Unanimous Consent Request--S. 1520

Floor Speech

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Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Mr. President, I rise for the seventh time to call for this entire body to have the opportunity to consider and cast their votes for the Military Justice Improvement and Increasing Prevention Act.

This commonsense reform would ensure that people in the military who have been subjected to sexual assault or other serious crimes get the justice they deserve.

In the 8 years that I spent advocating for this reform, with many other Senators, I have heard some criticism from those who would rather not see change to our military justice system. I wanted to take this time to briefly respond to a few of those criticisms.

First, I have heard that the bill will add bureaucracy to the process. The fact is, this bill actually cuts redtape. Instead of needing to find time on a commander's busy schedule for a military prosecutor to brief them on the case, the prosecutor's recommendations, instead, become the prosecutor's decision.

Under this law, prosecutors who understand complex military justice concepts like unlawful command influence and evidentiary standards make the decision, rather than a commander whose time is better spent focusing on warfighting than on learning the evidentiary rules. I have to wonder if these critics have actually read the bill, since it specifically requires the services to use existing resources that we have already provided to accomplish this reform.

Second, detractors worry that this law will result in fewer prosecutions. The opposite is true. Under the current system, only about one-third of survivors are willing to even come forward to report a crime. When 64 percent of victims are retaliated against for coming forward and less than 1 percent of victims actually sees a conviction, who can blame them?

When we put complex cases in the hands of impartial, professional prosecutors, both victims and the accused will have more faith and more confidence in the system. The more confidence survivors have in the system, the more they are likely to come forward. And the more survivors who come forward, the more offenders we can prosecute.

Third, those who would rather push off this reform to maintain the status quo sometimes say that there is a lack of data to support the policy and worry that it would somehow collapse good order and discipline. There is no lack of data on justice systems to pull from.

Our major Western allies have implemented systems like this, and in country after country, this type of reform, just like other military justice reforms, has improved good order and discipline.

In Israel, for example, this system brought survivors out of the shadows and gave them confidence to report. From 2012 to 2017, the Israeli military saw a 91-percent increase in willingness to report crimes. During that same period, the U.S. military saw an increase of only 33 percent. Despite the success of the #MeToo movement, we are still lagging so far behind in fostering a military climate where victims feel safe to come forward.

Year after year, detractors have had the same dogmatic response: Commanders will be unable to maintain good order and discipline if we make this change. Well, I have talked to commanders who have seen the need for change, and I encourage my colleagues to do the same. They can start with my cosponsor, Senator Joni Ernst. If commanders feel this authority is essential to their ability to lead, then they have a lot more to learn about leadership.

Last, we have the argument that is developing that, if we do make this change, to just make it a little bit. Let's just do it for one crime. Let's just do it for the crime of sexual assault.

Well, we have an editorial today that was published in The Hill. The headline is, ``Military justice reform, `pink court' and unit cohesion.'' These were four military experts who wrote this editorial, and I will read a quote from it.

President Biden, Secretary Austin and members of the House and Senate may be tempted to settle on a compromise under which only sex offenses would be subject to prosecution decision making by lawyers rather than non-lawyer commanders. After all, they may believe, it's those offenses that have given rise to this entire controversy, so let's just fix that.

That may be the way the process unfolds from here, but it would be a mistake--and a tragic one, given the difficulty of getting Congress to focus on military justice in a sustained way. It would take years for the military justice system to recover if Congress takes the wrong path at the current fork in the legislative road.

It goes on to talk about two reasons this would be harmed. The first lies with the fact that there is bias in the system and that this bias cannot be eradicated by just taking out one crime, that it should be for all serious crimes.

I will read from the text again.

Second, even though men as well as women in uniform are victims of sexual assault, public concern has chiefly focused on the women. It is concern over them and their willingness to come forward without fear of retaliation that has given the reform issue such potency. As a practical matter, if a parallel system is created for the disposition of sex offenses, that system will be understood as having been created chiefly for the benefit of women in uniform. Congress will, in effect, have created ``pink courts''--courts for women.

Creating ``pink courts'' will destroy unit cohesion. It is difficult to imagine a surer way of turning back the clock on all the progress our country has made in integrating women in uniform, including opening occupational specialties, admission to the service academies, qualification as pilots of warplanes and commanders of naval ships and Coast Guard cutters, and promotion to flag and general officer ranks.

Congress should transfer the charging power for all felony- level offenses by military personnel to uniformed prosecutors independent of the chain of command. Limiting the transfer to sex offenses makes no sense.

One argument that was not included in here is that, if you do limit it to just one crime, you don't address the issue of defendants' rights. Now, with so much data we have available about racial biases in prosecution and conviction and punishment, it is right that we care about both plaintiffs' rights and defendants' rights and reform the entire system.

These unfounded arguments are nothing more than delay tactics. Every day we delay this vote, we deny justice to our servicemembers--the people who do so much for us and so much for this country. There is no reason to wait any longer.

1520 and the Senate proceed to its consideration; that there be 2 hours for debate, equally divided in the usual form; and that upon the use or yielding back of that time, the Senate vote on the bill with no intervening action or debate.
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