Endless Frontier Act-- resumed

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I wanted to come to the floor very briefly today to thank Chairman Menendez and Ranking Member Risch for the great work they did on the Foreign Relations Committee to add to the pending legislation a title developed in the Foreign Relations Committee that makes sure that we are building the kinds of capacities inside the State Department and USAID that are able to make sure America can compete with China and a host of other developing, advancing nations all around the world.

The fact is, we are often fighting our competitors with one hand tied behind our back. For instance, the size of the Chinese international development bank dwarfs the capacities of the similar institution that is used by the United States of America, the DFC.

We have added new capacities to the DFC in this legislation that will allow the United States of America to be able to make sure that we can do development deals around the world and compete with other nations that are fast investing significant amounts of money and trying to use that money as leverage to gain political interest and political influence.

Included in that title, midwifed through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is a provision that builds upon the expectation that Congress should have that the administration share with us agreements that they have entered into on behalf of the United States. If we want to play our constitutional role to be a coequal branch with the executive on the setting of American foreign policy, then, of course, this body needs to have access--immediate access--to any agreements, whether they be binding or nonbinding, that the Federal Government, through the executive branch, has entered into on behalf of the American people.

I am very pleased that the legislation includes a requirement that, in an expeditious manner, the executive branch, whether there is a Republican President or a Democratic President, share with Congress any agreements that they have entered into on behalf of our constituents.

That section of the bill goes a little bit further than that, though. It also says that the administration shall notify Congress anytime that the administration is beginning a negotiation over a prospective agreement with a foreign nation. Again, that, on its face, makes a lot of sense, the idea that the administration should be communicating with Congress when they have begun a significant negotiation with a foreign country that may ultimately obligate the United States or this Congress with respect to an international agreement.

I raised, during the consideration of this bill in the Foreign Relations Committee and I have continued to raise both publicly and privately, concerns I have that I think are shared by current and former diplomats that there is a potential that by going too far in our request that the administration inform us of negotiations, we could provide a chill on both our government's willingness to enter into what are sometimes very sensitive, early negotiations with foreign governments but also a chill on foreign nations' interest in entering into negotiations with the United States of America if they were to understand that anytime they began a conversation with the United States about a very sensitive matter, there would be a notification to Congress that could easily become public.

In fact, there are good reasons sometimes where the executive branch, early on in a negotiation, before they know whether it is even going to become an agreement a year, 2 years down the line, would want the space to conduct that negotiation without the public eye coming down on those proceedings.

So I think there is a way to get this right. I think that we want to make sure that any agreements are sent to Congress. I can even understand how, in some circumstances, when you are talking about big negotiations of national significance, we would want to know at some point when those negotiations have begun. But I think you have to understand that there are two equities at play here. One is transparency, the right of Congress to get information from the executive branch, but the other equity is that we don't want to do anything here that would disincentivize diplomacy, that would create a massive bureaucracy inside the State Department that would serve as a barrier to negotiations with countries that may avoid a war or may end up in a more efficient expenditure of U.S. taxpayer dollars.

So I want to raise this concern about this language that is included in the substitute amendment. I know that there is a long way before this bill is law. Obviously, the House will take up their own version, and there will be some reconciliation between the House and the Senate. And I am glad to have Senator Menendez's commitment to continue to have this discussion to make sure that we balance these equities--the equity of Congress's right to know with the equity to invest and incentivize in American diplomacy.

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