Executive Calendar

Floor Speech

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Mr. WICKER.

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Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, I am wearing a pin on my right lapel that was presented to me by some folks today who appreciate veterans, and I appreciate being recognized.

I am a veteran of the U.S. Air Force and Air Force Reserve. I retired from that organization, and I appreciate their coming to put an extra pin on me today.

We will celebrate Veterans Day on November 11, and I will be making speeches. Hopefully, many of us will be properly recognizing those of us who have worn the uniform and taken the oath and are serving in that respect.

Today I want to talk about another group of folks, and those are the future veterans. By that, of course, I mean the soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and servicemembers who are serving their country now on Active Duty. I make a plea to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, at both ends of this building, to get our work done at least for national security.

We are at a time of heightened politics. There are tensions in this building as there often have been, but at this critical juncture, with so much at stake around the world, it seems to me we ought to be able to pass the National Defense Authorization Act, of which the distinguished chairman, Chairman Inhofe, and his ranking member, Senator Reed from Rhode Island, have prepared and are ready to go on. It seems we ought to be able to come to an agreement with the other body and get that to the President for his signature.

We are now 5 weeks into the current fiscal year, and we don't have an appropriations bill done for the Department of Defense. We have to have the authorization act, which I mentioned, but at the beginning of October, we are supposed to have the government funded, and we don't.

We are under a continuing resolution, a CR, and it sounds so harmless, like we are just continuing the funding until we get all the numbers right. That is not true. Every defense expert in the government--formally in the government and outside of the government-- will tell you that a continuing resolution is harmful to our Nation's defense. It not only sends the wrong signal, it has us sending money in the wrong direction and has us not spending money where we need to spend it.

At the end of this month, when the current CR ends, we need to be ready with a permanent appropriations bill for the Department of Defense for this current fiscal year. Just think of what we are looking at right now. Iran is the largest State sponsor of terror, and it is on the warpath. Iran knocked out the world's largest oil facility in Saudi Arabia just a couple of months ago and is attacking tankers in the gulf. This is no time to not have a permanent appropriations bill for this fiscal year. Vladimir Putin's Russia is in a shooting war against our partners in Ukraine. The Communist Government of China is brutalizing its own people on the streets of Hong Kong violating the ``one nation, two systems'' policy.

That is not the half of it. The Chinese dictator, Xi Jinping, is not keeping his repressive ambitions at home as we know from what is going on in the Pacific. As my friend, the chairman of the full Armed Services Committee, pointed out, the People's Republic of China has increased military spending by 83 percent. China has increased military spending by 83 percent over the last decade at a time when we can't even agree on the funding for the current fiscal year we are in. That sends a signal around the world. You best believe Xi Jinping knows we can't get our act together through a funding bill.

Now my hat is off to the leaders, both Republican and Democratic, in this body who have done their job and are ready to go forward with the funding bill, but we need to join hands and actually get it done. For some reason, we have not been able to do that. I am begging my colleagues, let's fund our military, and let's fund these future veterans who are serving on Active Duty right now. The current continuing resolution is doing real damage to our national security. It is harming the progress we have already made to rebuild our military since the sequester--and wasn't that a disaster. It is harming our military men and women and making it harder for them to do their jobs going forward.

I want to quote General Mattis, former Secretary Mattis, who said this, as Secretary, about continuing resolutions:

It's not like we even maintain the status quo if we go into one of these situations yet again. We actually lose ground.

I urge my fellow colleagues in the Senate and in the other body to heed the words of this great military leader. We are losing ground today, November 6, 2019, because we are under a CR. We have seen it before, and unfortunately we are losing money and losing readiness right now. Extending the CR any further will harm military personnel in every branch. The Air Force is short 2,100 pilots. Keeping the CR going would cut $123 million from undergraduate pilot training.

Under a continuation of the CR further than the end of this month, naval training will be scaled back dramatically. We will not be able to fix dangerous housing that we have had hearings about and there has been a scandal about in the press. We will not be able to attend to that because we are working under a continuation of last year's old- fashioned numbers. Vital research and development programs will go unbegun. Not only that, keeping a CR going not only doesn't save money, it actually costs us money because we are spending dollars on programs we have decided not to be involved in anymore. We want to move in a different direction. The House and Senate leaders have decided to do that, the Members of the Pentagon have decided to do that, but under the CR we are forced to keep spending money on programs we don't need anymore.

According to General Martin, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, delays and misallocated funds cost $7 billion every month, and that is just for the Army.

We have an opportunity to correct this, or we have an opportunity to waste another $20 billion on a yearlong CR. I am urging the American public to make it known to those of us at Veterans Day programs this weekend and next week. I am urging my colleagues to stress this when they talk to the public.

There are appropriations bills that are not yet worked out, but for heaven's sake, let's at least do the bill that pays the troops and sends a signal to the rest of the world in these trying times that we are at least going to fund our Defense Department and our future veterans who are on Active Duty and who have taken the oath today and that we will do them in a modern and timely fashion. We are 5 weeks late. Let's not make it another 5 weeks after this and another 5 months after that.

Pass a full-funding appropriations bill for our troops, for the Department of Defense, and give them the type of representation and government that they deserve based upon their worthy service.

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