Schumer Floor Remarks on Passage of Russian Sanctions Amendment
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today delivered remarks on the Senate floor regarding the passage of the Russian Sanctions amendment. Below are his remarks:
Mr. President, in a few minutes, we’ll vote on an amendment that consists of a package of Russia sanctions. I would like to endorse the amendment in the strongest possible terms and hope we can get all of my colleagues to vote on it.
It was negotiated by a bipartisan group of Senators that did a great job, Senators Corker and Cardin, the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Banking Committee, Senators Crapo and Brown, and with a great deal of help of Senators Durbin, Shaheen and Menendez. And Leader McConnell and I worked extremely well on this issue together, which I hope portends a future of things we can do together in a bipartisan way.
This amendment is as bipartisan as it gets, and rightly so – because this is an issue that should unite members of both parties and concern Americans of all political stripes.
Mr. President could we have order. Over the past several years, Mr. President, President Putin and his allies in the Russian oligarchy, have committed several sanction-able offenses. President Putin has violated the sovereignty of its neighbor, Ukraine, by annexing Crimea, he is guilty of human rights abuses, including propping up the brutal Assad regime in Syria; and of stifling political dissent and the human rights of his own people. In Mr. Putin’s Russia, elections are neither fair nor free, the media is controlled by the state, and political opposition hardly tolerated.
This is a regime that has routinely flouted international norms and agreements; that selfishly and brutishly pursues its own self-interest without regard to legitimate rights of other nations and other peoples.
For that, the United States Congress passed a series of economic sanctions to squeeze Putin and his allies and show him that the United States strongly condemns these actions.
And that was before Russia conducted a high-level campaign to interfere in the American election.
The Russia sanctions legislation we are about to vote on would address these two critical issues.
By codifying existing sanctions and creating a process for Congressional review of any decision to weaken or lift them, we are ensuring that the United States continues to punish Putin for his reckless and destabilizing actions. It’s particularly significant that a bipartisan coalition is seeking to reestablish Congress, not the President, as the final arbiter of sanctions relief, considering that this Administration has been too eager – far too eager in my mind -- to put sanctions relief on the table. These additional sanctions will also send a powerful, bipartisan statement that Russia and any other nation who might try to interfere with our elections will be punished.
There is no process more sacred in a democracy than the guarantee of free and fair elections. No principle more enshrined in our system of government than the people participating in our noble democratic experiment at the ballot box. The bedrock principle, that fundamental right was attacked by Mr. Putin. And if we do nothing, or reduce sanctions as the President has sometimes talked about, we would eat at the wellspring of our democracy. Foreign powers influencing who we elect—that’s something the founding fathers feared, and we are doing everything we can in this body to try to stop.
And with the upcoming vote, the United States Senate is saying to President Putin: “you will be held accountable for your actions.”
Mr. President, foreign interference in our democracy has been a concern since the founding of the Republic. It’s the origin of the Emoluments Clause in the Constitution. In Federalist 68, Alexander Hamilton writes that “these most deadly adversaries of republican government [come] chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.” Every “practicable obstacle,” Hamilton said, “should be opposed to such cabal, intrigue, and corruption.”
We cannot let Russia’s meddling in our elections go unpunished, lest they ever consider such interference again, nor any other nation in the world. They must know that if any future attempts are made to degrade our democracy, the retribution of the United States Congress will be sure and will be swift.
I urge a “yes” vote on the amendment, and I yield the floor.
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