[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 222 (Wednesday, December 30, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7980-S7982]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT
Mr. REED. Mr. President, I would like to rise and discuss the Fiscal
Year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act.
First, I would like to salute the chairman. He has done an
extraordinary job. We have both served on the committee for many years,
and this is probably the most challenging year we have had due to many
different factors: the pandemic, the virtual hearings, all those
things.
And this has been particularly challenging, and the chairman, at
every point, stood up to the challenge and led us. I want to thank him
for that. It was a pleasure working with him.
We all recognize that this legislation passed both Chambers, the
House and the Senate, by overwhelming bipartisan majorities. And it is
very important legislation. That is why it earned this bipartisan
support.
It enhances our national security. It strengthens our military
readiness and defense capabilities. It protects our forces and their
families and supports the defense industrial base.
Despite all that it does for our troops and their families, President
Trump waited until the 10th day after he received it and vetoed it the
last day he could exercise his veto. That was December 23, which made
quite a Christmas for our military personnel and for all of my
colleagues who are here today to start the process of responding to
that veto.
The House already took the first step. They returned on Monday. Once
again, by an overwhelming vote, over 300 Members of the House overrode
the President's veto. Now we face the same task in the Senate. It is my
hope we can quickly and resoundingly override
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the President's veto and provide our troops with what they need.
I will echo what the chairman said. You can go through all the
thousands of pages, literally, but what is the most significant aspect
of this legislation is keeping faith with the men and women who wear
the uniform of the United States. So if anyone has any thoughts about
their vote, just think about those men and women who are all across the
world putting their lives at risk while their families share that risk
and that sense of danger and sacrifice. That is what I think has
motivated the chairman and myself and all of our colleagues on the
committee and throughout this Senate to work hard to get this bill
passed.
There are several reasons being advanced by the President for
suggesting that this bill should be vetoed--the veto should be upheld.
One reason is that he claims the bill fails to include critical
national security measures. Yet this legislation provides critical
tools and authorities for the Department of Homeland Security to
perform network hunting for threats and vulnerabilities on Federal
networks. These tools and authorities would help to counter breaches
like the SolarWinds hack, which is possibly the largest intrusion into
our system we have ever seen by a foreign nation state adversary. We do
not yet know the extent and the degree of intrusion that we have
suffered. In fact, we weren't aware of this intrusion for many, many
months.
One of the disconcerting aspects is that it was discovered by a
private company that is one of the most, if not the most sophisticated
cyber intrusion expert in the world. Yet they were penetrated.
So we have a serious, serious situation on our hands. This
legislation would start giving basic tools, which would allow our cyber
security experts to go into other Departments to look at their
procedures, their policies, all of their cyber activities, and
recommend corrections.
In fact, this bill has done more, I think, for cyber based on the
work of the Cyber Solarium Commission, which was chaired by Senator
Angus King and Congressman Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin and also aided
significantly by my colleague Congressman Jim Langevin of Rhode
Island. They put the work together. We took a lot of the Solarium's
work and put it into this bill. So there is absolutely no credence to
the issue that we have not dealt with national security and cyber
intrusions in particular.
Then again, the President, in his veto message, wrote that one of the
reasons is the failure to essentially repeal section 230 of the
Communications Decency Act. But this issue has nothing to do with the
military--nothing at all. It was designed years ago to provide legal
protections to social media companies so that they could expand and
grow. Frankly, I think it has worked beyond our wildest imaginations.
Everyone recognizes it should be reformed, but reform requires
thoughtful, responsible analysis of the legislation. The effects of the
legislation should offer both sides the opportunity to explain
positions. None of that was done, and none of that can be done before
we conclude this legislative session.
It is more, I think, a personal feud of the President, the section
230 repeal, than it is one of careful, deliberate, thoughtful
legislation by the Senate.
There is another reason the President has used, and that is we have
established a commission to make recommendations for the renaming and
removal of symbols, displays, monuments, and paraphernalia that honor
or commemorate Confederates who served voluntarily with the
Confederacy. There is a clear exemption, by the way, for gravestones
that we would absolutely respect. But these individuals--many of them
who were on Active service with our Army or Navy at the time--decided
to consciously fight against the United States of America. It is that
simple. Yet we have bases that are named after them.
The President said this is part of the American heritage of victory
and freedom, but, again, these are named after men who took up arms
against the United States. In some cases--in most cases, they weren't
particularly exemplary generals, with some exceptions. And it was done
in a way that I think was not to honor the service of these individuals
but to advance other forces.
I think it is time that this history be changed, that this chapter be
closed, and the senior Defense Department officials have indicated they
are open to these changes. There is bipartisan support for cooperation
on this issue. It passed the committee. It passed the floor. It passed
the House. Now, it is in this legislation.
When the President vetoed the bill, he also said it is a ``gift to
China and Russia.'' I would strenuously disagree. This is one of the
strongest bills yet on countering the threat China poses to the United
States and our partners, including allies such as India, Taiwan, and
other countries and regions.
Among the provisions of this legislation is the Pacific Deterrence
Initiative. That is a new authority for the Department of Defense,
modeled after the European Deterrence Initiative and authorizes an
additional $150 million in funding.
This was the work--I was proud to collaborate, but the lead was the
chairman, Chairman Inhofe, and I was his copilot on that one. This is
the first time we really stepped back and said: We have a new threat--
significant threat--rising in the Pacific. We have to take a holistic
review of strategy, capabilities, equipment, and we have to make this a
top priority.
So rather than doing nothing about China, as the President alleges, I
think we have made one of the most significant steps forward in
consciously recognizing the relationship that has developed between
China and the United States.
With regard to Russia and Europe, the conference report enhances our
ability to deter Russian aggression, maintains strong support for
Ukraine, and reaffirms our commitment to the transatlantic partnership,
including by calling for a strong U.S. force posture in Germany.
Now, President Trump also vetoed this legislation because he wants
the ability to remove our military from ``far away and very
unappreciative lands.'' Those are his words. Particularly, I have
concern about the situation in Afghanistan. First--and I have been to
Afghanistan somewhere close to 20 times--since the beginning.
In fact, I was on the first congressional delegation to go in January
after the invasion. I have tried to pay attention to what is going on
there. And one point is that the Afghan people have struggled and
fought with us side by side. They have suffered greatly. I don't think
it is right to say they are unappreciative. I think every day they have
been suffering casualties. They have been fighting with our soldiers--
in fact, in some cases, saving and helping our soldiers survive on the
field.
Second, essentially, the provision allows the President to make the
decision. In fact, he can waive all the provisions we built in by
simply declaring that it is in the national security interests of the
United States and communicating that to the respective leaders in the
House and the Senate. That is something that is almost pro forma. So
the notion that this seriously hampers his ability is misplaced.
What it does, though, is signal that we have to be very careful in
recognizing all of the equities that are involved in Afghanistan. The
fact is that there are numerous terrorist groups there, and we have to
maintain a counterterrorism presence; the fact that, as I indicated
before, the Government of Afghanistan, the Afghan people, in many
cases, have suffered more than we have considering the onslaught of the
Taliban and other forces. So, again, I don't think that reason measures
up to the demands.
The National Defense Authorization Act has passed for 59 years. We
need to ensure it will pass for 60 years by overriding the President's
veto. The House, as I said, has already done that--322 to 87. I
encourage my colleagues to show similar support for our military
personnel and their families and override this veto.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, let me elaborate a little bit on something
that my good friend from Rhode Island said about China.
I think it is very, very significant that we realize that this is the
toughest bill on China that has ever been
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passed. That didn't come just from me; that came from the American
Enterprise Institute, which has all the credibility in the world. They
talk about the serious things that are going on, and they actually said
this bill has the most substantial and consequential China-related
provisions since--in, probably, history.
That is significant because all of us remember--I know that Senator
Reed and I have both spent time in the South China Sea, the seven
islands that they are doing right now. China--it is illegal, but they
have taken over--no, they have created seven islands in the South China
Sea. When you go down there, it looks as if, on those islands, they are
preparing for World War III. A lot of our allies in that area are very
much concerned because they are making a lot more noise than we are,
and they are demonstrating very clearly some of the things that they do
that we haven't done. Hypersonics is an example. That is a state-of-
the-art thing that we do in modernizing our military equipment and
abilities. It has been very successful, but they are still ahead of us,
so we are in catchup mode.
I would say this: When you go and you look and you see the buildups
that they have--I can remember--it wasn't long ago that every time
China got involved in any kind of an effort, they did it from their own
city limits there. Now they are all over Djibouti, Tanzania, and all
around the world.
We made this bill to establish the Pacific Deterrence Initiative.
That is $2.2 billion for foreign posture to put ourselves in the
position where we are going to pass, with this bill--we will pass
China, and then we will be shifting the supply chains away from China--
semiconductors and printed circuit boards, the pharmaceuticals--
stimulating the U.S. economy, protecting weapons systems and our
troops, and bringing China's malign national security activities into
light to make sure everybody knows what they are doing there.
We have a new report in this bill on the true China defense security
spending, new assessments of China's industrial base, new list of
Chinese companies operating in the United States and making it more
difficult for them to do that. It is all in this bill. There is a new
report on the fishing fleets they have out there. It extends the
successful China Military Power Report, supports Taiwan and a new plan
against--that is better than anything we have ever done before.
Yesterday, I put this into the record--all the things that we are
doing just concentrating on the threat that is posed to the United
States from the country of China. It is all in this bill. So this is
something we have taken great pride in because we recognize the threat
that is posed to our country from the Chinese.
This is a good bill. It is one that deserves overwhelming support. I
will say one more time that a lot of work went into this from both
sides of the aisle. We were in agreement on it with huge margins of
support in both Chambers of the House and the Senate. We will have a
chance to move procedurally toward that and make that a reality before
the end of the week.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
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