{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.capito.senate.gov/news/press-releases/video-capito-details-tumultuous-world-left-behind-by-biden-administration", "VIDEO: Capito Details Tumultuous World Left Behind by Biden Administration", "2024-12-04", "2024", "2024-12", "Republican", "Senate", "WV", "Shelley Moore Capito", "C001047", "www.capito.senate.gov", "capito", "https://www.capito.senate.gov/news/press-releases", "scraper", "Click here or on the image above to watch Senator Capito\u2019s floor speech.\n\nWASHINGTON, D.C. \u2014 Today, U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, delivered remarks on the Senate floor highlighting the dangerous world President Biden leaves behind after four years of weak national security policies.\n\nSenator Capito\u2019s floor remarks, as prepared for delivery, are included below:\n\n\u201cMr./Madame President,\n\n\u201cI rise today to bring attention to the dangerous world that President Biden and his administration are leaving behind: a world engulfed in the flames of war in Europe and the Middle East, and teetering on the brink in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.\n\n\u201cOur adversaries are testing American resolve in ways we haven\u2019t seen in decades, and that instability puts us, the American people, at risk.\n\n\u201cNow, America has a weak Commander-in-Chief who has sleepwalked the global order into chaos.\n\n\u201cJoe Biden may be temporarily tasked with steering the ship of state through these crises, but Joe Biden didn\u2019t inherit this world. He created it.\n\n\u201cJoe Biden\u2019s foreign policy? He doesn\u2019t have one, aside from flip flops, half-measures, and weak conciliations in place of strong deterrence.\n\n\u201cWhereas President-elect Donald Trump led with strength, defeated the ISIS caliphate, paved a path to peace in the Middle East with the Abraham Accords, exerted a maximum pressure campaign on Iran, and got tough on China.\n\n\u201cJust four years later, President Biden\u2019s weakness fuels violence and aggression the globe hasn\u2019t experienced in decades.\n\n\u201cOn January 20th, President-elect Trump is set to take the Oath of Office and, once again, assume the solemn responsibility of Commander-in-Chief.\n\n\u201cThe task ahead for him, and for us, is monumental.\n\n\u201cJoe Biden leaves behind a messy world and it\u2019s up to the incoming administration and Congress to clean it up.\n\n\u201cOver the past four years, China has aggressively expanded its military capabilities, including a massive increase in both conventional forces and nuclear weapons.\n\n\u201cIn 2020, the Defense Intelligence Agency assessed that China had about 200 nuclear weapons and would reach 400 by 2030.\n\n\u201cNow, four years later, the same agency counts about 500 nuclear weapons in China and predicts they will have more than 1,000 by 2030.\n\n\u201cChinese military spending has surged, with 2024 being the third year in a row that its military saw growth of more than 7%.\n\n\u201cAt the same time, President Biden\u2019s Department of Defense requested four consecutive military budgets that actually cut defense once you account for inflation.\n\n\u201cWhile China continues to build the largest navy in the world, Biden\u2019s defense budgets called for us to shrink our Navy from 296 ships in 2024 to 294 ships in 2030.\n\n\u201cChina knows that these investments have consequences. President Xi knows that our failure to invest weakens America\u2019s ability to project power abroad.\n\n\u201cDuring its unprecedented buildup, China has increased its assertiveness in the South China Sea and escalated its incursions into Taiwan\u2019s airspace.\n\n\u201cChina's cyber capabilities are also emboldened.\n\n\u201cAttacks like Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon reveal a brazen intention to burrow deep into our critical infrastructure and threaten the American people.\n\n\u201cAnd yet, the Biden administration has appeared more focused on seeking meetings and chasing diplomacy with China.\n\n\u201cChina recognizes hard power, and rebuilding ours will be a day one project for the Trump administration and for Senate Republicans.\n\n\u201cPivoting to the Middle East, our adversary, Iran, has also seized on the openings presented by Joe Biden\u2019s weak leadership.\n\n\u201cUnder Joe Biden, Iran has been able to supercharge its support for terrorist proxy groups by increasing its lucrative oil exports without consequence.\n\n\u201cUnder Biden\u2019s watch, Iran has used these billions of dollars to arm Hezbollah, ship advanced weapons like ballistic missiles to the Houthis, and orchestrate attacks on American forces across the region.\n\n\u201cLet me repeat: Iran-sponsored attacks on American forces.\n\n\u201cOur troops have faced hundreds of assaults, on the ground and at sea.\n\n\u201cIran-backed aggression has killed U.S. service members in Jordan and in the Red Sea.\n\n\u201cAnd let\u2019s never forget that American hostages remain held in Gaza thanks to Iran\u2019s support of Hamas.\n\n\u201cAll of this should have been completely unacceptable.\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s more, Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon today than it ever was under Trump.\n\n\u201cIn 2020, Iran\u2019s so-called \u2018breakout time\u2019 to produce enough fuel for a nuclear weapon was 3 months. Now, it\u2019s under a week.\n\n\u201cAnd, when Israel was thrust into a war for its survival, not of its choosing, Joe Biden publicly questioned Israel\u2019s actions, delayed critical arms shipments, and damaged one of our most vital alliances.\n\n\u201cPresident Biden should know that U.S. support for Israel is a valuable deterrent.\n\n\u201cThis undermining of the U.S.-Israel relationship would never take place under President Trump.\n\n\u201cHe understood that peace comes through strength and our alliance with Israel is unshakable, not a conditional agreement.\n\n\u201cAnd finally, as we stand here today, there is still a large-scale ground war in Europe perpetrated by Russia.\n\n\u201cWhen Donald Trump assumes office, the war will be entering its third year with an appalling toll in lives and suffering, more than one million Ukrainians and Russians killed or wounded.\n\n\u201cMost recently, Putin has ramped up arms production, used a new ballistic missile capability, and deployed North Korean troops.\n\n\u201cDonald Trump presents just the off-ramp the world needs because, looking to current American leadership, it\u2019s no wonder this conflict has escalated.\n\n\u201cThis bloody war, especially with Iran and North Korea as Russian partners, is a stark reminder of what happens when America projects weakness.\n\n\u201cPresident Biden\u2019s foreign policy missteps, such as lifting sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, emboldened Vladimir Putin.\n\n\u201cAnd his suggestion that a \u2018minor incursion\u2019 into Ukraine would receive a muted response? Well, that certainly didn\u2019t deter this catastrophic invasion.\n\n\u201cThen the Biden administration failed to push the whole of Europe to invest adequately in its military and industrial capacity.\n\n\u201cAnd for those of us who support military assistance to Ukraine, this administration has made it unnecessarily difficult for them to actually win the war.\n\n\u201cBy slow walking payments and stalling authorities, many of which they eventually agreed to, the Biden administration failed to give full support to a sovereign country who was unlawfully invaded.\n\n\u201cDonald Trump understood that Nord Stream 2 was a threat. He sanctioned it.\n\n\u201cDonald Trump understood that sticks work as well as carrots to boost Europe\u2019s defense spending and munitions production. He used that leverage.\n\n\u201cPresident Trump and his cabinet will get to work on day one to push our NATO allies to meet their commitments and bring peace to the European continent.\n\n\u201cThe bottom line is this: Joe Biden made a mess. Now, Donald Trump has to clean it up.\n\n\u201cAmerica may not be at war, but this instability threatens our national peace and prosperity.\n\n\u201cTo put it simply: failing to deter conflict makes it more likely that young Americans, young West Virginians, will have to fight someday.\n\n\u201cWeakness is dangerous.\n\n\u201cOur state is proud that West Virginians disproportionately throughout history have answered the call to serve, but their service is not something we take for granted.\n\n\u201cI believe that President Trump and his team are ready to get back to peace through strength.\n\n\u201cThey will restore our deterrence, the deterrence that ensures we don\u2019t have to send our men and women into harm\u2019s way.\n\n\u201cDeterrence is much cheaper than war.\n\n\u201cThe good thing is that we don\u2019t have to wait till January to get to work.\n\n\u201cCongress must take up the [National Defense Authorization Act] immediately, so our critical national defense policies are in place as the next administration takes office, something we should have completed months ago.\n\n\u201cAs for the executive, I\u2019m confident President-elect Trump has the record and resolve to clean up this mess.\n\n\u201cI look forward to working with my colleagues and President Trump to secure our country\u2019s rightful, respected, and preeminent role on the world stage.\n\n\u201cThank you, and I yield the floor.\u201d\n\n# # #", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-07T22:13:55Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.capito.senate.gov/news/press-releases/video-capito-details-tumultuous-world-left-behind-by-biden-administration"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8932738564908504, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}