National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2017

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I thank my friend from Rhode Island and look forward to vigorous debate on both the initial amendment and the second-degree amendment proposed by my friend from Rhode Island. I would like to engage in very vigorous debate on both, and hopefully, for the benefit of my colleagues, cloture on both will be filed by the majority leader and hopefully we can finish debate on it either late morning tomorrow or early afternoon, if necessary, so we can move on to other amendments.

Let's have no doubt about how important this debate and discussion on this amendment will be tomorrow. We are talking about $18 billion. In the case of the Senator from Rhode Island, I am sure there are numerous billions more as well. I think it deserves every Members' attention and debate.

I say to my friend from Rhode Island, I certainly understand the point of view and the position they have taken, and from a glance at this, it looks like there are some areas of funding that are related to national security that I think are supportable. There are others that are not, but we look forward to the debate tomorrow, and hopefully any Member who wants to be involved will come down and engage in this debate. We would like to wrap it up tomorrow because there are a number of other amendments pending.

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