[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 120 (Tuesday, July 17, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H6285-H6289]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
EXPRESSING SENSE OF THE HOUSE THAT THE NATION FACES A MORE COMPLEX AND
GRAVE SET OF THREATS THAN AT ANY TIME SINCE THE END OF WORLD WAR II
Ms. CHENEY. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the
resolution (H. Res. 995) expressing the sense of the House of
Representatives that the Nation now faces a more complex and grave set
of threats than at any time since the end of World War II, and that the
lack of full, on-time funding related to defense activities puts
servicemen and servicewomen at risk, harms national security, and aids
the adversaries of the United States.
The Clerk read the title of the resolution.
The text of the resolution is as follows:
H. Res. 995
Whereas the United States now faces a more complex set of
threats than at any time since the end of World War II;
Whereas the National Defense Strategy released on January
19, 2018, highlights these threats and acknowledges a return
to great power competition;
Whereas countries like Russia and China are heavily
investing in military modernization and developing
capabilities that the United States may not be able to defend
against while also expanding their influence across the
globe;
Whereas North Korea's nuclear program continues to be a
serious threat;
Whereas the National Defense Strategy states that ``Iran
continues to sow violence and remains the most significant
challenge to Middle East stability'';
Whereas the National Defense Strategy states that
``terrorist groups with long reach continue to murder the
innocent and threaten peace more broadly'';
Whereas the United States continues to fight a war against
terrorism and has troops deployed in hostile regions
throughout the globe;
Whereas, on January 19, 2018, Secretary of Defense James
Mattis stated, ``As hard as the last 16 years have been on
our military, no enemy in the field has done more to harm the
readiness of the U.S. military than the combined impact of
the Budget Control Act's defense spending cuts, worsened by
us operating, 9 of the last 10 years, under continuing
resolutions, wasting copious amounts of precious taxpayer
dollars'';
Whereas fiscal year 2009 was the last fiscal year the
Department of Defense received on-time funding;
Whereas the House of Representatives has passed an annual
appropriation bill for the Department of Defense before the
start of the next fiscal year in each of those fiscal years;
Whereas article I, section 8 of the Constitution gives
Congress the responsibility to ``provide for the common
Defence and general Welfare of the United States'' and calls
on Congress to ``raise and support Armies'' and ``provide and
maintain a Navy''; and
Whereas Secretaries of Defense appointed by Presidents of
both parties have warned about the damage funding uncertainty
has on the readiness of our Armed Forces: Now, therefore, be
it
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of
Representatives that--
(1) failing to provide our military with full, stable, and
on-time funding allows our adversaries to close critical
military capability gaps, putting our servicemembers at
increased risk, and severely harms our military's ability to
prepare for, deter, and, if needed, defend against these
capabilities, putting United States national security at
greater risk;
(2) providing full, stable, and on-time funding for the
Department of Defense is critically necessary to preventing
these increased risks; and
(3) the House of Representatives is committed to ending the
funding uncertainty for the Department of Defense and
providing the resources United States servicemembers need to
defend the Nation, and that the Senate should join the House
of Representatives in these efforts.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentlewoman from
Wyoming (Ms. Cheney) and the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Smith) each
will control 20 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Wyoming.
General Leave
Ms. CHENEY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may
have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and
insert extraneous material on the resolution under consideration.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentlewoman from Wyoming?
There was no objection.
Ms. CHENEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of my resolution, H. Res. 995, which
expresses this House's commitment to providing the full, on-time
funding our men and women in uniform need to defend our Nation.
This week and next, Mr. Speaker, we will be spending time on this
floor discussing the devastating impacts nine
[[Page H6286]]
consecutive continuing resolutions have had on our military's readiness
and on our ability to deter and defend against our adversaries. Despite
the fact that this House has consistently, and normally in a bipartisan
fashion, completed our work on time, we have repeatedly seen partisan
politics, particularly in the Senate, prevent the Congress from
delivering a funding bill to the President's desk on time. In fact,
since Republicans took control of the House in 2011, the House has
never failed to pass a Defense Appropriations bill on time.
Just a few weeks ago, we passed H.R. 6157, the Department of Defense
Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2019, with an overwhelmingly
bipartisan 359-49 vote.
Today's resolution, Mr. Speaker, expresses the sense of this House
that failing to provide full, on-time, stable funding increases the
risk to our servicemembers and aids our adversaries. The resolution
expresses our commitment to ending the funding uncertainty our military
faces and urges the Senate to similarly complete its work so we can
provide the on-time funding our armed services require.
Mr. Speaker, we must stop forcing our men and women in uniform and
their families to pay the price for our dysfunction.
Today, Mr. Speaker, we will consider three resolutions.
H. Res. 995, which I have introduced, acknowledges the unprecedented
global threat environment we face and the negative impact these
continuing resolutions have had on our military's ability to confront
this environment and deter and, if necessary, defeat our enemies.
We will also consider H. Res. 994, offered by my colleague and fellow
member of the Armed Services Committee, Mr. Gallagher from Wisconsin.
Mr. Gallagher is a marine with two deployments to Al Anbar province in
Iraq. His resolution details the negative impact of CRs and funding
instability on the readiness of the U.S Marine Corps.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, we will consider H. Res. 998, offered by Mr.
Wittman of Virginia, chairman of the Seapower and Projection Forces
Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. Mr. Wittman's
resolution lays out the damage that the CRs and unpredictable funding
have done to the United States Navy.
Next week, Mr. Speaker, we will consider resolutions addressing the
impact of unstable funding on the United States Air Force and the
United States Army.
We know, Mr. Speaker, that not every Member of this body is on one of
the defense-related committees, but we also know that every Member of
this body is committed to the security of our Nation. I take the
opportunity today, along with my colleagues, to lay out in detail the
threats we face and the impacts our actions in this House can have on
our military's ability to keep us safe.
Reflecting on the challenges facing our Armed Forces, Secretary
Mattis put it this way: ``As hard as the last 16 years have been on our
military, no enemy in the field has done more to harm the readiness of
the U.S. military than the combined impact of the Budget Control Act's
defense spending cuts, worsened by us operating 9 out of the last 10
years under continuing resolutions.''
Secretary Mattis went on to explain the consequences of Congress'
failure to provide reliable, on-time, sufficient funding: ``Ships will
not receive the required maintenance to put to sea; the ships already
at sea will be extended outside of port; aircraft will remain on the
ground, their pilots not at the sharpest edge; and eventually
ammunition, training, and manpower will not be sufficient to deter
war.'' Not sufficient to defer war, Mr. Speaker.
No experience, Mr. Speaker, has had a greater impact on me during my
time as a Member of this body than having the Secretary of Defense
testify in front of us as members of the Armed Services Committee and
say that congressional abrogation of our constitutional duty to fund
our military is putting our servicemembers at greater risk.
While our military has suffered under this burden of continuing
resolutions and dangerous policies of our previous administration, our
adversaries have been making steady gains. Never before in recent
history have we seen the gap between our capabilities and those of our
adversaries widen at such a breathtaking pace--and not in our favor,
Mr. Speaker.
China is pursuing an aggressive strategy to overtake our military and
economic advantage globally. They are developing technologies that are
specifically targeted to diminish our ability to project our force.
They are developing weapons systems against which we may not be able to
defend.
{time} 1415
They have utilized deficiencies in our current CFIUS process to
attempt to acquire critical U.S. technology. Chinese companies like
Huawei and ZTE have made significant efforts to embed themselves in the
United States, putting our telecommunications networks and,
potentially, our defense supply chain at risk.
Militarily, economically, in cyberspace, in space, on land, in air,
and at sea, the Chinese have made clear their objective is to achieve
global preeminence, which means they must attempt to displace us.
The Russians continue to modernize their nuclear arsenal, as they
violate their commitments to us under the INF Treaty. They, too, are
developing advanced and threatening weapons systems and attempting to
exercise their hegemonic ambitions across Europe. They have violated
the borders and sovereignty of their neighbors. In the words of the
National Defense Strategy, they are making efforts ``to shatter the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization and use emerging technologies to
discredit and subvert democratic processes in Georgia, Crimea, and
eastern Ukraine.'' They have attempted to subvert our own democratic
processes, as we saw in last week's indictment of 12 members of the
GRU, Russian military intelligence.
We have seen in Russia and China a return to great power competition,
and 8 years of Obama-era policies facilitated these developments. At
the same time, we continue to face significant threats from rogue
regimes like Iran and North Korea.
The Iranians benefited tremendously from the payments they received
from the Obama administration, over $1.5 billion, when they entered
into the Obama nuclear deal. This deal paved the way for a nuclear-
armed Iran with no real verification provisions, no complete disclosure
of their past activity, no cessation of their enrichment activity, and
it lifted restrictions on their ballistic missile program.
President Trump was right to withdraw from this disastrous deal, but
we are still living with the consequences of an emboldened Iran,
enriched with U.S. taxpayer dollars and a pathway to a nuclear weapon.
Their support for terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah has grown,
while they continue to pose an existential threat to the State of
Israel.
The North Koreans, similarly, continue to pose a serious threat, Mr.
Speaker, with an arsenal of nuclear weapons, an ongoing ballistic
missile program, and continued pursuit of biological and chemical
weapons.
Despite recent success on the battlefield against ISIS, radical
Islamic terrorism continues to pose a threat to our Nation. We have got
troops deployed today, Mr. Speaker, around the globe in the fight
against terrorism.
As we face all of these threats, we are also living through an era of
increasingly rapid technological development. The very nature of
warfare is changing. The ability and the agility required to
successfully respond to these threats requires funding sufficiency and
certainty.
Mr. Speaker, that certainty simply cannot be provided through
continuous continuing resolutions. In the face of all these threats,
Mr. Speaker, we in this body must resolve not to add to the risk our
troops are facing. We must resolve to fulfill our constitutional duty
and provide sufficient, on-time, reliable funding.
It took many years for the readiness, manpower, and training crises
we face to develop. We in this House and in the Senate must be part of
the solution today and for many days and years into the future.
In closing, Mr. Speaker, I would like to read something that the
Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral John Richardson, said before the
House Armed
[[Page H6287]]
Services Committee last year in a hearing about the damage of
continuing resolutions:
``I have a hard time believing,'' he said, ``that I am sitting before
you now to discuss the potential that we might take steps to make our
sailors' missions more difficult, to give our adversaries more
advantage. . . . `'
Think about that, Mr. Speaker. That is what this debate is about.
That is what this resolution is about. Insufficient, unreliable funding
gives our adversaries an advantage. We must not be part of that any
longer. We must resolve to get our work done on time, in the House and
in the Senate, and to fulfill our constitutional obligation.
We must, in this Congress, Mr. Speaker, be worthy of the sacrifices
our men and women in uniform make for us every day.
Mr. Speaker, I urge the adoption of this resolution, and I reserve
the balance of my time.
Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I
may consume.
Mr. Speaker, to begin with, the resolution that is presented before
us is 100 percent accurate, and I completely agree with it.
We have had uncertain funding for going on almost 8 years now for the
Department of Defense. It has been a series of continuing resolutions,
two government shutdowns, multiple threatened government shutdowns, and
an unbelievable amount of uncertainty. From one month to the next, the
Pentagon does not know how much money they have to spend. That
uncertainty, without a doubt, has undermined our ability to provide an
adequate national security for this country.
So I agree with the maker of this motion that budget certainty would
help enormously in terms of preparing our national security--well,
preparing the men and women in our Armed Forces to face the threats
that are in front of us. Beyond that, there was a lot said in the
opening remarks there that I don't quite agree with.
Also, it is really important to sort of understand the context. Why
are we in this situation? Why do we have budget uncertainty year after
year?
I don't agree that it is simple incompetence or Congress just isn't
feeling like doing its job. We have deep-seated differences of opinion
about where to spend our money, and also, we have no fiscal policy as a
country.
Well, that is not true, actually. Our fiscal policy is really rather
clear. We want a balanced budget; we want tax cuts; and we don't want
to cut spending.
Everything you need to know about why we have this problem can be
contained in three votes that the United States House of
Representatives took over the course of about a 4-month period. As I
tell you about these three votes, I want you to know that 134
Republican Members of Congress voted for all three of these things.
Number one, a roughly $2 trillion tax cut. Number two, a budget deal
that increased spending by $500 billion. Some of that was for defense;
a lot of it wasn't. Then, in the ultimate irony, a week later, those
134 Members of Congress, Republican Members of Congress, voted for a
constitutional amendment to balance the budget. They want to cut taxes
by $2 trillion; they want to increase spending by $500 billion; and
they want a balanced budget.
And, oh, by the way, we are roughly $22 trillion in debt and running
up a deficit that is projected to go up over $1 trillion going forward.
That is not a responsible fiscal policy.
Now, I serve on the Armed Services Committee with all of my
colleagues who are here today, and I hear the same things that
Congresswoman Cheney hears about how our military is suffering under
the uncertainty.
The readiness crisis is 100 percent real. It is getting better as we
have gotten some funding the last couple years, but it is still a major
challenge. But the reason for all of that is because of decisions that
are made on the front end. You can't cut taxes by $2 trillion--after,
by the way, over the course of the 15 years prior, we had already cut
them by multiple trillion dollars--and then stand up and say DOD
doesn't have enough money. You cut revenue and then complained that you
don't have enough revenue. It doesn't really make sense.
The second point that I would make is it is not just the Department
of Defense that is suffering under budget uncertainty. There are a
whole bunch of different examples. I won't go into all of them, but the
entire discretionary budget suffers under this uncertainty. And one big
chunk of the discretionary budget is infrastructure, the bridges and
roads and airports and a whole bunch of other things that basically
enable our economy to function, which generates revenue and helps pay
for things like national security.
Also, we have got bridges collapsing all over the country. There are,
literally, United States citizens who have died as a result of our lack
of investment in infrastructure.
So it is not just the Department of Defense. If we are going to
address the uncertainty, if we are going to address the problems with
dealing with our national security strategy, we have to address fiscal
policy.
For going on 8 years now, we have been having this conversation in
the Armed Services Committee, and most times my Republican colleagues
sternly rebuke me for raising issues that are supposedly not directly
related to the Armed Services, saying: We are the Armed Services
Committee. We are not here to talk about the debt or the deficit or
infrastructure or any of that other stuff.
Well, it all goes together, and what we as a congressional body have
to do is come up with a plan that actually makes sense, that actually
there is money for. If we do that, then we can have the stability for
the Department of Defense.
Now, I will tell you, if we are $22 trillion in debt--and the deficit
is projected to be pretty close to $1 trillion this year and quickly
north of $1 trillion going forward--we are going to have to deal with
that problem or there is not going to be as much money as we'd like for
defense or infrastructure or education--or anything, for that matter.
So we have to address the fiscal irresponsibility of our budgeting
process across the very long period of time, and certainly we can't
keep cutting taxes.
Now, as far as what does that National Security Strategy look like,
as was described, we face an incredibly complex threat environment. I
agree with that.
I don't agree that getting rid of the Iran nuclear deal so that Iran
can pursue nuclear weapons with absolutely no inhibition whatsoever is
a step forward in the right direction, nor do I agree that sitting down
with Kim Jong-un and agreeing, basically, to back off of a whole bunch
of things and getting nothing in return--I know that, in the
President's mind, North Korea is denuclearized, but they are not. They
haven't taken a single, solitary step in that direction.
Lastly, the final point I want to make is the complex threat
environment that we face is extraordinarily difficult. I will tell you
one thing of which I am 100 percent confident. There is no way that, on
our own, the United States of America can confront that threat
environment.
We need allies. We need friends. We need countries that are willing
to work with us to meet the national security threats that we face,
which is why the trip that the President just took is so troubling. He
spent the first part of it telling our allies, basically--sorry, I
can't say that on the floor--just saying that he didn't need them,
insulting them over and over and over again, allies that we are really
going to need to meet the threats not just from Russia, but China, the
terrorism threat that was described.
Our NATO allies are going to be crucially important to that, and the
President, at one point, said he's not even sure why we are in NATO,
insulted the EU and insulted all of our allies, and then turned right
around and sided with Vladimir Putin against our intelligence
communities, against our Justice Department, on the subject of Russian
interference in our election.
So, in a complex threat environment, you don't want to make it easier
for a country like Russia that threatens us and make it more difficult
for countries ranging from Canada to Germany to Great Britain, who
actually want to work with us, to meet that threat environment. So, on
that point, we need more allies, and we certainly don't need to take
the side of a dictator who
[[Page H6288]]
is threatening our country over our own intelligence agencies. That is
not in the best interest of national security.
Overall, we have to have a fiscal policy. We can have the argument
about the defense budget all we want, but if we keep cutting taxes and
have no policy whatsoever to get our budget even close to under
control, we are not going to have the money to spend on our national
security needs or other things.
Now, I will close it out with this. General Mattis, Secretary Mattis,
likes to say, ``We can afford survival.'' That is a nice phrase.
Unfortunately, it is a little bit unclear on what it means because,
what do you have to spend to survive? By and large, DOD doesn't engage
in that sort of black-and-white way of looking at it: We spend this
money, we survive; we don't spend this money, we die.
What they do, and what they've said over and over again, is they
manage risk: If we don't spend the money here, that increases the risk
by this amount.
I think that is a better way of looking at it. It is not a matter of
whether or not we can afford survival, because we don't know exactly
what China is going to do or Russia or any of these other folks are
going to do or how we are going to manage it. It is a matter of
managing risk.
It is very true that, if we continue to have an uncertain defense
budget--heck, I would submit, if we continue to have an uncertain
fiscal policy and an uncertain infrastructure budget, we are increasing
the risk of our country's ability not so much to survive but to prosper
and live in a peaceful world.
So this resolution is fine. It is horribly insufficient to actually
give us the certainty and predictability in our budget that we need. To
get there, we need to honestly address the fiscal challenges that our
Nation faces and come up with a coherent fiscal policy that takes into
account all the needs of our country in a balanced and coherent way so
that we manage those risks in the best way possible and in the best
interests of the American people.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Ms. CHENEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume,
and just want to say I enjoy very much the opportunity to serve with my
colleague, Mr. Smith, on the Armed Services Committee, and I appreciate
his support for this important resolution.
{time} 1430
We disagree on several points. I know that Mr. Smith knows that the
defense budget is not what is driving the debt in this country. I don't
disagree that we need a fiscal policy and that we have got to address
our fiscal concerns, but it is also the case that we have the votes,
that we have the ability, as we have done in this House and as they
could do in the Senate.
We saw, in the Senate Appropriations Committee, the Defense
Appropriations bill passed out 30-1. So it is a bipartisan bill that we
ought to pass. We passed it across this floor. We ought to pass it
across the Senate floor. We ought to get it to the President's desk so
that he can sign it, instead of being in a situation where we are
holding it hostage to a whole range of other issues and concerns.
Mr. Smith and I do have big disagreements. You know, to talk about
somehow that the tax cuts are impacting the Defense budget ignores the
history of the fact that the Defense budget was being strangled when
Barack Obama was in office. And as far as I know, nobody is accusing
President Obama of cutting taxes too much.
So the challenge that our military is facing and the challenge of
reliable sufficient funding isn't directly tied to tax policy. I think
what we have got to do is decouple these things.
If we don't get the funding for the military right, as Mr. Smith
said--you know, Secretary Mattis has said we can afford survival.
Another way to say that is if we don't get this right, nothing else we
do will matter. And the situation is so serious and so significant that
if we let ourselves one more time go down the path of holding this
funding hostage to other concerns and other issues, basically holding
our men and women in uniform hostage, I would submit that we are not
doing our job, and we are not fulfilling our constitutional obligation.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr.
Byrne), my colleague from the Rules Committee and from the Armed
Services Committee.
Mr. BYRNE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H. Res. 995.
As many of us have stood on this floor and said, We have planes that
can't fly, ships that can't sail, and troops that can't deploy.
Under the Obama administration, we saw an alarming trend where we
allowed our Armed Forces to be hollowed out, and we allowed a critical
readiness crisis to develop.
Over the last 2 years, members of the House Armed Services Committee
and others have fought tirelessly to ensure our military gets the level
of funding they need, not only to fix our current readiness crisis but
also to build up our force to a size to match the current threat
environment, which is the most complex one we have faced since World
War II.
While I am proud of the work we have done so far to raise the top
line Defense number, there is another critical piece to the puzzle.
Continuing resolutions are just as detrimental to our national security
as the Budget Control Act caps. Every day we don't pass the Defense
Appropriations bill, we are denying resources to our servicemembers and
making it harder for them to do their job.
Continuing resolutions and budgetary uncertainty also end up costing
the taxpayers more money. The Secretary of the Navy has said that the
Department of Navy alone wasted $4 billion since 2011 because of
continuing resolutions. That is $4 billion of real money that could
have been used to fund more ships, more planes, or more maintenance.
Under a continuing resolution, the Department of Defense and the
services are not allowed to enter into any new contracts. Every year we
have delayed the timelines of scheduled maintenance availabilities and
procurement schedules. All of these things are crucial to maintain
deployment rotation and ensure the U.S. presence is felt around the
world.
Compare this to your personal finances. For half the year you are
able only to pay your current expenses, like car payments and
utilities. You know you will get money later in the year for new things
you want to buy or invest in; however, you don't know how much you will
get or whether you will get it. Does that sound frustrating and
ineffective?
We have the world's greatest military. Yet, we are hamstringing them
with an irresponsible funding cycle. Let me put this in very blunt
terms. The inability of Congress to pass government funding bills on
time has endangered the health, safety, and lives of our
servicemembers. Just look at the aviation accidents and recent
collisions of Navy ships. These incidents can be blamed, at least in
part, on the readiness crisis.
As Members of Congress, we have a responsibility here. We are not the
ones on the front lines and deployed around the world, but we play an
integral role: getting those servicemembers their funding on time.
In a time where we face great power competition with Russia and
China, radical Islamic extremism in the Middle East, and Iran and North
Korea, there is no shortage of national security priorities.
Here, in the House, we have passed our Defense funding bill on time
yet again, but we need our colleagues in the Senate to follow suit. I
know it is a priority for my Alabama colleague, Senate Appropriations
Chairman Richard Shelby, to get our military funded, so I hope we can
do our job responsibly and on time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Ms. CHENEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the
gentleman from Alabama.
Mr. BYRNE. Mr. Speaker, let's not let petty political games get in
the way of funding our Nation's military, protecting our
servicemembers, and ensuring the safety and security of the American
people. Let's pass this resolution and demonstrate our strong
commitment to passing a Defense funding bill before the end of the
fiscal year.
Mr. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I
may consume
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Mr. Speaker, just a couple of quick points. The Department of Defense
budget is 18 percent of the overall Federal budget, and you would be a
pretty bad businessperson if you looked at your books and said that a
thing that takes 18 percent of the budget has nothing do with the
deficit. It all adds up piece by piece. It absolutely is a big part of
what contributes to us having a deficit and a debt, so we cannot ignore
what we spend on Defense and how it impacts everything else.
Now, you can make that policy decision that, you know, defense is
just so much more important than infrastructure or healthcare or
education or Social Security or Medicare or whatever, but to say that
it doesn't impact the debt and the deficit is not, well, fiscally
accurate.
And second, as far as tax cuts are concerned, yes, President Obama
cut taxes repeatedly and by way, way too much and contributed to this
problem. Most notably was in 2012 with the permanent extension of all
of the Bush tax cuts. So, we did that, and then with the stimulus
package back in 2009, there was about a $400 billion tax cut.
We have repeatedly, in this Congress--and I didn't vote for any of
that. We have repeatedly in this Congress prioritized tax cuts over the
men and women who serve in the military. That is what I find so ironic.
We hear all these complaints about how we are underfunding the
military, the complaints about readiness, and what the gentleman from
Alabama said, when he talked about the impact that this is having on
the men and women who serve, he is absolutely right. The continuing
resolutions are devastating to the way we try to function within the
Department of Defense.
I will again submit that they are also devastating to every other
aspect of our discretionary budget, and that should not be ignored. But
to cut taxes by trillions upon trillions of dollars and then look up
and say, Gosh, how come we don't have enough revenue to fund our
defense is hypocritical.
All I am asking is: Make a choice. If, in fact, we need to spend the
amount of money on DOD that you are all saying we are, then let's raise
the revenue and pay for it, okay. That is fine. That is a choice. But
to both say, we are going to give away massive tax cuts primarily to
the wealthiest people in this country, who, by the way, have been doing
quite well for quite some time, and then come up and say, Gosh, it is
just so irresponsible that we are not funding defense, that is not
consistent and it is not a fiscal policy.
And, again, I will come back to the fact that this is all very well
and good. I mean, what all these resolutions are saying is if we could
just pass the Defense Appropriations bill, then everything would be
fine. We have a $4 trillion plus budget. We have multiple layers of
problems here. If we do not address the underlying fiscal issues that
we are facing that I have described, then the men and women who serve
in our military will face the brutal uncertainty that is very
accurately described by my Republican colleagues over and over and over
again.
We have to address the underlying issue, not just come out and make
empty statements about how we want to support our men and women in the
military after putting in place a budget and a tax policy that makes it
next to impossible to do that. We have to deal with the issue up front
so that we are in a position to actually provide what my colleagues
have said we need to provide.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
Ms. CHENEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, again, I appreciate very much my colleague's support for
this important resolution. I look forward to having his support as we
go forward on these resolutions that lay out very clearly how important
it is to fund our men and women in uniform.
He and I have very serious and significant disagreements over tax
policy. I believe--I know that the private sector is the engine of
growth in this economy; that tax cuts, in fact, generate economic
growth, and economic growth generates revenue; that if you really want
to deal with the debt in this Nation, then you have got to generate
additional revenue.
The way to do that is not by taxing people more. It is by letting
people keep more of what they earn so they in fact can reinvest so we
can see the kind of economic growth we need.
But I would say my colleague's focus on that issue today points out
the problem that we have been facing. We face a number of critically
important challenges in this body and in the United States Senate, but
we have got to ensure that we don't hold our men and women in uniform
hostage while we deal with those other issues.
We are, today, not at a time when we have got an international
environment that is one in which we can feel safe in our predominance,
in which we can feel safe in our ability to continue to project our
power. We are in one where the threat to us is growing, and it is
significant.
When you have got servicemen and -women, when you have got service
chiefs, when you have got the Secretary of Defense telling us things
like: our adversaries have weapons systems we might not be able to
defend against, that policies and budget processes and votes that are
undertaken in this body are increasing the risk to our men and women in
uniform, those are things we have got to pay attention to. And I would
say we have an obligation to pay attention to those things that is
higher than any other obligation that we have.
We have to commit, Mr. Speaker, to fulfilling that constitutional
obligation to providing full and on time funding for our troops.
And, Mr. Speaker, I would like to close today with something that
General Dunford said in his testimony before the House Armed Services
Committee earlier this year. He said: ``The Joint Force must continue
to receive sufficient, sustained, and predictable funding for the
foreseeable future to restore our competitive advantage and ensure we
never send our sons and daughters into a fair fight.''
Every single time we have to deploy our forces, Mr. Speaker, we must
ensure that they have everything they need to prevail.
Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of the resolution. I urge a
continued focus on completing the Defense funding process on time and
getting the bill to the President's desk.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the
gentlewoman from Wyoming (Ms. Cheney) that the House suspend the rules
and agree to the resolution, H. Res. 995.
The question was taken; and (two-thirds being in the affirmative) the
rules were suspended and the resolution was agreed to.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
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