WASHINGTON—Representative Eliot L. Engel, Ranking Member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, today made the following statement regarding the House GOP’s National Security Agenda:

“The House GOP’s national security agenda is full of recycled attacks on the Obama Administration, but provides very little when it comes to new ideas. This document leaves aside plenty of legitimate concerns, such as the threat of climate change—a challenge the entire world has rallied around, but about which the Republican Party remains in bizarre denial. It isn't a serious plan.

“Perhaps this agenda is light on details because the Republican presidential candidate has offered a truly disturbing vision of America's role in the world. The GOP standard-bearer has promised a foreign policy of isolationism, by drawing back from our most important alliances; war crimes, by sanctioning torture and murdering the families of suspected terrorists; proliferation, by allowing more countries to obtain nuclear weapons; xenophobia, by barring entire groups from our country based on religious beliefs; and outright racism, by calling our neighbors in Mexico drug dealers and rapists.

“The world will watch what happens in the United States in the months ahead.  People everywhere understand what it means when members of a political party call their own nominee racist, and history has shown us what happens when the politics of fear and division prevail.  In a country built by immigrants, our citizens have always been our links to the rest of the world.  The leader of a major political party spewing ‘textbook racism’ damages those ties and threatens our standing in the world.

“Make no mistake: that’s the real Republican national-security plan and it's the wrong way for America. Supporting a candidate means supporting his policies. Nothing will distract from that reality.”

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