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Floor Speech

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Mr. WICKER. What is the pending business?

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Mr. WICKER. Madam President, let me say that in just a few moments, we will begin voting on amendments that are subject to unanimous consent requests, and we hope to do five votes today and additional votes tomorrow and following so that we can get this National Defense Authorization Bill enacted and get to conference.

Let me say that this year's National Defense Authorization Act would help meet the dangerous national security moment we face and would equip our military with the tools necessary to implement the national defense strategy.

Chairman Reed will speak later about the ways this bill will help us deter adversaries and reinforce our defenses. It has been a pleasure to work with him and to advance our constitutional duty to provide for the common defense. We do this every year. This will be the 63rd time that Congress--the House and Senate--have sent a national defense authorization bill to the President for his signature, and I know we will do it today. This is a testament to our commitment to our country and also to our servicemembers.

Our threats are much greater than they were 63 years ago in 1961 when the first NDAA was passed. Today, the United States faces the most complex and dangerous global security situation since World War II.

China is swelling its military might. Xi Jinping has directed his forces to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. He has actually said this is his goal. He proclaimed it openly. A successful invasion of Taiwan would spell the end of the global security architecture that has helped ensure American peace and prosperity since 1945. Meanwhile, Russia is executing the largest European land war in over half a century. But Vladimir Putin's eyes are not only on Ukraine and Europe. He seeks influence across the global south and the Middle East.

Amid this resurgence of great power conflict, Iran and North Korea are increasingly bellicose. Their weapons programs and missile tests raise the specter of nuclear conflict to a higher level. The President of Israel mentioned this very effectively in a joint speech to Congress earlier today.

Indeed, our own homeland is no longer a sanctuary. Criminal Mexican cartels have exploited our porous southwest border. This has created a drug and human-trafficking crisis that is killing thousands of Americans each year.

Moreover, two decades after 9/11, our sovereign airspace is vulnerable. We witnessed that earlier this year when China flew a surveillance balloon over our country without any encumbrance. Managing such a complex threat environment requires more resources and smarter approaches.

Senior national security officials have repeatedly told the Senate Armed Services Committee a simple message: American defense capabilities are spread dangerously thin. In fact, our military has not been spread this thin in 70 years. Our industrial base began to hum on the eve of war with the Axis powers. And since then, our worldwide military presence has underwritten our domestic tranquility.

We have succeeded because we followed the doctrine of peace through strength. We believe the best way to encounter today's threats is to deter our adversaries from attacking at all. However, as today's threats increase, our deterrence capabilities have decreased, and they must begin to increase and do so immediately.

For the past few years, our defense industrial base has languished. Anemic budgets created a brittle industry that cannot ramp production to meet the needs of today. This year's NDAA is an important step forward in our quest to rebuild our arsenal. Ideally, we would have an annual 3- to 5-percent boost to our topline above inflation--3- to 5- percent boost above inflation to our topline. Yet even without that budget increase, our committee has managed to advance a strong bipartisan product that contains important provisions.

Let me summarize a few.

Our secret weapon, first of all, has always been our people. So supporting our military personnel is key to any successful NDAA. This bill authorizes a 5.2-percent pay raise for our servicemembers, and it includes a host of other quality-of-life improvements for our troops and for our families.

The bill also contains provisions that will help the military solve its recruiting crisis. I am glad to note we include a massive expansion of Junior ROTC--the JROTC program--an initiative that instills values like citizenship and public service in our young people and, no doubt, increases interest in military service.

A 19th century American Navy captain said:

Whoever rules the waves, rules the world.

Our committee agrees. This year's NDAA supports our shipbuilding programs by fully authorizing LPD-33, the Marine Corps' top priority. The bill decisively rejects the Biden administration's misguided proposal to retire several ships too early. We also included support for our submarine programs. The legislation addresses ongoing maintenance delays. We are sending more funds to our shipyards. It expands our deterrent capabilities with the sea-launched cruise missile, and it allows us to make good on our commitments to the United Kingdom and to Australia, commonly known as the AUKUS agreement.

The NDAA also delivers a host of powerful munitions. The bill makes six more munitions eligible for multiyear procurement contracts, including the highly regarded Tomahawk missile. This missile is one of INDOPACOM's commander's top priorities for deterring Chinese aggression in the western Pacific. The commander said he needed this additional procurement, and this committee bill gives it to him.

These multiyear commitments send a clear demand signal to our industrial base. We have to manufacture this ammunition. We have to manufacture these weapons. They also allow us to replenish our stocks while securing victory for Ukraine against our strategic adversary Russia. And we will produce these arms at home, equipping American troops with weapons made by American workers.

Our committee realizes military competition in the 21st century will be decided also by our willingness to harness emerging technology. So this NDAA accelerates the development of artificial intelligence-- offensive cyber, hypersonics, and unmanned platforms. We intend to lap Beijing in the 100-year innovation marathon. We need to lap communist China. So we are authorizing a new Pentagon authority within the Office of Strategic Capital.

This bill also establishes investments in space launch infrastructure to secure the high ground in the Sino-American space race.

As always, partnerships with our allies act as a force multiplier on all the tools we are providing American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines.

I am glad this bill enhances security cooperation with allies in every part of the free world, from the Baltics to the Pacific.

The bill also addresses the crisis at the southwest border. And it is a crisis. We do this by requiring the Department of Defense to develop a strategy for countering fentanyl--a DOD strategy for countering the deadly drug of fentanyl. It also authorizes the Department to act against criminal Mexican cartels in cyber space.

Today, the Department unbelievably pays rent to store previously purchased border wall materials. We don't put them up to protect our border, but we pay rent to landowners to store these border wall materials. This legislation, on a bipartisan basis, compels them to use or transfer those materials so that wall construction can continue. This bill focuses the Pentagon on deterring real wars, not fighting culture wars.

Our NDAA sends a signal to the Department of Defense bureaucrats that Congress intends to rein in divisive social policies. This year's bill limits the amount we spend on salaries of DEI staff. It restores a culture of meritocracy and calls our service academies to focus on forming effective officers and not on hosting Berkeley-style seminars.

Time forbids me from listing all the provisions we have included in the NDAA. But before I finish, I should note that we have an all-too- rare chance to return the Senate to regular order today, and it gives us a chance to avoid a costly, wasteful continuing resolution for our military. For the first time in years, the Senate majority leader has put the Defense bill up for consideration with months left in the calendar. Still, we must be mindful of the fleeting time. But we must take this chance to avoid another self-inflicted real cut to defense. And that is what a continuing resolution always does when we have to retreat to that. Let's avoid that and we are doing that today.

We are going to take up five amendments that we have agreed by unanimous consent to bring to the floor. The managers' package contains 50 amendments that have been agreed to by the committees and the leadership--25 amendments sponsored by Democrats, 25 amendments sponsored by my party, the Republican Party. And we have a chance to continue this with votes tomorrow.

I think we should proceed with dispatch, working into the night, if necessary, next week, to get this bill done after having a full debate on ideas submitted from both sides of the aisle.

Let's work thoughtfully to deliver a bill to the President's desk that commits this Congress to a national policy of preparedness.

Let me quote President Theodore Roosevelt who endorsed such a policy of preparedness. Theodore Roosevelt said this:

Never in our entire history has a Nation suffered . . . because too much care has been given to the Army, too much prominence given it, too much money spent upon it, or because it has been too large. But again and again, we have suffered because enough care has not been given to it; because it had been too small; because there has not been a sufficient preparation in advance for a possible war.

We need to heed those words today. And what President Roosevelt was saying is it will cost a lot to deter our enemies, but it would cost a lot more if we do not. We cannot wait a moment longer to consider this year's NDAA.

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Mr. WICKER. Madam President, to speak for a few seconds in opposition to this amendment, it is absolutely unnecessary. I cannot think of any currently serving elected official of significance who is calling for suspending or withdrawing from NATO.

If I didn't know better, I would think that this amendment might be aimed as a slap at former President Trump, but surely that is not the case.

If it is, however, we should be reminded that the former President was concerned about some of NATO's members not meeting their obligations to spend 2 percent of GDP but that he was fully committed to article 5 of NATO.

You will be pleased to know that this bill, NDAA, addresses the concern of the 2 percent. We adopted an amendment at markup, sponsored by Senator Sullivan, that would require the Secretary of Defense to prioritize NATO members who are meeting or exceeding the 2 percent GDP defense spending target when the DOD is making decisions on basing, training, and exercises.

I yield the balance of my time.

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Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, how much time is left on this unnecessary and extraneous amendment?

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Mr. WICKER. I urge a ``no'' vote for those reasons. Vote on Amendment No. 429

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Mr. WICKER. A parliamentary inquiry.

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Mr. WICKER. Do I understand this will be a 10-minute vote and those Senators who arrive after 10 minutes and a brief grace period will not be allowed to vote? Is that the position of the chair?

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Mr. WICKER. I appreciate the clarity.
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