Udall Foundation Reauthorization Act of 2023

Floor Speech

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Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I know my time might be short tonight because we finally have come, I guess, to an agreement about a vote, but I wanted to come tonight to the floor to talk about why I am voting against this bill.

I am going to vote against this bill because the House has sent it over here without funding in it to support Ukraine, and I think that is shameful. I think that is a complete abdication of the House's responsibility to our own national security and to democracy around the world.

It is common to come out here and criticize the U.S. Senate. I have done it many times. But I was grateful to be part of the Senate when we had about a 6-month negotiation about whether or not to pass what was called the supplemental, which was a budget bill to, among other things, fund Ukraine. There was money in that for Ukraine. There was money in that for Taiwan. There was money in that for Israel. There was humanitarian aid in there as part of that deal as well.

There was a lot of disagreement about a lot of things, but over a 6- month period, we actually finally came to a bipartisan agreement and got 70 votes. You almost never get 70 votes for anything in this place unless it is easy.

You almost never get 70 votes for anything in this place that is hard. Yet we were able to get 70 votes. We were able to put together a coalition of Democrats and Republicans to send a message to the House that funding Ukraine was very important and that the U.S. Senate, despite our disagreements over many, many things, we are united in the idea that we have an obligation to fulfill here on behalf of our national security, on behalf of democracy, on behalf of the fight that Ukraine has led.

We had to overcome, to be sure, isolationist voices--mostly in the Republican Party--during that debate. There are people making arguments from that isolationist wing of the Republican Party that we heard before World War I, that we heard before World War II. It is not an unknown tradition in American history that people would come out and make those arguments. It is such a known tradition that the people who are advancing those arguments are calling themselves by the same name of some of the folks who were the most ardent isolationists before World War II. America Firsters is what they called themselves back then, and that is what they are calling themselves again.

You would have thought they would have learned history's lesson based on the way history shone on the last version of the American Firsters. They were trying to keep us out of World War II. When my mom was being born in 1938 in Warsaw, Poland--a Polish Jew--the country was completely run over or was about to be run over by the Nazis. But all these years later, you hear the same people, the same wing of the same party making the same arguments once again, and the arguments just don't make any sense.

One of the ones that I think is hardest to understand is this argument that we can't simultaneous support Ukraine--we, the United States of America, cannot simultaneously support Ukraine and prepare for a possible conflict with China, which I am sure nobody here would wish. I certainly don't wish for that conflict. But it is more than hypothetical; it is possible that someday we might be in conflict. But the idea that we would stop supporting Ukraine in an actual conflict against tyranny, in an actual conflict against fascism, in the hope that we would somehow be better prepared for later makes absolutely no sense.

Then when you look at the contents of the bills themselves, the bills that we passed as part of the supplemental, and you see the money that is being spent all across America, in 40 States, in 70 cities--our industrial production for our military is up 20 percent since Russia invaded Ukraine because we were not investing in our production before that happened. That was a threat to our national security. And we are doing it now all over this country, all over the United States. In big cities and little cities, in rural communities and urban communities, that is what we are doing. We are retooling our defense complex.

If I accept, if I grant the isolationist wing's view of this, what I would say is that even based on your own arguments, you should be for these bills because these bills are making the United States stronger; they are refreshing our industrial base, our military base; and they are making us more prepared not just for what is going on in Russia today but for what could go on in China.

I mean, it is utterly self-explanatory, and that is why I think it is actually an excuse for not engaging. I think it is an isolationist impulsive tendency that we have seen before. We saw it when the United States shamefully didn't get into World War II until years after we should have, and we are seeing it again here. But this is a different case than that because we are not talking about American troops; we are just talking about American support.

So we are talking about retooling our industrial base. We are talking about creating jobs here in the United States. We are talking about spending the vast majority of money that we authorized in that bill in the United States of America--not in Ukraine but here.

I suppose it would be one thing if Ukraine hadn't earned our support, but on top of everything else, they have. In the last 2 years since they were invaded--an invasion they did not ask for--they have done everything the world could have asked of them--more than the world could have asked of them.

You know, it is another point here, too, that we are not sending them our fanciest equipment either. We are sending them older equipment that is a lot better than the Soviet-age equipment they had. But it is allowing us to have the newest versions of this. We are sending older versions of that equipment to Ukraine, but they have used it magnificently. I am on the Intelligence Committee, and the intelligence community is telling us that the Ukrainian people have fought magnificently.

I have heard some of the isolationists on the other side of the aisle say: Well, we don't know where the money is being spent, and therefore we shouldn't spend any more money. I think it is safe to say that there is no enterprise in the world--I choose my words carefully--there is no enterprise in the world that has a better set of receipts than the men and women who have been fighting on the Ukrainian frontline. I challenge any of those people to show me where they said that Ukraine was going to throw Putin off half the territory he took from them, but they have; that they would be able to attack his so-called, you know, impregnable supersonic missiles, but they have. The Ukrainian people don't even have a navy, really. I don't mean any offense, but it is true. They don't really have a navy, and yet they have been able to keep Putin out of the Black Sea. That has meant that wheat has been able to be transported from Ukraine all over the world so people can eat. These fighters have the receipts. It is in the success they have had.

It is important to understand that this isn't just a fight for Ukraine, which they have fought magnificently. It is a fight for the West. It is a fight for NATO. It is a fight for democracy itself.

They didn't ask for this fight. President Zelenskyy never asked for this fight. Three years ago, he was on a television program, and then he ran for President, and he got elected because there was such concern about corruption in the country. They said: You know what, we are going to put a television guy in charge, and maybe he will do better.

Then Putin invaded his country, thinking that he was going to be able to decapitate the regime in 72 hours, thinking that Zelenskyy was going to run, thinking that they wouldn't stand up to his invasion--the first invasion since we settled all this stuff at the end of World War II with global order and commitment to the rule of law.

My mom is still alive, my mom whom I mentioned earlier. Born in 1938, she is still alive. She can't believe she has lived long enough to see another land war break out in Europe. I suppose, seen from a different way, it is an incredible testament to the institutions that have been built and the alliances that have been built that it has been so long since we have had somebody with the audacity to do what Putin has done. But thank God he ran into the Ukrainians--for all of us--because we don't have to send our people there, and NATO does not have to send their people there.

They are willing to fight and die for democracy, and they are asking us to support them--not with our people but with our military support and with a little bit of money.

As I mentioned earlier, we passed a bill with 72 votes over here to fund the effort in Ukraine, and the House of Representatives has completely ignored it. That same isolationist wing that is over here-- that is now over there in the House of Representatives is declining to fulfill our responsibilities to the rest of the world, and they have left town today without having supported Ukraine.

I want to say, by the way, as I stand here that there has been an incident in Moscow today or outside of Moscow, and I am very sorry for the theatergoers who are there who lost their lives--further illustration of how complicated this world is.

But let me tell you something: There is nobody more cheerful about the House of Representatives' failure to pass the Senate bill than Vladimir Putin. He reads our newspapers. He reads our social media. He manipulates our social media. He knows what is at stake, and the Ukrainians know what is at stake.

This is not fanciful, the questions that are at risk here. Look what happened just in the last few weeks in Russia. Vladimir Putin got reelected by something over 95 percent of the vote in Moscow, and of course it was completely manipulated, and he went out and said: This is an endorsement for my war. This fraudulent election is an endorsement of my war.

Look what happened in Hong Kong last weekend, where the Chinese Communist Party from Beijing has completely thrown out the rule book in Hong Kong, which has a long tradition of commitment to the rule of law, free enterprise, a place where you can predictably run a business or have a newspaper, have opposition. This weekend, they sucked out the last embers that were glowing there of the right to be able to do that stuff. So now you can get a life in prison--maybe even worse than a life in prison--in Hong Kong if you defy what Beijing says, just like Alexei Navalny, the leading opposition figure in Russia, who was put in prison by Putin and now, you know, died of natural causes in his early forties because Putin killed him while--while--Members of this Congress were at Munich during the Security Conference. He knew exactly what the message was he was sending: I care so little about your opinion of this that I am going to kill Alexei Navalny while you are all there.

So I am going to come to an end because I can tell people need to move on to the next thing, but let me just say that, contrary to what I have heard in the debate around here, the Ukrainians have succeeded beyond anybody's wildest dreams.

The evidence is so clear that that is true. Even the most recent town that was defeated, which was a smoldering ruin by the time the Russians got there--Avdiivka--it took the Russians 6 months and 30,000 troops to get that village. And the alliances held otherwise, notwithstanding the fact that they are out of bullets, notwithstanding the fact that they are out of artillery. At this point, in some ways they are kind of fighting with their bare hands, which is how they started in this war.

We have a responsibility here that is not a service to Ukraine. This is a service to our national security. This is a service to our kids and to our grandkids. This is a service that is the same as the one that was provided by the people who, before World War II, were able to overcome the ``America First'' crowd back then so that America could play its unique role in the world. And this is a service to anybody on planet Earth who cares about freedom, who cares about the ability to have a real debate and a real discussion, who cares about whether there is actually a rule of law in place so might doesn't make right; so that you can open a small business in your village on a corner and know that a gang isn't going to come and steal your money; so that you know that your parents and grandparents aren't going to be locked up with the key thrown away just because they had a different point of view than the ruler of the country.

In human history, it is much more common to see a situation where might makes right than it is for people to exercise those freedoms, and the Ukrainians know that from the guys who are on the frontlines to President Zelenskyy and back. That is why they are fighting so hard for this freedom.

That is why we need to pay attention when Putin takes out his leading opposition. That is why we need to understand the implications for us when China sweeps into Hong Kong and rips away people's freedoms and people's rights in front of the entire world. That is what happens when they shut down opposition newspapers. This is something we should be able to agree on without respect to our political party.

I worry a lot about what is going to happen over the next 2 weeks, because there are people out there who are not telling the truth about what the battle has been in Ukraine. There are people out there-- amazingly, to me--who think the United States can't support Ukraine effectively and prepare for what might be coming down the pike. There are people who don't believe that our military needs to be retooled. I am really worried in this moment that crossing our fingers and hoping for the best is not a recipe for a good outcome here. That is why I believe that it was critical for us to try to force, in this debate, on this bill, the inclusion of Ukraine funding, and I have said that all the way along.

The first funding bill that came over here 6 months ago, I threatened to shut the government down over that bill because it didn't include Ukraine funding. A deal had been cut behind closed doors, between the then-Speaker of the House and others in the House, to allow a bill to come forward without Ukraine funding, and I said to my colleagues here: We have no plan to fund Ukraine.

We had no plan to fund Ukraine, and as a result of that threat, we were able to get commitments from the leaders of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party here that we keep working on it, and we keep working on it.

Several months later, we had this same kind of moment, and we were able to get the same kind of commitment, and because we all worked together on this, notwithstanding the political divisions that exists in our country, we were able to get to that 72-person vote. We were able to show Putin that we were going to stand up against him here-- against him here. And, unlike some people here, he knows exactly how things are going on the Ukrainian battlefield. He knows he has got real problems on the Ukrainian battlefield because it took 30,000 people to succeed at the last village that he was able to secure. He knows how this nation of ``MacGyvers'' has shown up time and time and time again to figure out how to take him on with their fists or with drones or with our help.

But I am sorry to say this, Mr. President. I think it is true that the battlefield that he is trying to succeed on is the battlefield of the U.S. Congress. He thinks he is going to win on this battlefield. He is trying to count on our dysfunction, our division, our petty disagreements, and the lack of understanding about what is at stake here from the historical point of view or from democracy's point of view. With the message that we want to send to our allies and to our foes around the world tonight, he is going to be able to sleep a little better because the House failed to do it.

So I am not here to say that I am going to shut the government down. There is nothing I can do at this point to bring the House of Representatives back to Washington, DC. That is not possible. There wouldn't be any benefit to doing it.

I am going to vote against this bill because it doesn't include the Ukraine funding. And I would say to my colleagues who are here, every single one of whom supported the Ukraine funding when it came through the Senate, that we have got our work cut out for us over the next 2 weeks to make sure that we persuade the people in the House of Representatives that there is no more time left; that the Ukrainians, as I said, are out of bullets, out of ammo, and out of time. And we are out of time too. The whole world is watching.

I don't know the Speaker, but I would be very surprised if he wants to go down in history as the person or the politician who lost Ukraine--who lost Ukraine--because he had to hold on to his job, or who lost Ukraine because there were people in his party who couldn't resist the celebrity benefit of going out and raising money on crazy politics that doesn't recognize the stakes for what they are.

We were able to close over that here in the Senate, and I believe that the House is going to have to do that as well. And we have got to do everything we can to make sure we reach that conclusion, because the consequence for our Nation's reputation will be as severe as anything that we have ever certainly faced in the last decades around here.

Usually, I would end by saying I am confident. What I am confident in is that there are people of goodwill in this body who have worked together to get this done and who will continue to work together to make sure the United States of America stands up for democracy, stands up for NATO, stands up for our responsibilities to our children and grandchildren and our responsibilities to this world.

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