[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12663-12664]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION

  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to laud the Senate's unanimous 
approval of a $517.6 billion blueprint for the Nation's Armed Forces 
that expresses Congress's support for the necessary tools for our 
military fighting throughout the world.
  It is critical that our military invest more resources for training, 
weapons, and technology to meet the new demands placed on it by the war 
on terror. We need to keep investing in our defense programs that have 
worked well in the past. We must also make sure that we provide enough 
resources for research and development, which will ensure that our 
servicemen and servicewomen are equipped with the best weapons 
possible. I wish to express my pride in the many Connecticut defense 
companies and skilled workers that meet both of these critical demands. 
Last year, I successfully fought efforts to close Submarine Base New 
London, because closing the base would have been a threat to our 
national security and would have put the most skilled defense workers 
in the world out of work. These irreplaceable workers are key to 
promoting our national security and developing important innovations 
that will help protect the lives of our military personnel.
  I would like to highlight several provisions of the bill that I 
believe merit emphasis. Particularly important are additions to 
submarine design programs and construction at U.S. Submarine Base New 
London. They provide $75 million in additional funding for submarine 
design, $65 million for improvements to the Virginia class submarine 
and $10 million to begin design for the replacement of the nation's 
Ohio class ballistic missile submarine. This addition will help 
submarine designers at Electric Boat in my home State of Connecticut. 
The inclusion of $9.6 million for a small craft maintenance facility is 
also a critical step in upgrading the submarine base.
  I am particularly heartened by the adoption of an amendment I worked 
on with Senators Boxer, Kennedy, and Clinton to ensure that our 
soldiers receive the mental health care they need and deserve. The 
amendment creates a detailed and comprehensive screening process to 
assess the mental health status of individual soldiers before they are 
deployed to combat zones and ensures that a soldier who is determined 
to have symptoms of a mental health condition will be referred to an 
appropriate qualified mental health care professional for further 
evaluation. It also mandates timely access to mental health services if 
requested by a member of the armed forces before, during, or after 
deployment to a combat zone--within 72 hours after making the request 
or as soon as possible and requires consent from a qualified mental 
health care professional before a soldier deemed to have a duty-
limiting mental health condition is sent to a combat zone.
  We introduced this amendment to protect the health and safety of 
servicemembers and their units--similar to the ones The Hartford 
Courant has written about. The military mental health amendment has two 
purposes. First, it is meant to keep these courageous young men and 
women out of the way of any further harm. Second, we must make certain 
that our units have the strongest and healthiest soldiers and this 
amendment moves us in the right direction.
  I also cosponsored an amendment that enables the Air Force to enter 
into a multiyear contract beginning in fiscal year 2007 for 60 F-22 
aircraft over 3 years. Moving to multiyear contract will save American 
taxpayers more than $250 million.
  To ensure military families do not have to face the burdens of rising 
pharmaceutical copays for TRICARE next year, I cosponsored an amendment 
with Senators Lautenberg and Stabenow that prohibits increasing retail 
pharmacy copays for TRICARE beneficiaries through fiscal year 2007. The 
President's budget submission proposed raising generic and brand name 
copays from $3 and $9 to $5 and $15, respectively. That type of 
increase is simply not an acceptable solution. Our amendment ensures 
that we keep prescriptions affordable for those individuals who 
selflessly serve in our Nation's military.

[[Page 12664]]

  Finally, I cosponsored an amendment introduced by Senator Cantwell 
that will help elucidate the link between troop exposure to depleted 
uranium during combat and gulf war syndrome. This amendment requires a 
joint comprehensive study of troop depleted uranium exposure by the 
Defense Department, Veterans Affairs, and Health and Human Services. We 
need to better understand the relationship between depleted uranium 
exposure and adverse health effects, and I believe this amendment will 
help us achieve this goal.
  I thank both Senators Levin and Warner for incorporating these 
amendments and funding priorities into the Defense authorization bill 
for 2007. I encourage the conferees in both the House and Senate to 
keep these provisions in the final version of the legislation.

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