in this legislation in the coming weeks as Nancy Pelosi once said I believe you have to read a piece of legislation after you pass it I would prefer that we read a piece of legislation before we pass it but most importantly I would prefer that we debate and challenge the legislation before we pass it you cannot write a hundred billion worth of checks in 4 days of public debate you need more time you need to correct it you need to fix it you need to address the problems like what I’ve just mentioned that we put an impeachment Time Bomb for the next Trump Administration in this legislation you need to fix problems like this and a real process is how you fix it now I appreciate that some of our colleagues prefer a fake process because that process is empowered Senate leadership well you know who hasn’t who it hasn’t empowered it has not empowered the American people this is ridiculous and this is ultimately in my view a farce one final observation that I’ll make recognizing that my time is short is the I I’ve been United States senator for a year it’s the professional honor of my lifetime and I serve across the aisle with distinguished colleagues with brilliant people with people who are publicly minded despite our disagreements but I think this process is an insult to them we can do better we should do better thank you madam president uh thank you Mr chair and thanks to um deputy secretary for being here um I want to ask just a couple of questions about our sanctions regime and potentially you know efforts within this body to really ramp up that that sanctions regime so um you and I I believe discussed last year excuse me um you know how the sanctions on Russia after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine what effect they were having on the Russian economy what effects actually matched our expectations and what effects didn’t match our expectations uh you know we’re we’re a little further down the road here uh it’s April of 2024 do do we have a good sense of how the Russian economy did in 2023 and how effective the sanctions were or were not at inhibiting Russian growth we have a better sense now than we did um earlier this year and to answer your question sender I think what we have found is that the Russian economy has largely transitioned to a war economy where all the tools of production have went from building out a diversified econ economy that was styled for long-term growth to one that is driven by a short-term need to build as many weapons as possible to further their War AIMS in Ukraine and what did their GDP grow last year do you know their GDP I believe grew somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 to 2% okay uh which is you know frankly at or above some of our European allies and uh I I I really do worry here and and I agree with you that they’ve transitioned their economy to a war footing that has its own internal momentum and one of the things I worry I know this isn’t your area um of focus one of the things I worry some of my my colleagues underappreciate is that that war footing has a certain momentum to it and we should be trying to arrest that war footing as much as possible not leaning into it and prolonging this thing because I worry that once Russia becomes an economy that only works in a time of war that actually makes it more likely and um that they’re going to uh show aggression now and in the future um I want to sort of transition in and and Mr secretary how aware are you of sort of of the repo act REO that’s sort of moving through uh this chamber are you sort of aware broadly with its outline yes I am okay so one of the things that that does and correct me if I’m I’m wrong here because I’m trying to sort of think through uh my own view on it but one of the really worrying Provisions uh is that as I understand it it would actually freeze the current sanctions regime that we have on Russia in place legally as an act of Congress and so if a future president or a second Biden term wanted to change that sanctions regime they would need an act of Congress to do so is that correct I’m not certain of that provision my understanding is that it gives the president certain authorities I don’t know that it freezes the current regime okay that’s that’s my understanding at least but I think worth having a follow-up conversation and certainly my staff will follow up as well on that particular topic uh here here’s the thing that I worry about I imagine that we have different preferences for who wins the next presidential election uh Mr secretary but whether it’s a President Biden or president Trump I think it’s really important for the next Administration to have diplomatic flexibility to negotiate what will certainly I think be an end to the Russ Ukraine war whatever end that ultimately takes I hope to God that it doesn’t last another five years and what I worry about with the repo Act is that we actually if we are freezing the sanctions regime we prevent the president from having an important tool at his disposal and actually negotiating a peaceful settlement to that conflict uh let me let me ask just one final question on the repo act as I understand it it would give um it it would effectively Force asset seizure uh of all Russian assets and I I’m wondering you know h h h have we done that in a time of peace with a country that we’re not directly at war with have we ever done something like what the repo Act envisions so Senator the one thing I am clear of is that my understanding at least is the Senate version of the repo act gives the president the ability to doesn’t require him to do so and I think part of the reason for that is because we know that the vast majority of those assets are in Europe and we’d only want to act alongside our European allies if we did something like that in terms of um seizing the assets um against a country that were not um engaged in hostility against I don’t know that we have done something like that at this um at this juncture in um at this juncture yeah I appreciate that Mr secretary uh and with that I I yield the remainder of my time thanks for being here and thanks for answering my questions thankk you uh senator warno of George is recognized with respect uh to my colleagues who voted uh in the other direction on this particular piece of legislation uh let me offer some serious concerns about the direction we’re headed as a country and about what this vote represents in terms of American Readiness American capacity to defend itself and its allies in the future and most importantly the American leadership’s ability to acknowledge where we really are as a country our strengths our weaknesses what can be built upon and what be must be rebuilt entirely I am extraordinarily aware of a couple of historical analogies that should inform this debate one that seems to always inform the debate and another that seems to never come up now opponents of further Aid in Ukraine and I count myself among them say that this is a Chamberlain versus Churchill kind of moment and you just heard my distinguished colleague from Delaware make this observation with no disrespect to my friend from Delaware we need to come up with some different analogies in this chamber we need to be able to understand history as not just World War II replaying itself over and over and over again Vladimir Putin is not adol Hitler doesn’t mean he’s a good guy but he has significantly less capability than the German leader did in the late 1930s America is not America of the late 1930s or the early 1940s we are substantially we we we we possess substantially less manufacturing might in relative terms than we did almost 100 years ago and most importantly there are many ways in which the analogy falls apart even if you ignore America’s capacity Russia’s capacity and the like there are ways in which we should be looking at other historical analogies and I’d like to point just a couple to a couple of those uh right now the second world war of course was the most devastating War arguably in the history of the world close behind it is the first World War and what is the lesson of the first world war it’s not that there are always people appeasing the bad guys or fighting against the bad guys the lesson of World War I is that if you’re not careful you can blunder yourself into a broader regional conflict that kills tens of millions of people many of them innocent in 1914 alliances politics and the failure of statesmanship dragged two rival blocks of military of militaries into a catastrophic conflict in the past week alone the Council on Foreign Relations has published an essay calling for European troops to sustain Ukraine’s lines as Ukraine struggles to raise troops some European leaders have said they might send troops to support Ukraine in a conflict perhaps the history lesson we should be teaching ourselves isn’t Chamberlain versus Churchill perhaps we should be asking ourselves how an entire continent how an entire world’s set of leaders allowed itself to BL blunder into World conflict is there possibly a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Ukraine yes I believe that there is indeed as multiple people both critics of Vladimir Putin and supporters of Ukraine have pointed out there was in fact a peace deal on the table approximately 18 months ago and what happened to it the Biden Administration pushed zalinski to set aside the peace agreement and to engage in a disastrous counteroffensive a counter offensive that killed thousands tens of thousands of ukrainians that depleted an entire decade’s worth of military stocks and has left us in the place that we are now where every single objective Observer of the Ukraine war acknowledges today that the war is going worse for Ukraine than it was 18 months ago could we have avoided it yes we could Mr President and we should have avoided it we would have saved a lot of lives we would have saved a lot of American weapons and we would had this country in a much much more stable and much better place if we had there’s another historical analogy that I think that’s worth pointing out and that is the historical analogy of the early 2000s now in 2003 I was a high school senior and I had a political position back then I believed the propaganda of the George W Bush Administration that we needed to invade Iraq that it was a war for freedom and democracy that those who were for appeasing Saddam Hussein we’re inviting a broader regional conflict does that sound familiar to anything that we’re hearing today it’s the same exact talking points 20 years later with different names but if we learned anything over the last 20 years no I I don’t think that we have we have learned that we if we beat our chest instead of engaged in diplomacy that it will somehow produce good outcomes that is not true we learned that if we talk incessantly about World War II we can bully people and cause them to ignore their basic moral impulses and lead the country straight in a catastrophic conflict now it’s one of the great ironies of my my time in the United States Senate for the last 18 months I have been accused by multiple people of being a stooge of Vladimir Putin well I take issue to that because in 2003 yes I made the mistake of supporting the Iraq War I also a couple months later enlisted in the United States Marine Corps one with two kids from my small block on McKinley Street in Middletown Ohio to enlist in the Marines just that year I served my country honorably and I saw when I went to Iraq that I had been lied to that the promises of the foreign policy establishment of this country were a complete joke just a few days ago we saw our friends in the house waving Ukrainian flags on the floor of the United States house which I’d love to see them waving the American flags with such Gusto and I won’t complain about the fact that it was a violation of the rules of decorum though it certainly was but it reminded me it reminded me and I believe 2005 maybe it was 2006 when that same exact chamber the members were raising their fingers stained with purple ink to commemorate the incredible Iraqi elections that had happened in 2005 I was in Iraq for both the Constitutional referendum of October of 2005 and the uh parliamentary elections of December 2005 and I remember the people in Iraq happily voting raising their fingle fingers in the air what I’m not what I’m saying is is not that the people of Iraq were bad or that they were bad for voting in their elections what I’m saying is the obsessive focus on moralism Democracy is good Saddam Hussein is bad America good tyranny bad that is no way to run a foreign policy because then you end up with people waving their fingers on the floor of the United States House of Representatives even though they have walked their country into a disaster and I say this as a proud Republican I say this as somebody who supports Republican colleagues who agree with me and disagree with me on this issue it is perhaps the most shameful period in the Republican party’s history of the last 40 years that we supported George W bush in the prosecution of that military conflict now my excuse is that I was a high school senior what is the excuse of of many people who were in this chamber or in the House of Representatives at the time and are now singing the exact same song when it comes to Ukraine have we learned nothing have we updated nothing about our mental thinking about the standard that we apply for when we should get involved in military conflicts have we learned nothing about how precarious and precious us life is and other life around the world and that we should be a little bit more careful about protecting it back then in 2003 we actually had an anti-war left in this country now nobody really is anti-war nobody’s worried about Prosecuting uh military conflicts overseas nobody seems to worry about unintended consequences but Iraq had a lot of unintended consequences a lot of consequences that were Maybe foreseen by a few smart people a lot of them that weren’t foreseen by anybody one of which is that we gave Iran a regional Ally instead of a regional compe did George W bush stand before the American people and say we’re going to invade this country and give one of our strongest enemies in the region a massive Regional Ally did we think that 20 years later Iraq would become a base to attack American troops in the Middle East did we think it would Empower one of the most dangerous regimes in that area of the world we’re now funding Israel as I think that we should to defend itself against attacks that are originating in Iran when the same people who are were calling for more war all over the world were the same people who caused us to start a war that empowered Iran there’s a certain irony in this a certain sadness that I have that we never seem to learn the lessons of the past we never seem to ask ourselves why it is that we keep on screwing up American foreign policy why it is that we keep on making our country weaker even though we say that we intend to make it stronger here’s another thing that we should learn from the Iraq or something that I as a Christian care a lot about and I think that even many of my colleagues who are not Christians many of my fellow Americans who are not Christians should care about the United States remains to this day the world’s largest majority Christian Nation we are the largest Christian Nation by population in the entire world and yet what are the fruits by your fruits ye shall know them the Bible tell us what are the fruits of American foreign policy when it comes to Christian populations all over the world over the last few decades well in Iraq before we invaded there were 1.5 million Christians in Iraq many of them ancient communities caldan people who traced their lineage and their ancestors to people who knew the literal Apostles of Jesus Christ now nearly every single one of those historical Christian communities is gone that is the fruits of American labor in Iraq a regional Ally of Iran and the eradication and decimation of one of the oldest Christian communities in the world is that what we were told was going to happen did the American people the world’s largest majority Christian nation in the world do they think that’s what they were getting themselves into I certainly didn’t and I’m ashamed that I didn’t but we did we did all of those things because we weren’t thinking about how war and conflict leave uh lead to unexpected places now it sounds farfetched I’m sure when we apply these lessons to the Ukraine conflict certainly certainly this has no risk of spilling over into a broader Regional or even World conflict well certainly not in fact I was being sarcastic it obviously does as European allies propose sending troops to fight Vladimir Putin drawing NATO further into this conflict yes the Ukraine war threatens to become a broader regional conflict what about the assault on traditional Christian communities just today the Ukrainian Parliament is considering an acting a law that would dispossess large numbers of Christian churches and Christian communities in the country of Ukraine now they say it’s because these churches are too close to Russia that’s what they say and maybe some of the churches are too close to Russia but you don’t deprive an entire religious community of their religious freedom because some of its adherence don’t agree with you about the relevant conflict of the day I believe standing here that this war will eventually lead to the displacement of a massive Christian Community in Ukraine and that will be our shame our shame in this chamber for not seeing it coming our shame in this chamber for doing nothing to stop it our shame for refusing to use the hundreds of billions of dollars that we send to Ukraine as leverage to ensure and guarantee real religious freedom the other thing one final point on this historical contingency point it was true then and it was true today there’s this weird way where the debate in this country has gotten warped where people can’t engage in goodfaith disagreement with our Ukraine policy you will immediately be attacked for being on the wrong team for being on the wrong side I remember as a a young conservative High scholer how opponents from the conservative side of the Iraq War well you’re just all for Saddam Hussein and you believe in uh you believe that Saddam Hussein should be allowed to continue to brutalize the Iraqi people you have no love for these innocent Iraqi people you don’t believe in America and the same exact arguments are being applied today that you’re a fan of Vladimir Putin if you don’t like our Ukraine policy or you’re a fan of some uh terrible tyrannical idea because you think maybe America should be more focused on the border of its own country than on someone else’s this war fever this inability for us to actually process what’s going on in our world to make rational decisions is the scariest part of this entire debate you see people who served their country who have been advocating for good public policies agree or disagree with them for their entire careers smeared as agents of a foreign government simply because they don’t like what we’re doing in Ukraine that’s not good faith debate that is slander and it’s the type of slander that’s going to lead us to make worse and worse decisions it should make us all feel pretty weird when you see your fellow Americans making an argument and the response to that argument is not well no no no here’s why you’re wrong or here’s substantively why I disagree with you but they fling their their finger in your face and say you’re a Putin puppet you’re an asset of a foreign regime this way of making decisions democratically is how we bankrupt this country and start a third world war we should stop doing it so let me make some arguments for why our Ukraine policy doesn’t make any sense the first we do not have the manufacturing base to support support a land war in Europe this must be appreciated and it’s interesting Mr President when I was uh when I was making this argument that we didn’t have the manufacturing base to support a military conflict in Eastern Europe to support a military conflict in East Asia and then also to actually support our own National Defense that America was spread too thin I was commonly met 18 months ago with a very common rejoiner I was told that the Ukraine war represented a fraction of a fraction of American GDP that we could do everything all at once and it would not stress America’s capabilities now everyone seems to agree with me now everyone seems to acknowledge that we are severely limited not in the number of dollars that we can send to Ukraine there are limits there but in the number of weapons of artillery shells and missiles that we don’t make enough of the critical weapons of war War to send them to all four corners of the world and also keep ourselves safe but people will say well JD is right we need to rebuild the defense industrial base we need to rebuild our capacity to manufacture weapons but now the desire and the need to manufacture more weapons is an argument for the Ukraine conflict instead of an argument against it it’s interesting how Advocates of this conflict always find a new justification when the just justification of a few months ago falls apart so let me deal let’s deal with some very cold hard facts the ukrainians have argued publicly their defense minister has said this that they require thousands of air defense Interceptor missiles every single year in order to keep themselves safe from Russian attack do we make thousands no if this supplemental passes as I expect it will in a few hours we will go from making about 550 Pack 3 Interceptor missiles to about 650 and there are a few other weapon systems that can provide that that can provide protection in terms of air defense but Ukraine’s air defenses are being overwhelmed right now because we don’t make enough air defenses Europe doesn’t make enough air defenses and by the way we’re being stretched in multiple different directions the Israelis need them to push back against Iranian attacks the Ukrainian need them to push back against Russian attacks we may God forbid need them and the Taiwan Taiwanese would need them if China ever invaded we don’t make enough air defense weapons and neither do the Europeans and so rather than stretching ourselves too thin America should be focused on the task of diplomacy and making it possible for our friends and our allies to do what as much as they can but to recognize the limitations and to ensure that we most of all our own people and our own country can look after our own defense but it’s not just air defense missiles 155 millim artillery shells these are one of the most critical weapons for the land war in Europe maybe the single most critical weapon for the land war in Europe the United States makes a fraction of what the ukrainians need and if you combine what the United States needs with what the Europeans excuse me what the United States provides with what the Europeans are able to provide and what other figures are able to provide we are massively limited and whether we can help Ukraine close the gap that it currently has with Russia now you’ve heard senior figure figures in our defense Administration say that unless this bill passes unless this bill passes the ukrainians will face a 10 to1 disadvantage when it comes to critical Munitions like artillery 10 to one what gets less headlines is that currently the ukrainians have a five to one disadvantage and there is no credible Pathway to give them anything close to parity and I’m not even talking about this year I’m talking about next year too during a conversation with a senior National Security official of the Biden Administration I was told that if the United States radically ramps up production and if the Europeans radically ramp up production the Europeans excuse me the ukrainians will have a 4 to1 disadvantage in artillery by the end of 2025 and that was treated as good news you cannot win a land war in Europe with a 4 to1 disadvantage in artillery especially when the country that you’re going up against has four times the population that you do and of course the most important resource in war even in modern war is not just air defense missiles and is not just artillery shells the most important resource is human beings human beings still will fight our Wars as tragic as that is and as much as we wish that it wasn’t true and Ukraine has a terrible Manpower problem too the New York Times recently wrote a story about how they had conscripted perhaps accidentally I certainly hope so they had conscripted a mentally handicapped person into service in their conflict they have now dropped the conscription age and still they are engaged in deonanan to conscript people into this conflict that says nothing about the fact by the way that approximately 600,000 military aged men fled the country this war is often compared as I said earlier to the UK’s fight against Nazi Germany in the height of World War II did a million Brits over a million Brits leave Britain to avoid being conscripted by the Germans I highly doubt it so there is a deep res Reserve problem a reserve of weapons there aren’t enough of them a reserve of Manpower there isn’t enough of there isn’t there aren’t enough men this is the problem that Ukraine confronts and I say this not to attack the ukrainians who fought admirably many of them defending their country many of them have died defending their country but if we want to respect the sacrifice of the people who have died in this conflict we have to deal with reality and the reality is that the longer this goes on the more people will needlessly die the fewer people will actually be left to rebuild the country of Ukraine and the less capable Ukraine will be of actually functioning as a country in the future but I’m not just worried about that I’m not just worried about whether Ukraine can win I also worry about as I said earlier unintended consequences and now we should spend a little bit time discussing some more of those few things come from our obsessive focus on Ukraine number one we have at multiple levels in this Congress passed pieces of legislation that deal with Ukraine that attempt to explicitly curtail the diplomacy powers of the next president presidential Administration now I know we we don’t often talk so directly about politics and I’m sure I disagree with my friends on the aisle other side of the aisle about who the next president should be but we want to empower the next president whoever that is to actually engage in diplomacy not make it harder to engage in diplomacy and multiple provisions of this legislation but also other legislation this chamber has passed and I’ve opposed try explicitly to tie the next president’s hands and so so let’s just say that the next president whoever that might be decides that he wants to stop the killing and engage in diplomacy this chamber will be giving a predicate to impeach that next president for engaging in basic diplomacy hard to imagine a more ridiculous judgment on the priorities of American leadership that we are already trying to make it impossible for the next president to engage in any measure of diplomacy that’s not leadership and that’s not toughness that is a blind adherence to a broken foreign policy consensus which is unfortunately exactly what we have the Ukraine supplemental that is again likely to be passed in the next few hours funds Ukraine’s border while turning a blind eye to the United States’s own border crisis the bill includes hundreds of millions that could be used to strengthen Ukrainian border security and support the state Border guard service of Ukraine good for them I’m glad that they care about their own border security the supplemental extends benefits for Ukrainian parole leaves in the United States and includes 481 million for refugees and interin assistance which could be used in part for the office of refugee resettlement to provide resettlement assistance to ukrainians arriving in the United States and also to other organizations who also because money is fungible uh who could resettle other migrants from other countries into our country so the very same moment that we are supporting the ukrainians to secure their own border we’re not just ignoring our own border we are funding NOS that will worsen Joe Biden’s migration crisis it’s completely senseless and yes that’s what we’re doing let’s talk about something else this bill includes a provision that is wildly popular called the repo act now in short the repo act does something very simple the repo Act allows the treasury Department to seize Russian assets to help them pay for the war and look who that sounds great of course Russia shouldn’t have invaded Ukraine and of course they should have to pay for some of the consequences all of the consequences that they’ve created but ask yourself are there unintended consequences that come from seizing tens of billions of dollars from foreign assets and in fact there are a number of economists from across the political Spectrum have argued that the repo act could potentially make it harder to sell us treasuries now this is something a lot of Americans don’t care about I’m sure their GLA their eyes might glaze over a little bit but this country is almost is running almost two trillion dollar deficits every single year and he asked where where do those $2 trillion do come from they come from selling treasury Bonds on the open market that’s how we pay for the deficit spending in this country and what happens when people start to worry that us treasuries are not a good investment well we’ve already seen the consequences over the last couple of years interest rates go up inflation goes up home mortgages become more expensive are we at least a little bit worried that the bond markets could react negatively to us seizing tens of billions or hundreds of billions of dollars of assets we should certainly should be worried about it because we already can’t afford the deficit spending in this country to begin with treasury yield rates are already extraordinarily high and thanks to the Biden spinning Pro the Biden spinning programs they’ve actually shown a remarkable stubbornness over the last few months here’s another unended consequence Germany has it’s an important American Ally and it has by some standards the fourth or fifth largest economy in the entire world a very very important country a very important Ally and by the way a beautiful country with beautiful people but Germany under the influence of a series of so-called green energy policies is rapidly de-industrializing Germany by the way was one of the few countries in the wake of the of World War II especially in the the 70s ‘ 80s and ’90s that actually kept its industrial might largely intact think about German car and all the other manufacturing things uh that come from the country of Germany well Germany is much less powerful in terms of manufacturing today than it was 10 years ago why because it takes cheap energy to manufacture things you need cheap energy if you want to manufacture steel you need cheap energy if you want to manufacture cars that’s one of the reasons by by the way the manufacturing economy has done so poorly under the Biden Administration is because our energy policies don’t make any sense but Germany should be told that the United States will not subsidize its ridiculous energy policies and its policies that weaken German manufacturing we should send a message to the Germans that they’ve got to manufacture their own weapons they have to field their own Army and they have the priority and they have the responsibility to defend Europe from Vladimir Putin or anyone else I ask the question how many mechanized for Gades could the German army field today by some estimates the answer is zero by other estimates the answer is one so the fourth most powerful economy in the world is unable to field sufficient mechanized brigades to defend itself from Vladimir Putin now this isn’t yesterday excuse me this isn’t 5 years ago or 10 years ago this is yesterday so for three years the Europeans have told us that Vladimir Putin is an existential threat to Europe and for 3 years they have failed to respond as if that were actually true Donald Trump famously told European nations they have to spend more on their own defense he was chastised by members of this chamber for having the audacity to suggest that Germany should step up and pay for its own defense even today Germany by some estimates fails to hit its 2% of GDP threshold where it’s supposed to spend 2% of it economy on Military and even if it hits that 2% threshold in 2024 it will have hit it barely after literally Decades of being chastised now is it fair that the Americans are forced to front this burden I don’t think that it is but I’m actually more worried less I’m less worried about the fairness I should say and I’m more worried about the signal this sends to Europe if we keep on carrying a substantial share of the military burden if if we keep on giving the Europeans everything that they want they’re never going to become self-sufficient and they’re never going to produce sufficient weapons so that they can defend their own country you hear all the time from folks who support endless funding to Ukraine that unless that unless we send resources to Ukraine Vladimir Putin will Mar March all the way to Berlin or Paris well first of all this doesn’t make any sense Vladimir Putin can’t get to Western Ukraine how is he going to get all the way to Paris and second of all if Vladimir Putin is a threat to Germany and France if he’s a threat to Berlin and Paris then they should spend more money on military equipment some of my fellow Americans have been lucky enough to travel to Europe it’s a beautiful place but one of the things that Europeans often often say about Americans is that we have way too many guns and way too little healthare well one of the reasons why we have less Health Care access than the Europeans do is because we subsidize their military and their defense if the Europeans were forced to step up and provide for their own security we could actually take care of some more domestic problems at home but no too many in this chamber have decided that we should police the entire world the American Tax pair ban let make one one final Point here I’m cognizant that I have colleagues who wish to speak can I ask uh Mr President how much time do I have the U Senator has 28 minutes reminding great I see my colleague from Florida so I I will be uh relatively brief here for 40 years this country has made largely I I’d say it a bipartisan mistake it is allowed our manufacturing might to get offshored and to get outsourced while simultaneously increasing the commitments that we have all over the world we’ve basically outsourced our ability to manufacture critical weapons while stepping up our responsibilities to police the world and of course if we’re going to police the world then it’s American troops who need those weapons so with one hand we have weakened our own country and with the other we have overextended there is a certain irony that if you look at the voting records and the commitments of this chamber the people who have been most aggressive my colleagues some of them my friends who have been most aggressive in sending our good manufacturing jobs to China are now the ones who are most aggressive and assert that we can police the world well what are we supposed to police the world with our our our artillery manufacturing our weapons our air defense manufa ufacturing our basic military industrial complex has become incredibly weakened and this bill you’ll hear people say fixes it it doesn’t fix it at all in fact this bill while it does invest some and this is a good thing by the way it’s not all bad while it does invest some in critical manufacturing of American weapons it sends those weapons overseas faster than it even replenishes them this is not a bill to rebuild the defense industrial base this is a bill to further extend this country with that Mr President I will uh I will yield recognizing that my my friend from Florida wants to speak and uh I appreciate it thank you everybody sit down sit down sit down go on come on it’s very kind of you um but you know maybe you hear what I say I think I’m an so you know do the standing ofation as right I say what I’m going to say here uh appreciate so much all of you having me um as you can probably tell if you haven’t been working under a rock it’s really slow news week for me and for the country at large um it’s so funny on uh on on Monday when I got to the capital uh I sort of and a bit humorous expect all the reporters to swarm me and ask me a bunch of questions about uh you probably can guess and they were totally uned because there’s nothing the media loves more than a good Death Watch and that’s what’s happening on the left right now is and as they care what they wish for of course because the prize at the end of the bonbo would be kamla Harris so uh talk about talk about call between a rock and a hard place but let me just let me just before we we get into what I’m going to say here uh let me thank uh first of all soram and yorum for putting together an incredible event I’ve heard so much about it God bless you guys thank you for what you’ve done where’s your where are you of course have War here uh from from Israel which is uh dealing with a number of uh of terrible problems and the terrible attack and trying to respond to it as best they can so we certainly wish you the best your but we’re glad you’re here and we’re glad that this conference would off so well I I I it’s it’s so amazing that the American conservative movement is so influenced by what’s happened here I’ve heard my colleagues just the last few days talk about some of the the discussions the panels the criticisms made of me uh all all all manner of things uh that have happen here but this really is the place of intellectual leadership in the American conservative movement so thank you guys and thank you for everything that you do it actually matters so let me just offer a few observations about where we are uh because I I think it’s important to sort of acknowledge that we’ve had a lot of successes and we’ve also had some defeats and a sort of level check about where we are when I came to this conference in 2019 I was a you know a venture capitalist I was an author I had written a book I was running a venture capital fund and uh I I was not really thinking about public policy aside from the fact that I was worried that my country seemed to be going in the wrong direction and I think I made a a couple of points there and in that in that speech 5 years ago that still unfortunately ring true today I talked about the fact that the American dream the American dream of my my my grandfather was declining in the birth of the American dream the the the place that actually gave birth to this idea that you through working hard and playing by the rules should be able to build a good life for yourself right this very basic idea that you should be able to build a good life for yourself and your family in the country that you call home that idea was under Siege by the American left and of course it is still under siege and in some ways things have gotten a little bit worse uh in other ways I think that we’ve notched incredible victories uh in and and you know if if you just go back to uh you one of my hobby horses over the last few years is this idea that American foreign policy should be realistic about what we can accomplish where we can focus and the fact that military power is fundamentally Downstream of industrial power the most important lesson of World War II is not that if you thump your chest and pretend that you’re the good guy you can win a conflict the most important lesson of World War II is if the home front is strong then we can win and project how overseas our leaders te of course you have forgotten that but as much as our leaders have forgotten that and as much as I think that the most significant example of that is is in Ukraine uh where we have sent hundreds of billions of dollars of Weaponry with no obvious end in sight and no obvious conclusion or even objective that we’re close to getting uh getting accomplished there and so many of my colleagues ignore the basic realities of of War but I will say on the good news the majority of the Republican house and the majority of the Republican Senate the most recent cycle said no more of this no more right that’s a good thing that’s progress even though we didn’t win the debate we’re starting to win the debate with within our party I think that really matters now just just on that particular topic I have to take a shot is that I’ve done at every single matcon at the world Street Journal at the T page I think actually every speech I’ve that I I I know brige spoke earlier who was going to speak brige you out there somewhere okay sorry to tie you up in this nefarious business that I’m about to engage in but the dumbest of all possible foreign policy Solutions and answers for our country is that we should let China make all of our stuff and we should fight a war with China okay we should we should in my view not fight a war with China if we can avoid it we should also not let the Chinese make all of our stuff and yet i’ I’ve seen the Wall Street Journal editorial page for the last couple of years say we can indefinitely send remissions and weapons of war to Ukraine after for the past two generations advocating when we ship our industrial base overseas it doesn’t make any sense it’s sort of the perfect encapsulation of the dumbest way to govern our country let’s send our entire Machinery from making War to countries that hate us and then let’s spend what little stock piles that we have on a war that has no obvious of ins sight that’s the Wall Street Journal editorial page approach and I’m happy to say that the Republican party is increasingly aggressively and with momentum rejecting it so that is a great achievement and a great amount of progress that we’ve made another thing that we’ve made real progress on is even the Libertarians even the market fundamentalist I know we have a few in the audience we won’t beet up on me too much I know one’s out there somewhere um even they acknowledge that you can’t have unlimited free trade with countries that hate you it be the the equivalent of allowing the Nazi Germans in 1942 to make all of our ships and missiles people recognize that that era has come to a close even the people who are generally going to disagree with us about how much to protect American industry from this point for agree you can’t let the Chinese make all of your stuff when you’re engaged in I think a long-term great power competition with the Chinese so we’ve made incredible progress there and and yet I will say that as much as we’ve made some great progress there are still these weird little pockets of the old consensus that continue to Bubble to the surface and continue to fight us on all of the most important question so our work is hardly done here uh but I do think that we’ve made some significant progress now the issue where I think we’ve made for most progress and I I have to say this is you know I think a lot of you agree with this but where the national conservative movement has made the most progress not just here but I think overseas as well is the recognition that the real threat to American democracy it’s not certainly not Donald Trump it’s not even some foreign dictator who doesn’t like America or our values the real threat to American democracy is that American voters keep on voting for Less immigration and our politicians keep on rewarding us with more that is the threat to American democracy and I I have had a conversation with an English friend uh earlier today and you know one of the things that’s very obv obious is that all over the Western World in Germany in the UK in place after place after Place populations keep on telling their leadership that they want less integration and their leadership keeps on refusing to listen to them this is like a fundamental broken translation function in our in our sacred democracy that our leads don’t seem to care about why don’t seem to care about well number one they really benefit from the cheap labor okay number two they actually don’t really like the people who make up the domestic populations of their own country it’s one of the things that we consistently find uh from the you know the UK Elites to certainly the American Elites is they seem to really not like their own fellow citizens even though the wars that they want are going to be of course fought by the people in the Heartland and not by the people who are walking down the streets of Washington DC um but I I I I I digress so I apologize for that but but the the the thing on immigration is that no one can avoid that it has made our societies poor less safe less prosperous and less Advanced now I remember getting into some argument with some Loser on Twitter a year or so ago about whether immigration raised housing prices and of course the argument is that yeah maybe immigrants take up some more demand for housing but they they build all the houses that’s not true by the way go to Pennsylvania Ohio we see a lot of very many of born citizens who still build houses it’s actually shocking uh but if you go there are some towns in Ohio um where we actually had houses before the Immigration Act of 1964 I’m I’m dead serious we actually did build homes in the United States of America before our Elites flooded The Zone with nonstop cheap labor and by the way we can still do it those people can still do it they just want to get proper wages in the process um but Sean but now everybody seems to agree that if you look at for example the the the United Kingdom uh if immigration non-stop immigration was the way to create wealth and prosperity and lower home prices then London would be doing great and I got to tell you I was in London last year and it’s not really so good you don’t even have to go to London you can go closer to home the places in our own communities in our own uh states that have the highest immigration rates are the places with the highest home prices and it’s not even it’s not it’s not a correlation versus causation issue if you actually look at the Metro Zone by Metro Zone if you go partial by paral you can see that where you have more immigration you have higher home prices but but it’s not just that there’s a community called Springfield Ohio and it’s very close to my heart because Springfield Ohio if any of you know the state of Ohio it is nearly a carbon copy of Middletown Ohio wide grub it’s a population sort of a small to medium-sized town about 55,000 people and you’re not going to believe this statistic when I when I repeat it to you because I didn’t believe it when I first heard about it but in the last four years thanks to Joe Biden’s open border policies the City of Springfield has gone from 55 ,000 residents to 75,000 residents the 20,000 resident Delta is almost all recent Haitian immigrants okay in a town a small town of Ohio of 20,000 people now go to Springfield go to Clark County Ohio and ask the people there whether they have been enriched by 20,000 newcomers in 4 years housing is through the roof people middle class people in Springfield who lived there sometimes for Generations cannot afford a place to live a third I heard this yesterday a third of the local County Health budget is now tied up in giving free benefits to illegal immigrants and of course the left with fact check and say Well they’re not a Leal immigrance because through the abuse of Asylum laws and through Joe Biden’s massive parols they are now no longer technically illegal aliens because according to Joe B nobody is an illegal alien uh the only illegal people in this country are the people whose Grandparents were born here according to the bid Administration they’re the people there the People by the way who are not allowed to have an opinion about what’s going on in their country because they will be S silenced they will be censored they will be called every name in the book but but Springfield Ohio has been overwhelmed and you don’t have to believe of course that the 20,000 at least most of the 20,000 newcomers are bad people in fact I imagine that many of them are very good people but my interest is not in protecting the good people of another country I’m a senator for the state of Ohio our leaders have to protect the interests of the citizens of this country and the fact and the fact that this has happened is evidence that they’re not and so I I want to come back to something that I I I started with here which is that we’ve made a lot of progress there have been things that that have been bad that have happened I mean you know in my home state of Ohio we’ve had a couple of ballot referendum that had not gone the right way we lost some elections in 2022 that I think that we should have won of course like I said earlier not every foreign policy debate has gone in our Direction but by and large the national conservative movement is winning the debate and or changing the conversation we’re doing that from the very very basic and simple principle that American leaders should look out for Americans and by the way I know for the Brits here UK leaders should look out for citizens of the UK or subjects or whatever you guys call yourselves and so on and on for other other citizens of other countries by the way I have to beet up on the UK just one one additional thing I was talking with a friend recently um and we were talking about you know one of the big dangers in the in the world of course is nuclear proliferation of course the bid Administration doesn’t care about it and uh I was talking about you know what is the first truly islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon and we were like maybe it’s Iran you maybe Pakistan already kind of counts and then we soonly finally decided maybe it’s actually the UK since NE just took over but but our 20 thingss I have to say um you guys have got handle on this but neither here or there um the reason I’m most optimistic about the future of this movement and the future of our country is because for the first time in a very long time it is clear that the leader of the Republican party is not some Doo who’s desperate for sheep labor and it’s not some random person who claims to speak for this or that constituency the leader of the Republican party is a guy who actually plans to put American citizens first and that’s Donald Trump that and that and I remember in 2019 when I came to speak at this conference and as you all know um and of course Trump knows because he has a memory like a steel trap I almost wish his memory was as bad as Joe Biden’s because he would forget about what I said about him in 2016 but you know I I I I I was a convert in 2019 to the cause of Trump’s America First agenda in many ways I came here very much as a convert and I was re I was ciz of the fact that because I was a convert Trump had not yet taken over the Republican Party even in Washington DC even in 2019 even though he was the president of United States there were people who were aggressively pushing back against his in who were already planning a return to you know basically reimplementing the Wall Street Journal of 12 Pages preferred positions in 2019 I think that’s over now and I think that the fact that it’s over is a huge huge win for you guys but most importantly it’s a huge huge win for the American people because the American people again they need people who put the interests of their own Citizens first of our own Citizens First and that’s what this entire movement is all about and I think that’s what the Trump presidency will be about if we give him another shot as I expect that we will let me thank you let me um Let Me Close just with an observation here and I apologize to a few of you because a few of you have heard me give this RI but I think that it’s important because we’re you even though I think um we’re in a very good place electorally in 2024 there’s of course going to be a massive set of debates and conversations going forward and one of the things that you hear people say even on our side that you hear people say is that America um is the first credle nation okay America is an idea America has really good ideas at the founding of our country it was created by very brilliant men the constitution of course had this incredible influence and political Theory and that’s why it is stood the test of time but America is not just an idea but we were founded on great ideas America is a nation it is a group of people with a common history and a common future and yes thank you one of the parts of that commonality as a people is that we do allow newcomers to this country but we allow them on our terms on the terms of the American citizens and that’s the way that we preserve the continuity of this project from 200 years past to hopefully 200 years in the future and let me illustrate this in a particular way I I am married to the daughter of South Asian immigrants to this country incredible people people who genuinely have enriched uh the country in in so many ways and of course I’m biased because I love my wife but I believe that it’s true but when when my wife and I got when we were went proposed to her uh we were in law school and I said honey I come along with $120,000 worth of law school debt and a Cemetary plot in Eastern Kentucky that’s what you’re getting right and that cemetery plot of E from Kentucky if you drive down Kentucky Route 15 go to Jackson Kentucky that’s my family’s ancestral home before we migrated to Ohio about 60 70 years ago that’s where all of my relatives came from is is the Deep heart of central Appalachia this is Kentucky coold country by the way one of the 10 poorest counties in the entire United States of America uh of course our Elites love to accuse the residents there of having White Privilege go to Brea County Kentucky and tell me that these are privileged people they are very hardworking people and they’re very good people and they are people who love this country not because it’s a good idea but because in their bones they know that this is their home and will be their children’s home and they would die fighting to protect it that is the source of America’s greatness ladies and gentlemen and I represent I get to represent millions of people in the state of Ohio who are exactly like that but in that Cemetery in that Cemetery there are people who were born around the time of the American Civil War and if as I hope my my wife and I eventually laid to rest there and our kids follow us there will be seven generations just in that small Mountain cemetery plot in Eastern Kentucky seven generations of people who have fought for this country who have built this country who have made things in this country and who would fight and die to protect this country if they were asked to they that that that is not just an idea that is not just a set of principles even though the ideas and the principles are great that is a Homeland people don’t go and fight and die just for principles they also importantly they go and fight and die for their home for their families and for the future of their children if this movement is going to go anywhere and if this country is going to Thrive we have to remember that America is a nation we’re going to disagree sometimes about how best to serve that Nation we’re going to disagree of course even within this room about how to would best accomplish the reinvigoration of American industry and the renewal of American family that’s fine but never forget that why we exist why we do this why we care about all those great ideas is because I would like eventually for my kids the lady to rest in that cemetery and I would like them to know that the United States of America is as strong and as proud and as great as ever let’s get to work to make that happen God bless you guys and thank you

Over the past two years, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), former President Trump’s nominee for 2024 GOP Vice Presidential nominee, has forthrightly shared his views on the Ukraine-Russia war.

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