America's Small Business Tax Relief Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, as I traveled all over Oklahoma during the State work weeks in March, I heard the concerns over and over from families in my State about terrorism. I talked with a gentleman in Coalgate, OK, who absolutely could not understand how the United States could release $1 billion to Iran the same month that rural hospitals across our State and across America were facing new cuts from CMS in new criteria there. That $1 billion that was sent by the United States to Iran could have bailed out every single rural hospital in America.

I talked to a mom in Lawton who did not understand why there was a conversation in DC about closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and bringing those individuals into the United States.

I talked to a dad in Tulsa, a dad of a soldier, who wanted to know what is happening with terrorism and what is America's response.

I talked to an Oklahoma business owner who is very concerned about cyber security and the threat of foreign governments attacking his network and other networks and businesses around the country.

As details come out about what happened in Brussels in that terrorist attack, every American has their security and their family in mind. I continue to pray for the victims of those awful attacks and work to determine the best way our great Nation can confront this threat.

As the only Member of this body who serves on both the Homeland Security and the Intelligence Committees, I have the privilege to ensure that Oklahomans and Americans have a strong voice in the discussion over our Nation's national security priorities. There is no simple solution, though, and there is no single method to confront terrorism. But we must be absolutely clear that terrorists will find no quarter in the land of the free, in the home of the brave.

As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I walk behind a heavy door several times a week to hear the sobering details about foreign threats and the amazing work that Americans do to confront them. I wish we could talk about all those things here because I believe Americans would be very proud of the work that is going on.

We can talk about disrupted terrorist plots and insight into adversaries' plans that allow us to adjust and to prepare and to confront those terrorists before they bring the fight here. There are hard questions behind those closed doors. Oversight should be expected, and open discussions should be expected.

Let me say today how incredibly grateful I am for the people in the intelligence community who work hard every single day. Members of our military and members of law enforcement around the country wear uniforms, and we get a chance to say thank you to them personally when we see them. But members of the intelligence community are patriotic Americans who are working to protect their families and our families every day. We don't get to say thank you to them because we don't know who they are. But let me say thank you to them today from our country.

Right now, members of radical Islamic groups around the world are calling out on social media, through encrypted messages and in public forums around the world, for the small minority of Muslims who believe as they do and who believe in their hate-filled doomsday mission. They tell people that if they believe as they do, they should kill as they do. ISIS is enraged by our views about free speech, freedom of religion, girls attending school, equal pay, equal opportunity, and even voting in elections. It is almost impossible for Americans to imagine their hatred for the modern world and for freedom and basic human rights.

How do you win against an enemy like that? You confront them is how you do it, not ignore them. You deal with their ideology that spreads like a cancer around social media platforms around the world.

Some people say poverty and lack of education creates radicalism. There are billions of people in the world who live in poverty, and most of them do not practice this particular form of radical Islam. The shooters in San Bernardino, CA, weren't living in poverty or lacking in education. The killers in Paris and Brussels were not isolated and poor. While refugees and isolated communities in poverty are undoubtedly breeding grounds for anger and frustration, that is not the primary cancer of terrorism. There are millions of people living as refugees in the world right now who are not extremists. They are not terrorists; they just want peace so they can go home and have a normal life again.

We do have a moral and national security obligation to help the vulnerable when we can. The refugee crisis is immense, and it is affecting millions worldwide. Many countries are at the brink, and we need to stay engaged. But America has already given billions of dollars in aid. No country--no country has done more for the refugees than the United States. Our logistics, our support, and our financial aid have sustained most of the refugee communities there either through direct aid or what we are doing through the United Nations right now. But the people living as refugees need access to education and training so their children will grow up with skills and opportunity. We can help them have a second chance. But that is not the primary source.

We need to engage with religious leaders around the world. We cannot and we will not define faith for them, but we can challenge any faith that promotes the death of people because of their race, their belief, or their gender. We should work to shut off terrorists' financing around the world, their illegal energy trade, their drug trafficking, their extortions, and persons in wealthy countries who send money with the implicit promise that those terrorists will not bring terrorism to their country if only they will send them money to do terrorism in other places.

We must also fight and confront those individuals militarily. We must learn the lesson of 9/11. They are not just a group of radical thugs over there who we can ignore. They hate us, and they will find every way possible to attack us here and to attack our allies. No one wants war, but we cannot stand by and watch terrorists beheading Egyptian Christians on the beaches of Libya, killing Shia Muslims because of their faith in Iraq, blowing themselves up in an airport in Brussels, shooting people at a rock concert or a synagogue in Paris or just people enjoying a party at work in California. We can't put our heads in the sand and ignore what is really happening and assume it will just go away if we do nothing.

As long as they hold territory, they call out to people worldwide to come join them in their caliphate to come fight for them or to fight where they are. We are Americans. We lose track of that at times, I am afraid. No one in the world has the same logistical capability as the United States of America. No one in the world has the most moral, most powerful military in the world like the United States of America. No one has our intelligence capability. No one in the world has our Tax Code planning capability. So the whole world is waiting on America to decide what we are going to do so they can decide if they are going to join us in this fight against this radical Islamic terrorism. It is not about massive troops on the ground; it is about a clear plan and a clear strategy to carry it out. It is why the Russians currently look more mobile and more capable than us all of a sudden.

So the ``now what'' question rises large in this body.

No. 1, there are multiple proposals in State and foreign operations for how we can engage in peaceful activities: helping refugees, helping those in poverty, helping to bring education to places, helping engage diplomatically with religious leaders around the world and with other countries to deal with terrorist financing. Those are things we could and should do and should do more aggressively.

No. 2, the national defense authorization is coming, and it is coming soon. We need to give great military clarity--not only rules of engagement in the battlefield, but what is the clear purpose militarily for the United States in this battle against radical Islam?

No. 3 is tougher for this Nation, apparently: Believe and understand that Iran is one of the key areas in this fight. I believe this administration has been too eager to believe good news about Iran and is ignoring the concerns that many of us hold. I have stood here several times in the past year to speak out against the President's reckless nuclear deal with the Iranian Ayatollah. I didn't like it then, I still don't like it, and I still don't believe Iran can be trusted to be able to carry out its end of bargain.

I recently authored a resolution that clearly outlines to the administration how the United States should respond if Iran--and I believe when Iran--breaches the nuclear agreement. We should reapply waived sanctions and U.N. Security Council resolutions and limit Iran's ability to import defensive equipment so they can stop fortifying their nuclear capabilities over the next 10 years. When all the enrichment limitations are lifted, they will be well prepared to defend those facilities they have now created.

As I have said many times, until Iran proves it is a peaceful, responsible player in the Middle East, the international community must be vigilant in pushing back against Iran's harmful and destructive influence among its neighbors.

Last week I spoke with Adam Szubin, Acting Under Secretary of the Treasury's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, and he communicated to me exactly what everyone already knows and fears--that Iran has become even more of a destabilizing factor in the region after the nuclear deal was signed.

This is clearly evident in Iran's continued, unabashed support for terrorism and terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah, their propping up of the Assad regime in Syria--a government that continues to blow up its own people and butcher its own people--and Iran's shipments of weapons to rebels in Yemen to be able to fuel their civil war there, right on Saudi Arabia's southern border.

We haven't even discussed Iran's testing of ballistic missiles in direct violation of international law. If Iran can't be trusted to uphold the law now, how can it be trusted to be able to uphold some agreement which it hasn't even signed? That is the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Congressionally imposed sanctions on Iran is what brought the Ayatollah to the negotiating table. Let's be honest about this. Regardless of what some people may say about the momentum of the moderates and the reformists inside of Iran, Iran's foreign policy, especially in dealing with the United States, runs through the Ayatollah Khamenei. He has made it crystal clear that his regime is built on radical Islamist views, and this particular view of Shia Islam--though it is opposed to ISIS--is supportive of spreading their views around the world. It is absolutely anti-American.

It is essential that the Treasury continue to completely shut down Iran's access to the U.S. dollar, and it is essential that Treasury rigorously enforce the still-standing human rights and terrorism- related sanctions on Iran.

I spoke with DNI Clapper in this administration just a few weeks ago. When I asked the Director of National Intelligence if there has been any change in Iran's focus on being the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, this administration's Director of National Intelligence said there has been no change in Iran's behavior since the nuclear deal was signed in relation to terrorism.

We should not release known terrorists or bring them to U.S. soil. I can't believe I have to even raise this as an issue in this Nation. We should keep Guantanamo Bay, known as Gitmo--that detention facility-- open and operational rather than releasing known terrorists back into the battlefield or bringing them to the United States.

In this era of growing threats, why would we irresponsibly release these individuals? Senator Kirk and I, along with four other members of this body, introduced a bill last week to prohibit the President from transferring terrorists detained in Guantanamo Bay to any other state where they may go and actually sponsor terrorism. It is not a hard decision; it is common sense.

Our bill is very clear: If those individuals are transferred out of Guantanamo to some other state and then they later commit some act of terrorism, that state's foreign aid is cut off. The expectation is if these individuals go to that location, that location is actually going to monitor them. Americans assume that at this point, but it is not happening.

Senator Inhofe and I will introduce a bill later today which prohibits the transfer to the United States or release of terrorists held in Guantanamo Bay. It also goes further than what we do with Senator Kirk's bill, and it actually prohibits the President from closing the facility entirely. The President should not risk our Nation's national security just to fulfill some campaign promise that makes absolutely no sense and puts our country at risk.

The executive branch occasionally laments congressional engagement in foreign policy, but this is the way the American people speak out because the people in Oklahoma are absolutely concerned about what is happening in national security and they want this administration to hear it loud and clear. There seems to be no clear plan, and the plans that are clear seem to weaken our resolve on national security.

Today I simply ask my colleagues to join me and do what the people who we represent sent us here to do--to assume the mantle of responsibility as leaders and to show them that we are not afraid to work with this administration or any administration. We need to take responsibility for setting the Nation's national security agenda. It must be done.

It can't be done just militarily. It must be done in a broad method by reaching out, not only strategically and diplomatically through our State Department but also militarily with a clear focus to make sure we protect the Nation and that we don't release terrorists and actually do what we are supposed to do--guard this Nation's security.

With that, I yield back.

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