[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 72 (Thursday, April 27, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2567-S2569]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                        U.S. Military Readiness

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, our military and our intelligence 
community grapple with intersecting issues that aren't wholly unique to 
this day and age. Our national security has always been imperiled by 
foreign threats, from the Revolutionary War to two World Wars, and we 
previously faced a seemingly unsurmountable debt burden following World 
War II.
  The challenge seems to be, as it always is in a democracy, that 
people of different views differ on the sense of urgency on priorities 
and the means to address both those threats and our financial house in 
order to be able to pay for what it takes to keep America safe. What is 
unique is the range and complexity of the problems we face and their 
scale.

  I am reminded of a sobering quote from the former Director of 
National Intelligence during a hearing just last year, former Director 
James Clapper, who served 50 years in the U.S. intelligence community. 
He said: ``In my time in the intelligence business, I don't recall a 
time when we have been confronted with a more diverse array of 
threats.'' I agree with him.
  On top of that diverse array of threats, never before has our country 
been at war for such an extended period of time since 9/11, and never 
before have we done so much with an all-volunteer military force 
stressed by repeated deployments, while at the same time defense 
spending has been cut by nearly 15 percent over the last 8 years.
  So the United States is at a crossroads when it comes to meeting the 
diverse threats we face today, while simultaneously preparing for the 
ever-evolving future threats headed our way tomorrow.
  I wish to first provide a little bit of context about our lack of 
readiness to meet those threats by framing the challenges our military 
and our Nation faces, and then I wish to offer some thoughts about how 
we can rise to meet these challenges and maintain our military 
preeminence and leadership in the world.
  First, there are the challenges abroad. We face a range of 
adversaries unlike any other in our history. In the Middle East, even 
as ISIS forces are pushed back in Iraq, their ideology spreads like a 
contagion through their so-called cyber caliphate, and it continues to 
permeate the West and attract the vulnerable and the disillusioned. FBI 
Director Comey has said that his agency has open investigations into 
home-grown jihadists in all 50 States.
  Iran, under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, is a breakout 
nuclear threat and remains the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism in the 
world. At the same time, it is rapidly growing its ballistic missile 
arsenal and has regained much of its financial strength following 
sanctions relief under the JCPOA.
  Then there is Syria. Since the Syrian civil war began, 400,000 have 
died in a bloody civil war, while Bashar al-Assad, a brutal dictator 
known to repeatedly use chemical weapons on his own people despite 
redlines drawn, enjoys Russian and Iranian support and protection.
  In addition to its meddling in the Middle East, Russia has invaded 
eastern Ukraine and annexed Crimea. It routinely threatens NATO member 
states and has ramped up its use of ``active measures''--a program of 
both overt and covert action that leverages propaganda, cyber 
espionage, social media, and a sometimes gullible mainstream media both 
here and abroad--to influence and undermine public confidence in the 
very foundation of our democracies, which are our free and fair 
elections.
  In the Pacific, China seeks to advance its regional dominance by 
making claims to former sandbars and reefs

[[Page S2568]]

that it has now built into strategic military bases--complete with a 
10,000 foot runway--in the South China Sea.
  Finally, as we learned more about yesterday at the White House in the 
briefing from the President's national security advisers, North Korea 
continues to develop and test its nuclear and ballistic missile 
capabilities with the threat of soon being able to combine the two to 
threaten the continental United States and wreak death and destruction.
  Many before me have observed that American strength on the world 
stage is a deterrent and a stabilizing influence, while weakness is an 
invitation to our adversaries and inherently destabilizing. I think 
that proposition has never been more evident than it is today.
  But to address these threats--to maintain the peace and fight, if we 
must--we need a capable, ready, and modern military force. But the 
truth is we are not ready. While I believe America will always rise to 
the challenges once roused from our national complacency, it makes a 
dangerous world even more dangerous.
  U.S. military readiness and modernization--already under great stress 
and stretched thin around the world--has suffered 15 years of continued 
operations and simultaneous budgetary restrictions and deferred 
maintenance and investment. That has led to some very real consequences 
for our military. Let me just illustrate a few of those consequences.
  According to General Walters, the Assistant Commandant of the Marine 
Corps, more than half of all Marine Corps fixed- and rotary-wing 
aircraft were unable to fly at the end of 2016. Let me say that again. 
That is a shocking statistic. More than half of the Marine Corps' 
fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft were unable to fly by the end of 2016. 
These aircraft are in constant operation overseas and are absolutely 
necessary to continue the fight against ISIS and terrorism, yet half of 
them are unable to take off.
  The Navy fleet currently stands at 275 of the 350 ship requirement. 
Law mandates an inventory of 11 aircraft carriers and has a stated 
force level goal of 12. But today, the Navy requires a waiver in order 
to operate just 10, currently. As we all know, these carrier strike 
groups deploy worldwide, and, as the Navy likes to say, they act as 
``100,000 tons of diplomacy that doesn't need a permission slip.''
  Of our 58 Army brigade and combat teams, only three are considered 
fully ready for combat. These are the main building blocks of the Army 
that support the majority of Army operations, and only three are fully 
ready. Keep in mind, too, that our Army is smaller than at any time 
since before World War II, as a result of draconian cuts in defense 
spending.
  Finally, when it comes to our Air Force, General Wilson, the Air 
Force Vice Chief of Staff, recently testified: ``Sustained global 
commitments and funding reductions have eroded our Air Force to the 
point where we have become one of the smallest, oldest equipped, and 
least ready forces across the full-spectrum of operations in our 
service history.'' The Air Force currently has 5,500 aircraft in its 
inventory. That is down from 8,600 since 1991. The average aircraft in 
the U.S. Air Force is 27 years old. For example, I was at Dyess Air 
Force Base in Abilene, TX, just last week, viewing some of their B-1 
bombers, which is a plane first flown in 1974.
  Then, of course, there is the grandpa of our aircraft fleet, the B-
52--that is still in operation--first introduced in the 1950s.
  The Air Force is also experiencing a pilot shortage crisis due to the 
pressure on the force, including quality of life issues and, of course, 
increased demand and competition from the airline industry.
  So our military faces these internal issues as well. No one would 
argue that in order to keep the peace and to protect our national vital 
interests, we must have a credible and modern force. But the hard truth 
is that we don't currently meet that standard, and we can't afford to 
ignore the problems.
  So why, I ask, do we continue to do so? More importantly, the 
question is this: Where do we go from here? How can we assure that our 
military can maintain its competitive edge and ensure it is ready to 
meet these and future challenges? I have a few suggestions.
  First, we must fund our military to meet the threat environment, not 
do what we can to meet the threat environment with what we funded for 
the military. In other words, the threat should determine the resources 
necessary to meet that threat. So I would suggest we should start by 
eliminating sequestration of Department of Defense funding under the 
2011 Budget Control Act. The truth is that the Budget Control Act was 
never meant to cut military spending. It was meant to spur action. 
Remember the supercommittee and the hoped-for grand bargain? Instead, 
the BCA took a meat ax to our defense budget. Allowing the Budget 
Control Act to keep making automatic cuts to our military until 2021 
does not serve the national security interests of the United States. It 
does the opposite. These cuts add risk not just to our national 
security but also to our servicemembers and their families--who, as I 
said, have been fighting the longest war in our Nation's history--and 
it does so by undermining their training, readiness, and modernization.
  At a time when our growing national security threats require greater 
investment in technology, we are tying the hands of our military and 
simply hoping for the best. So if we want to return to a strong 
American military after years of stress and inadequate funding, we need 
to start with ending the Department of Defense sequestration.
  Of course, the next logical question becomes this: If we do away with 
the defense portions of the Budget Control Act, how do we control 
overspending, deficits, and unsustainable national debt, which is a 
serious problem?
  That brings me to my second point. A bipartisan Congress and the 
Trump administration must address our budget priorities by looking at 
and addressing all government spending, not just the 30 percent or so 
represented by discretionary spending. Right now, about 70 percent of 
Federal spending isn't even appropriated by the Congress. It simply 
runs on autopilot, and it grew last year at the rate of 5.5 percent, 
while discretionary spending has remained relatively flat. Until we 
have the political courage on a bipartisan basis to tackle our 
structural financial problems, we will never adequately fund the 
military or our other national priorities.
  We also need a bipartisan commitment to ending continuing resolutions 
and the self-destructive drama and narrative of potential government 
shutdowns.
  Most importantly, perhaps, the Defense Department needs to be able to 
plan, not just for the duration of the next continuing resolution, but 
it needs to be able to plan long term and to spend the money that is 
appropriated to it in an efficient way.
  The Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Goldfein, captured the 
point well 2 months ago, when he said: ``There is no enemy on the 
planet that can do more to damage the United States Air Force than us 
not getting a budget.'' This sentiment is shared by all the service 
chiefs, and I wholeheartedly agree.
  In a Department as big, as large, and as unwieldy as the Department 
of Defense, there is no doubt that there is room to streamline, improve 
efficiencies, and reduce duplication. We can all agree on that. But the 
truth is we need to take a hard, strategic look at our budgetary and 
fiscal needs across the Federal Government. Endless continuing 
resolutions aren't the answer. Continuing resolutions actually limit an 
agency's ability to be efficient and flexible, and they prevent the 
establishment of new programs and the retiring of the old and obsolete 
programs.
  At the end of the day, the only way we can rein in spending, get a 
handle on our debt, and ensure our military stays ready for the threats 
facing it every day is to clearly articulate our country's needs and 
how we plan to meet them. That way, we can restore constitutional 
oversight responsibilities to Congress.
  Finally, Congress has a tremendous opportunity, working with the 
Trump administration, to propose a strategy to modernize our military 
and prepare for the next generation of warfighting. Both readiness and 
modernization have been encumbered by the lack of a coherent national 
security and foreign

[[Page S2569]]

policy strategy in recent years, in addition to the blanket 
restrictions placed on defense spending.
  Too frequently, modernization has simply been pushed aside by myopic 
views of how to deal with our financial challenges, which place greater 
risk on the warfighter and our collective security. You had better 
believe that, not hamstrung by redtape and regulations or continuing 
resolutions or deep cuts in defense spending or national security 
spending, our enemies take full advantage of our reluctance to deal 
with our challenges on a bipartisan basis. All the while, the United 
States operates on platforms engineered decades ago to fight the last 
generation's wars.
  I can't think of a better example than our nuclear weapons program. 
This is the preeminent deterrent to war. Our country is the leading 
pioneer in science and technology, but instead of modernizing our 
nuclear weapons to provide a safe, reliable, and dependable deterrent, 
we, in effect, merely extend the service life of outdated and ancient 
weapons.

  Clearly, we need a coherent national security strategy from President 
Trump and his Cabinet to do that. I know Congress is committed to 
working with them to make that happen.
  By doing away with the Budget Control Act, putting the Pentagon on a 
dependable and predictable budget and developing a coherent national 
security strategy, we can maintain our status as the top military in 
the world. Along the way, we can deter our enemies and reassure our 
allies. We don't need to rewrite the playbook. We need to go back to 
the basics of government, providing for our national defense and 
keeping our fiscal house in order, all in light of the challenges and 
threats these times present.
  My hope is that we will get out of the rut we have been in the Senate 
and in the Congress for the last few years and we will actually 
capitalize on this moment--and rally around a bipartisan commitment 
that a strong, modern, and ready military is really a nonnegotiable 
item--to lay the foundation for a modern military that will continue to 
keep our Nation safe for generations. I am committed to working with 
the administration and all of my colleagues in order to accomplish 
these goals.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.