[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 192 (Tuesday, December 3, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6793-S6794]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             APPROPRIATIONS

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, this week, House Democrats are 
continuing their 3-year-long quest to impeach the President and are 
continuing to obstruct urgent bipartisan legislation. This has been the 
Democrats' strategy for months now--obsess over impeachment and 
obstruct everything else.
  Take the USMCA, which would create 176,000 new American jobs. Speaker 
Pelosi has been stalling it for months, constantly saying she is 
optimistic or getting close or almost there. For months, it has been 
this broken record. I understand, this very week, while the Speaker of 
the House has apparently flown to Madrid to discuss climate change, she 
keeps offering the same empty rhetoric that is no different than what 
she was saying 10 months ago. American workers have waited and waited 
and waited. House Democrats keep stalling.
  Consider the appropriations process. Even after signing a bipartisan 
agreement to forgo poison pills, Democrats ignored it and thrust other 
policy disagreements back into the appropriations process. They voted 
twice to filibuster funding for our Armed Forces. Well, last week, 
Chairman Shelby and Chairwoman Lowey reached an important agreement to 
address allocations at the subcommittee level. This was an essential 
step. It will take a lot of work and cooperation to move the 
appropriations process forward in the short time ahead of us. Our 
Democratic colleagues will finally need to rediscover that our men and 
women in uniform are more important than their partisan fights.
  Speaking of our Armed Forces, let's talk about the NDAA. Congress has 
passed an annual defense authorization bill every year since 1961. 
Every year, after some jousting and jostling, the Congress has put 
aside all of our extraneous disagreements to fulfill one of our most 
basic responsibilities and reauthorize our Armed Forces, but remember 
the Democrats' new playbook: Obsess over impeachment, obstruct 
everything else, including, apparently, even our troops and national 
security.

[[Page S6794]]

Imagine being so far left that even the routine annual bill to 
reauthorize the U.S. military is some controversial thing you have to 
be goaded into supporting. House Democrats abandoned longstanding 
traditions of compromise and larded up the NDAA with partisan policy 
riders. For what appears to be the first time ever in either Chamber, 
they passed an NDAA on a pure party-line vote--the first purely 
partisan NDAA in 58 years. In the Senate, by contrast, Chairman Inhofe 
and Ranking Member Reed collaborated on a bill that passed the Senate 
86 to 8. We certainly did our part to stick with an annual tradition.
  Now my colleague, the Democratic leader, is moving the goalpost and 
enabling Speaker Pelosi's reckless strategy. Longstanding bipartisan 
precedent says that in order for any subject outside the Armed Services 
Committees' jurisdiction to travel in the final NDAA, the chairmen and 
ranking members of the actual committee of jurisdiction need to give 
bipartisan signoff. This basic test protects the Senate; it protects 
our committees; and it protects the NDAA from being held hostage for 
specific partisan ends. Every year, dozens, if not hundreds, of 
provisions meet that bar. Those that don't end up on the cutting room 
floor.

  Thus far, in the Senate, Chairman Inhofe and Ranking Member Reed have 
worked hard to respect those norms, but this year, the Speaker of the 
House and my colleague the Democratic leader want to scrap this 
precedent, undermine the committees, and demand special treatment for 
partisan priorities that have no business being crammed into this 
essential legislation for our Armed Forces.
  We are talking about a new taxpayer-funded benefit for all Federal 
employees and sweeping changes to U.S. foreign policy. This is what 
they are trying to shoehorn into the NDAA. It is not good-faith 
policymaking, not when these demands pour in at the eleventh hour over 
must-pass legislation for our servicemembers. It is just political 
theater that is taking precedence over our Armed Forces. So, right on 
cue, I am sure we will hear made-for-TV histrionics about all of the 
new provisions the Speaker and the Democratic leader want to shove into 
this bill--bypassing hearings, markups, and negotiations between 
chairmen and ranking members.
  We will probably keep hearing the dishonest myth that the Republicans 
are soft on Russia--never mind that a few years ago, President Obama 
was mocking the Republicans for being too tough on Russia; never mind 
that this administration has aggressively pursued sanctions, expelled 
Russian operatives, provided lethal defensive weapons to Georgia and 
Ukraine, taken major steps to protect our elections, and more. It is 
just more bluster and histrionics to distract from the core fact that 
is crystal clear to the entire country: There is no legislation, no 
matter how crucial, that the Democrats will not obstruct in order to 
pick fights with this President.
  The very bills the Democrats are resisting are essential for our 
national defense strategy--for our needed investments in cutting-edge 
weapons, in the European Defense Initiative, in modernizing our nuclear 
force. They are all critical for competing with, deterring, and 
defending against Russia and China. If the Democrats divide Congress 
over nondefense issues and kill these bills, they will have played 
right into our adversaries' hands. If we jettison the longstanding 
bipartisan process for negotiating the NDAA, they will have made this 
basic national security requirement far more difficult in the future.
  Our Democratic colleagues must understand that national security 
comes before ``the resistance.'' The country cannot afford this new 
tactic of obsessing over impeachment and obstructing everything else. I 
hope this changes soon.

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