State Sponsors of Terrorism Review Enhancement Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman and Dr. Yoho for putting forth this wonderful bill. The State Sponsors of Terrorism Review Enhancement Act is the work of our Florida colleague, Ted Yoho. I thank Dr. Yoho for his leadership on this bill, as well as Chairman Royce and Ranking Member Engel for their leadership in getting it to the House floor.

This bill is an important and necessary legislative fix to a broken process: the manner in which nations are delisted as state sponsors of terrorism.

Over the years, through three different statutes, Congress developed the State Sponsors of Terrorism list and the consequences for being on the list. The three laws--the Foreign Assistance Act, the Arms Export Control Act, and the Export Administration Act--work to prevent state sponsors of terrorism from receiving assistance, goods, and technology that could help support terrorism.

In past decades, administrations from both sides of the aisle have mistakenly and prematurely delisted states, for example, including taking North Korea off the list in 2008, as the chairman pointed out, and removing Cuba, as the chairman pointed out, last year. North Korea has armed and supported organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas and has reportedly assisted the regime in Syria and in Iran in developing their nuclear weapons program.

Other examples of North Korea's provocations and destructive behavior are prolific, including continued illegal nuclear weapons tests like the one that we just saw last week; missiles launches; cyberattacks, sinking a South Korean naval vessel; and shipping weapons systems likes those that were intercepted out of Cuba in the year 2013.

Cuba has links to North Korea and state sponsors of terrorism Iran and Syria. It provides safe haven to terror groups like the Colombian FARC and Spanish ETA, and harbors fugitives, as the chairman pointed out, from American justice, like convicted cop killer JoAnne Chesimard.

As we saw in the cases of Cuba and North Korea, the process in which Congress is able to weigh in on whether a nation should or should not be delisted as a state sponsor of terrorism is a broken process, and only one of three laws provides a legislative mechanism to stop it. Only one.

This bill aims to fix that, extending the amount of time that Congress has to review an administration's proposal to delist a country and providing Congress with a mechanism, under each law, to block its removal by enacting a joint resolution of disapproval.

It is a simple legislative fix, Mr. Speaker, that allows Congress to fulfill its oversight responsibility, determine whether these countries are still supporting terrorism, and prevent them from being delisted should there not be enough evidence for their removal.

Congress needs to have the ability that it always had and that we thought it had to weigh in on attempts to remove countries from the list and to ensure that countries that are still supporting terrorism remain sanctioned, restricted from any material that they might be receiving that could aid in their terrorism, and remain on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list where they belong.

So it makes a change to the law, the review process that should have been made a long time ago. I thank Dr. Yoho for doing this. It allows Congress to execute its proper oversight responsibilities and prevent the executive branch from delisting countries as state sponsors of terrorism prematurely.

We have seen in cases of both North Korea and Cuba, delisted by Republican and Democratic administrations respectively, that giving these nations these concessions only emboldens the rogue regimes and undermines our national security.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source