National Defense Authorization Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I know my good friend, the Democratic leader, is frustrated that he is no longer setting the schedule in the Senate. He seems to differ with the order of priorities that we deal with things here. Yesterday, he said debating the Defense authorization bill was ``a waste of time''--a waste of time to debate the Defense authorization bill in a time of high crisis for our country.

Nevertheless, a new majority sets the agenda of the schedule these days. Today, the Senate turns to the consideration of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2016--in June, not in December, at the end of the year, in a situation in which no amendments are allowed.

This legislation, which authorizes funds and sets out policy for our military annually, is always important, but it is especially important now, given the multitude of threats that challenge us as a nation; for instance, the aggressive rise of ISIL, Iran's ambitions for regional hegemony and its accompanying quest for nuclear weapons, and both Chinese and Russian efforts to erode American influence and assert domination over their neighbors. It is also important, given the need to start thinking about preparing our armed services for the many global threats the next President will confront the day he or she takes office.

The reality is we have left behind the era of when Americans could withdraw from conflict overseas and escape to the comfort and security provided by vast oceans and isolation. We have lost the luxury of building our forces years after a war has begun. Most important, the simple tradeoff of guns versus butter, drawing down our conventional forces, hollowing them out, and standing behind our nuclear arsenal does not suit the strategic challenges we now face. We can no longer ignore ungoverned spaces. We have left the Cold War long behind. Tradeoffs have become more difficult to accomplish, and they require greater strategic thought than the President has provided, and we have seen the resilience of the terrorist threat.

Senator McCain, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, is a man with the depth of experience to understand the need to modernize, refit, and prepare our military for the threats and operations in the coming years. Thankfully, for the Senate, he is also a man with vision to craft a bill that could put us on a path to address those challenges--legislation that could help equip the next President with adequate capabilities to address threats from adversaries like Russia, China, ISIL, and Al Qaeda, not to mention the unforeseen challenges that inevitably arise. That is just the course this Defense authorization bill proposes to put us on--the correct course. I would like to commend Senator McCain, not just for crafting this bill but for working closely with Members of both parties to steer it through committee with overwhelming bipartisan support.

This legislation proposes to do a lot of things, but fundamentally it is premised on a commonsense idea that we should cut waste and redirect that authorized funding to where it is actually needed--such as meeting the needs of the men and women who put everything on the line--everything--to keep us safe.

In a time when missions are in imbalance with resources for a military that has already had to endure too many cuts in recent years, it just makes sense to do things such as taking on a growing bureaucracy in the Pentagon to make it more efficient and effective, working toward reforming the way our military purchases weapons and equipment, and improving and modernizing the military retirement system in order to secure greater value and choice for servicemembers.

Overall, this bill authorizes about $10 billion in savings for actual military needs. These authorities will allow for improvements in the training and capability of our forces, and they will help us develop new technologies to maintain superiority on the battlefield. Our constituents stand to benefit from many of the provisions in this bill as well.

For instance, Kentuckians will be glad to know this legislation would authorize a new Special Forces facility at Fort Campbell. They will also be glad to hear it will authorize construction projects and an important new medical clinic at Fort Knox--an initiative I have championed literally for years.

It is no wonder why so many Democrats joined Republicans to support this bill on the floor of the House of Representatives or why they joined Republicans in the Armed Services Committee to pass this bill on an overwhelming bipartisan basis, too, which of course is the tradition, both of that committee and of the Senate as a whole.

Now we need to keep the momentum going because this defense policy bill cannot fall hostage to partisan politics. Too much is at stake.

We just heard more partisan saber rattling from the White House yesterday, which is now threatening to block a pay raise for our troops unless Congress first agrees to spend billions more pumping up bloated bureaucracies like the IRS. That is despite the fact that the funding level in this bill is exactly--exactly--the same as what President Obama requested in his budget. Let me say that again. The funding level in this bill is exactly what President Obama requested in his budget--$612 billion.

As I said earlier, the Democratic leader appeared to go even further, essentially saying that voting to support the men and women who protect us is now ``just a waste of time.'' It is just a waste of time, according to the Democratic leader, to be debating the bill about the men and women who protect us. The assumption, I guess, is his party isn't getting its way on other partisan demands completely unrelated to the bill, so they want to punish the men and women of our military.

Look, we understand that some of our Democratic friends might be so determined to increase spending for Washington's bureaucracies that to achieve it they would even risk support for our men and women in uniform in the face of so many global threats. I certainly don't love every aspect of the Budget Control Act, especially the effects we have seen on the defense side in hindering our ability to modernize the force and meet the demand of current operations. But to deny brave servicemembers the benefits they have earned putting everything on the line for each one of us, for these partisan reasons, would be profoundly unfair to our troops.

Blocking this bill is not in the national interest. So let's skip the partisan games and start working toward commonsense reforms, as this bill proposes.

Let's work together to pass the best Defense authorization bill possible.

I urge Members of both parties who want to offer amendments to go ahead and do so and then work with the bill managers to get them moving. We have that opportunity this year because we returned to the regular order and because we are considering the NDAA at the appropriate time in the session, rather than at the very last minute with little time for thoughtful consideration of amendments, as had become the unfortunate norm under the previous majority. This positive turn is another credit to Senator McCain's leadership.

Of course, no Defense authorization bill will ever be perfect, but this legislation reflects a good-faith effort to authorize programs in the political reality in which we live today. It is bipartisan reform legislation that proposes to root out waste, improve our military capabilities, support the brave Americans who protect us, and make preparations for challenges, both foreseeable and unforeseeable, in the years ahead.

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