National Defense Authorization Bill

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise to highlight a number of important provisions in the fiscal year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act. This is the measure in its entirety. It comes with this report. It is about 1,664 pages for the actual bill and another 642 pages for the report. It is no wonder, as it deals with national security issues as well as the Department of Defense and many other agencies. It is clearly the product of many hours and months of work by the members of the committee, as well as the staff.

We consider it on the floor of the Senate and have a special responsibility to look at it very carefully. This bill, of course, will take some time to be digested and analyzed. We have been in that process this week. Many of us count on our professional staff whom we have work for the defense appropriations committee. They also look at this measure to see how it squares up with the actual spending bill. I don't serve on the defense authorization committee; I am on the spending part of it, the defense appropriations subcommittee. We approved our measure today and reported it from the full Appropriations Committee. It will be coming to the floor in a few weeks.

What is the most pressing concern when it comes to our national defense? Most Americans would rightly say it is terrorism. Terrorism is a real threat to America and to our families. We have to do everything in our power to prevent terrorism from reaching our shores and to dismantle it and destroy it overseas. It is a large undertaking.

The United States leads the world in dealing with global terrorism. This bill we are considering has elements in it that address that challenge. I take the threat seriously, and as vice chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, I have worked with the senior Senator from Mississippi, Republican Senator Thad Cochran, to try to make sure our troops have the funds they need to wage the fight overseas.

To defeat ISIS, we should defeat them on the ground in Iraq and Syria and dismantle their international terror network. We also must continue to prevent the spread of terrorism here at home through stronger homeland defenses and work with our allies to strengthen their intelligence-gathering. To win, we have to mobilize the full force of the U.S. Government against ISIS and ensure that every national security agency has what it needs to keep us safe--at not just the Department of Defense but at all of the intelligence agencies: the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department, and the Treasury Department. It is not DOD's fight alone.

This Defense authorization bill contributes to that strategy to stop the spread of terrorism. It authorizes funds for the fight against Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS, and also includes $1.7 billion to build the capacity of our allies in Iraq, Syria, and the broader region.

Finally, like this year's Defense appropriations bill, this bill also consolidates a lot of duplicative programs in order to make the fight more effective. It streamlines the authorization for funding for DOD efforts to train and equip our top partners. It will mean better oversight. It will mean more fighting time against ISIS and Al Qaeda instead of more time fighting among the bureaucracy in the Pentagon.

There are several other good provisions in the committee bill which represent a bipartisan consensus between the chairman and the ranking member. I commend the chairman and the ranking member for refraining from budget gimmickry, as we have seen in the other body across the Rotunda.

Our House colleagues recommend authorizing and appropriating only half of what our men and women in uniform need to keep us safe--half an appropriation--through April of 2017. Testifying in front of my Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter called this House ``gambling with warfighting money at a time of war, proposing to cut off troops' funding in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria in the middle of the year.'' I am glad we have refrained from those tactics in the Senate.

The bill also authorizes a well-deserved pay increase for our uniformed and defense civilian workforce. It rejects a request by the Department of Defense to authorize a future Base Realignment and Closure, or BRAC, Commission. Many of us have lived through a lot of these BRAC Commissions. I am not optimistic that if we embark on another one, it will have positive results.

Like many of my colleagues, I strongly oppose Russian President Vladimir Putin's reckless invasion of Ukraine, so I also appreciate this bill's authorization for additional military assistance for Ukraine.

There are several issues which are not addressed in this bill which I hope we can address on a bipartisan basis. Unlike previous years, the bill contains no extension for the Afghan special immigrant visa program so that we may continue to keep faith with those foreign translators who risk their lives to help American troops. Senator Shaheen and others have championed this effort, and I hope we can deal with it appropriately.

There are several provisions in this bill that are controversial. I would like to address a few.

The closure of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba is an issue that I think is timely and extremely important. This bill once again blocks the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo Bay to the United States. Some of my colleagues are threatening amendments to tighten these restrictions further.

The reality is, every day Guantanamo stays open, it weakens our alliances, inspires our enemies, and calls into question our commitment to human rights. Time and again, our most senior national security and military leaders have called for the closure of Guantanamo.

The troops--the service men and women who are responsible for maintaining Guantanamo--have an almost impossible assignment. I have been down to Southern Command in Florida. I have talked to them. They are doing their level best to make sure Guantanamo Bay meets standards. I don't hold against them the reputation Guantanamo has in many places in the world, but the fact is, we should look at Guantanamo in honest terms.

In addition to our national security costs, every day that Guantanamo remains open, we are wasting taxpayer dollars. Many colleagues come to the floor and make speech after speech against wasteful Federal spending. So let me give a classic example at Guantanamo Bay. According to this authorization bill, we are now spending $5.5 million a year for each of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

What if those prisoners were put in the most secure Federal prisons in America, supermax facilities where no one has ever escaped? How much would it cost us? Would it cost $5\1/2\ million like Guantanamo? No. It would cost $86,000 a year. Why, then, would we waste millions of dollars on Guantanamo when we know these detainees can be held safely, securely, and without any fear of escape for a fraction of the cost? Because this has become a political symbol, a symbol which the other party is willing to fight for even if it means wasting almost $500 million every single year to keep Guantanamo open.

All of us are committed to preventing terrorist attacks. Terrorists deserve swift and sure justice and severe prison sentences. But holding detainees at Guantanamo Bay does not administer justice effectively. It does not serve our national security interests. It is inconsistent with our country's history as a champion of human rights.

There are convicted terrorists being held safely in Federal prisons in more than 20 States, including my own. At the Marion Federal penitentiary in Southern Illinois, we are holding convicted terrorists. How many people from Southern Illinois have come to me and objected to the fact that terrorists are incarcerated at the Federal prison in Marion? Exactly none. Not a one. They trust the men and women in the Bureau of Prisons to hold these prisoners safely, even if they are convicted of terrorism. Why, then, do we continue the charade of maintaining Guantanamo for some bragging rights in some places in this world? I don't understand it. If you want to save $500 million for the taxpayers of America, here is a place to start.

There are also some troubling provisions on guns, including on the reimportation of military firearms for sale. Now, listen to this one. One section of the bill would circumvent State Department restrictions on reimporting surplus military weaponry back into the United States for sale to the public--military weapons for sale to the public in the United States. This is an item that has long been on the gun lobby's list--a wish list that hopes that hundreds of thousands of M-1 military-grade rifles that the United States supplied to South Korea decades ago will come back into the United States, be put in the hands of gun companies, and be sold back in our country. How many people think that bringing in these items--hundreds of thousands of military- grade weapons--and selling them will make us a safer nation? I don't.

Section 1056 of the bill would have the U.S. Army basically serve-- listen to this--as a free shipping service to bring these weapons back into the United States, thus bypassing State Department restrictions on the reimportation of these guns by private companies. The bill would then direct the Army to make these guns available to the companies so they could sell them to the public at large--military-grade weapons.

There is also a provision giving military-grade firearms to museums. Another section of this bill would authorize the Secretary of the Army to transfer up to 4,000--4,000 military-grade firearms to public or private military museums, but there is nothing in the bill requiring that the guns be rendered inoperable. There is nothing to prohibit these museums from reselling them to the public as well.

We should be very careful in importing and selling military-grade firearms in the United States of America.

I will defend Second Amendment rights. I will defend the right of individuals to own, use, and store guns safely for sporting purposes and for self-defense. But the notion that we need to bring hundreds and thousands of military weapons back into the United States and put them in circulation--do you really believe that will make us a safer nation? I don't.

The bill also includes a provision affecting Department of Defense- operated schools and school districts that regularly receive impact aid. We need to ensure that our kids are safe as they step onto the bus, walk through school hallways, and enter the classroom each day. When we entrust teachers, administrators, bus drivers, librarians, and others to watch over and care for students, we should have confidence that they are individuals who will actually protect our kids. Indeed, the vast majority of school employees are hard-working, caring individuals dedicated to ensuring that students learn in a safe, nurturing environment. However, we unfortunately have read too many recent headlines about predators who, instead of teaching and protecting kids, ultimately harm and abuse them.

I agree with my colleagues that we need to put in place a comprehensive background check system that will close loopholes and establish zero-tolerance policies for sexual misconduct by school employees. That said, I have serious concerns with section 578 in this bill. This provision fails to provide adequate due process and civil rights protections for innocent individuals. I am also concerned that this provision is overly broad and could potentially allow schools to dismiss highly qualified individuals who pose no risk to any children. We need to strike the appropriate balance to make sure there is a just process before we make the final determination.

Another troubling provision is Section 829H, which states that the Executive order on fair pay and safe work places would not apply to all defense contractors; rather, just to those who have previously been debarred or suspended as a result of labor law violations. The Executive order simply requires transparency about a contractor's ability to follow long-established labor law. The American people deserve to know why DOD decides to task billions of dollars' worth of work to these people. We should ensure that the President's Executive order is implemented fairly and consistently across the Federal Government.

The bill also contains three related troubling provisions relating to the issue of how to best protect Americans' national security as it relates to the launching of national security payloads into space. I will have more to say about that as this debate progresses, but I would note at the outset that the provision in the bill which I am pointing to has been addressed at the highest levels by our Department of Defense.

The Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter; the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper; and the Secretary of the Air Force, Deborah James, all disagree with the chairman of this authorization committee on this issue--every one of them. They all agree that this Senator's proposal would cost taxpayers across America billions of dollars more than the current strategy.

In times of tight budgets, when America, its taxpayers, and certainly the men and women in uniform need every dollar we can save them, you can't explain or defend the position taken by the committee.

The disagreement is over how to best get the United States off the dependence of Russian-made rocket engines for the launching of national security payloads into space. The proposal coming out of the committee from the chairman last year and again this year continues to suggest a rash and abrupt halt to the purchase of these Russian-made engines. Let me make it clear. I want to move away from these Russian engines quickly. I want American engines, built by Americans, to propel those payloads into space. But it takes time. For 2 years we have been appropriating money to achieve this goal. It will take at least 2 or 3 years more for us to reach that goal and have an American-made engine.

This chairman of this committee ignores that reality and says we will just stop when it comes to these Russian engines and take the consequences. Well, the consequences, sadly, are going to be an extraordinary expense for American taxpayers.

As chairman and now vice-chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, I am committing to an American-made engine. We have appropriated even more funds for this effort than this authorizing committee has authorized over the last several years. The Air Force is using these funds to liberate us from Russian-made rockets as quickly as possible. But Secretary Carter, Director Clapper, and Secretary James have all testified publically that the proposal from the senior Senator of Arizona is dangerous to national security and costly.

Secretary Carter, testifying in front of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee on May 6, 2015, said:

We want to get off of that dependency on Russia, but it takes some time to do so. And in the meantime, we don't want to have a gap. . . . We can't afford to have a gap because we need to be able to launch national security satellites.

Earlier this year, Air Force Secretary James testified in front of the senior Senator's own committee--from which we are now considering the bill--making the same case, noting that the chairman's proposal ``would add anywhere from $1.5 billion to $5 billion in additional costs.''

That is a lot of money. I have heard the chairman of this committee come to this floor over and over and over again, suggesting wasteful spending. According to the Secretary of the Air Force, his proposal will end up costing us $1.5 billion more than we should have to pay for this important part of our national defense. That is a waste of taxpayers' dollars.

I hope my colleagues will pay attention to this issue, and I hope we have time to debate it in detail. There is simply too much at stake for our national security, for our troops, and for the taxpayers to accept the senior Senator's proposal on this matter.

This is a lengthy bill, as I mentioned at the outset. I am sure there are going to be additional measures that we uncover as we go through it page by page, and we will take the time to actually do so.

In the meantime, I thank the chairman and ranking member of this committee for their work to present this body with their committee's product. I look forward to a meaningful debate on the many issues this authorization bill presents.

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