Biden Administration Adds Foreign Policy to Growing List of Crises They’ve Created

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding national security:

“While Americans contend with Democrats’ self-created border crisis and inflation crisis, our foreign policy is in crisis as well.

“The Biden Administration’s disastrous retreat from Afghanistan may be over, but the danger to the American citizens and Afghan partners it left behind certainly isn’t.

“Around the world, adversaries and allies alike are drawing new conclusions from President Biden’s Afghanistan disaster about America’s will to defend our allies and interests.

“Pyongyang is putting on another master class in how despots disdain the so-called rules-based international order.

“Literally while a North Korean official was haranguing the UN in a speech about the, ‘consequences it will bring in the future in case it tries to encroach upon [its] sovereignty,’ the Kim regime punctuated the speech with yet another provocative round of UN sanctions-violating ballistic missile tests.

“Iranian disregard for international norms and the Biden Administration’s efforts to enforce them continues apace. Tehran is ramping up its nuclear activities, demanding bribes to even return to the negotiating table, as well as stepping up its use of terrorist proxies to threaten its adversaries across the region.

“In light of our retreat from Afghanistan, we should not be surprised if Iranian-backed groups redouble their efforts to inflict US casualties and otherwise pressure the Biden Administration to turn tail and run from Syria and Iraq.

“When it comes to near-peer competitors like Russia, the Biden campaign’s tough talk has been replaced by the Biden Administration’s desperate rhetoric of diplomacy. Putin is unfazed and undeterred.

“Repression at home. Manipulation of energy markets abroad. Military modernization. Cyber mischief. This doesn’t exactly scream: ‘ready for good-faith engagement’.

“Most of all, the Administration’s hollow rhetoric has done nothing to deter the growing threat from communist China.

“Just this month, Beijing has sent a record number of military aircraft on provocative missions into Taiwan’s airspace.

“As senior Pentagon officials warn, ‘we are witnessing a strategic breakout’ by China, Democrats still refuse to let us adequately fund our own military and defense.

“The Biden Administration’s budget falls woefully short of our requirements for greater competition with China and Russia. All the more so given the inevitable growing terror threat. And in Congress, Democrats are doubling down on this reckless misstep.

“Democrats want to spend trillions of dollars on a socialist wish-list at home while leaving the servicemembers who keep us safe overseas in the lurch.

“Now, I don’t expect Chairman Sanders or certain radicals in the House to be keen on using reconciliation to fund our military. Hardly. But Senate Democrats have left Congress’ most fundamental tool for influencing defense policy – the historically bipartisan NDAA – in procedural limbo for months.

“The Democratic Leader’s latest public statement on his caucus’ spending priorities didn’t even mention the defense authorization bill. Apparently, he’s content to let it languish behind their left-wing wish list.

“Madam President, America is staring down serious and historic threats. And somehow, with unified control of government, the only actions Democrats have managed to take on foreign policy have made them worse.

“The American people deserve better. Our servicemembers deserve better. Our allies deserve better. But Washington Democrats are proving they cannot deliver.”