“If any of y’all believe that Republicans are winning the shutdown argument, lay down until the feeling goes away.”
WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) appeared before a luncheon meeting of The Ripon Society yesterday afternoon, delivering straight talk not only about the war with Iran and America’s commitment to our long-time allies, but the ongoing government shutdown and the need to cancel the upcoming congressional recess if things are not resolved.
“If you’re wondering what’s going to happen, nobody knows — including the Majority Leader,” Tillis said, referring to the funding stalemate in remarks to open the discussion. “We have to be prepared to stay here and cancel recess until we fund the agencies that are unfunded. It would be malpractice to wait … We have to do it for two reasons. One, it’s just irresponsible not to go to the mat, particularly for agencies that were shut down for so long historically last year. But it’s also politically dumb.
“If Chuck Schumer walked down to the well of the Senate and said, ‘I am responsible for this shutdown — I am shutting this thing down.’ Republicans would still get blamed for it. It’s just the way it works … If any of y’all believe that Republicans are winning the shutdown argument, lay down until the feeling goes away. Because it’s not real, okay? It’s simply not happening. At best, we can hope to tie and push. But we need to get it done because at the end of the day, people judge leadership.”
“And when you run Washington, at the end of the day, why aren’t you getting it done? Why aren’t you trying to figure out a way to use every lever you have. When you have the gavels in both the House and the Senate and you’ve got the White House. So spare me this childish amateurish, ‘Well, it’s their fault thing.’ When you’re the boss, figure out how to get it done.”
Tillis, who will be retiring from the Senate at the end of this year, was first elected in 2014 after a 29-year career in business and a career in state and local politics. Since coming to Washington, he has earned a reputation as a no-nonsense lawmaker who believes not only in the importance of conservative principles to meet the challenges we face at home, but the importance of American leadership to confront the growing threats we face abroad.
He touched on that leadership in his remarks yesterday afternoon, encouraging the President to communicate and be clear with both the American people and our allies about America’s objectives in the ongoing military conflict with Iran.
“The War Powers Resolution has given the President a fair amount of leeway over 60 days to engage DoD resources to authorize kinetic strikes,” Tillis said. “But once you get close to that 60-day mark, or actually once you surpass the 30-day mark, you better start being very clear on what your strategic and tactical objectives are. Some of those can be communicated publicly, some can’t. For me, it’s personal because we have a thousand soldiers from the 82nd Airborne headed that way, and we have some 8,000 Marines headed that way. If you know anything about North Carolina, about half of all the Marines are attached to North Carolina. So it’s very personal to me, and it’s time to start being clear.”
“It’s also time to start being respectful to our allies, because if you intend to have a sustained engagement in Iran, it’s not going to go well if you try and go it alone. And on that subject, I think that this President has taken bad advice, particularly from my perch as the Republican leader of the Senate NATO Observer Group since 2018. This is not the way you treat allies who came to our side when we went to Afghanistan. The only time the Article 5 commitment has ever been honored is by members of NATO to go into Afghanistan. We should honor that commitment. We need to make sure our members also make it very clear that NATO is a congressional entity. It’s not a thing that the President can opt into and out of. We made certain of that by providing clarifying language that exiting NATO means you go through Congress, and there is absolutely no appetite for that sort of rhetoric in Congress.
“I say this to my diplomat friends — there’s a certain amount of latitude that the President’s getting in terms of his rhetoric. But believe me when I tell you that vast majorities of the House and Senate do not agree with the rhetoric with respect to our partners and allies. They’re just navigating the reality of politics in an election year. But you should not ever think for a moment that those longer-term relationships are at risk.”
To view Tillis’ remarks to The Ripon Society yesterday afternoon, please click the link below:
The Ripon Society is a public policy organization that was founded in 1962 and takes its name from the town where the Republican Party was born in 1854 – Ripon, Wisconsin. One of the main goals of The Ripon Society is to promote the ideas and principles that have made America great and contributed to the GOP’s success. These ideas include keeping our nation secure, keeping taxes low and having a federal government that is smaller, smarter and more accountable to the people.