[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 203 (Monday, December 16, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7043-S7046]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





                          LEGISLATIVE SESSION

                                 ______
                                 

  NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2020--CONFERENCE 
                                 REPORT

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Cloture having been invoked, the Senate will 
resume legislative session on the conference report to accompany S. 
1790.
  The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, we are here today to pass the NDAA, the 
National Defense Authorization Act. It has just passed the procedural 
vote so we are ready for the vote that is going to take place tomorrow.
  It is the 59th year in a row that we will be passing the NDAA, and 
that is because it is the most important bill Congress will be doing 
all year and one that fulfills our constitutional responsibilities, and 
that is to defend America.
  There is a document nobody reads anymore that is called the 
Constitution. If you read that document, it tells you what we are 
supposed to be doing here, which is providing for the common defense 
or, simply put, defending America and all who call it home.
  This conference report does exactly that. It is a testament to the 
good work we can accomplish when we work together, and I am talking 
about Democrats and Republicans of both parties in the House and 
Senate. The bill has been a long time coming. We started working on it 
last January, 11 months ago, holding hearings with military leaders 
about what resources they needed around the world. We started drafting 
it not long after, and in May we passed the bill out of our committee. 
We passed the bill out of committee by a 25-to-2 vote. That doesn't 
happen very often on big bills.
  In June, we debated on the floor and incorporated more than 90 
bipartisan amendments before it passed with an overwhelming bipartisan 
vote of 86 to 8. Then we started the conference where we have been 
working day in and day out since September. This year, we had twice the 
number of Big 4 meetings. Now, Big 4 meetings are with a Democrat and 
Republican from both the House and Senate getting together to iron out 
some of these problems, and there were a lot of problems with this 
bill. Anytime we have 90 bipartisan amendments we are considering while 
putting the bill together, that is a big deal. We had twice the number 
of Big 4 meetings and more than twice the number of staff-level 
meetings that we normally have working our way through over 1,500 
provisions within the bill.
  I say this to remind everyone that our committee and staff have been 
working on this bill tirelessly for nearly a full year, and now we are 
going to pass it. If I had to break it down, I would say this year's 
NDAA has two big overarching principles. First, it resources and aligns 
priorities to implement the blueprint for the National Defense Strategy 
Commission. This is it, the publication here, and this was put together 
by Democrats and Republicans a few years ago, laying out exactly what 
we have to have to adequately defend America.
  We follow this blueprint. We are still following it today, and it is 
working. This bipartisan document outlines the challenges we need to be 
prepared to meet, namely, strategic competition with China and Russia. 
This is something--and I don't say this critically of the previous 
administration, but President Obama's priorities were not the same as 
the priorities we normally had. It was not defending America. There 
were other projects he was concerned with, and as a result of this, if 
you take the last 5 years from 2010 to 2015, the amount of money going 
to the military from President Obama's budget was reduced in that 5-
year period by 25 percent. Keep in mind, while that was reduced by 25 
percent, China was increasing their spending by 83 percent. That has 
never happened before.
  Accordingly, the conference report funds the military at $738 
billion, in line with the bipartisan agreement I just described. So we 
are sticking with that. It is a good thing when you get a chance to get 
everyone together. There is always partisanship and all that, but when 
you get an outline like this, it is something that has worked and 
worked well.
  In addition, the NDAA authorizes $5.3 billion in emergency disaster 
recovery to help military installations. Occasionally, we have natural 
disasters. We had them in Nebraska, Florida, and North Carolina that 
inflicted great damage on our military bases in those areas.
  The Space Force is the President's big deal. It will help protect 
space and ensure America's dominance in this warfighting domain for 
years to come. It is interesting also. There are those who are 
criticizing it, and I had some reluctance at first because we are doing 
a good job in space. We have been doing a pretty good job in space for 
quite a while, but it is not all in one area. There is a psychological 
component. Our chief problems out there are China and Russia. China and 
Russia have their own space dominance in this Space Force, and just the 
fact that we don't have one is something that made people believe we 
didn't have an interest in the Space Force, and we are going to 
dominate Space Force. This is the first time we will have a new branch 
in government in over 70 years. The Space Force will help us protect 
space and ensure American dominance in the warfighting domain for years 
to come.
  To implement the national defense strategy, the NDAA reframes its 
priorities. It accelerates investment in efforts to modernize our Armed 
Forces, including creating hypersonic weapons, 5G, cyber, long-range 
missiles, and areas where we are at risk.
  I mention the hypersonic weapons. That is the state of the art and 
what we are doing right now. Prior to the last administration, we were 
ahead in hypersonic weapons. At the end of that administration years 
later, China and Russia were ahead. Now we are catching up. We are 
going to pass them. This bill is going to be a way to do this.
  The NDAA has strong support for nuclear modernization, preserving all 
three legs of the triad to maintain maximum deterrence against our 
adversaries. Our triad has been controversial for a long time, but it 
has worked, and there are some who would like to drop it down to just 
two forces as opposed to three, but we want to make sure we have the 
best. We want to make sure we can win in a nuclear battle.
  It also provides needed reforms to the way the Department of Defense 
does business. An efficient, effective Pentagon will help America 
retain and, in some cases, regain the competitive edge. We don't have 
the competitive edge around the world.

  I talk to people around the country. They always assume that America 
has the best of everything, and there was a time when we did. I think 
ever since World War II we were in that situation, but we have lost 
some of that edge, and this is what we are going to do; we are going to 
regain it.
  The legislation also keeps President Trump's promise to continue 
rebuilding the military. The legislation invests its equipment, 
resources, and training needed to restore American readiness. These 
investments mean we will have a larger Army, larger Navy, a more agile 
Air Force and a more lethal Marine Corps--a force that is ready to 
deter or, if necessary, defeat any threats that might come our way.
  That is something a lot of people think is extreme, but we are used 
to that. We learned our lesson in World War II. We have gone through 
several conflicts since that time, and we are not going to allow that 
to happen again. We are going to keep all of these forces strong. That 
is what the bill does to rebuild our military and realign to be able to 
compete with Russia and China.
  You go through and see the changing scenes all around the world. You 
go to the South China Sea and see China building islands out there. It 
is as if they are preparing for World War III, and some of our allies 
in that part of the world are wondering what we are doing. They don't 
see us out there, but we are. Now this bill puts us back in the 
running.
  I said this bill does two main things. The second part is the bill 
really looks out for our servicemembers and their families. To tell the 
story of what we do in that area is really to tell the story of two 
courageous military spouses. Those two military spouses are Janna 
Driver and Jane Horton.
  I have had the honor of knowing both of these women who represent 
hundreds of thousands of military spouses around the country. About 1 
year ago,

[[Page S7044]]

Janna Driver reached out to me because she had housing. This all 
started with privatizing housing. We privatized housing and everything 
went right for a few years and things started dropping down. People got 
greedy. We had 14 contractors that were busy doing this.
  Janna Driver was from Tinker Air Force Base. I had the honor of 
knowing her well because she came to me and reached out to me to share 
the horrible conditions she and her family were facing in their housing 
at Tinker Air Force Base.
  Let's back up a little. Privatized housing was something that was 
working, but things started slipping. Right now, we have done a lot of 
work with that. She told me about the mold in her unit, and she 
couldn't get a contractor to fix it. We are talking about 1 of the 14 
contractors that got the awards. We started looking into the problem 
and learned it was bigger than we thought. When Janna Driver came to 
me, we thought it was just at Tinker Air Force Base, but after that we 
found other places in Oklahoma. We have five major military 
establishments in Oklahoma, and we found they were all having some of 
these problems. Then I found out this was all over the Nation. So this 
was a serious problem she called to our attention.
  We got to work, holding hearings and inspecting homes and demanding 
answers. As a result, the NDAA includes a landmark overhaul of the 
military privatized housing system. The legislation gives military 
families the tools to demand accountability, and reengages military 
leadership. It is only natural that a lot of the military leadership 
would say: Well, we privatized it. Now it is their problem, not our 
problem. They kind of stepped aside. Well, they are back in the fight 
again to make sure contractors live up to their end of the bargain and 
give military families high-quality housing. That was my experience 
with Janna Driver.
  Then there was Jane Horton. I mentioned there were two heroes I 
learned to love over the years. In an event in Collinsville, OK, a 
little bit north of Tulsa, we had a townhall meeting over there, and I 
was getting ready to go to Afghanistan. This happened about 7 years 
ago. Jane Horton was there, the wife of someone who was in the 
military. As I was getting ready, and I mentioned I was going to go to 
Afghanistan, she told me her husband Chris was deployed there. I 
promised her I would visit with him while I was there in about a week's 
time. I never got that chance because Oklahoma Army National Guard SPC 
Chris Horton was killed on September 9, 2011. He was only 26 years old.
  After everything Jane Horton went through after losing her husband, 
she was then penalized by what we refer to as the ``widow's tax''--a 
dollar-for-dollar offset of benefits as a Gold Star spouse. She came to 
me, and we started working on it together to repeal it. Years after we 
restarted the process, this year's NDAA repeals the widow's tax in a 
fiscally responsible way. It does it over a period of time that is 
going to be doable.
  That is a fraction of the benefits it has for military families. The 
conference report provides a 3.1-percent pay raise for all troops. It 
is the largest pay raise we have had in a decade. The bill also 
improves access to childcare on military installations.
  It helps spouses transfer their professional licenses. Here is a 
problem people don't realize we have, and it is that the military 
member is going to be moved around every 2 or 3 years. When that 
happens, the spouse will go with the military member, but that spouse 
may be a trained professional and working as a second worker in the 
household. The problem is, there are a lot of States where nurses, for 
example, if the spouse is a nurse, they have to wait for 1 or 2 years' 
residency before they can actually practice in the State.
  Those are little things that nobody really thought of, and it is kind 
of discriminatory against our military. So that problem is not going to 
exist anymore.
  The bill continues critical reforms to fight sexual assault--we hear 
a lot about sexual assault--and misconduct and works to improve the 
military healthcare system. This bill does a lot.
  I have heard people say--there are people around, people who are 
actually in this body who don't really think we have a real obligation 
to spend so much time and money on our military. In fact, I have heard 
people say so many times: Well, wait a minute. The United States spends 
more money than China and Russia put together. That is true, but you 
have to realize why that is.
  We were just talking about housing. You know, China and Russia are 
communist countries. They don't care about helping people with housing. 
They don't care about healthcare for their people. All they do is give 
them an AK-47 to go out and kill people. The vast majority of what we 
spend on our military is spent on our people; other countries don't do 
that. They say you recruit a servicemember, but you retain a family by 
making our NDAA dedicated not only to the warfighter but also to their 
families.
  Lastly, there are a few other provisions outside of the jurisdiction 
of the Armed Services Committee, and they are worth highlighting in 
this bill. This has been happening now for 59 years. One of the reasons 
is that this is a bill that everybody knows is going to pass. I had 
doubts this year that it definitely was going to pass, but it did. A 
lot of people have difficulty getting something passed during the 
regular session but wait until the Defense authorization bill comes up, 
and then they will put it on there as an amendment. We have a lot of 
examples.
  There is the MARAD authorization. That is the maritime authorization. 
Senator Wicker from Mississippi put that in. He is the chairman of the 
Commerce Committee. Then we had the intelligence reauthorization. 
Senator Burr is the chairman of that committee. We have that as a part 
of this bill. Sanctions designed to punish Syria, Russia, North Korea, 
China, and all those countries, that would really be in the Foreign 
Relations Committee. Senator Risch is the chairman of that committee. 
It is in this bill.
  So the result is this is a good bill, and now we are going to pass 
it. This is the 59th year in a row we have passed the NDAA. It is one 
of the few authorization bills that passes year after year, and that is 
because everyone knows how important it is. It usually doesn't get 
bogged down in partisan fighting.
  This year, the process of getting to our final conference report was 
certainly tougher than most years. The first bill that came out of the 
House, there wasn't one Republican who voted for it on the floor, and 
they ended up supporting it. That is the way it happened this year. 
There were some moments we weren't sure we were going to be able to get 
one. It took a few months of hard-fought negotiations, but the end 
result is getting a bill that we are proud of.
  I thank Congressman Smith and Congressman Thornberry from the House 
and, most importantly, Senator Reed. Senator Reed is my counterpart. I 
am the chairman of the committee, and he is the ranking member of the 
committee. We worked together, and I am talking about hours and hours. 
My wife and I have been married now 60 years tomorrow. I saw more of 
Senator Reed during this time than I saw my own wife. We had a lot of 
time together working on things. We worked together on the 
controversial things, and they worked. We were successful.
  I also thank the members of the Armed Services Committee who put in 
good work to make sure the bill supports the military community and 
keeps America safe. I want to thank President Trump for his leadership 
in support of the legislation, especially the Space Force. I look 
forward to him signing this into law immediately.
  I would be remiss if I didn't thank the Armed Services Committee 
staff, especially the staff directors John Bonsell, for the majority; 
Liz King, for the minority; and my personal staff, who have worked 
countless hours to bring this bill to the floor today. Also under them, 
from the majority, we have 33 members of the Senate Armed Services 
Committee, and I think 15 members from the minority. That is a total of 
48 members.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record all 48 names of 
those heroes who participated.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       From my staff from the Senate Armed Services Committee: 
     John Wason, Tom Goffus, Stephanie Barna, Greg Lilly, Rick

[[Page S7045]]

     Berger, Marta Hernandez, Jennie Wright, Adam Barker, Augusta 
     Binns-Berkey, Al Edwards, Jackie Kerber, Sean O'Keefe, Tony 
     Pankuch, Brad Patout, Jason Potter, J.R. Riordan, Katie 
     Sutton, Eric Trager, Dustin Walker, Otis Winkler, Gwyneth 
     Woolwine, Katie Magnus, Arthur Tellis, Leah Brewer, Debbie 
     Chiarello, Gary Howard, Tyler Wilkinson, John Bryant, Patty-
     Jane Geller, Baher Iskander, Keri-Lyn Michalke, Jackie 
     Modesett, Soleil Sykes.
       And from the minority: Jody Bennett, Carolyn Chuhta, Jon 
     Clark, Jonathan Epstein, Jorie Feldman, Creighton Greene, 
     Ozge Guzelsu, Gary Leeling, Kirk McConnell, Maggie McNamara, 
     Bill Monahan, Mike Noblet, John Quirk, Arun Seraphin, Fiona 
     Tomlin.

  Mr. INHOFE. From my personal staff, we had Luke Holland, Andrew 
Forbes, Dan Hillenbrand, Jake Hinch, Don Archer, Kyle Stewart, Bryan 
Brody, Esther Salters, Devin Barrett, Leacy Burke, Wendi Price, Laurie 
Fitch, Whitney Folluo, Mark Powers, Brandon Ellis, and Charlotte 
Mitchell.
  And the floor staff, they are always back there. They work on all the 
bills, but they dropped everything to make this a reality: Laura Dove, 
Robert Duncan, Chris Tuck, Megan Mercer, Tony Hanagan, Katherine 
Foster, Brian Canfield, and Abigail Baker.
  Now, let's vote on this conference report, and let's have the vote be 
so overwhelming that there isn't a military family in America who could 
doubt our commitment to them. Let's use our vote to send a message as 
well to Russia and China that we are revitalizing American power so we 
can win the competition for influence that will shape the kind of world 
our children and grandchildren are going to live in.
  Kay and I have 20 kids and grandkids. They are the ones I am 
concerned about, as well as your kids and grandkids. We are not going 
to win with a strong military alone, but we will lose without one. That 
is what this NDAA will do: revitalize American military power so we can 
achieve our vision of a safe, prosperous, and free world. That is what 
this is all about. That is what we are going to do.
  Merry Christmas.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sullivan). The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. HOEVEN. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the National 
Defense Authorization Act. I want to begin by thanking the chairman of 
the Armed Services Committee and also his ranking member, Senator Jack 
Reed. I think Senator Inhofe and Senator Reed have both shown 
tremendous leadership on behalf of our men and women in uniform, 
working together in a bipartisan way.
  The Presiding Officer, as a member of our military still today, can 
certainly vouch for the importance of this legislation. The way they 
worked together and got this done, I think, is exactly the way people 
would want the chairman and ranking member of the Armed Services 
Committee to work on behalf of our military. So I thank the good 
Senator from Oklahoma and his ranking member. It is really an 
outstanding effort.
  This is a very important piece of legislation. Of course, it is 
something that we need to get done on behalf of our military, the 
finest men and women in uniform in the world. This is an incredibly 
important support. I thank not only the chairman and the ranking 
member, but I also thank all of my colleagues on the Armed Services 
Committee for their diligence and for their efforts to reach a 
conference agreement on this National Defense Authorization Act. This 
is a critical piece of legislation that supports our Armed Forces.
  This year, the conference agreed to $738 billion in overall funding 
authorization. I am a member of the Defense Appropriations Committee, 
so I work on the other side of the equation to make sure that those 
authorizations are funded. Obviously, this includes numerous provisions 
and investments that build readiness, modernize our force, and preserve 
our status as the world's preeminent military power.
  In addition to providing a 3.1-percent pay raise for our men and 
women in uniform--the largest increase in nearly a decade--the 
agreement also includes important provisions to support our 
servicemembers and veterans. I am proud to have worked on some of those 
and backed, of course, not only those provisions but other provisions 
that make this very good legislation for our men and women in uniform.
  Similar to legislation I helped introduce earlier this year, the NDAA 
extends TRICARE Reserve Select eligibility to all guardsmen and 
reservists, including those who also are Federal employees. That is 
effective beginning January 1, 2030. That is something that I know 
members of our Guard and Reserve felt was very important.
  It also includes the Military Widow's Tax Elimination Act, which 
repeals the current military widow's tax to ensure that surviving 
military spouses receive their full survivor benefits.
  Another bipartisan bill that I wrote together with the Senator from 
New Hampshire, Mrs. Jeanne Shaheen, the Air Traffic Controller Hiring 
Reform Act of 2019, is included in this legislation as well. It enables 
the FAA to prioritize the hiring of veterans and graduates of FAA-
Certified Collegiate Training Initiative schools, like the University 
of North Dakota John D. Odegard School of Aviation and Aerospace, and 
it removes the current 10-percent hiring pool limitation. That is very 
important for our universities that provide training in air traffic 
control, and it is very important for the FAA and for the safety of 
aviation in our country, making sure that we have qualified air traffic 
controllers out there managing air traffic in the national airspace.

  The NDAA also includes several more important measures that I was 
pleased to cosponsor, one that helps ensure that the children of 
National Guard and Reserve members have access to additional support 
services in school, as well as another provision that corrects the 
disparity in the U.S. Bankruptcy Code to protect veterans' benefits in 
the event they file for bankruptcy.
  There are many other important priorities in this legislation that go 
to my particular State, whether it is the MQ-9 program that our 
National Guard runs out of Hector Field in Fargo or whether it is the 
Global Hawk's mission at the Grand Forks Air Force Base or the B-52 and 
ICBM mission at Minot Air Force Base. All of these installations and 
our Guard, of course, play an incredibly important part in terms of the 
overall defense of our country, as well as so many other aspects.
  Things that we have come to rely on, whether it is flood, fire, 
hurricane, or anything else, who do you turn to first? It is always the 
National Guard. They are always there, and they are always ready. Of 
course, they do an amazing job when we send them overseas or in any 
military capacity, but they do such an amazing job for us in so many 
other situations. Like I said, in any kind of disaster, fire, flood, or 
emergency, they are there for us.
  The NDAA legislation also includes an amendment that I sponsored that 
requires the Air Force and the National Nuclear Security Administration 
to regularly report on their progress in developing the new ICBM and 
replacing its warhead. This measure will foster interagency cooperation 
and in turn help ensure the replacement for the Minuteman III is on 
schedule.
  Not only do we need to authorize these programs, but, as I said, we 
also need to provide the funding for them as well, which we do through 
Defense appropriations. As the Presiding Officer knows, we will be 
taking up that legislation soon, as well. That is the other side of the 
coin, that we need to make sure we get done this week, in a timely way, 
for the full year so that our military knows they have not only the 
authorization but the funding to move forward with these programs.
  There is no question that we have the finest military in the world 
and that we have the finest men and women who put everything on the 
line for us to serve in that military. We need to make sure we not only 
get these programs authorized, but that we fully appropriate the 
funding for those programs to support our tremendous men and women in 
uniform. There is no way for us to say thank you enough for all they 
do, but it is very important that we get our job done here and provide 
this very important support for them.
  With that, I thank you.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.


                           Order of Business

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that 
notwithstanding the provisions of rule XXII, at

[[Page S7046]]

11:45 a.m. on Tuesday, December 17, all postcloture time be considered 
expired on the conference report to accompany S. 1790 and that the 
Senate vote on the pending motion to waive the budget act, if 
applicable, prior to a vote on adoption of the conference report.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________