[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 498-499]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT

  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, in a few moments we are going to vote on 
the Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2008.
  The bill before us today is the same bill we passed by a 90-to-3 vote 
a little more than a month ago, except for minor changes.
  This bill will provide essential pay and benefits for our men and 
women in uniform. It includes a 3.5-percent pay raise for the troops.
  It includes the Wounded Warrior Act, the greatest reform in the law 
relative to medical care for our troops in more than a decade. It will 
address the substandard living conditions, poor outpatient care and 
bureaucratic roadblocks and delays faced by injured soldiers. These 
provisions will dramatically improve the management of medical care, 
disability evaluations, personnel actions, and the quality of life for 
service members recovering from illness or injuries incurred while 
performing their military duties and begin the process of fundamental 
reform of DOD and VA disability evaluation systems.
  The Wounded Warrior Act will require the Secretary of Defense and the 
Secretary of Veterans Affairs to work together to develop a 
comprehensive policy on the care, management, and transition of 
severely injured service members, including Active Duty, National 
Guard, and Reserve members, from the military to the Veterans 
Administration or to civilian life. It will require the use of a single 
medical examination where appropriate, and require and fund the 
establishment of centers of excellence for the signature wounds of the 
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan--post-traumatic stress disorder and 
traumatic brain injury.
  To improve the disability evaluation system, the bill will require 
the military departments to use VA standards when making disability 
determinations, authorizing deviation from these standards only when it 
will result in a higher disability rating for the service member, and 
will require the services to take into account all medical conditions 
that render a member unfit for duty.
  The bill will also increase the severance pay for military personnel 
who are separated for medical disability with a disability rating of 
less than 30 percent and will eliminate the requirement that this 
severance pay be deducted from VA disability compensation for 
disabilities incurred in a combat zone or combat-related operation.
  The bill also includes essential management reforms for the 
Department of Defense, including the Acquisition Improvement and 
Accountability Act of 2007. Some of the reforms included are: 
establishment of a defense acquisition workforce development fund to 
ensure that DOD has the people and the skills needed to effectively 
manage its contracts; strengthening of statutory protections for 
contractor employees who blow the whistle on waste, fraud, and abuse in 
DOD contracts; and tightening of the rules for DOD acquisition of major 
weapons systems and subsystems, components and spare parts to reduce 
the risk of contract overpricing, cost overruns, and failure to meet 
contract schedules and performance requirements. These and other 
provisions should go a long way toward addressing the contracting 
waste, fraud and abuse that we have seen altogether too frequently in 
recent years.

[[Page 499]]

  Our legislation will also address a major failure in Iraq--the 
failure to exercise control over private security contractors. It will 
require for the first time that private security contractors hired by 
the State Department and other Federal agencies to work in a war zone 
comply with directives and orders issued by our military commanders as 
well as with DOD regulations.
  On December 17, 2007, we sent the defense authorization act to the 
President for his signature. The following weekend, the White House 
staff notified us that they had identified a problem with one provision 
that would lead the President to veto the bill. While the 
administration had previously expressed concerns about this provision, 
no administration official had ever indicated that the President would 
consider a veto. Quite the opposite, this provision was not on the list 
of potential veto-causing problems.
  I remain disappointed by the administration's failure to work with us 
to address this provision until after the bill had passed both Houses 
of Congress and was sent to the President for signature. It does not 
serve anybody's interest when we fail to address issues like this in a 
timely manner. The veto of the National Defense Authorization Act sent 
the wrong message to our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines at a 
time when many of them are risking their lives on a daily basis in 
Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.
  I am pleased that we have been able to work out language to address 
the administration's concerns on a bicameral and bipartisan basis. The 
bill that is before us today contains modifications that have been 
agreed upon by the White House and by the bipartisan leadership of the 
House and Senate Armed Services Committee. I understand that these 
changes are also acceptable to Senator Lautenberg and other Members who 
worked with him to put together the provision in the earlier bill.
  Let me briefly explain the White House's problem, and how we have 
addressed it.
  Section 1083 of the bill clarifies the law that permits U.S. 
nationals and members of the U.S. Armed Forces who are victims of 
terrorist acts to sue state sponsors of terrorism for damages resulting 
from terrorist acts in the U.S. courts. The provision also strengthens 
mechanisms to ensure that victims of terrorism can collect on their 
judgments against such State sponsors of terrorism. U.S. courts have 
previously entered such judgments against Iran, Libya, and Saddam 
Hussein's Iraq.
  After the bill was passed and sent to the President for signature, 
the administration informed us that Iraq currently has more than $25 
billion of assets in this country that could be tied up in litigation 
if section 1083 were enacted into law and that such restrictions on 
Iraq's funds could take months to lift. The White House stated that 
restrictions on Iraqi funds would interfere with political and economic 
progress in Iraq and undermine our relations with Iraq.
  We have addressed these concerns with new language which authorizes 
the President to waive the applicability of section 1083 to Iraq, if he 
determines that a waiver is in the national security interest of the 
United States; that the waiver will promote Iraqi reconstruction, the 
consolidation of democracy in Iraq, and U.S. relations with Iraq; and 
that Iraq continues to be a reliable ally of the United States and a 
partner in combating international terrorism.
  The revised language also expresses the sense of Congress that the 
President, acting through the Secretary of State, should work with the 
Government of Iraq on a state-to-state basis to ensure compensation for 
any meritorious claims based on terrorist acts committed by the Saddam 
Hussein regime that cannot be addressed in the U.S. courts due to a 
Presidential waiver.
  We expect that the Department of State will actively pursue such 
compensation from Iraq.
  As one of the authors of the new section 1083, I want to assure the 
Senate that the new language authorizes the waiver of section 1083, 
only as it applies to Iraq. The new subsection (d), which we have added 
to the bill, specifies that the President may waive any provision of 
section 1083 ``with respect to Iraq'' and not with regard to any other 
country. We explicitly reaffirm in this bill that other cases against 
state sponsors of terrorism, including both Iran and Libya, may proceed 
to judgment and collection under section 1083, unaffected by any 
Presidential waiver.
  Over the last 2 weeks, concerns have been expressed about the 
possible impact of this provision on innocent third parties entering 
joint ventures with Libya or Iran. The concern was that these companies 
would find their own property seized to satisfy judgments against those 
countries. Our language does not allow for that result, because that is 
not our intent. This is not a new issue: the question has been raised 
by the language of the Lautenberg amendment ever since it was first 
approved by the Senate last fall.
  We specifically addressed the problem of joint ventures in our 
conference on the Defense authorization bill, previously approved by 
the Congress. We added language to the bill making it clear that the 
courts are authorized to compensate victim of state-sponsored terrorism 
out of Libya's--or other states'--assets, while separating and 
shielding the assets of companies engaged in joint ventures with those 
States. In the accompanying statement of managers, we specifically 
urged the courts to make use of this authority. This language was the 
strongest action that we could take to protect innocent third parties 
without also shielding the offending governments from liability for 
their own actions.
  We have included a provision to ensure that the statement of managers 
on our previous conference report will apply to this new bill in this 
and all regards.
  Outside of the modification of section 1083, the bill remains 
virtually unchanged. We have, however, taken steps to ensure our men 
and women in uniform will not lose a penny as a result of the delayed 
enactment of this bill. Toward that end, we have revised a number of 
provisions in the bill to make pay increases and bonus provisions 
retroactive to January 1 and avoid any gap in these authorities. These 
changes have been worked out with the Department of Defense and agreed 
to by the two Armed Services Committees on a bipartisan basis.
  Other than these few changes, the bill before us today is identical 
to the conference report that the Senate overwhelmingly passed last 
month. It is my hope that the bill will receive similar support when we 
vote on it again later today.

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