Defense Authorization and Defense Appropriations Bills
Floor Speech
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Mr. REID. Mr. President, over the next few weeks, the Senate will be voting on both the Defense authorization and Defense appropriations bills, these two very important pieces of legislation. We need to take the time to understand them and, of course, to read these bills and make sure we are doing the right thing. Just reading the Defense authorization bill is not going to be an hour-long deal. It is not going to be done watching a ball game or watching television programs. Why? It is a very big piece of legislation. This is it. Try reading that between innings--1,664 pages.
Chairman McCain may have read this. He may understand every line in it. He would have a better chance than most of us because he is the one who conducted the hearings behind closed doors--secret sessions. Few outside the committee probably know what is in this monstrous bill, this big bill.
Even though the chairman came here on Monday and started complaining about this legislation, if you want to get an idea how the bill was hastily put together, consider this. The bill was put together behind closed doors. At 5 p.m. last night, Senator McCain's committee voted on the classified annex to the Defense authorization bill. He had been ranting and raving about Democrats holding up this bill. That is what the Republican leader did here today. He didn't rant and rave, but he did say we are holding it up. But the committee hadn't finished its work as of last night. The bill wasn't done. They just finished it last night at 5 p.m. Unfortunately, it appears that this massive bill is everything Senator McCain has in the past complained about. He says he hated what has gone on in the past.
This bill is loaded with special projects--loaded with them-- sprinkled with special favors and many different flavors. It has extraneous provisions, and who knows what else. If there were ever anything that could be identified as an earmark or two or three or four or a few hundred, it is in this bill. I thought Senator McCain didn't like that. I can understand why some would want to rush this bill through the Senate without a lot of public scrutiny, but we are not going to do that. This legislation is far too important.
I started reading a book last night called ``Red Platoon.'' It is a brand-new book written by a man who won a Medal of Honor. It talks about a remote outpost in Afghanistan. We know what sacrifices the Red Platoon and the men and women who fought in the new wars in Iraq and Afghanistan made. So we know they deserve better than just rushing through this bill. Hard-working American taxpayers deserve better.
The one thing we can all agree on is that Americans must have a strong, strong military with the capability to defend America's national security interests around the world and to protect us here at home. There is no dispute about that.
Democrats believe that we must take care of our middle class also. We must know that the security of all Americans depends not only on the Pentagon--on bombs and bullets--but also on other national security interests--the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the help that comes through this legislation to local police departments and first responders. That is why we fought so hard as Democrats last year to stop the devastating cuts from sequestration, which was generated by the Republicans and which would have been a disaster for the military, our national security, and millions of middle-class Americans.
We need a bipartisan budget agreement. We reached that, and it is commendable that the Republican leader said we want to stick with that. Well, we need to stick with it because that bipartisan budget agreement was based on the principle that we need to treat the middle class as fairly as the Pentagon. That agreement was intended to avoid another budget fight this year, but it doesn't appear that is possible.
I was pleased that my Republican friends stuck to this budget agreement in the committee with both authorization and appropriations. But we have been told--and told publicly--that they intend to break the bipartisan budget agreement and propose $18 billion increases only for the Pentagon. This money is going to come from a strange source. It is going to come from the military itself.
I had the good fortune of meeting with the Secretary of Defense last Thursday. To use the so-called OCO moneys--they are used for warfighting, and that is why they are put in there--to take this and use it for some other source or some other purpose is wrong.
My friend talks about how the military supports this legislation. Of course they do. But they don't support what Chairman McCain is going to try to do. In the process, we need only to look at what else is going on with the Republican Senate. They refuse to provide money to fight the Zika virus, to stop the terrible situation regarding opioid drugs. The people of Flint, MI, are still waiting for help. We need funding for local law enforcement, which has not been forthcoming, and for the intelligence agencies and our first responders. It is wrong not to take care of these folks.
We reached an agreement last year. Now both sides need to keep our promises and the agreement for the American people. We must treat the middle class fairly. Make no mistake, as the appropriations process moves forward, we are going to insist on that.
I will support cloture on the motion to proceed to the Defense authorization bill today, even though in 2010 my friend, the chairman of the committee, voted with other Republicans to stop moving forward on the Defense bill. But Democrats are willing to proceed deliberately. We are going to hold Republicans to their word on the budget agreement. We are going to do our jobs, as we want them to do theirs. Our Armed Forces and middle-class Americans deserve nothing less.
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