June 18, 2020 - Issue: Vol. 166, No. 113 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 2nd Session

[Pages S3073-S3074]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ISSUES FACING AMERICA

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, the Senate has been confronting 
issues of historic importance on the homefront.
  Just since March, we sent historic resources to the healthcare fight 
against COVID-19 on an overwhelming bipartisan basis. We passed the 
largest rescue package in American history on a bipartisan basis. We 
just passed a generational bill for our public lands, also on a 
bipartisan basis.
  Yesterday, the junior Senator from South Carolina introduced a major 
proposal to reform policing and promote racial justice. If our 
colleagues across the aisle can put politics aside and join us in a 
real discussion, then on this issue, too, we should be able to make law 
on a bipartisan basis.
  The Senate has led and is leading the way toward serious solutions. 
At the same time, developments around the world continue to remind us 
that the safety and interests of the American people are also 
threatened from beyond our shores. Just 2 weeks ago, I explained how 
the Chinese Communist Party has used the pandemic they helped worsen as 
a smokescreen for ratcheting up their oppression in Hong Kong and 
advancing their control and influence throughout the region. It hasn't 
stopped.
  At sea, they have stepped up their menacing of Japan near the Senkaku 
Islands. In the skies, Chinese jets have intruded into Taiwanese 
airspace four separate times in a matter of days. On land, for the sake 
of grabbing territory, the PLA appears to have instigated the worst 
violent clash between China and India since those nations went to war 
way back in 1962.
  Needless to say, the rest of the world has watched with grave concern 
this violent exchange between two nuclear states. We are encouraging 
deescalation and hoping for peace. The world could not have received a 
clearer reminder that the PRC is dead set on brutalizing people within 
their own borders--challenging and remaking the international order 
anew in their image, to include literally redrawing world maps. Of 
course, this is not exactly breaking news to any of us who have been 
paying attention.
  Earlier this year, the Senate passed legislation to give the 
administration new tools to directly punish the CCP for its egregious--
egregious treatment of the Uighur people and the modern-day gulags it 
has constructed there in the Xinjiang Province. The President signed it 
into law yesterday.
  Going back to the United States-Hong Kong Policy Act, which I wrote 
back in 1992, the Senate has maintained a keen interest in the freedom 
and autonomy of our friends in that city. Unfortunately, Beijing has 
continued to tighten its grip there as well.

[[Page S3074]]

More and more Hongkongers find themselves facing an agonizing decision: 
Can they remain in the city they love or must they flee elsewhere if 
they want their children to grow up free?
  As I have said often, every nation that cares about democracy and 
stability has a stake in ensuring that Beijing's actions in Hong Kong 
carry consequences. I encourage the administration to use the tools 
Congress has given it and to work with like-minded nations to impose 
those costs, but punishing the PRC cannot be our only priority. We also 
need to actively help the people of Hong Kong.
  Led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the United Kingdom says they are 
preparing to offer visas to potentially millions of Hongkongers. In 
addition to funding democracy programming and supporting legal 
assistance, we must also consider ways to welcome Hongkongers and other 
Chinese dissidents to America.
  Chinese Americans have formed part of the backbone of our Nation for 
about two centuries. Against headwinds of racial prejudice, Chinese 
immigrants literally helped build modern America as we know it. 
Generations of Chinese Americans have enriched our society and fueled 
our economic prosperity. Not surprisingly, I am particularly partial to 
the Secretary of Transportation, whose parents fled Communist rule. She 
has served her country across four Presidential administrations, 
including as the first Chinese American to ever serve in a President's 
Cabinet.
  If some of the same brave Hongkongers who have stood up for liberty 
waving our American flag and singing our American national anthem would 
like to come here and join us, we should welcome them warmly.
  Of course, this Senate is not only acting with respect to China. 
Earlier this year, at my urging, the Senate enacted the Caesar Syria 
Civilian Protection Act, and this week, the administration is using 
these tools to impose painful new sanctions on the brutal regime of 
Bashar Assad.
  With the help of Russian airpower, Iranian advisers, and manpower 
from Hezbollah terrorists, Assad has recaptured military control of 
most of the territory he had lost during 9 years of civil war, but he 
has effectively destroyed his own country in an effort to save his 
regime.
  Assad faces renewed protests across the country, infighting within 
his regime and family, and a Syrian economy that is in free fall. 
Because of this Congress and this administration, the cashflow to these 
butchers is going to shrink, and the price that leaders and businessmen 
in Tehran, Beirut, Cairo, Moscow, and Beijing will have to pay to do 
business with the regime will grow.
  These new steps will help us achieve our objective: creating leverage 
for diplomats and our partners on the ground to negotiate a political 
solution and finally end the war. To maintain this pressure, we should 
keep our limited physical presence in Syria. We should work to bring 
our NATO ally Turkey back onto the right side, and we should preserve 
the deterrence that President Trump has rebuilt against Iran, to keep 
checking their influence in Syria and throughout the Middle East

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