[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 31 (Wednesday, February 15, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S417-S418]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Space Command

  Mr. President, we have had, over the last 10 days or so, or 2 weeks 
or so, in the Senate, briefing after briefing that our constituents 
never get the chance to see. These are briefings by the intelligence 
community, by the Department of Defense, about what the nature of the 
global threat is to the United States and the state of our national 
security--what they call the net effect between where we are as a 
strategic force and where our competitors are as strategic forces.
  Without revealing anything that I have heard in any of those 
classified sessions, either in those sessions or as a member of the 
Intelligence Committee, I can tell you that I have found these 
briefings to be very sobering over the years. I would be surprised if 
there isn't a single Member of the Senate who doesn't feel the same way 
as I do. We have our work cut out for us. It is time for us to move 
from a 20th century mindset when it comes to our national defense and 
to our national security to a 21st century mindset. That is not going 
to be easy. We are going to have a lot of choices to make as a body to 
do that, but I am confident we will do it.
  One of the places we have a lot of ground to cover is in space. My 
colleague from Colorado is on the floor this evening. I am very glad 
that he is here because he was the Governor of Colorado, and he knows 
this issue as well as anybody in this Chamber, and I have seen it from 
the Intelligence Committee.
  You know, I deeply regret the fact that, for many years, among other 
things, we have enabled the Chinese--in particular, Beijing, and I 
should say it specifically--to steal a lot of our technology to be able 
to benefit their national security in the space race that we have. So I 
am really focused on this because we have had, based in Colorado for 
many years, something called a Space Command, which is the unified 
combatant control for space in the United States of America. The home 
has been in Colorado, and it has always been in Colorado.
  I am not going to bore you with one of the saddest stories that I 
know about a process run completely awry that resulted in the top 
generals in the Air Force walking into the White House with a 
recommendation that said we ought to leave the Space Command in 
Colorado. By the way, the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force in the 
Trump administration was part of making that recommendation to the last 
White House. They walked into that White House with, as I said, the 
recommendation that it stay at the Peterson Air Force Base--now the 
Peterson Space Force Base--in Colorado.
  There were three principal reasons they were arguing that it should 
stay there. One was that it would reach full operational capability in 
Colorado faster than if it were moved anywhere else,

[[Page S418]]

between 4 and 6 years faster; that it would be cheaper to repurpose 
assets in Colorado for the Space Command than to move it across the 
country or to move it somewhere else; and that there would be massive 
attrition if the Space Command were moved. Of course, roughly 60 
percent of the personnel who are part of the Space Command are 
civilians. They are not people who are in the Department of Defense, 
although 40 percent are people who are in the Department of 
Defense. That worries me a lot. All those things worry me a lot.

  But nothing was of more concern to me--especially in the wake now of 
Putin's invasion of Ukraine, nothing is more important than making sure 
that we get to full operational capability and that we do it in a way 
that makes sense. That is where the generals were on this issue. That 
is where the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force was.
  In fact, the people who went in to see President Trump said: If you 
are going to make a decision other than--other than--leaving Space 
Command in Colorado, you should delay the decision because nowhere else 
in America is ready to do the work that needs to be done. Instead, 
President Trump overturned their recommendation.
  As Senator Hickenlooper would tell you, that has never happened 
before in the history of our country, that we can find the President of 
the United States overrule the recommendation of the generals who knew 
the subject best. He went on the radio, and he said to these radio 
hosts in Alabama--which is where Donald Trump preferred to send Space 
Command for reasons that I suppose only he could know--but he went on a 
radio show and bragged that he single-handedly had overruled everybody 
else who had looked at this and said it ought to stay in Colorado, to 
put it in Alabama instead. The GAO and DOD's own inspector general have 
confirmed the facts that I just related to you.
  Instead of removing the stain of politics, I am sad to say that the 
Biden administration may be close to ratifying a decision that can't be 
ratified, a decision that was made in the face of the recommendations 
of the generals, a decision that was belied by all the relevant facts, 
and a decision that the GAO, the DOD's own inspector general, and 
Donald Trump on a radio program all confirmed, which is that politics 
played into the decision about moving Space Command to Alabama, not the 
national security interests of the United States.
  I know it is easy to think--and I will just confess in front of the 
pages and everybody else--that it might seem like this is just a 
parochial interest on the part of the Senators from Colorado because 
Space Command happens to be in Colorado. I will admit that fact. We 
have been a great home to Space Command. But I will also say that the 
months and months and months that we have dedicated, the years that we 
have dedicated to analyzing this decision, I think it is fair to say 
that we are here not representing the parochial interests of our State 
but representing the national security interests of the United States 
and the incredible importance of this Biden administration not 
ratifying a political decision that was made in the last few days of 
the Trump administration, because decisions of this importance 
shouldn't be made this way. It should be made in the interests of our 
national security.
  The Biden administration has the opportunity to restore the integrity 
of this process, and I think if they do restore the integrity of this 
process, they will find that this Space Command belongs in Colorado, 
and it shouldn't be moved anywhere else.
  I am on the floor today to remind people here of the importance of 
this issue, the urgency of this issue, not just for Colorado--not even 
for Colorado--but for the country as a whole and for our national 
security as a whole. This is a decision that should be made in the 
interest of the national security of the United States of America, and 
that decision will lead the Biden administration, I think, to reverse 
Donald Trump's political decision--a decision that he went on a radio 
show to advertise for the people of Alabama, demonstrating the 
political spoil that he was holding up in one hand instead of saying he 
had done the right thing for the people who work at Space Command and 
had done the right thing for the mission that we all care about so 
deeply.
  That, in the end, is what the American people, of course, deserve 
here, because our opponents and our competitors in space are not 
waiting for us to get out of our own way. It is critically important 
for us to give the people who are serving in this capacity a sense of 
security and a sense of stability about what the choice is going to be.
  I yield the floor.