Press Releases

Congressman Morgan Griffith (R-VA) issued the following statement after voting against H. Res. 1130:

“The Senate has the constitutional role to ratify or reject accession to NATO, but the House does not. The resolution in fact goes further than support for admitting Finland and Sweden to NATO by calling on the alliance’s other members to support it, too. I think that goes well beyond the House’s jurisdiction.

"Decisions about the future of NATO need to be made carefully and with a full consideration of the facts. Discussion about what assets Finland and Sweden would bring to the alliance has been insufficient. Although Finland meets the threshold of spending two percent of its GDP on defense, Sweden does not. Too many current members of the alliance do not meet this benchmark even though it was agreed upon in 2014. President Trump was right to urge countries to spend more on defense, and we should fix this major challenge to the alliance’s standing before NATO takes on more obligations.

“I am not inherently against admitting Finland and Sweden to the alliance, but considering that substantial questions still hang over the future of NATO and that this resolution was rushed to the floor, I voted no.”

###