On the recordMay 14, 2015
I thank the chairman for including my amendment en bloc. Mr. Chairman, the amendment is very simple. It authorizes the Secretary of Defense to deploy assets, personnel, and resources to SOUTHCOM and to the Joint Interagency Task Force South in order to take on threats with sufficient intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities. Terror groups receive a large number of financial resources through the illicit drug trade and in their cooperation with drug cartels in our region, and we are dangerously ill-equipped to tackle these threats. It is in our vital national security interests to bolster our efforts to counter the nexus between drug traffickers and terror groups. To do so, we need to give SOUTHCOM the resources it needs to get the job done. Not nearly enough attention is being paid to the Western Hemisphere, and with our limited resources and intelligence capabilities, our visibility and assessment of the threats in our hemisphere are dangerously inadequate. This lack of resources jeopardizes our national security as terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant are increasingly operating in our hemisphere; and we all know that Iran, Russia, and China are expanding their influences here in order to undermine our regional interests.
