[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16646-16647]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT

  Mr. AKAKA. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the National 
Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2006. Under the leadership of 
Chairman Warner and Senator Levin, the ranking member, who have 
continued their tradition of strong and bipartisan leadership, the 
Senate Armed Services Committee was able to produce a very workable 
piece of bipartisan legislation. I would also like to thank my friend, 
colleague, and subcommittee chairman, Senator Ensign, for his 
cooperation and leadership throughout the process this year.
  I think the bill before us goes a long way to supporting the needs of 
our service men and women. In addition to highlighting some positive 
areas the committee focused on, I do want to highlight a few concerns.
  First, I am pleased that an additional $50 billion has been 
authorized for ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for 
the first few months of fiscal year 2006. I am disappointed that the 
administration's request did not include any funding to support our 
troops in their ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for 2006, 
and that they have not yet done enough to provide the needed 
accountability for how funds in Iraq and Afghanistan have been used so 
far. I think Congress has done the right thing by taking the initiative 
to provide funding now for these ongoing operations, rather than making 
the Army and the other services absorb these enormous expenses until 
next spring. It is imperative that we include an authorization of 
additional funding in this bill.
  But in the long term, we cannot continue to rely on supplemental 
funding. The President should start submitting budgets that recognize 
these enormous costs. The continued use of emergency authorizations to 
fund the global war on terrorism, and the administration's continued 
failure to include the true cost of the war in the annual authorization 
request are bad for our military and are bad fiscal policy. For this 
reason, in the fiscal year 2005 emergency supplemental, we requested 
that the Secretary of Defense provide a report to the Speaker of the 
House of Representatives, the majority leader of the Senate, and the 
congressional Defense Committees that identifies such things as 
security, economic, and Iraqi security force training performance 
standards and goals. The report must also include an assessment of US. 
military requirements, including planned force rotations, through the 
end of calendar year 2006. Once the process needed to identify these 
requirements has been established, it should be possible for the 
Department of Defense to be able to identify funds needed for the 
global war on terrorism, and these costs should be able to be included 
in the fiscal year 2007 President's budget in February.
  On the positive side, I am extremely pleased with the provisions 
supporting the compensation and quality of life for the men and women 
in uniform. The budget includes funding for child care of military 
families and for increased death gratuity to service members' survivors 
as well as increased service members' group life insurance.
  But these increases do not go far enough to improve the quality of 
life for our members of the military. The budget request did not 
include funding for the Citizen-Soldier Support Program, which improves 
and augments family readiness programs for families of the Reserve and 
Guard. The committee recommends an increase in operations and 
maintenance, O&M, funds to expand the services of this program. The 
budget did not include funding for the Parents as Teachers Program. The 
committee believes this program can provide a valuable service to 
military families by providing instructional assistance to parents of 
preschool children.
  In the O&M accounts, the Readiness Subcommittee did our best to 
support the readiness of our forces. Part of ensuring readiness is 
funding it. As then-Secretary of the Navy Gordon England wrote to our 
committee earlier this year:

       Readiness is a direct function of Operation and Maintenance 
     dollars available. Under-funding O&M adversely affects 
     readiness.

  I am encouraged by the support for O&M funding in this bill, because 
that translates directly into support for our men and women in uniform. 
The subcommittee also took actions designed to improve the Army's 
training and get them to produce a strategy for both training and for 
the basing of their forces as they convert to a modular brigade format.
  I am pleased about our continued support for military construction 
and family housing needs that are so critical to quality of life for 
our service men and women. I also support many of the provisions we 
have included that will further improve the management of the 
Department. I particularly appreciate the bipartisan effort that the 
committee made to address a wide range of procurement issues, 
environmental issues, and some longstanding DOD financial management 
problems.
  I share with the committee a great concern over the impact of the 
global war on terrorism on recruitment and retention. In order to 
address this impact, the committee has recommended the payment of an 
incentive bonus not to exceed $2,500 to military members of the Active 
and Reserve components who transfer from the Regular or Reserve 
component of one service to the Regular or Reserve component of another 
service. The committee also recommends increasing the amount of 
selective reenlistment bonus for certain enlisted personnel and a 
retention incentive bonus for members of the selected Reserve qualified 
in a critical military skill or specialty.
  With regard to the end strength of the services, the committee 
recommends increases for the Army and

[[Page 16647]]

the Marine Corps. As the conflict continues in Iraq, the Army and the 
Marine Corps are suffering the greatest impact of prolonged tours of 
duty as well as multiple tours of duty. By increasing the end strength, 
the committee believes that the use of the stop-loss practice will be 
significantly reduced. While we are already seeing a reduction in 
recruitment numbers, these increases are meant to alleviate some of the 
strain currently placed on the service members deployed in the global 
war on terrorism.
  Mr. President, this bill will provide needed funding for our service 
men and women and the future of our national defense.
  Thank you, Mr. President. I yield back my time.

                          ____________________