National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2017

Floor Speech

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Mr. BOOZMAN. Mr. President, the Federal Government's No. 1 responsibility is to protect the American people. As the Obama administration approaches its final months, the American people still do not feel, with any degree of confidence, that Washington is taking the proper steps to carry out that responsibility. The Islamic State terror group has repeatedly encouraged sympathizers in the West to launch domestic attacks. In the group's self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq, it continues to carry out atrocities on a daily basis.

ISIS has no intention of letting up, and the President's strategy of scattered attacks is doing little to slow the terror groups' strength. A group President Obama once dubbed the JV team has become a clear and serious threat during his watch.

That is just one of the many failures during this administration's foreign policy which is rooted in wishful thinking rather than grounded in reality. The idea that we can wish away the Nation's threats that our Nation faces by passively withdrawing from the international stage is a dangerous approach. It is this mentality that the President and his aides used to justify not calling jihadi attacks what they are, radical Islamic terrorism. The President has convinced himself that radical Islamic terrorism will not be a threat if we just call it something else. Clearly, this is not true.

It is the same mindset that thinks closing Gitmo and moving dangerous terrorists to U.S. soil is the right thing to do, and it is how we ended up with a deal that does nothing to prevent Iran from going nuclear but instead emboldens it to belligerently threaten the United States, our allies like Israel, and its neighboring Arab States.

The regime in Tehran acts as if it is virtually untouchable as a result of the Obama administration's agreement. Iran has no intentions of being a responsible, peaceful player in the international community. Even before the deal's implementation, Iran shamelessly violated U.N. Security Council mandates. Now, free from sanctions, the Iranians are flush with resources to build an arsenal to fund terror across the region. None of this seems to matter to the White House, which was bent on making this deal the cornerstone of its foreign policy.

The administration was so determined to sell this deal that it engaged in a propaganda campaign, enlisting outside groups to create an ``echo chamber'' and feeding material to a press corps that White House staffers said ``knew nothing'' about diplomacy. The administration even took extreme steps to keep the uncomfortable truths from the American people by removing a damaging exchange about whether officials lied about secret talks with Iran in 2012.

All of this just adds to the perception that the Obama administration was willing to go to any length to get this deal done, no matter how bad it is for our national security.

Senate Republicans have tried to correct this, of course. We wanted to stop this ill-advised Iran deal, but the minority leader forced his caucus to protect the President's legacy.

We have taken efforts to force the President to present a coherent plan to defeat ISIS abroad and to protect Americans here at home. That plan is still nonexistent.

We have inserted language into law after law to prevent the closure of Gitmo. In fact, the President is once again threatening to veto the bill we are currently considering, in part, due to the language that prevents closure of the facility.

We shouldn't be moving dangerous terrorists out of Gitmo. If anything, we should be moving more terrorists into Gitmo. The state-of- the-art facility is more than serving its purpose for detaining the worst of the worst, obtaining valuable intelligence from them, and keeping these terrorists who are bent on destroying America from returning to the battlefield.

A report from the Washington Post yesterday indicates that the Obama administration has evidence that about a dozen detainees released from Gitmo have launched attacks against the United States or allied forces in Afghanistan that have resulted in American deaths.

As the threat posed by ISIS grows, Gitmo remains the only option to house these terrorists. Any facility on U.S. soil is not an option. It never was with Al Qaeda terrorists, nor can it be with ISIS terrorists.

The President has failed to understand the gravity these terrorists pose to our homeland. Radical Islamic terrorists around the globe are pledging allegiance to the group and, as we have seen in Paris, Brussels, and San Bernardino, they are committed to and capable of hitting Westerners at home.

The President has never presented a strategy to Congress for eliminating ISIS, and our sporadic airstrikes have done little to stop the group from pressing forward and attempting to strengthen its global reach.

While ISIS grows and the United States sits idly by, Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea have ramped up their belligerent actions, putting our security at risk around the world. This will only continue to increase if we continue to chase the diplomacy to the point where it puts the safety of the American people at risk, to the point where any leverage the United States started with is gone, and to the point where we withdraw from conflicts with enemies because it is easier to allow someone else to fight the battle.

We are trying to fix the problems created by the Obama administration's failures so we can restore the confidence of the American people that their government is working to protect them here and abroad. Passage of the bill before us this week is a good step in the right direction.

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