[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9956-9957]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




 VOTES ON NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT AND MOTION TO PROCEED TO 
                       DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS ACT

  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I rise today to commend the honorable 
men and women in Maryland--including the 28,939 men and women on Active 
Duty, the 6,223 in the National Guard, our Reservists, and our civilian 
employees and contractors--who are serving our Nation.
  When I go around the State to bases such as Walter Reed National 
Military Medical Center, Fort Meade, Fort Detrick, the U.S. Naval 
Academy, and others, I see the people who put their lives on the line 
every day to defend America.
  I support you. I am fighting to make sure you and your families have 
the resources you need, from equipment, to training, to fresh, healthy 
food at our commissaries. That is why today I voted against the final 
passage of the National Defense Authorization Act and the motion to 
proceed to the Defense appropriations bill. My vote was not a vote 
against our national defense; it was a vote for our national defense. 
It was a vote to end sequester and a vote for military readiness.
  How will voting against a funding bill help end sequester? Because it 
brings us to the table now--in June--to agree on how we are going to 
fund the vital programs that we all agree are necessary to protect our 
Nation. Not in September. Not in November. Not when another funding 
deadline looms or when there is a clock ticking until the government 
shuts down. We are going to address this now, so the Senate can do its 
job to support our troops, our military families, our veterans, and our 
national security.
  National security is more than the Department of Defense. We need 
diplomacy around the world to prevent conflicts when we can and end 
them once started. So we need our State Department. We need embassy 
security to keep our Foreign Service safe--and that is not funded by 
the Department of Defense.
  Our law enforcement agencies here at home also protect our national 
security. The FBI, tracking down ``lone wolf'' terrorists; the Coast 
Guard, protecting our coasts from smugglers and drug traffickers; 
Customs and Border Patrol; the Drug Enforcement Administration; 
Immigration and Customs Enforcement--all standing sentry to protect 
America. Yet none are funded by the Department of Defense.
  Nation states and organized crime are infiltrating our cyber 
networks, and we need the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and 
the National Institute of Standards and Technology to help us protect 
dot-com and dot-gov. Those key cyber warriors are not funded by the 
Department of Defense.
  Finally, we need troops ready for duty. Sadly, only one in four 
recruits can pass muster, many for lack of education or lack of 
physical fitness. We need great schools turning out great graduates 
ready to work. We need childhood nutrition to feed them healthy meals 
that build healthy bodies. But education and nutrition are

[[Page 9957]]

not funded by the Department of Defense.
  In order make the Department of Defense successful, we need to stop 
hollowing out America. This means making sure our other agencies have 
the resources necessary to meet national security needs at home and 
abroad.
  However, the Republican Budget uses two sets of rules--first, pretend 
funding for basic, essential military operations--things that are 
supposed to be in the base budget--taken from the Overseas Contingency 
Operations, OCO, account that was created for funding wars. This 
gimmick allows $38 billion of extra defense spending by evading the 
budget caps. The second rule the Republicans are using is saying: We 
are going to apply the sequester budget constraints to the rest of the 
Federal agencies. That is not acceptable, but we can fix it.
  We need to end sequester for defense, without gimmicks, and we need 
to end sequester for the rest of our agencies. We need to make sure 
defense has the right resources, but we also need to make sure that the 
other agencies that protect our country and make it great and are not 
included in the Defense bill have the resources they need too. Today, I 
voted no to moving to the Defense appropriations bill, but that no is 
meant to speed up the process of getting a better outcome for our 
troops and our country.
  Many of my colleagues fail to mention that we in Congress can go 
through these motions: We can pass funding bills, go to conference, and 
send them to the President's desk. But that will do no good if the 
President vetoes these bills, which he has said he will do if they 
include budget gimmicks.
  I hope that after having this vote, our leadership will sit down and 
negotiate a new budget deal, now in June. We need to have a real 
solution for the budget constraints that impact all of our Federal 
agencies, so that our Nation can be protected and the government can 
serve the people. That is what the people deserve.

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