[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 179 (Wednesday, December 4, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Page S6799]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                  NDAA

  Mr. TUBERVILLE. Madam President, I rise today to highlight some of 
the major victories that were included in the Senate's version of the 
NDAA--the military budget--that passed out of the Senate Armed Services 
Committee almost 6 months ago.
  The Senate's version of this year's NDAA includes some excellent 
provisions, including a 4.5-percent pay raise for America's military 
servicemembers. This is a pay raise for the boots on the ground, not 
the top brass at the Pentagon. We secured powerful, new security 
initiatives in the Indo-Pacific. We secured provisions that advance our 
counter unmanned aircraft systems technologies.
  Among the Senate's NDAA victories, I also count my amendments, which 
will help focus the Pentagon on its stated mission of deterring war and 
ensuring our Nation's security. One of these amendments includes 
slashing all funding for the woke diversity, equity, and inclusion 
policies at the DOD. Another amendment prohibits the use of taxpayer 
dollars for any costs associated with funding gender transition 
surgeries.
  We need a military that is 100-percent focused on protecting our 
country and enhancing our national security, not implementing a woke 
agenda. Our military is not a social experiment. It should be a lethal 
fighting force, feared by our enemies and made up of our best and 
brightest in this country, which is why I applaud the work of the 
Senate Armed Services Committee and Ranking Member Wicker's leadership 
for putting together this excellent piece of legislation. The Senate's 
version of the NDAA received bipartisan support in committee, getting 
22 of the 25 votes. You seldom see Republicans and Democrats come 
together like this.
  So I ask: Why has Senator Schumer not brought this to the floor for 
the past 6 months? Why has the Senator from New York put a stop to 
good-faith efforts on setting our military up for success in the 
future? If Senator Schumer really cared about our military, he would 
have brought the NDAA up for a vote almost 6 months ago, but instead, 
we have been prioritizing liberal judges for the final weeks he has 
left as majority leader. Senate Democrats are more interested in 
burning taxpayer dollars on an unwinnable war in Ukraine than passing 
our military's budget.
  Sadly, we have seen this time and time again: leadership that would 
rather cater to the woke administration than ensure our military is a 
lethal fighting force. But putting a woke agenda over our national 
security is nothing new to this administration. No institutions, not 
even our great military, are safe from being taken over by the Biden 
regime's radical woke policies.
  Immediately after taking the White House, President Biden began to 
weaponize the DOD, using it as another tool in the administration's 
arsenal to further its progressive agenda. One of the Biden 
administration's first moves was to mandate the divisive diversity, 
equity, and inclusion training at the DOD--picking up right where 
Barack Obama left off 4 years earlier.
  On day 1, the Biden administration announced that the military would 
begin conducting training to ``have knowledge of systemic and 
institutional racism and bias against underserved communities.'' This 
hateful ideology has no place in the United States, let alone the U.S. 
military.
  This is supposed to be the No. 1 fighting force in the world. It is 
dangerous and insulting to waste our troops' valuable time on political 
indoctrination such as this. We need a lethal killing machine to deter 
aggression from our adversaries. I want our military focused on 
protecting Americans and our national security in an increasingly 
dangerous world, not on all of these woke DEI initiatives. There is no 
place for it, and Americans want to fund the military to achieve this 
objective. That is what our taxpayers pay money for, which is why on 
November 5, nearly 77 million Americans joined me in taking a stand to 
say: Enough of this nonsense.