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Floor Speech

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Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, I thank my colleague, the Senator from Maryland, for leading this discussion on what is an absolutely critical decision that this U.S. Senate is going to have to make.

One of the most important things we do is pass the National Defense Authorization Act. That is the moment where, through the committee process and the floor debate, America lays out a pathway to secure the defense of this country against all threats. It is an extraordinarily important piece of legislation that sets the course for a year.

This National Defense Authorization Act fails to address the critical question that is before this country right now, and that is the war in Iran. It fails to address the changing nature of warfare by spending a half a trillion dollars more on weapons systems that are the weapons systems of yesterday.

Third--and this is a point my colleague has been making, and I am going to talk about it very immediately--it outsources to another country those decisions on intelligence sharing and weapons production that should only be made by our country.

Fourth, it commits the taxpayers of this country to the obligation of another half a trillion dollars with absolutely no outline of how we are going to pay for it, and this on top of a deficit that is the highest we have ever had in this country.

So let me talk about these one by one.

First of all, it is absolutely catastrophic what is going on, in the Middle East, to our economy. We are in a war that was decided by the President of the United States unilaterally to enter into that war. It was done with the expectation that B-1 bombers would be able to blast their way into victory. And it was done without an appreciation or awareness that, once the extraordinary power of the U.S. military was applied with weapons that are only ours to deploy, the asymmetric response by the Iranians allowed them to close the Strait of Hormuz, which to this day is not open to the passage of ships.

That is having an incredible impact on our economy, on our farmers, on our manufacturers, and on grocery prices. And there is no end in sight.

And the fact that we are going to have a debate about authorizing a $1.5 trillion defense budget without having any discussion about what is driving the cost or what is the major defense threat right now--and that is this ongoing war in Iran--is not acceptable. We have the obligation to debate that, and many of my colleagues have indicated already by their vote that they oppose the authorization of warfare in Iran.

This NDAA bill comes before us as though that is not even going on. That is wrong. We have an obligation to debate that, and we have an obligation to vote on it.

But, second, there are provisions in this bill that do outsource fundamental responsibilities and obligations of our military and our national security organizations and our President to make decisions on the basis of what is in our national interest and what is required for national security.

My colleague mentioned them. There are provisions in this bill that create a legal obligation for the United States to do information and intelligence sharing with another government and to enter into joint production agreements with another government.

When it comes to sharing intelligence, I want our generals, I want our national security officials, I want our President--our Chief Executive and Commander in Chief--to have unfettered discretion to make those decisions about with whom we share information, what information we share, and under what circumstances to be our decision and our decision alone.

And, of course, our military and our national security organizations work very hard to have cooperative relationships with neighboring countries or with fellow countries that are aligned with us on interests, and that can include Israel, as it has at times.

But we have never, ever had an obligation to relinquish the exclusive right of decision making that has to fundamentally be made in the best interest of what is in the national security interest of the people of this country. We cannot relinquish that right and that responsibility.

So this provision that ``the President, acting through the Director of National Intelligence and, as necessary, the Secretary of Defense, shall''--shall--``subject to applicable law and the protection of intelligence sources and methods, expand and enhance intelligence sharing with the Government of Israel''--my concern here is less the Government of Israel. It is about the national security interests in this country and the unfettered right of our military, national security, and President to make decisions on behalf of the American people and exclusively for what is in the best interest of the national security of this country. That provision has no place in this national defense authorization.

A third point I want to make is that what we have seen with the extraordinary conflicts in Ukraine, in Iran, and Lebanon is that the old weapons systems that are so expensive don't win the victories. The drone warfare in Ukraine has allowed them, through their ingenuity, to turn the tide on Russia.

The B-1 bombers--the exquisite weapons systems that cost so much money--are not winning the conflict in Iran for the United States. And we are seeing these situations where there will be a $35,000 drone that is taken out by a $1 million missile, and all of us know that is not a sustainable situation. Our Pentagon knows that.

But in the rush to make the adjustment--and I know that the people in the Pentagon are trying to make that adjustment. You don't make that adjustment by suddenly coming up with a half a trillion dollars where you don't have a plan, you don't have a strategy, and you end up throwing money at a problem without a plan on how to solve the problem.

So I have gone through three things here: one, an NDAA that acts as though the war in Iran is not a war that is having an impact on the American people; No. 2, outsourcing absolutely critical decisions about intelligence sharing and weapon-production sharing that have to be the sole prerogative of the United States, our military, our national security community, and our President; and then, third, the failure to have a coherent plan about the extraordinary adjustments that have to be made in the design of weapons systems of the future.

And the fourth point I want to make--and I know this is a topic of great concern to you: How are we going to pay for this? We are adding half a trillion dollars to the deficit, and there is literally-- literally--no discussion about how we are going to pay for it.

You know, we have a debate in this body about how to spend money, what the priorities should be. And I will acknowledge that I am on the side of spending more money on domestic efforts. I do think we should help our farmers more. I do believe we should put more into education. I do believe we should put more into scientific research. But when I say we should do that, I am also willing to pay for it. And I do believe we have to have a strong military, but we have to pay for that too.

And what we have seen in this Congress is that the folks who want to put more money in the military, they may be willing to pay for it by cutting scientific research, by cutting education, by cutting nutrition benefits for the thousands--millions--of Americans who are struggling to feed their kids and can't do it without the SNAP program.

There is a lot of good work that has been done by our committee on a bipartisan basis with many of the provisions--policy provisions--in this NDAA, but we cannot act on the NDAA in a responsible way if, No. 1, we don't address the war; No. 2, we don't absolutely insist on defense and intelligence and production decisions being the sole prerogative of this country and not delegate authority to any other country to interfere with what we believe is in our national security interest. Third, we need a coherent plan to have a production system that focuses on weapons of the future and not legacy weapons of the past that are revered by the defense-industrial complex but are not effective on the battlefield. And, fourth, we have to come to a reckoning that, whether it comes to national defense or even domestic programs, they don't pay for themselves, and we have got to step up and accept that responsibility. For far too long, we have been ignoring it.

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