[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 177 (Wednesday, November 6, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6439-S6440]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Appropriations

  Mr. President, I have been asked several times in the last couple, 3 
days where we are with regard to what I consider to be the most 
significant bill of the year every year, which is the Defense 
authorization bill, and I have been having to give the same answer for 
the last 3 or 4 days, and it is unfortunate, but I think it is going to 
ultimately happen.
  Last week, I came down here and I talked about why we needed to pass 
the National Defense Authorization Act and why a full-year continuing 
resolution is totally unacceptable and would be devastating to us. I am 
back here again because in the last week, nothing has changed. That is 
not OK. The reason it has not changed is because many of the Members of 
the House are off someplace. I think they are in Afghanistan or 
someplace on a trip when we are in the middle of negotiating.
  Let me just make sure we all understand what I am talking about. For 
58 consecutive years, we passed the national defense authorization 
bill, so we will ultimately pass it. We did that. And I have to say 
that this is not a partisan statement I am making about this because 
the House and Senate Democrats and Republicans did a good job.
  I particularly want to thank Jack Reed. Jack Reed and I--I am the 
chairman of the committee, and he is the ranking member--did our bill 
in record time. We set a record, actually, a year ago. We did this in a 
shorter period of time than has been done in 40 years, and we were 
anticipating doing that again. We did our bill in the Senate, and 
everything came out fine. We ended up passing it with only two votes in 
opposition to it. So there is no reason we are not doing it right now.
  The reason this is critical is that if for some reason we didn't get 
this done until December, our kids over there would not be funded. I am 
talking about payroll and everything else. Our military would stop in 
its tracks. That is not going to happen. One reason we know it is not 
going to happen is because we introduced the short version of the bill 
that upset everyone. That was taking everything out of the bill that 
had nothing to do with defense and just doing it. That is getting kind 
of in the weeds, and it is complicated. Nevertheless, we need to get to 
it just in a matter of days now, as soon as the members of the 
committee in the House are back in town.
  What kind of a message do my Democratic colleagues think they are 
sending our troops who lay their lives on the line every day if we 
don't prioritize their pay, their housing, and their programs to care 
for their families while they are away? What kind of a message do our 
Democratic colleagues think we are sending our allies and our partners, 
those who depend on us? What kind of a message are we sending those who 
are not our allies?
  This is the problem we are having. I say to the Democrats in the 
House--because it is not the Republicans in the House, and it is not 
the Democrats in the Senate. This is just the Democrats in the House. 
We passed our bill in a bipartisan way here in the Senate, and we just 
need to get this finished. It is the most important bill of the year.
  Now they claim we are not supporting our partners in Syria, and then 
they turn around on a dime and refuse to authorize the very funds that 
keep our partners safe and effective in the fight against ISIS.
  I am concerned about the kind of message our colleagues are sending 
to our adversaries. Our adversaries enjoy this dysfunction. They want 
defense funding mired in partisan debate. They don't want us to catch 
up.
  If we don't take action now, partisan bickering over supporting our 
troops and investing in national defense will be our Achilles' heel.
  At the end of the day, these challenges won't go away because we want 
them to go away. They are out there. To meet these challenges, our 
troops need equipment, training, and weapons.
  Everything is outlined in this blueprint. This is the blueprint that 
is the National Defense Strategy of the Nation. This was put together 
by an equal number of Democrats and Republicans well over a year ago as 
to how we want to handle our national defense and what our strategy is 
going to be. The President adopted this, it is a good strategy, and we 
have been following this in our committee to the letter.
  We have this National Defense Strategy Commission report. There is a 
quote from GEN Creighton Abrams, a military leader from World War II on 
through Vietnam. His name may sound familiar because the Abrams tank 
was named after him. He talked about how after World War II the United 
States failed to properly modernize and train our military. And who 
paid for it? Our soldiers, airmen, Marines, and sailors. They paid for 
it with their lives. He said: ``The monuments we raise to their heroism 
and sacrifice are really surrogates for the monuments we owe ourselves 
for our blindness to reality . . . for our unsubstantiated wishful 
thinking about how war could not come.''
  That is exactly what happened. It was true then, and it is true now. 
So to say that these things can wait while the House goes on another 
recess or to use them as a bargaining chip or to forgo them to instead 
wage war on our own President is at best a waste of time and resources 
and at worse a dangerous abdication of our constitutional duty.
  Unfortunately, the truth is, if we kick the can down the road on 
these defense policy and funding bills, we are just adding another 
challenge to our defense.
  We were off to a great start last year. Defense appropriations were 
enacted on time for the first time in a decade, and, as I said, we 
passed the NDAA over here faster than we had ever done in 40 years.
  All of the service leaders who came before the Senate Armed Services 
Committee said that having on-time appropriations and authorization is 
critical to rebuilding the force. We have the National Defense Strategy 
and the commission report as a roadmap. We have a budget deal. There is 
no reason we can't get this done. There is no good reason our 
Democratic colleagues are dragging their feet. Our senior military 
leaders said that a continuing resolution is absolutely the worst thing 
we can do.
  By the way, a lot of people don't know what a continuing resolution 
is. If you pass a continuing resolution because you can't get 
appropriations bills passed, then you are continuing what you did the 
previous year. That doesn't work when you are carrying on a military 
because the needs we have in the coming year are not the same needs. We 
could have those programs already complete. Yet we would still have 
funding for them under a continuing resolution. It is a separate issue, 
but it is one that is critically important today and is being 
considered today.
  So I am surprised that the Democrats in the House--not the Senate. 
The Senate Democrats and Republicans worked very well together. I am 
surprised that the Democrats in the House are willing to resort to a 
full-year CR. It is throwing in the towel. It is quitting when our 
troops need us the most.
  My Republican colleagues in the House, led by House Armed Services 
Ranking Member Thornberry, put out this document that talks about how 
America's military will be damaged under a full-year CR. No one has 
talked about this before. I am glad he came out with it. I will mention 
five examples that he mentioned.
  It would extend the pilot shortage in our Air Force--extend, because 
we are still climbing out of the current shortage. We have a problem. 
We have a problem in the Air Force, and we have a problem everywhere we 
are using flying equipment, whether it is fixed wing or otherwise. This 
is a problem, and it is a serious problem. If we were to somehow have 
to do a full-year CR, that problem wouldn't be solved.
  It would prevent the military from managing its personnel, including 
necessary efforts to grow the force, pay for military moves, and lock 
in bonuses for our troops. That won't happen if we end up with a full-
year CR.
  It would force the Navy to cancel ship maintenance and training. 
Repairs for 14 ships would be canceled.
  It would worsen the existing munitions shortage by preventing DOD 
from buying more than 6,000 weapons.
  Finally, we would fall even further behind our competitors on 
hypersonic weapons, artificial intelligence, and next-generation 
equipment that we need to face all the challenges I just talked about.

[[Page S6440]]

  With regard to hypersonic weapons, as an example, I saw the other day 
for the first time--in fact, I used this picture down on the Senate 
floor. A hypersonic weapon is kind of the weapon of the future. It is 
one that works at 5 times the speed of sound. It is a type of 
artillery. It is a type of munition.
  Prior to the last administration, the Obama administration, we were 
ahead of our peer competitors, which are China and Russia. Now we are 
actually behind China and Russia. That is how serious this is.
  I talk to people in the real world. When I go back to Oklahoma, I 
talk to people, and they assume that we in the United States have the 
very best of everything. We don't. We have allowed other countries--
primarily China and Russia--to catch up with us and actually put us 
behind in some areas, not to mention the waste of taxpayer dollars.
  A CR wastes billions of dollars by creating repetitive work, 
injecting uncertainty into the contracting process, and forcing rushed 
work at year's end. It is something that is totally unnecessary and is 
something that should not be happening.
  I have been meeting with my fellow conferees regularly--more than we 
ever have before NDAA negotiations. I am making sure we have a backup 
plan if we can't reach an agreement on the NDAA, but time is running 
out.
  Here is the reality. We only have 20 legislative days left in the 
Senate. The House has even less than that because of the recess week 
they took. If the House sends us articles of impeachment, that would 
eat up all the time in December and could spill into January. That 
would mean we go beyond the deadline our troops need to be funded, and 
that is a reality we never had to face before.
  We don't have time left. We need to make these bills a priority the 
way we always have done before. The NDAA has passed for the last 58 
years. It is the most important thing we do each year.
  In June, the Senate bill passed 86 to 8. That is a landslide, and 
that was not down party lines; that was on a bipartisan basis. I am 
grateful to the Senate Democrats for their partnership and their work 
in creating and passing this bipartisan bill. Jack Reed is my 
counterpart over there. He is the ranking member in the Senate Armed 
Services Committee. We worked hand in glove throughout this process and 
even set records. We did our job, and it has to be completed in the 
House. This happened in line with the best traditions of the Senate 
Armed Services Committee--a tradition that spans almost six decades.
  Usually, this is a bipartisan process; both sides give and take. So 
it concerns me to see partisan politics being inserted into this must-
pass bill when we go to conference between the House and the Senate. It 
concerns me to see Democrats filibustering Defense appropriations to 
prove a political point. It concerns me to see them prioritizing their 
misguided attempts to undo the results of the 2016 election through 
impeachment, instead of taking care of our troops with the NDAA. If we 
can't keep Defense authorizations free of partisan gridlock, what kind 
of message does that send to Americans who rely on our troops for 
protection and our allies who rely on us?
  I said before: The world is watching. We are sending a message. We 
need to make that a successful message.
  Let me say one more thing about the skinny bill. This is now a 
reality. When I filed this, we thought the chances we would have to use 
that were very remote. If they should go through with this thing they 
are threatening to do over on the House side--an impeachment process--
people don't realize that if you want to impeach somebody, it not a 
simple vote of the majority. It is the second step that is significant. 
If they impeach, they don't have to have any evidence, any 
documentation, any problem at all if they just want to get the majority 
of people and say: Let's impeach the President, they can say: We will 
impeach the President.
  The problem there is, then it comes over to the Senate, and the 
Senate has to go through this long process, and that is what we would 
be competing with when we are not getting the Defense authorization 
bill done. The skinny bill is important. It is now filed. It is ready 
to pass, if we should have to do that. Nobody wants to do it, but we 
may end up having to do it. That is the good news and the bad news. 
This is the most important bill of the year. We need to get it passed.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the Armed 
Services Committee for his bipartisan work with my senior Senator, Jack 
Reed, year after year on the National Defense authorizations.