Is U.S. Inadvertently Assisting Al Qaeda in Yemen?

September 23, 2016


One of the reasons many Americans are growing increasingly wary of the United States intervening in sectarian armed conflicts in the Middle East is that our actions – no matter how well-intentioned – often have unpredictable consequences that produce more instability and volatility, fostering the conditions for terrorist organizations to thrive.

The United States’ ongoing involvement in the civil war raging in Yemen is a case in point.

After overthrowing the Yemeni government in 2014, the Houthis – a Shia Islam movement from northern Yemen – began an aggressive campaign to consolidate power in the country that included a moderately successful war against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a rival faction vying for control in Yemen and also a sworn enemy of the United States. Of all the terrorist organizations operating around the world today, AQAP is consistently ranked by U.S. military and intelligence officials as one of the most dangerous and greatest threats to U.S. national security – a position that Secretary of Defense Ash Carter reiterated on Thursday in a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Now, this doesn’t validate the old proverb that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” – the Houthis are certainly not a friend to the United States – but there’s no denying that their string of battlefield victories against AQAP and their stated commitment to destroying the terrorist group coincided with one of the strategic objectives of U.S. military strategy in the Middle East.

But the Houthis’ successes – and AQAP’s losses – quickly came to an end when Saudi Arabia, a long-time ally of the recently overthrown Yemeni government, began attacking the Houthis more than a year ago. With its chief regional adversary dramatically weakened, AQAP was able to reassert itself and now controls a large portion of central Yemen and its coastline – an area that rivals the size of ISIS’s territories in Iraq and Syria.

And where did Saudi Arabia get the military equipment and logistical support necessary to carry out its extended intervention into Yemen’s civil war? The United States of America. In addition to providing hundreds of air-to-air sorties, the United States recently approved the sale of $1.15 billion worth of weapons to the Saudi military.

Now, there’s nothing wrong, in principle, with the United States government selling military weapons and equipment to our allies. Saudi Arabia has long been an American ally in a very volatile region, and strengthening that alliance should be a priority of our foreign policy in the Middle East.

But the fact that Saudi Arabia is an ally with whom we have a track record of selling arms is not a sufficient reason to endorse this arms deal. Yes, we want our allies to be strong and capable of defending themselves. And yes, we should offer them assistance in times of need. But the first and most fundamental responsibility of the United States government is not to satisfy the requests of our allies. It is to protect the lives and liberties of the American people.

Is intervening in the Yemeni civil war – and participating in the decades-long sectarian conflict underlying that war – necessary in order to protect the lives and liberties of the American people?

Earlier this week the Senate had an opportunity to debate this question in response to Senator Rand Paul’s resolution of disapproval of the billion-dollar arms sale to Saudi Arabia. But by voting to table Senator Paul’s resolution, the Senate opted the avoid this debate.

This was more than just a missed opportunity – it was a gross dereliction of duty. Members of Congress in both chambers have a responsibility to the American people to carefully evaluate our interventions abroad, and to participate in the process of defining America’s national interests and developing a foreign policy to pursue those interests. If we ever hope to earn back the trust of the American people, we must once again fulfill this obligation.

Saving Internet Freedom

September 16, 2016

The essence of human freedom, of civilization itself, is cooperation: cooperation between friends and family; businesses and customers; entrepreneurs and employees.

History and human experience teach that humans cooperate best when they do so voluntarily, without government coercion. That is why I fully support the eventual transition of control over the Internet from the Department of Commerce and to a private entity.

But I also worry that President Obama is hastily rushing the current transfer of power to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which could make it easier for the United Nations to take over the Internet.

Today, the Internet is so vast and ubiquitous that is hard to imagine it existing in any other form. But for the first few decades of the Internet’s existence, the basic roadmap for navigating the Internet – the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), the system that allocates and records the unique numerical addresses to computers – was managed by just one man on a voluntary basis.

In 1998, the Commerce Department began contracting with ICANN, a California non-profit corporation, to take over management of IANA and the Internet’s domain-name system. For the most part, the Commerce Department has allowed ICANN to govern itself, but it has always maintained the authority to pull the non-profit’s contract, which allowed the federal government to ensure that its contracting partner did not stray from its original mission.

But some governments do not like ICANN’s current hands-off approach to Internet regulation. They want more control over how Internet traffic is managed and what domain names are allowed to exist. Just five years after ICANN was created the United Nations established a Working Group on Internet Governance “to investigate and make proposals for action […] on the governance of Internet.” And in 2012 at the World Conference on International Telecommunications, several authoritarian regimes – including Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia – called for the “sovereign right” of governments to “establish and implement public policy, including international policy, on matters of Internet governance.”

The United States firmly resisted these calls for more international control over the Internet until 2013 when Edward Snowden leaked details of the National Security Agency’s surveillance program, which led the Obama administration to believe it could not maintain international support for the current system. So in March 2014, the Commerce Department announced it would be fully transferring the Internet’s names and numbers functions to ICANN. In other words, the federal government would relinquish its leverage over ICANN by giving up its ability to renew – or threaten to cancel – ICANN’s contract.

Normally, I would applaud the loss of federal government leverage over a private entity. But in this case there are some ominous signs that ICANN is not ready for the role it is about to take on.

ICANN is currently involved in litigation over alleged improper interference from governments who objected to how the organization awarded the .africa domain name. And the organization was recently admonished by an Independent Review Panel for making decisions that were “cavalier” and “simply not credible” in relation to an application for domain names.

Also, it is unclear whether the new bylaws ICANN is set to adopt for the transition will be strong enough to prevent Russia and China from exerting more control over Internet governance.

For these reasons, I am working closely with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and other senators to delay the final transfer of Internet governance to ICANN. There is no reason this transfer has to happen this year. There is no reason not to allow ICANN to work through its new governance structure on a trial basis for two years so we can make sure it will run smoothly and in a truly independent manner.

If we rush this transition and ICANN fails, it will be nearly impossible to get the Internet back from the authoritarian regimes that are pushing for more control.

That is simply not a risk we can take.

Ransom Payment to Iran Is a Bad Deal for America

September 9, 2016

On January 17th of this year, three Americans were released from Iranian government custody in Tehran and boarded a Swiss Air Force plane, which took them out of the country. Only after that plane left did U.S. officials then send a cargo plane carrying $400 million worth of euros and other foreign currencies to Iran.

At the time, senior U.S. officials said the American prisoners were secured thanks to a “prisoner swap.” And the U.S. did release seven Iranian nationals who were in U.S. custody.

But no mention was made of the $400 million cash payment to Iran until The Wall Street Journal broke the story on August 3rd. The Obama administration’s desire to keep the payment secret is understandable for two reasons.

First, it sent a signal to the rest of the world that President Obama has abandoned our nation’s long-standing policy of never rewarding hostage-takers with ransom.

Now President Obama has since insisted that the $400 million payment was simply part of an effort “to clear accounts on a number of different issues” while he was negotiating his nuclear deal with Iran. Specifically Iran had claimed for more than 35 years that the U.S. owed it upwards of $10 billion for weapons it never delivered to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi back in 1979. The $400 million, Obama claims, was just the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement of that issue.

But Obama’s convenient explanation does not explain why U.S. officials held the $400 million until the American prisoners were released. In fact, State Department spokesman John Kirby admitted on August 18 that the $400 million was withheld from Iran “to retain maximum leverage until after American citizens were released.”

More importantly, the Iranians understood the $400 million payment as a ransom. Not only has state media in Iran quoted Iranian Revolutionary Guard commanders calling the payment a ransom, but Iran has since captured more Americans.

The second reason Obama would want to keep the cash payments secret is that Iran is still designated as a state sponsor of terrorism and federal law prohibits the “supply, directly or indirectly from the United States, or by a United States person, wherever located, of any goods, technology, or services to Iran or the Government of Iran.”

$400 million is one heck of a “good” or “service.”

While federal law also allows “all transactions necessary … to payments pursuant to settlement agreements entered into by the United States Government” in a legal proceeding, the Obama administration has never claimed they were using this loophole. And if Obama did give Iran the $400 million pursuant to this loophole, then why did he make the payment in euros and other foreign currency? Why not just give the Iranians U.S. dollars?

The administration has not answered any of these questions, which is why Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and I sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, and Attorney General Loretta Lynch demanding answers.

The administration has had our letter for almost a month now, and if they don’t answer in a timely matter, I will press for a Judiciary Committee hearing on the matter.

China and the Law of the Sea Treaty

July 15, 2016

For the past several years, the Chinese government has aggressively laid claim to important waterways and small island chains in the South China Sea that are contested by many countries in the region. This week, an international arbitration court in The Hague ruled against many of the Chinese claims, rebuking their antagonistic actions, in a suit brought by the Philippines through the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOST). The ruling was not a surprise to anyone, as China has been brazenly violating international maritime norms for years. China’s response was also predictable: Beijing immediately dismissed the court’s ruling as biased, stating that they will not abide by it.

In response, many have called on the United States to ratify LOST, which U.S. policymakers have repeatedly rejected since its creation in the early 1980s. But this week’s ruling and its aftermath prove that the prudent course is exactly the opposite: the United States has no need to ratify the LOST treaty and should avoid becoming a member of its organization.

Proponents of treaty ratification believe that it will improve the United States’ ability to engage in and peacefully resolve maritime disputes by granting the U.S. a “seat at the table” in the international bureaucracy that the agreement creates. But does the United States currently lack the legitimacy and authority necessary to influence the peaceful resolution of maritime disputes?

Of course not. The reality is that our Navy and Air Force’s “command of the commons” – the sea and air lanes through which foreign nations commercially interact with one another – gives the United States a very prominent seat at the proverbial table. We have achieved this influence through the sacrifice of American soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen over the past two centuries, not by a piece of paper that attempts to empower international bureaucrats.

Moreover, China’s casual repudiation of the court’s ruling shows what kind of dilemmas would await the United States if we were to ratify the LOST treaty. China is a party to LOST, but everyone knew that the Chinese government never had any intention of following a ruling that was not consistent with their territorial interests. Why would the United States want to ratify a treaty whose signatories completely ignore its rules? Doing so would only make the United States appear weak in the face of such flagrant violations, and it could potentially put us in the position of playing enforcer even when it is against our interests.

The LOST treaty is also an expansive document that would bind the United States to provisions that were written by international bureaucrats and that would affect domestic U.S. law, including policies that establish environmental and energy standards, govern the adjudication and exercise of mineral rights, and call for international economic redistribution. Adopting this far-reaching treaty would do great damage to U.S. sovereignty.

Around the world, we are witnessing a rejection of the centralized, bureaucratic institutions developed in the 20th Century that have never had the capacity to represent and address the varying interests of free and independent peoples. The Law of the Sea Convention is one of those institutions, and this week’s events prove once again that the United States is better served by pursuing our economic and security interests around the world without ceding sovereignty to an unaccountable international body.

NATO Defense Spending Needs

July 1, 2016

Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty states that “an armed attack against one” member of the treaty “shall be considered an attack against them all.” This principle of collective deterrence is the cornerstone of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and is a major reason why the United States and our allies in Europe have enjoyed over 60 years of peace and prosperity since the end of World War II.

Just as important, but less well known, is Article 3 of the Treaty, which obligates all NATO members to “maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack.”

In 2006, NATO members agreed to fulfill this commitment by pledging to spend at least two percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defense spending every year. Ten years later, less than half of NATO members have honored that pledge.

As a result, the United States has taken on a disproportionate amount of the defense related burden compared to what was originally contemplated in the North Atlantic Treaty. According to NATO’s own figures, even though the GDP of the United States is smaller than the combined GDP of all other NATO member countries, the United States contributes an astonishing 73 percent of all NATO member defense spending.

This does not mean the U.S. is paying 73 percent of all NATO related costs, like running the headquarters in Brussels. But it does mean that NATO and its member nations are overly dependent on U.S. intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, ballistic missiles, and air-to-air assets.

In fact, while some NATO members like Poland are pulling their own weight (Poland spends about 2.18 percent of GDP on defense), 14 NATO member nations spend less on defense than the city of New York spends on its police department.

This pattern of shirking shared responsibilities not only departs from the original intent of the North Atlantic Treaty, it also jeopardizes the peace and security that the alliance has helped maintain for more than 60 years. Today, NATO member nations face a host of new security challenges – from an increasingly antagonistic Russia to a burgeoning immigration crisis (largely of their own making). In order to meet these challenges, they must increase their defense spending.

That’s why Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and I sent a letter to President Obama this week, asking him to make increased NATO defense spending a top priority at next month’s NATO Summit in Warsaw, Poland.

“It is simply inconceivable to most Americans,” the letter reads, “that their hard-earned tax dollars are used to reassure financially capable allies who have failed to meet decade-old commitments.”

Ultimately, the elected officials of NATO member countries, and the people they represent, must choose to change course and once again invest in the defensive resources that keep us safe. But as the commander in chief, President Obama has a unique responsibility to encourage our allies to reaffirm their commitment to the collective security of Europe and the United States.

The Brexit Opportunity

June 24, 2016

Yesterday the people of Britain won a major victory for democracy and sovereignty by voting to leave the European Union (EU).

Many on the left, along with their allies in the media, are predicting that this “Brexit” will lead to economic disaster for Britain, if not all of Europe and the rest of the world. These doomsayers should take a deep breath and a fresh look at the reality of the situation beyond the initial disruptions caused by this momentous decision.

To hear many American elites talk about the Brexit decision, you would think the EU is the equivalent of Europe’s version of the North American Free Trade Agreement – a liberalized commercial area for a small group of foreign nations in close geographic proximity designed to facilitate economic cooperation. But it is much more than that. By submitting to the EU, Britons have been subjected to the laws, decisions, and regulations of a centralized legislature, court, and bureaucracy located in a distant capital and out of touch with the local needs and priorities of the people – an arrangement that many Americans would recognize as similar to our own over-centralized, unaccountable federal government.

Moreover, yesterday’s vote only begins the process of Britain leaving the EU. When announcing his resignation today, Prime Minister David Cameron said his successor should decide when and how to trigger Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. And even after the next prime minister is elected, Article 50 provides a two-year process for Britain to negotiate both its own terms for leaving the EU and new trade deals with the rest of the world, including the United States.

That is what the United States should be doing now to support the people of Britain as they continue the work of disentangling themselves from the clutches of the EU’s centralized power structure in Brussels. We should be doing everything we can to negotiate new treaties with Britain to ensure a smooth, prosperous, and secure transition for both countries.

Prior to yesterday’s vote, President Obama indicated he wants to go a different path. Earlier this year, he threatened Britain that they would have to go to “the back of the queue” in any trade negotiations with the United States if they were to vote to leave the EU. This threat was ill-advised at the time and would be harmful to both countries if adhered to going forward.

Instead, Congress should pass new legislation both requiring the United States to honor our current agreements with the United Kingdom until new bilateral agreements can be negotiated, and directing the U.S. Trade Representative to begin negotiations on new bilateral agreements as soon as possible. There is no better way to honor America’s special relationship with Great Britain.

Reining in Prescription Drug Costs with CREATES Act

June 17, 2016

One of the most urgent problems facing our health care system today, and one of the primary causes of rising health insurance premiums in the United States, is the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs. One in four patients say that they have refrained from filling a prescription because it was too expensive, and nearly three-quarters of Americans believe prescription drug costs are unreasonably high.

There are many problems contributing to the unrelenting cost inflation of prescription drugs – including the FDA’s outdated, byzantine approval process for new drugs, which can last as long as 13 years – but one of the most egregious, and easy to fix, is the ability of brand-name drug companies to unfairly block generic drug companies from entering the market with more affordable products.

This is largely a problem of the government’s own making. The FDA is allowed to require drug manufacturers to submit to what’s called a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, which may include restricted distribution. This scenario makes the brand the sole gatekeeper for a generic competitor attempting to enter the market – even after patent expiration – and brands sometimes use this situation to refuse to sell samples to generics. This prevents generics from conducting the laboratory tests that are required to gain FDA approval. Or the brand name firms will block generics from participating in their FDA-mandated safety protocol, which is a prerequisite for government approval.
Restricting generic drug manufacturers from accessing samples of new drugs allows brand name companies to dramatically inflate the prices of their drugs. For instance, in 2015 Turing Pharmaceutical increased the price of its anti-parasitic drug Daraprim 5000 percent overnight, from $13.50 to $750 per pill.

To combat outrageous, abusive practices like this, I recently teamed up with a bipartisan group of senators to introduce the Creating and Restoring Access to Equivalent Samples (CREATES) Act of 2016. The CREATES Act provides an efficient pathway for generic drug manufacturers facing one of these delay tactics to bring an action in federal court seeking injunctive relief, in order to obtain the sample necessary for bioequivalent testing or enter court-supervised negotiations for a shared safety protocol.

If we’re ever going to bring the cost of health-insurance premiums and prescription drugs under control we must reform the Food and Drug Administration’s excessively onerous, time-consuming regulatory process. The CREATES Act is an essential first step in that process. It is a commonsense, bipartisan measure that will provide real, immediate relief to a serious problem.

A Victory for the American People

June 10, 2016

It’s not every day that the American people score a victory over the global elite, but on Thursday that’s exactly what happened.

The victory came in the form of preventing the ascension of Mark McWatters to the Board of Directors of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, whose nomination Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) has successfully bottled up in the Senate Banking Committee.

Created by Executive Order during the height of the Great Depression, the Ex-Im Bank has been used a tool to reward politically connected elites, both in the United States and abroad, for decades.

Here’s how it works: a large corporation pays money to lobbyists and politicians so that Ex-Im will leverage the full faith and credit of American taxpayers to guarantee loans used to finance global transactions. Because these loans are backed by you, the United States taxpayer, these politically favored global corporations are able to secure below-market interest rates. The difference between the market interest rate the global corporations would have paid to finance their transactions and the below-market interest rate made available by Ex-Im’s guarantees, acts as a giant taxpayer subsidy for these global corporations.

The lobbyists and politicians supporting these global corporations will tell you that Ex-Im’s loan guarantees are cost-free programs that support American middle-class jobs.

Not quite.

First of all, as any economist will tell you, there is no such thing as a free lunch. As the Congressional Research Service has explained, “Subsidized export financing merely shifts production among sectors within the economy, rather than adding to the overall level of economic activity, and subsidizes foreign consumption at the expense of domestic consumption.”

Secondly, if these global corporations are so concerned about American middle-class jobs, then why do they spend millions of dollars lobbying foreign governments to create and maintain their own version of our Export-Import Bank? These corporations aren’t concerned as much about American jobs as they are about maximizing the number of foreign governments that subsidize their business.

And who exactly is on the other end of all these Ex-Im financed deals? China mostly.

China is by far the biggest beneficiary of Ex-Im guaranteed loans. And since most of that financing benefits state-owned firms, the Ex-Im Bank is one of the largest subsidizers of Chinese communist officials in the world.

For instance, in 2013, the Export-Import Bank financed a $63 million deal to help build a semiconductor manufacturing plant in China. How exactly does subsidizing Chinese semiconductor manufactures help save American jobs?

It doesn’t.

But it does help line the pockets of the governing elite both here and in China. That is what the Export-Import Bank is all about.

By blocking the nomination of McWatters to the Export-Import Bank’s Board of Directors, Sen. Shelby has denied Ex-Im the quorum it needs to authorize loan guarantees over $10 million. Between 2007 and 2014, 84 percent of the Bank’s subsidy and loan-guarantee deals exceeded $10 million, and the vast majority were given to the wealthiest, most well-connected businesses that should have no problem acquiring financing on the open market.

The American people have not succeeded in shutting down this spigot of cash to the world’s global elite yet, but we are gaining votes in the House and Senate every year.

We will win eventually.

Let’s Stop Government Hacking Before It Starts

May 27, 2016

Should a Department of Justice prosecutor under the direction of President Obama’s Attorney General have the power to hack into the phone or computer of virtually anyone in the United States if they have convinced just one sympathetic judge of their choosing to give them a warrant to do so?

That is the question the Supreme Court of the United States sent to Congress in late April, and if Congress does not act before December 1st, Attorney General Loretta Lynch will be given this new power.

The issue stems from the arcane way the procedural rules that govern how federal criminal trials are conducted (a.ka. the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure) are written and changed.

For two years now, the Obama administration has pushed for changes to Rule 41(b)(6)(B) that would allow a single judge to issue a nationwide warrant empowering the federal government to hack into any computer that they believe may be part of a botnet. Last month the Supreme Court approved that new rule.

Botnets are a tool used by hackers to commandeer computers by often unsuspecting third parties towards the hackers own ends, whether it be sending spam email, coordinating a denial-of-service attack, or distributing pornography.

The new rule, if it is adopted, would revolutionize the manner in which the government is able to access your phone or computer. Currently, the government must apply for a single warrant in the judicial district where the search would take place. Under the new rule, however, this deliberate and focused process would be scrapped in favor of a nationwide warrant to search millions of devices anywhere across the country.

This is not just a “procedural” rule change. This would change the substantive privacy rights of every American.

Congress must step up its oversight of this issue. Under current law, Congress can stop the change to Rule 41(b)(6)(B) from going into effect with simple majority disapprovals from both the House of Representatives and the Senate. But we have to act before December 1st, otherwise the change automatically goes into effect.

Don’t Force Women To Fight, Don’t Force Americans To Serve

May 20, 2016

The federal regulatory state is out of control. It is out of control economically, costing Americans between $1 trillion and $2 trillion per year in artificially inflated prices. And it is out of control politically, as federal bureaucrats now write upwards of 95 percent of all new federal “laws” without winning a single vote in Congress or at the ballot box.

The Founders wrote our Constitution specifically to protect the American people from this kind
of government without consent. They gave exclusive legislative power to the most accountable branch of the federal government – Congress.

Having elected legislators solely responsible for federal law makes it easy for the American people to know who to blame when policy decisions go bad. This stringent accountability is inconvenient for elected officials. That’s why members of Congress have spent decades delegating their legislative powers to the Executive Branch – to duck political responsibility
for actual policy decisions.

The Article I Project was launched this year to help reverse this trend. Central among A1P’s goals is to restore direct, accountable congressional control over the federal regulatory system. To that end, next week Rep. Mark Walker (R-NC) and I will introduce new legislation next week titled the “Article I Regulatory Budget Act.”

Our bill would, for the first time, require Congress to vote on the total regulatory burden each
federal agency may impose on the American people each year – a budget for federal regulatory costs to mirror Congress’s annual budget for taxes and spending.

Under the discipline of a regulatory budget, Congress would be directly responsible for the size
and scope of the regulatory state. Executive agencies could still issue and enforce their rules, but only so long as their impact fits within the regulatory-cost limits established by Congress.

This would give regulatory agencies – really for the first time – an incentive to make their regulations cost-effective. They would be made to work for the American people instead of the other way around. And the American people, for their part, would be empowered to make informed judgments at the ballot box about economic regulations.

This is what the Founders had in mind when they wrote Article I of the Constitution in the first place: a lawmaking system accountable to – and therefore legitimate in the eyes of – the people.