Traumatic Brain Injury Program Reauthorization Act of 2018
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee for engaging in this brief colloquy and for specifically calling for a hearing a couple of weeks ago at which the two cochairmen of the National Defense Strategy Commission presented the findings of the Commission's report. I agree that the hearing, which was attended by, I believe, every member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was a remarkable hearing because the members of the Commission, represented by the two cochairs, made it clear that their report--our report--was, indeed, a bipartisan document and nonpartisan, as cochairman Admiral Roughead said.
Perhaps it would be good to just dwell for a moment on how this Commission was created, and then we can talk a little bit more about the report itself because I think one of the biggest factors about the report is the credibility of the people who helped to design it.
A couple of years ago, the two Armed Services Committees in the House and Senate put a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act to create a commission that would be comprised of 12 members--6 of whom to be appointed by the Senate and 6 of whom to be appointed by the House. Three each would be appointed by the chairmen and the ranking members of the two Armed Services Committees so there would be a balance of six Democrats and six Republicans--I think. I say that because, like Admiral Roughead, I am not sure of the politics of everybody who served on the Commission. They all knew my politics, as I was a retired Republican Senator at the time, and I knew a couple of the other members of the Commission. Yet, frankly, the politics were left at the door. We went in and debated about the status of our national security and, in particular, about the Secretary of Defense's national strategy.
We concluded, first of all, that the Secretary was correct in that we had to reorient the priorities of our national defense to reflect the fact that China and Russia now both presented a challenge to the United States that had not existed in the prior several years but that the challenge was increasingly difficult to confront and important to confront because of the attitudes of those two countries and that the other threats from Iran, from North Korea, and from terrorists, while still very significant, would be relegated, in effect, to a secondary position. We thought, in that regard, the Secretary's strategy was correct, and we commended him for that.
We also found the basic strategy he laid out for confronting the challenges was satisfactory but with a big caveat, and that was that unless the Defense Department was adequately reauthorized to confront these challenges, the strategy could not succeed. So much of what the Commission dwelt on was what we would need to do in the near and medium future in order to rebuild our military to successfully defend the United States against these emerging threats.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee is exactly correct. You could illustrate the same things with charts relating to our Air Force, to our Army, to our Marine Corps--all elements of our services. It is not just in the number of ships but in the quality of the ships. Both the Russians and the Chinese, I would note, have made some significant advances in submarine technology, for example, that would pose a real threat to the U.S. Navy.
What the Commission concluded was, three major changes were necessary to the way we fund our military.
The first is, the top line, the total amount Congress appropriates each year, needs to be increased. We didn't specify a particular amount, but we noted that just to satisfy the 20-year budget projections of President Obama's Secretary of Defense, this would require a minimum of 3- to 5-percent increases annually above the rate of inflation; in other words, real growth in the topline spending.
Secondly--and these are two faults of the U.S. Congress--the Commission pointed to the Congress and said: You have been funding government for far too long with continuing resolutions rather than your getting on with the job of passing appropriations bills that actually note each year's requirements and appropriate an amount of money to reflect those requirements. The continuing resolutions, or CRs, make it almost impossible for the planners at the Defense Department to plan more than just a couple of months in advance, and when we are talking about enormously long-term acquisitions that cost billions of dollars, this makes it a very inefficient way and ineffective way to fund defense.
Finally, we recommended that the Budget Control Act, which currently controls the way the Congress spends money, needs to have a change in it. The sequestration trigger in that bill has harmed defense spending more than anything else. It has resulted in about one-half trillion dollars, over 10 years, in lost appropriations for the Department of Defense. That law is still in effect, and it will govern the appropriations of the last 2 years of the decade of its being in effect unless Congress repeals it or modifies it. So the third recommendation is, the sequestration trigger in the Budget Control Act needs to be eliminated.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I certainly appreciate this comment by the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee because the Secretaries of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs have all said our strategic deterrent has to be our No. 1 priority. Why is that? It is because this is the one area in which the entire U.S. security is at risk. This is the existential threat--the threat that could destroy the entire United States. Obviously, a nuclear war between either the United States and China or Russia would be devastating to the entire world, but because it is a direct threat to the homeland, it has to be the No. 1 priority.
Yet, as the chairman notes, through our negligence, the administration's and Congress's past, we have allowed three things to deteriorate all at the same time, and the bill is now coming due on all three. Therefore, it is going to be a difficult proposition to get funded.
The first are the laboratories in which our nuclear weapons were designed. There was testing and, to some extent, they have been modified or refurbished and have had their life extended through a program operated at our National Labs.
The National Labs are in incredible need of modernization. We have a 1946-built facility in which our uranium is being produced, and the roof is literally falling in--I have been there--in Oak Ridge, TN. In Los Alamos, there is a great need to make changes, and we have to create a new facility for the production of plutonium pits. This is all highly technical, but the bottom line is, our laboratories are in dire need of refurbishment.
Secondly, the nuclear weapons themselves, designed in the 1950s and 1960s and some as late as the 1970s but built in the 1970s and 1980s, are in extreme need to be checked for their safety and their security and to have their life extended by the replacement of certain components, making certain everything else is in operating order. I was given as a souvenir a vacuum tube which was taken out of one of our nuclear weapons, having been replaced with a more modern circuit board. These are the kinds of things we are doing to extend the life of the nuclear weapons, and it is not inexpensive.
Third, our triad, our delivery systems--the bomber force, the intercontinental ballistic missiles, and our nuclear-powered submarines that carry the missiles that currently represent part of our triad and our strategic deterrent--have all been allowed to deteriorate and need replacement at the same time. Instead of doing this seriatim, we are faced with a bill that is going to come due for all three.
The good news is, through the good efforts of the chairman of the Armed Services Committee and others, provision has been made in the past NDAA bills to begin this modernization. It has begun, but barely begun, and it is going to have to continue for a period of 13 to 15 years, something like that.
The other piece of good news is, while all three components of our nuclear deterrent are needed and are going to have to be paid for at roughly the same time, at no time in the budget does the combination of all three of these things represent more than 6.4 percent of the defense budget. In fact, in most years, it is 3 to 4 percent.
So for the most strategically important element or component of our national security, we are really spending a very small amount in proportion to what we have to spend on everything else. That is one of the reasons I think the committee has found it so important to ensure that all three of these things move forward, on time, and in the right way, so our strategic deterrent will, in fact, deter any potential adversary from miscalculating and thinking that the cost of aggression against the United States is worth whatever they might seek to achieve.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. KYL. I couldn't agree with the chairman more. I applaud the chairman and the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee for going to the President, along with Secretary of Defense Mattis, and talking about the need to continue with his defense modernization, noting the fact that the improvements the Senator has made in the last 2 years have not rebuilt the military or even begun to close the gap. It has staunched the flow of blood. It has been like a tourniquet on the arm to prevent any more loss of blood for the military.
The Senator is absolutely right. What the President then said after his meeting with the Senator, that he thought a number somewhere around $750 billion was a more accurate number, is exactly correct. In fact, I think it would be a little more than $750 billion to represent the 5 percent or 3 percent above the rate of inflation. I will have to do the math when I sit down here.
The point is, some people think the last 2 years, because you all were very effective--this is before I came back to the Senate--in staunching that flow of blood, that, therefore, the fight is over. Nothing could be further from the truth. Really, a 13- to 15-year program to rebuild our military has just begun.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source