Defense Authorization and Sequestration

Floor Speech

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Mr. REID. Mr. President, my friend the Republican leader throws the word ``filibuster'' around. He has a right to do that because he is an expert. He has led in this Senate more filibusters than all previous leaders put together. As the Republican leader, he has engineered about 300 filibusters, stopping basically everything--certainly slowing down everything on the President's agenda. It was a plan he was a part of and he certainly lived up to that.

The 46 Democrats over here are just as patriotic as the 54 Republicans over there. We care about the troops just as much as the Republicans over there, but we also believe that when my friend the Republican leader throws around terms such as ``vast bureaucracy,'' that we want to fund a vast bureaucracy, I don't think we should start talking about bureaucracies. The Pentagon is a pretty good bureaucracy in itself. I admire very much the Secretary of Defense. He does the best job he can. Our Secretary of Defense does not agree with the Republicans as to how the troops should be funded.

My friend the Republican leader knows the legislation before this body is going to be vetoed by the President. He said so. He put it in writing. The President said that on appropriations bills, if they are at the level of sequestration, he will veto those also. So this little magic game I mentioned yesterday that the Republican leader has engineered, saying we are going to take care of defense, and with the vast bureaucracy, we don't care what happens to them--well, in this ``vast bureaucracy'' are things such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Homeland Security Secretariat, which is important for protecting our homeland, making sure airports are safe, making sure our borders are protected. That is the vast bureaucracy he is talking about.

So we Democrats want to make sure there is equality. We believe in funding defense, and we are going to do everything we can. There has been no better example of that than the ranking member of the subcommittee dealing with defense, the senior Senator from Illinois. Senator Durbin has worked so hard to be fair--fair to Democrats and fair to Republicans--and I am confident he will continue to do that.

I am also confident he cares about the other agencies we are so concerned about, not only the few I have mentioned. To have a secure nation takes more than bombs and bullets. Having a secure nation is also making sure we have a good education system, a good transportation system, a good program to maintain research for health.

The most famous organization in the history of the world for investigating disease is the National Institutes of Health. We know what sequestration did to them once, and they are about to do it again, if this little magic game the Republican leader is engineering goes on. It will be cut like everybody else. It is not defense.

The one fact Senator McConnell fails to mention is the fact that it is all borrowed money--$100 billion, approximately--to get what he wants done in the Defense bill. It is borrowed money in the so-called overseas contingency fund.

We are going to do what we think is appropriate for the country.

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