[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9043-9044]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT

  Mr. REID. The majority leader also came here and talked about how 
Democrats don't care about people in the armed services in America--
that we don't care. In Nevada, I would compare our military 
installations and their contributions to a stellar military. Nobody 
surpasses what we do in Nevada. We have the finest Air Force training 
center in the world for people who fly fighter aircraft. They are all 
there. We have 10,000 civilian employees, and about 10,000 troops are 
stationed there. It has been in existence since it was called the 
Gunnery School in World War II. We are very proud of that. It is an 
important part of our community, and we protect it.
  If you go north 350 miles, there is the Fallon Naval Air Training 
Center, which is a great installation, where if you want to fly on an 
aircraft carrier in America, that is where you train, at Fallon. TOPGUN 
is there. It is a wonderful facility, and we are proud of that 
facility. It doesn't have as many civilian personnel as Nellis. It is 
not as big and does not have as many active military, but it is an 
outstanding operation. People come from all over the world to train at 
Nellis--from all over the world. We have such a vastness in Nevada, and 
people train there. They can't do it anyplace else in the world.
  So I would put my support of the military--I would certainly compare 
it to my friend the Republican leader. I am sure he cares. I care also, 
and all 45 Members of the Democratic caucus care about the military. We 
care about it in a way that is not denigrating to the Internal Revenue 
Service that he keeps bashing.
  One reason that the Internal Revenue Service has a tough time doing 
its job is because the Republicans keep cutting their budget. The head 
of the IRS came to see me a couple months ago, and said: We made it 
through the tax season. There were very few problems, but he said that 
if anyone wanted to call the IRS 2 months prior to the tax season 
ending, they couldn't answer the phones. They didn't have enough staff 
to do it.
  The bill came out of the Armed Services Committee, and at that time, 
our leading member of that committee, Jack Reed, a graduate of the U.S. 
Military Academy said that the bill was flawed. It was flawed because 
he hoped we could fix the funding mechanism that the Republicans put in 
this--another unbelievably fictitious way of taking care of our 
government.
  The chairman of that committee is somebody with whom I came from the 
House of Representatives 33 years ago. We came to the Senate together. 
He has been someone who has stood on this floor and berated phony 
spending. Where is he now? How could this man be in favor of deficit 
spending? How can he be in favor of OCO? He has spoken out openly 
against it in the past, but suddenly he is in favor of it.
  The President said the minute that bill was taken up in the 
committee: If you don't change that, I am going to veto the bill--as he 
should. What we have said is we are going to support that. We believe 
what is in this bill is as fictitious as his account of what ObamaCare 
is all about. But my friend the Republican leader keeps talking about 
the leftwing: The leftwing is trying to kill this bill. We are not 
trying to kill the bill. We are trying to make sure we have programs in 
America that support the middle class, that support medical research, 
that support funding the FBI, and our court system. My friend the 
Republican leader seems only to care about the military. We care about 
the military, but we care about other things that lead to the security 
of this Nation.
  We are not a secure Nation when we don't fund the National Institutes 
of Health. We are not a secure Nation when we don't fund the FBI, the 
Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Department of Homeland 
Security. We are not a secure Nation when we don't fund the Immigration 
and Naturalization Service. But my friend the Republican leader is 
saying: Don't worry about them. Just take care of the military. All 
this other stuff will work out.
  The military is not secure, our government is not secure, and our 
homeland is not secure, when we have all these other agencies that are 
being, in effect, cut back in funding.
  Now, on cyber security, we know the Presiding Officer of this body 
led the Senate through some very important debates in recent days, and 
one of the things that was underlying everything done by the Presiding 
Officer was cyber security--maybe sometimes not directly, but that is 
in the background, always.
  What does the Republican leader now come and say?
  Look how much I am on cyber security. Look at me. I lifted weights 
this morning.
  But what he has done is that now he is going to put cyber security on 
the bill the President said he is going to veto. We are stuck. We have 
400 amendments filed, and we are not going through these amendments. He 
wants to be able to check off the box, saying: Well, we did cyber 
security.
  He hasn't done cyber security. I have a quote here from him on cyber 
security, just a short time ago: ``Any issue of this importance 
deserves serious consideration and open debate.'' This is what the 
Republican leader said. He says: Oh, we have done double the amendments 
that were done in the last couple of bills.
  It takes two sides of the Senate to have amendments heard. The 
Republicans would not let us have open debate on the armed services 
bill the last two Congresses. We never even had a debate here. What 
happened is the two chairs of the committee met in secret and came up 
with a bill that came up to the Senate floor, and we were able to get 
that done. But for people to come here and say this is the 53rd year we 
have done the bill is a little fictitious itself.
  I hope that my friend, the senior Senator from Kentucky, will get in 
touch with reality on ObamaCare, on the Defense authorization bill 
before this body, and on cyber security and stop making things up, 
because that is it. It is fiction, and it is not appropriate.
  I was so disappointed yesterday to see my Republican colleagues vote 
against the amendment proposed by the ranking member of the Armed 
Services Committee, the senior Senator from Rhode Island. His amendment 
would have done what no Republicans have even tried to do, which is to 
adequately address sequestration.
  Sequestration was supposed to be so absurd and so foolish that it 
would force Congress to reduce the deficit in a sensible, balanced 
manner. On the floor now--I have said this before and I will say it 
again--I asked the senior Senator from Illinois who came to this House 
with me and with John McCain 33 years ago: Would you do me a favor? We 
have this committee that the President has set up, and I need somebody 
that represents maybe a little bit left of center on this committee. 
Would you do it? He had many other obligations, but he agreed to be on 
the Bowles-Simpson Commission, and he did a stunningly important good 
job. He supported the financing of that. Quite frankly, that surprised 
me because of all the people yelling for all these budget cuts, and 
many of those voted against it in the committee. Now, no one in this 
body understands sequestration any better than my friend from Illinois.
  Sequestration was supposed to be so absurd--I repeat--so foolish, 
that it would force Congress to balance in a sensible manner. Yet what 
the Republicans considered lunacy a few years ago is now the preferred 
form of legislating, the preferred form of budgeting. That tells you 
everything you need to know about today's Republican Party. They are 
beating their chests about how great sequestration is. Isn't it great 
that all of these Federal agencies are being cut.
  The Reed amendment would have allowed the Democrats and Republicans 
to negotiate a balanced budget and would have rescinded sequestration, 
while ensuring adequate funding to the Department of Defense and 
nondefense programs. Instead, by rejecting Senator Reed's legislation, 
the Republicans have effectively said spend first, budget later. Here 
is what they have come up with. They are saying: Ready,

[[Page 9044]]

fire, aim. Or they are saying: Fire, ready, aim. We know they are not 
saying: Ready, aim, fire. They have it all backwards, like everything 
they have done here legislatively--like ostriches with their heads 
buried deep in the sand.
  The majority leader and Republicans continue to deny the need for a 
bipartisan budget. They deny the need to fix sequestration, just as 
they deny the urgent need to authorize the Export-Import Bank, which 
employs 165,000 people in America, as we speak. It expires at the end 
of this month.
  They deny the urgent need to fix our roads, rails, and bridges. That 
program is going to expire in 6 weeks, which creates millions of jobs--
millions of jobs.
  Regardless of what Republicans tell themselves, they cannot wish 
these important issues to just disappear. It is our job to address 
these matters that affect working Americans.
  Here we are in June, months before funding for the government runs 
out. We have plenty of time to sit down and work out an agreement that 
both sides can work out. It appears to me what the Republicans are 
doing is that we are heading for another shutdown. They did it once; 
they are going to do it again. They want to do nothing now. They want 
to wait until the fiscal year ends and then lock it up--close up 
government. There is no reason for this to become yet another 
manufactured crisis, and that is what we have here.
  We can, I repeat, months before the funding for government runs out, 
do something about it. Do they desire another closed government? I hope 
not. But it appears that is where we are headed. The Republicans are 
unwilling to do things that are real. So I urge my Republican 
colleagues to change course, instead of barreling ahead with bills they 
know are going to fail.
  The Defense authorization bill, the President is going to veto. The 
veto will be upheld. We will do it over here. But the House already has 
enough votes to sustain the President's veto. It is just moving forward 
for reasons that I do not fully understand. I urge them to change 
course, work with us to forge an agreement that can get signed into 
law.
  The majority leader's party can continue to ignore and procrastinate 
all they want, but eventually we will need to negotiate a budget free 
of sequestration, a budget that protects our military and also 
nondefense, our middle class. Eventually, we will need to reauthorize 
the Export-Import Bank, I repeat, which sustains hundreds of thousands 
of jobs and is responsible for billions of dollars in U.S. exports.
  Now, eventually we need to find a lasting way to fund on a long-term 
basis our American highways. Fifty percent of our highways are 
deficient, 64,000 bridges--50 percent of those are structurally 
deficient. Not far from here, over the great Memorial Bridge, they are 
closing two lanes. Why? Because it has rotted away. Hundreds of 
thousands of people go over that every day--or they used to. So why 
wait? Instead of waiting for the President to veto their sham funding 
mechanism and then scramble to craft some last-minute, hastily wrought 
continuing resolution, the Republicans should work with us on a 
bipartisan solution now. We are ready to cooperate with Republicans to 
pass legislation that keeps America safe and protects the middle class. 
But to do that, my Republican colleagues will first have to pull their 
heads out of the sand.

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