Chris Van Hollen: “I thank my colleague for the comments, but to suggest that this is a fight over the schedule and not an effort to…”

“I thank my colleague for the comments, but to suggest that this is a fight over the schedule and not an effort to protect our elections from what we know is an ongoing and continuing imminent threat, I believe, misses the point entirely. He mentioned that this is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. I would suggest that the Senate has already taken this because we voted unanimously last year, as part of the Defense authorization bill, to adopt this provision as part of our national defense to defend our democracy. Every single Senator voted--or no one came forward to object at that time. Yet here we are 12 days out from election, no action taken. We get this report yesterday about foreign interference, and nobody should say: Oh, we are shocked there is foreign interference in our election going on. The shocking thing is we haven't done enough. I appreciate him listing some of the actions the administration took about particular Russian individuals, oligarchs, but as you know, and as we know, the DETER Act is not aimed at just punishing particular bureaucrats and apparatchiks who are obeying the orders of President Putin. The whole idea is to deter President Putin by making him understand that he and his country will pay a price if they interfere by sanctions on the banking sector and on the all-important energy sector in Russia. In order to stop interference, we need to do two things: We need to harden our systems at home.…”