[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 222 (Wednesday, December 30, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Page S7971]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, today, the Senate was supposed to 
finish legislation securing critical tools, training, and support for 
America's Armed Forces, but the junior Senator from Vermont had other 
ideas.
  Remember, Senator Sanders spent last summer, literally, trying to 
defund our military. Not my words, but the title of a piece he 
published: ``Defund the Pentagon: The Liberal Case.'' Our colleague 
offered an amendment to strip 10 percent of funding from our 
servicemembers and decimate our defense budget. The Russians aren't 
cutting military funding. China isn't cutting funding. But last summer, 
Senator Sanders and fellow Democrats, including the Democratic leader, 
voted to make America unilaterally disarm and cut ours.
  The left took a break from trying to defund the police to try to 
defund our Armed Forces. Their amendment went down in a landslide, but 
now our colleague from Vermont is again putting political stunts before 
the needs of our men and women in uniform.
  Our colleague says he will slow down this vital bill unless he gets 
to muscle through another stand-alone proposal from Speaker Pelosi that 
would add roughly half a trillion dollars to the national debt, which 
does not align with what President Trump has suggested and which has no 
realistic path to quickly pass the Senate.
  Well, as I have said, the Senate will not let our national security 
be shoved off course, certainly not by Senators who have spent years--
literally years--trying to gut America's capabilities while our 
adversaries continue ramping up. The Senate will stay on this important 
bill until we complete it one way or another.

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