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Floor Speech

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Mr. BENNET. I actually was going to talk about the FAA, but I came out here, and I got accused by the Senator from Texas of being irresponsible. And my friend Phil Washington, who is up for the FAA, was attacked for not knowing anything about airports.

So I just want to address those two things before I go into my remarks. One, to the gentleman from North Carolina, Phil Washington knows a considerable amount about transportation and aviation in this country. That was ignored by the Senator from Texas. It is being ignored this afternoon by the Senator from North Carolina.

He runs Denver International Airport. That is one of the largest airports in the United States of America. It is an airport that has been built more recently than any other airport in the United States of America. It has the third largest traffic in the world. It now has the United hub there. I was just talking to the President of United yesterday, CEO. They have more traffic coming through there than they do in Chicago.

So, for the record, let me just say, Phil Washington knows a lot about this, and I am sorry that his nomination didn't go forward. That is not why we are here today.

Let me also say, since he called me irresponsible, that it is nice to hear the Senator from Texas come out here and plead for some regular order, in terms of how our government should work, to worry about the fact that people could be furloughed or laid off; that they are uncertain of the future because the bill is not permanent.

These were all concerns he did not have the last time we were on the floor together when he had shut the government down while Colorado was literally underwater because of floods, when we were out here having that crocodile tears speech the last time, and I am glad that he has reconsidered all of that and that he wants the FAA to run in a proper fashion.

But I don't think it is irresponsible for me to be here today to object, and I will object to this request because I think it is critically important for us to use this moment to fulfill our obligations in the world, to the United States' national security, and to our commitment to democracy both here and throughout the Western world.

The Ukrainian people were invaded 2 years ago by Vladimir Putin. They didn't ask for that. By a tyrant. They did not ask for that.

The intelligence agencies told us that Kyiv would be taken in 72 hours. That is what they said it would take. My colleague from the Intelligence Committee is here on the floor, and he knows that. They were told that Putin would be able to install a puppet government in Ukraine and be able to dictate the future of the Ukrainian people, be able to keep Ukraine from being part of the West.

Well, as sometimes happens in human history, they were completely wrong. They were completely wrong. The Ukrainian people, much to the surprise of the entire world, because of their courage, because of their bravery, because of our support--both our intelligence support and the armaments that we have been able to ship them, which, by the way, have allowed us to restart our own national security efforts because we are building those weapons systems here in 38 States--the Ukrainian people have taken back half the territory that Putin took from them. Nobody would have ever believed that.

The Ukrainian people and their military have pushed Putin's navy out of the Black Sea without even having a navy. They have no navy, and those guys are so unbelievable that they have taken the tools that they have created and that we have given them to push Putin out of the Black Sea and to reopen those incredibly important grain shipments to the rest of the world to keep the rest of the world in this war. They have won battle after battle after battle.

I hear people around here--it is so tiresome--say that the stalemate on the frontlines between Zelenskyy and Putin, between Ukraine and the Russian troops, is somehow a failure for Ukraine on their part. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It is a miracle--actually, it is not a miracle because they did it through their blood, sweat, and tears. It is a testament to the sacrifice that the Ukrainian people have gone through, to what their troops have gone through, to the number of Russian troops and Russian artillery that they have taken off the battlefield, that they have created a stalemate in this war. That is not an admission of failure; that is an admission of success.

What we are trying to figure out today, when we go into this long winter, when Putin is on television today saying that the Ukrainians are out of bullets, that the United States is going to stop funding the Ukrainian people, telling the Western world, the free world, which has been so inspired by what the Ukrainian people have done, so inspired by their courage and their bravery that they have come together, with the leadership of the United States, to strengthen NATO in ways nobody could have imaged, and to have free citizens all over the world say to people like the Senator from Texas and me: Do more. Do more. Do more.

That is what they are doing during this Christmas season. They are fighting for their lives. They are fighting for democracy. They don't get to say ``OK, it is time to go home'' 11 days before Christmas has happened. Their fight is our fight. Their fight is our fight.

(Ms. BUTLER assumes the Chair.)

Madam President, I held up the budget bill a few months--by the way, it is very nice to see the Senator from California in the Chair. I have never seen you up there. Good to see you.

I held the budget bill several months ago on this floor because it had no funding for Ukraine, even though we said that we would fund Ukraine, because there was no plan to get it funded. On the single most important thing we have in front of the world, not just the Senate of the United States, we had no plan to fund Ukraine, and I thought that was a lousy message to send, and it was a lousy message to send. We left here without funding it. Actually, it turned out we left here without a Speaker of the House.

We left here with bright lights flashing on the institutional incompetence of our own democracy, which, by the way, that is not a great look for the United States of America. And what happened? We left, and a death cult called Hamas killed 1,400 Israelis while we were gone, and now we have a war going on in the Middle East. The world is an unpredictable place.

I am encouraged because a few days ago, it looked to me like this deal was dead. A few days ago, I was facing the prospect of calling up my mom, who was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1938, who is still alive-- the worst moment probably in human history to be born Jewish and the worst place on the planet to be born when she was born--who can't believe she has lived long enough, and thank God she has lived long enough--but she would say: I can't believe I have lived long enough to see another land war break out in Europe. But she has, and it happened.

I thought I was going to have to be in a position of saying to my mother: We haven't learned anything from history. We haven't learned anything about the 16 million people who were killed in the years after she was born just in Poland and just in Ukraine, just in those two countries, by Hitler and by Stalin. We haven't learned anything. We are too tired. We are too busy. We are too distracted by the other stuff that is going on in the United States of America to actually do our work--which, by the way, no other country in the world can do. There is no other country in the world that can turn on the leadership that we can provide. There is no other country in the world that can provide the munitions we are providing.

I want to say again to the American people that virtually 90 percent of the armaments that we are sending to Ukraine are being made here in the United States of America, 38 States--Colorado is not one of them-- putting people to work all over the United States, driving incomes up but also, more important than that, making us ready in a world where Hamas has attacked Israel, where Putin has invaded Ukraine, where Xi is watching every single day to see whether we are going to turn our backs on our allies in the free world who have done everything that anybody here could have asked for. In fact, nobody would have ever asked for it because nobody here would have believed it was possible. No one would have believed it was possible. And for what, by the way? Zelenskyy told us in the first Zoom call we had with President Zelenskyy: Just so we can live our lives the way you live your lives.

He said the other day, in front of the Democrats and Republicans who came to see him when he was here, that he thought he could win if we continued to supply him but that he would lose if we didn't continue to supply him.

He said: Either way, we are going to fight to the death--either way, with your help or without your help. One way, we will be successful. The other way, we are going to lose.

He said: The reason why we are going to do that is because the Ukrainian people love freedom, because the Ukrainian people want to live their lives the way you live your lives.

I mentioned the Middle East. Every day--and I hear my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say every single day Iran is now attacking our troops in Iraq. The Houthis are sending their missiles to attack shipping around Israel and around the Middle East.

There are flashing red lights going on all over the Middle East, and the Israelis have to worry about another front opening up there.

Finally, of course, China is watching what we are doing as well.

I would never have attached these border issues to the Ukraine bill. I would never have attached these immigration issues to the Ukraine bill. But some Republican colleagues have done it because they have said: This is an important bill. We are going to use this to leverage our concerns about immigration or the border.

I have a lot of concerns about a lot of things. I think our education system doesn't work well for poor kids in this country at all. I think our healthcare system doesn't work well for the American people. But I am not attaching those to this piece of business.

But I have heard Republicans who support Ukraine who have said they need to do this in order for us to have a bipartisan bill. I have heard the President of the United States say our immigration system is broken. I have heard the Homeland Security adviser, the Secretary of Homeland Security, say the same thing.

I will tell you, I think the American people do not want an immigration system that is run by transnational smuggling rings, transnational gangs that are sending people to the border of the United States at record numbers. I don't think the American people want that.

So if there is a way for us to have a negotiation here that can get us to a good result for the American people on immigration and on the border, and that is the price people have said they are going to insist on, I have been willing to have that discussion, and I will be willing to have that discussion. It is one of the other reasons why I think we shouldn't leave.

But as I said a few days ago, we were making no progress. Now, finally, we are making some progress, and the world is watching what we do here, and we can't fail. Given how screwed up American politics can be, it can make you wonder whether we ought to take an extra day or a day after that or an extra few days or whether we ought to just stay here and do the work or whether we ought to move on to other things, like the FAA bill, before we are done.

I know I have tested your patience, and I have tested the patience of the Senator from Texas, I am sure, this afternoon, and I am going to stop. But I want to finish by saying, at least speaking for myself, I don't think there is anything that anybody who is here will ever do in this Senate that is going to be more important than the vote we are going to take on additional funding for Ukraine.

I think we are going to either establish or reestablish America's very special place in this world and our leadership of free countries and democracies around the world or we are going to squander that in the face of what Putin is already telling us he is going to do, in the face of what the Iranians are already doing to our soldiers who are in the Middle East, and in the face of what Xi Jinping is thinking about with respect to Taiwan.

The authoritarian leaders in this world think they have a better way of running human affairs than democracy. I think they are wrong.

When the Ukrainian people have fought as hard as they have for the last 2 years and eclipsed any expectation that anybody could have had for them, the least we can do is continue our support.

Finally, let me say, as I close, that it is going to be really important for us to get back to a place where we can have a bipartisan discussion about how to create a functional immigration system in America.

Now, I am not just talking about the border. Immigration has been a fundamentally important part of our country's history, and it will be a fundamentally important part of our country's future. It is a massive advantage that the United States has over other countries around the world when it is working well. And there are people all over the world who want to be here. No one is crossing the Gobi Desert to get into Beijing, and we should be happy about that. They want to come here.

One of the highlights of my life has been in 2013, when I was part of the Gang of 8 here that negotiated an immigration bill that had a pathway to citizenship for 11 million people that were undocumented. It had the most progressive Dream Act that had ever been written. It had all the visa stuff for farmers and ranchers and for business people. It had $40 billion in border security to strengthen our southern border and be able to say to the American people that we are taking that seriously. Unfortunately, it didn't pass.

And times have changed since then. You know, these transnational gangs have made it their business to make billions of dollars sending people to the southern border every single day, and we have to take notice of that. We are going to have to adjust. But I hope that doesn't mean there won't be a day that comes back where we have a chance to do it in a bipartisan way.

In the meantime, we have to get our work done in Ukraine. In the meantime, we shouldn't leave. In the meantime, I don't think we should move on to other pieces of legislation. For all those reasons, I object.

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Mr. BENNET. I thank the Senator from Texas. Actually, it is fun to remember all this, and I am sorry I don't have a phone on my desk. Nobody can send me my prior quotes or his prior quotes. I wish I had thought to do that. But I have a pretty good memory, and the facts are on the floor. The facts are the facts.

When we were out here in 2019--and, by the way, I would never confuse the Senator from Texas with Senator Schumer. So let's establish that at the outset. I know you are two different people. You are very different people.

When we were out here in 2019, though, what I was talking about was, I was reminding people of the shutdown you led in 2013 while Colorado was underwater, while there were cities and towns all over our State who had been crushed by the floodwaters that had started in these unexpected storms and come rushing through these mountain valleys and ended up destroying towns and villages. It looked like bombs had gone off. The people in Colorado were digging themselves out.

There were people--local elected officials, Democrats and Republicans--who were doing the work they needed to do. And the Federal Government was shut down because of Senator Cruz from Texas. That is what happened. Those people are owed an apology for what the Senator of Texas did.

And then he came out here in 2019 pretending that he cared about trying to resolve--by the way, it wasn't Chuck Schumer's shutdown. It was Donald Trump's shutdown. He was the President. It was the longest shutdown in American history. And I don't have my phone to tell me this, but if you look it up--please do--you will find it was the Trump shutdown, not the Schumer shutdown. And it went on forever--not forever, but it was the longest shutdown ever. And Senator Cruz was coming out here with these Potemkin pieces of legislation to sort of trick Democrats or to force Democrats into taking a bad vote on the funding of the Coast Guard while the whole rest of the Government was shut down.

He might have believed that the most important thing to do at that moment, I suppose, was to fund the Coast Guard and to leave everything else shut down. I suppose that is possible.

I suspect the likelier reason was that he was trying to create a vote that said the Democrats are for shutting the government down--or shutting the Coast Guard down, not shutting the government down. Donald Trump had shut the government down, President Trump. And that is what we were out here discussing.

So you give me the opportunity to remind everyone of the 2013 events. And I won't withdraw what I said in 2019.

I will say that I want to thank the Senator from Texas for remembering that I even had a Presidential campaign at all. It is not a well-remembered event in the history of our democracy. I am grateful that he could have played a role in trying to get me off the ground. We will have to see. But that was not the great--as I have said to people--well, I won't go on.

I will say to the Senator from Texas that when I got in, even my mom said: Do we need one more Democrat in this race, Michael? So that was how I started that race.

Then, I will say, finally, that the FAA doesn't end up expiring until the 31st of this month. We have time in front of us to do the work that needs to be done.

I want to congratulate the Senator from Texas for the work that he did on the Nord Stream Pipeline. I think that was meaningful work.

I remember you standing out here at a time when a lot of other people didn't even know what you were talking about and having you stand here and make that case. So I give you that, for sure.

I would say, also, that I am sure you feel passionately that the position that you took before Putin invaded Ukraine might have had some effect on what he did. We have a disagreement about that, but that is OK. Neither of us can change what has happened in the past. But what we can do is make sure that we recognize that this tyrant has invaded Ukraine; that this tyrant has done something that is in contravention of the civil order since World War II, since my mom was born in Poland in 1938; that the world has come together to support the free people of Ukraine in their battle; that Putin's only allies in this battle today are North Korea and Iran and sort of China, which are kind of watching how this all unfolds.

So the question before us now is not, I don't think, did we have some vote in the Senate that went one way or another--and I am sorry to the Senator from Wyoming, I will stop--went some way or another or that Democrats or that Joe Biden are somehow responsible for Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine.

First of all, that is certainly not true, even if we have disagreements about what was going on here. But what is certainly true is that Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. He decided to invade Ukraine. The Ukrainian people have exposed the weakness of Putin's army. They have exposed the weakness of his leadership. They have exposed the weakness of his strategy. They have exposed the strength of NATO. They have exposed the importance of American leadership. They have given us the chance to rearm the American people. They have pushed back Xi Jinping. That is not bad for 2 years of work.

And we should not go home. We should stay here and do the work we need to do to support Ukraine.

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