[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 221 (Tuesday, December 29, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7961-S7964]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT

  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I was disappointed last week when 
President Trump vetoed the NDAA.
  This will be the 60th year that we have had the NDAA. The NDAA is the 
National Defense Authorization Act, and I have said so many times, 
countless times--on the floor of the House and on the floor of the 
Senate--that this is the most important bill that we have. Some people 
don't agree with that, but I do.

[[Page S7962]]

  That is what we are supposed to be doing here. We are supposed to be 
defending America. And there is a lot to do. We are in the most 
threatening situation that we have ever been in.
  I sometimes look back and think of the good old days of the Cold War 
when you had two superpowers out there. We knew what they had; they 
knew what we had. Mutual assurance of destruction meant something at 
that time. If you kill us, we kill you, and everyone is happy.
  But that is living in the past. But anymore now, with the weaponry 
that is out there, you can get one outside group that doesn't have any 
resources at all, and they have the ability to wipe out another 
country. So it is a real threat that we are up against.
  I do chair the committee called the Senate Armed Services Committee, 
and, of course, I have been very active in the National Defense 
Authorization Act every year since--well, since 1987. It is a long 
time.
  So I am proud of the conference report that we had. The NDAA right 
here--our vote in this Senate was 84 to 13. Wow. You can't find that 
kind of togetherness in a cause anywhere else. But it puts members of 
the families of the military first.
  I share President Trump's frustration about section 230. I know that 
it is a complicated thing. The majority of people in America don't know 
what that is all about, but section 230 is something that has nothing 
to do with the military--nothing at all.
  The committee that I chair is the Armed Services Committee. That 
would be found in the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee. The 
Judiciary Committee is chaired by Senator Lindsey Graham. He does a 
great job of chairing that. That is where any kind of reform in section 
230 should come from.
  I agree that the President should have the authority to determine 
troop levels. That is what we have in this bill. We have the President 
making those decisions. That is why we made sure that the final NDAA 
gave the President very broad authority in determining troop levels all 
around, and we have looked at them in Western Europe and Eastern 
Europe. We have looked at them in Ethiopia--in Afghanistan and other 
places around the world.
  So we look at what we have done, and I was going to mention--I have 
been down here several times talking about the President and what he 
has done and the great job that he has done for the United States. And 
I am going to wind up with some comments on a card that I put together. 
I put this card together back 2 years ago, talking about the top 10 
Trump accomplishments. I think it is important that people remember 
that. We have a lot of people down here forgetting about all the really 
good things that have happened, so I am going to talk about that in a 
minute.
  But I am here today because we have to pass the NDAA. This would be 
the 60th year in a row that we have the NDAA, and it is necessary to 
have. It is the most important bill of the year. I have believed this 
for a long time. You have heard me say it before.
  I always stand with our troops. The military servicemembers and their 
families will suffer if we don't enact it for the 60th year. If the 
NDAA is not passed, more than 200,000 military families will see 
smaller paychecks in January because the special pays and the bonuses 
for hazard pay are all part of this bill.
  Additionally, it would hurt the areas where the military is having 
the most serious problem. In a way, it is kind of a mixed bag because 
we have--prior to the pandemic coming along, and that was in about 
March of this year--before that happened, we had the best economy, I 
could argue, that we have had in my lifetime, and all these things were 
very, very good. Then, of course, when that happened everything 
changed.
  Now, one of the problems you have when you have such a great economy 
is that you have a lot of competition. We have to have a military 
force. That military force has to have resources. They have to have the 
ability to step in because we don't know where the next threat is going 
to come from.
  And with people with special abilities--now I am talking about 
pilots, cyber experts, engineers, and doctors--that is where we have a 
problem. We don't have enough of them--pilots. I have been an active 
pilot now for longer than most Members here have been alive, and I know 
that back during the previous administration, the Obama administration, 
we had a real serious problem because we were not able to attract the 
pilots at that time because that was when we had a President who--he 
wasn't ashamed of it--his top priority was not defending America. He 
had other priorities.

  So, consequently, we went through a period the last 5 years--the last 
5 years of his administration were the years 2010 through 2015, and 
during that timeframe he reduced the funding for the military by 25 
percent. At the same time he did that, China was increasing theirs in 
that same timeframe by 83 percent. So we have China increasing their 
military expenditures by 83 percent at the same time we are reducing 
ours by 25 percent. So we had serious problems there.
  One of the areas, when people are cutting the military, that they do 
it where it won't be as noticeable is in the flying hours. So we had 
pilots out there, but they weren't flying the hours that they needed to 
fly to keep their proficiency up, and, consequently, a lot of them left 
and went to the airlines and went other places because they were 
wanting to be flying the hours. That is one of the problems that we had 
during that time.
  So we have the military's ability to recruit and retain 
servicemembers who are in the shortest supply. As I mentioned, that 
would be things like cyber experts and engineers and doctors, so they 
have the skill sets that need to be done out there.
  Of course, this President came along, and we started rebuilding the 
military. I will always remember being at the White House during a time 
that we were talking about what we were going to do with the military, 
and he actually looked over at me, and he said: What do you think we 
need to do with the military? I said: We are going to have to rebuild 
the military. It is going to cost something like $750 billion before it 
is over. He said: That is what we should do; we need to start with 
that.
  And this President, with his leadership, took us with a new priority 
in defending America and building our military, and it happened.
  So we have the things that will happen if we don't pass this thing--
the education of children for military families. There is a thing 
called the impact aid. Impact aid comes about when you don't get the 
tax base increase with the added enrollment into the schools of the 
children of military families. So they have impact because they don't 
pay the taxes.
  So the impact aid is the amount of money that supplements that. It is 
not just in my State of Oklahoma but throughout the country. It ensures 
that children of military families receive a quality education by 
supplementing the school districts, the budgets, where they are 
required.
  If the NDAA is not passed, military construction projects--I have one 
in my State of Oklahoma that is one that would--let's see; where is 
that? Yes, we have a thing where we have an ammunition depot, a 
demolition shop, for one. This is something where we have gone through 
a lot of BRAC rounds--that is Base Realignment and Closure 
Commissions--and we have increased the size of our ammunition 
demolition activities substantially. And we are doing most of it now 
right there in Oklahoma. Well, this has a new demolition shop in there 
so we can get rid of a lot of these things we were not able to get rid 
of.
  So we have military construction projects in 38 States, and one 
happens to be in the State of Maine. It is very significant that they 
be able to do these projects. If the military construction doesn't 
happen, both an authorization and appropriation--people don't 
understand this because it is kind of talked around, but in order for 
something to get done, you have to have it authorized. That is what the 
committee that I chair does--authorizes the military projects.
  Then it has to be appropriated. The appropriators come along, and 
they put the money in there. That is how this system works.
  If the NDAA is not passed, the military won't be able to increase the 
end strength--or the total number of troops in the military services--
where

[[Page S7963]]

that is needed to address the growing threats. End strength increases 
don't happen without authorization. You can't appropriate it.
  So if the NDAA should not be passed, the Pentagon loses the ability 
to quickly and efficiently process security clearance investigations. 
Right now there is a backlog because it takes a long time to do this, 
but this has a streamlining provision in it that is going to make that 
a lot easier so we will be able to get security clearances.
  All these things are tied into this bill. The DOD, if we didn't pass 
this thing, would lack the authority to pay the nonmilitary personnel 
on hospital shifts. They are the ones who are doing the great job right 
now with the COVID response.
  That is just kind of a snapshot of what we are counting on to support 
our troops in the field, the bare minimum we need. Without the NDAA, we 
lose all of that and also lose all the other policies.
  Right now, this bill makes China the primary strategic threat. I 
think we all understand that. We have strategic threats from Russia and 
China. Last year, we had the European part addressed. This year, the 
bill that is pending right now that we are going to try to get passed 
for this year--and I think we will successfully do that--is going to be 
concentrating on the Pacific area; that is, China and the things that 
China is doing that people don't--many people don't realize the threat 
that is out there.
  Right now we are up, as I understand it, to seven different areas 
where the Chinese are actually building, creating islands in the South 
China Sea. This is something that is different than has ever been done 
before. I contend and have always contended it is illegal, but they are 
still doing it. They are doing it, and that is the effort that they are 
making there.
  If you go into these islands where they are rebuilding, it is almost 
as if China is preparing for World War III--all of it. This is what is 
happening right now.
  Right now we know about this SolarWinds hack, the hack that we are 
facing. That is something where we have language to deal with that in 
the Defense authorization bill.
  The new ``hunt forward'' authority that allows our cyber operators to 
do more work to find malicious actors proactively, this is something 
that we need to get done for the defense of our country.
  It implements the Cyber Solarium Commission and the recommendations. 
There are 27 recommendations that they have in this commission. And it 
establishes a new National Cyber Director.
  These are things where it is a moving target. There are a lot of 
things that we are doing now that we should have been doing before, and 
it took China and Russia to kind of forge ahead of us, as they did in 
the previous administration, to remind us that we have these very 
serious problems. Our troops need the NDAA. It is our responsibility to 
make sure that they have the equipment, training, and resources to 
complete the mission and return home safely.

  I will close with this one reminder. On December 29, 1777, 243 years 
ago today, General George Washington wrote to the Continental Congress 
imploring that they needed to provide the resources his troops needed. 
He wrote:

       I hope that the supplies they will be able to furnish in 
     aid of those, which Congress may immediately import 
     themselves, will be equal and competent to every demand. If 
     they do not, I fear--I am satisfied the Troops will never be 
     in a situation to answer the Public expectation and perform 
     the duties required of them.

  That is as true today as it was in 1777. We have to do that.
  We look at the national security wins of this President. I think 
people don't talk about that as much. We have identified China as the 
No. 1 adversary. That was in the NDS, the national defense survey. It 
was put together by 12 of the real experts--6 Republicans, 6 Democrats. 
It has been the blueprint for our military ever since that time, about 
3 years ago. They identified China as the major threat.
  There is $2.5 trillion to rebuild the military. That is what we were 
able to get done. We increased the size of the military, replaced 
obsolete equipment, and made new investments in future tech. 
Hypersonics is a good example. Both Russia and China are ahead of us in 
the area of hypersonics; it is the new ``state of the art.'' There is a 
pay raise for the troops.
  They took out the terrorist leaders. How many people remember 
Baghdadi and Soleimani? They were the top terrorists in the world. They 
are gone now. This President, this administration took care of that.
  We established the Space Force. The Space Force was the first new 
force that was established in many, many years. I wasn't really sold on 
it at first because I thought we were doing a pretty good job. It 
wasn't coordinated. You had different military units doing it, and they 
weren't even really talking to each other. That is what we put 
together. This President provided the leadership in doing that.
  There is the widow's tax. Everybody remembers that. That was 
something that had to be done. Others talked about it. This President 
did it.
  Then the ISIS caliphate was destroyed. There is the Abraham Accords. 
They supported Israel through new security assistance. We know that is 
going on today. All these things this President has done and has done a 
great job.
  I do want to mention this, and I think it is worthwhile, really, 
because we know what won't happen if we don't pass this bill. We won't 
get the bonuses necessary; I already mentioned that. The impact aid, I 
mentioned that. Military construction project authorizations, we would 
not have that. Full pay for DOD civilians, that has to be done. That 
has been talked about by a lot of administrations but not really done.
  I will finalize this by talking about China. Nothing in the bill 
helps China any way at all. There is a group called the American 
Enterprise Institute. That is a group that is kind of the conservative 
conscience that evaluates programs that come along. They said: ``This 
bill has the most substantial and consequential China-related 
provisions since the 2000 NDAA.'' They are talking about this bill and 
what it does for China. It establishes the Pacific Deterrence. We 
talked about the European Deterrence last year in the NDAA bill. This 
is the Pacific Deterrence. That is China we are talking about. It 
shifts the supply chains away from China in semiconductors, circuit 
boards, and pharmaceuticals, and it stimulates the economy in those 
ways. It brings Chinese malign national security activities into light 
so we know what they are doing--who the good guys are, who the bad guys 
are.
  This supports Taiwan. We have talked about that for a long period of 
time. This bill accelerates that program.
  It prevents Chinese intellectual property theft.
  I have a whole list here.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this list be inserted 
after my comments.
  What I would like to wind up with, if I brought it--I did. Two years 
ago, I put this card together. This is when I realized the media hates 
Trump. People are not aware of all the good things he did in those 
first couple of years. People were not aware of it.
  First of all, on the card--I am going to run over these. Biggest tax 
cuts. We learned a lesson back there during a Democratic 
administration. John Kennedy said the best way to get more revenue in 
for the Great Society programs that they were advocating at that time 
was to reduce marginal rates and that would increase revenue. It did. 
Unfortunately, John Kennedy died before he could reap the benefits that 
came with that, but it worked. Of course, others followed him, 
including Presidents Clinton, President Bush, and others, by reducing 
the rates. That also increased the revenue.
  What this President did that was different than the rest of them is 
that he did not just decrease the rates--the tax rates--but he also 
decreased all the overregulation.
  How many people know that, back during the Obama administration, we 
had a rule that we were adhering to that said if you were a domestic 
oil and gas producer in the United States of America and you were in 
competition with China or somebody else, you had to give them our whole 
playbook on how we put together our system over here and all the 
elements. And that put us at a disadvantage with our competitors in 
China and in energy.

[[Page S7964]]

  I was happy that I used to say, after Obama got out of office, that 
the war on fossil fuels was over for a while. Look at the energy 
dominance now. We are the global leader in oil and gas production: a 
277-percent growth in crude exports, a 132-percent increase in coal 
exports, a 52-percent increase in natural gas exports. These are 
exports. That is what we are doing now in the United States as a result 
of the efforts of this President and bringing our economy around.
  Crackdown on illegal migration. Nobody wanted the wall, they said. 
Now people realize that is where a lot of the bad people were getting 
in.
  We moved the Embassy. Every Democrat and Republican President, in my 
memory, tried to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. They all 
talked about it. This President went in and did it.
  He enacted the infrastructure bill, the WRDA bill, or the Water 
Resources Development Act, and the FAA reauthorization.
  And on the judges we have, not just Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, but I 
think our number is up to about 225 new judges.
  He repealed the overregulation of the Dodd-Frank rules. Anyone in 
business will tell you that that was one of the major accomplishments 
of this President, President Trump--and the record employment.
  But then I would say that the 10th and last one I mention to everyone 
who will listen is what he did for the military. We went from the time 
of dropping down in the last 5 years of the Obama administration by 25 
percent, while China was increasing 83 percent. Now we have rebuilt 
that military. That is why the NDAA is so significant right now and to 
make sure that that gets passed and that we are able to have that. That 
is what this vote is all about.
  The NDAA, or National Defense Authorization Act, is the most 
important bill of the year. That is why we are doing it, and that is 
why we are here today during this holiday season
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:


                      TRUMP NATIONAL SECURITY WINS

       Identified China as #1 adversary in 2018 NDS; $2.5 trillion 
     to rebuild military; Increased size of military; Replaced 
     obsolete equipment; New investments in future tech--
     hypersonics, AI, cyber; 3.1% pay raise--biggest in a decade; 
     Took out terrorist leaders (Baghdadi, Soleimani); Established 
     Space Force; Eliminated widow's tax; Destroyed ISIS 
     caliphate; Historic Abahram Accords; Supported Israel through 
     new security assistance; Withdrew from Iran deal; Withdrew 
     from INF Treaty; Maximized arms sales; Improved military 
     spouse employment; Rescued 55 hostages in 24 countries; 
     Secured $130 billion in new NATO spending, growing to $400 
     billion by 2024.

  Mr. INHOFE. I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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