[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 115 (Tuesday, July 10, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Page S4867]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                  National Defense Authorization Bill

  Mr. INHOFE. First of all, Mr. President, we are about to go to 
conference. The first three votes here are very, very significant. They 
are considered to be maybe the most consequential votes of the year.
  We have been working closely with the President on our John S. McCain 
National Defense Authorization Act. It is going to be a reality. We 
have done this through regular order in a very effective way. The 
Senate Armed Services Committee has been in concert with our combatant 
commanders, with Secretary Mattis, with the service chiefs, with the 
President. We have had a markup, our committee markup. We actually had 
over 300 amendments.
  I am disturbed that we can't change this policy we have had for a 
long period of time that says that if one person on the floor objects 
when we are considering a bill--the NDAA, which we have considered 
successfully for 57 years--we are not going to be able to consider 
amendments. That is something we may want to address. To overcome that, 
we adopted 47 bipartisan amendments, both through the managers' package 
and the votes on the floor.
  Tomorrow, we are going to hold our first big meeting of the 
conferees. I have been through a number of these in the past. This is 
where Members of the House and the Senate meet each other, talk about 
their issues, and talk about their successes and what they want to 
accomplish in this conference report. I have already visited with 
Ranking Member Senator Reed, Chairman Thornberry, and Ranking Member 
Smith, and we have a commitment to finish this conference report by the 
end of July. It is very ambitious. It is something we will be able to 
do.
  The second vote we are going to have is to instruct the conferees in 
terms of the CFIUS issue. Personally, having recently been to China and 
the South China Sea, seeing what they are doing right now in northern 
Africa, in Djibouti--we have a different China than we had before. We 
are going to have to thoroughly review foreign transactions for 
national security concerns. I think Senator Cornyn is on the right 
track. I fully support his amendment.
  The last one we will have is from Senator Reed, and I think this is 
significant too. Our President has said several times--I have to say 
this. Not one President in my memory, Democratic or Republican, has 
been successful in getting our allies and NATO to carry their share of 
the burden. This President is getting very tough on that. I think the 
Reed motion to instruct conferees on NATO is one that will give him a 
lot of the force that he needs to impact these other countries.
  If you take 29 countries--67 percent of our actual budget for our 
country is the entire amount for 29 countries. That isn't right. This 
is something we can change, and we will hopefully succeed in doing that 
during this conference we will have.