[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 2887-2888]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  NATIONAL SECURITY SATELLITE LAUNCHES

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, yesterday the senior Senator from Arizona 
took to the floor to criticize the work of the Defense Appropriations 
Subcommittee. I am honored to be on that subcommittee as the vice 
chairman and to work with Senator Cochran, the Republican from 
Mississippi.
  The senior Senator from Arizona argued that the support for 
Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump is somehow connected to 
the work of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. I have heard some 
pretty outlandish claims by Mr. Trump on the campaign trail, but the 
fact that he would capture the hearts and minds of the Defense 
Appropriations Subcommittee with his rhetoric is beyond me.
  Senator Cochran has been a Member of the Senate for many years. He is 
respected and has worked his way up to be chairman of the full 
committee. I have worked with him and found him to be an excellent 
partner. He is bipartisan and tries to make sure that we protect our 
Nation's national defense. I have never found him to be in the thrall 
of Donald Trump, but that suggestion was made yesterday by the senior 
Senator from Arizona. I will leave it to the American people to judge 
the wisdom or absurdity of that allegation.
  I would like to take a moment to correct the record on a few of the 
things that the senior Senator from Arizona said. The issues involved 
are pretty complex, but the crux of it comes down to this: The senior 
Senator from Arizona is proposing to waste $1.5 billion--and perhaps as 
much as $5 billion--on a controversial proposal on how the Department 
of Defense and intelligence agencies should launch national security 
satellites. In addition to costing billions of dollars--that is 
billions, not millions--the senior Senator from Arizona's proposal is 
opposed by the Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter; the Director of 
National Intelligence, James Clapper; the Under Secretary of Defense, 
Frank Kendall; and the Secretary of the Air Force, Deborah James. One 
would think that the senior Senator from Arizona, who chairs the 
Defense Authorization Committee, would note that it is unified 
opposition from the Department of Defense to his ideas. Each of these 
individuals has expressed strong concern about the ideas of the senior 
Senator from Arizona. They have stated as clearly as they can and as 
often as they can that what he has in mind will harm our national 
security. They have even stated it in the senior Senator's committee 
hearings. He is either not listening, paying attention, or refusing to 
agree. Nevertheless, all that I did, all that the Senate has done last 
year with Senator Cochran on a bipartisan basis, was to listen to our 
senior national security leaders while protecting taxpayers from 
wasting billions of dollars.
  The matter generating all of this discussion is about competition for 
launching defense satellites into space. Let me tell you at the outset 
that before I came to the subcommittee, we made a terrible decision. 
About 10 years ago, the two leading competitors for launching 
satellites into space were two private companies, Boeing Aircraft and 
Lockheed. They came to the government with a suggestion, and they said: 
We've got a great idea. Instead of competing against one another to 
launch satellites--listen to this--we will merge our companies 
together, and we will save the government lots of money. I don't know 
why, but the Department of Defense and the committees on Capitol Hill 
bought it, and they created the United Launch Alliance, or ULA. It 
became a monopoly. These two merged corporations became a monopoly in 
launching satellites. You know what happens when you have monopoly 
status? The costs go up dramatically, and that is exactly what 
happened.
  In the last 10 years, United Launch Alliance has been a reliable 
partner with the Department of Defense, and they have launched 
satellites and other things into space which have been critical for 
national security. But because they are a monopoly with no competition, 
they became very expensive.
  There are new entries in the market that are promising in terms of 
launching satellites, and one of them is SpaceX. SpaceX has matured 
into a company that can play an important role in the future of 
satellite launches. I noted this fact, and as chairman of the Defense 
Appropriations Subcommittee, I did something that is unusual by Capitol 
Hill standards. In January of 2014, I held a hearing. At the same table 
I invited the CEO of United Launch Alliance and the CEO of SpaceX to 
sit next to one another and testify. They answered questions about 
their capabilities and about the history of space launch in the future. 
The committee members asked them how they could save money, and each of 
them responded. At the end of the hearing, I suggested to each of the 
CEOs that they propound up to 10 questions to the other CEO that they 
didn't think were covered in our hearing. I tried to make this as open 
as possible and to invite a new competitive spirit when it came to 
these space launches. I think it was constructive.
  It is also clear that there is another element in this issue that 
brought the senior Senator from Arizona to the floor. The United Launch 
Alliance has several engines that can take a satellite into space. The 
most economical one, the RD-180, is not built in America. It is built 
in Russia. Now, that has become a major problem. Put Vladimir Putin and 
his adventurism to the side here. I have even joined with the senior 
Senator from Arizona, condemning what Putin has done in countries such 
as Georgia and Ukraine and his threats to the Baltics and Poland. Put 
that over to the side for a moment. It is best for us to make our own 
engines when it comes to the launching of satellites for America's 
national defense and intelligence. We put millions of dollars in the 
appropriations bill to incentivize the building of a new engine so we 
can finally break away from

[[Page 2888]]

our dependence on this Russian RD-180 engine. For 2 years we have been 
putting that money in the bill.
  I am not opposed to competition. I favor competition. I favor an 
American-made engine. That is not the issue. Here is the problem: You 
can't just waive a wand or pass an appropriation and recreate a new 
rocket engine. It can take up to 5 years. What will happen in that 5-
year period of time while we in America are developing at least one new 
American-made reliable rocket engine? We will have to be dependent 
either on that Russian engine in transition or run the risk that we are 
not going to have any engines available when we desperately need them 
for satellite launches. That is exactly what the Secretary of Defense 
has told the senior Senator from Arizona, and he just will not buy it. 
He has said: We have to cut the cord and walk away from the Russian 
engines.
  Here is something he can't answer: NASA also uses engines to launch 
satellites and people into space. Why would we launch people into 
space? For the space station. How do we get those folks up to the space 
station and bring them home? On Russian rocket engines.
  If the senior Senator from Arizona says that's it, cold turkey, no 
more Russian engines, what in the world is he going to do about NASA's 
needs for this engine in supplying the space station and making sure 
that the folks in orbit can safely come home? He can't answer that 
question because the answer truly tells him the problem he is creating 
here.
  What we are trying to do is this: Transition to American-made 
engines. I am for that. Create competition for space launches in the 
future. I am for that. And make sure we do it in a thoughtful, sensible 
way and not at the expense of America's national defense, our national 
intelligence, or the future of our space program. We can work with the 
Senator from Arizona. I would like to do that, but when he comes to the 
floor and suggests that all of us who oppose him are somehow cronies of 
Vladimir Putin or marching to the orders of Donald Trump, it doesn't 
create a very productive environment for conversation.
  Let's do the right thing. Let's work together on an appropriations 
authorization. Let's put the Russian engines behind us in an orderly 
way, let's create the American engine, and let's push for competition. 
That is where I got started on this, and that is where I am today.
  We need to listen to the experts--the experts at the Pentagon--who 
have told us repeatedly that to do this cold turkey and to cut off the 
Russian engines is, frankly, to jeopardize our national defense, 
security, intelligence gathering, and even our space program. That is 
something I hope the senior Senator from Arizona can agree is an 
outcome which we should avoid.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Rounds). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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