[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Page 9754]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION AND SEQUESTRATION

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, my friend the Republican leader throws the 
word ``filibuster'' around. He has a right to do that because he is an 
expert. He has led in this Senate more filibusters than all previous 
leaders put together. As the Republican leader, he has engineered about 
300 filibusters, stopping basically everything--certainly slowing down 
everything on the President's agenda. It was a plan he was a part of 
and he certainly lived up to that.
  The 46 Democrats over here are just as patriotic as the 54 
Republicans over there. We care about the troops just as much as the 
Republicans over there, but we also believe that when my friend the 
Republican leader throws around terms such as ``vast bureaucracy,'' 
that we want to fund a vast bureaucracy, I don't think we should start 
talking about bureaucracies. The Pentagon is a pretty good bureaucracy 
in itself. I admire very much the Secretary of Defense. He does the 
best job he can. Our Secretary of Defense does not agree with the 
Republicans as to how the troops should be funded.
  My friend the Republican leader knows the legislation before this 
body is going to be vetoed by the President. He said so. He put it in 
writing. The President said that on appropriations bills, if they are 
at the level of sequestration, he will veto those also. So this little 
magic game I mentioned yesterday that the Republican leader has 
engineered, saying we are going to take care of defense, and with the 
vast bureaucracy, we don't care what happens to them--well, in this 
``vast bureaucracy'' are things such as the Federal Bureau of 
Investigation, the Homeland Security Secretariat, which is important 
for protecting our homeland, making sure airports are safe, making sure 
our borders are protected. That is the vast bureaucracy he is talking 
about.
  So we Democrats want to make sure there is equality. We believe in 
funding defense, and we are going to do everything we can. There has 
been no better example of that than the ranking member of the 
subcommittee dealing with defense, the senior Senator from Illinois. 
Senator Durbin has worked so hard to be fair--fair to Democrats and 
fair to Republicans--and I am confident he will continue to do that.
  I am also confident he cares about the other agencies we are so 
concerned about, not only the few I have mentioned. To have a secure 
nation takes more than bombs and bullets. Having a secure nation is 
also making sure we have a good education system, a good transportation 
system, a good program to maintain research for health.
  The most famous organization in the history of the world for 
investigating disease is the National Institutes of Health. We know 
what sequestration did to them once, and they are about to do it again, 
if this little magic game the Republican leader is engineering goes on. 
It will be cut like everybody else. It is not defense.
  The one fact Senator McConnell fails to mention is the fact that it 
is all borrowed money--$100 billion, approximately--to get what he 
wants done in the Defense bill. It is borrowed money in the so-called 
overseas contingency fund.
  We are going to do what we think is appropriate for the country.

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