Unanimous Consent Requests--Executive Calendar

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRAHAM. Thank you very much, and thank you for your service and to everybody that served.

Next week is Thanksgiving. We are all going to go home here in a little bit and enjoy our families. God willing, we make it home safe. I mean that for everybody--Coach, everybody. There are a lot of people who won't be with their families next week because they are in some place doing things that are very difficult, risking their lives. This is where I am here tonight.

How do you right wrongs? You don't create another wrong. I want to right the wrong of having abortion paid for by public taxpayer dollars from the defense coffers that I think not only violates the Hyde amendments, it is just bad policy.

Count me in, Coach. I am with you on that, Mike. I am with you on that. You say it is illegal. I tend to agree with you. Go to court.

One way you right a wrong in America if you think the law is broken, you actually bring a lawsuit. I think we found a way--talking to Jay Sekulow--to bring a lawsuit challenging the Defense policy of President Biden using taxpayer dollars to pay for transportation costs from DOD funds to perform abortions. I think that is in violation of the Hyde amendment. The good news is I believe the Speaker of the House has standing to bring the lawsuit.

Generally speaking, in America, when you get in a legal dispute, you go to court. The DOD general counsel has a memo that it doesn't violate the Hyde amendment. I think they are wrong, but we are not a court of law here. There is a court of law available to resolve this dispute, and I would encourage us to seek that remedy.

Another remedy is to try to find a compromise between the House version and the Senate version of the NDAA. The House strips the policy; the Senate--because they are controlled by Democrats--we have the policy, and we will try to work out some way to reconcile that through the legislative process. That is one way to fix this problem.

What we have chosen to do--and every Senator has a lot of power. That is what makes the Senate different than the House. I have served in both bodies. With power comes responsibility. The wrong we are creating here is to put our military at risk at a time of great need.

If you do not believe these holds are having an effect on the military, I don't question your sincerity; I question your judgment. If you ask anybody out in the field right now--there is one flag officer for the whole continent of Africa. This is like a car wreck on I-95. It keeps backing up. Last time we were talking, there were 300. We are up to 450. This is affecting the ability of the Nation to defend itself.

I will not tolerate being told something I know is wrong. The policy is wrong, but holding these officers who had nothing to do with this is wrong. They deserve better. They have done nothing to get us here in this spot. We have got a political difference between the Department of Defense and the Senate and the House, and the courtroom is available to resolve this. And I just ask my good friend from Alabama--I don't doubt your sincerity--but if this continues, this is one of the worst self- inflicted wounds I have seen in 20 years.

We pulled out of Afghanistan; that was a self-inflicted wound. We had a chance to deter Russia, and we chose not to by having pre-invasion sanctions; that was a self-inflicted wound done by the Biden administration. We have a broken border; that is self-inflicted. We will challenge all of those self-inflicted wounds. And as Republicans, it will be easy. What is hard is to challenge people of your own party at times.

When it comes to the military, I lay the party label down because I have seen what it takes to defend this Nation up close and personal.

It means you miss birthdays. You miss graduations. You miss babies born, and you lose your life. That is what it means to serve. And all the people, the 450 people, if you have got an individual problem with one of these folks, I will support your right to object, and we will hear your side of the story. But I don't believe that all 450 people are woke. So here is what I would say about the 450 people.

They have dedicated their adult lives to serving this country. They have given every ounce that they could give to get to where they are at to be promoted.

Do you know how hard it is to become a sergeant major in the enlisted corps? It is 1 percent of the enlisted force.

Do you know how hard it is to become a general officer, because you are competing with some of the best people on the planet? For every one that gets promoted, there are 10 that could be promoted or would do great in positions of responsibility.

We are taking the military and throwing it in the ditch in terms of command structure. There are people filling jobs today that are waiting to go to their next assignment, and they can't get there because they can't get promoted. They are paying two house payments, not one. Their children don't know what school they are going to go to. They deserve better than this.

This is my promise. I will work with Senator Tuberville and Senator Lee and anybody else and everybody else to find a solution that is acceptable to them to get us back on track and talk about the issues I just discussed. But I promise you this, this will be the last holiday this happens. If it takes me to vote to break loose these folks, I will.

I am not going to talk about me being pro-life. Just look at what I have done. To my pro-life friends, you are not advancing this cause. You are hurting this cause if the average American believe that the reason these people are getting blocked from promotion is because of some policy choice they didn't make. It is not fair to have people in uniform, who have to follow their civilian leadership, when the fundamental precept of American democracy is civilian control of the military--they have no choice. Don't punish them because in our system the civilians make the decisions.

Let's punish the civilians who make these choices. There are plenty of people we can hold and should hold. There are plenty of things we can do to fight to right this wrong. We can go to court. We can insist on change to the NDAA process. But this is not righting the wrong. This is creating another wrong. This is putting our Nation at risk.

And I would just say this. I have been here for 20 years now. I have never seen the world on fire like this. The only reason that an American soldier hasn't been killed in Iraq and Syria because of drone attacks by a Shi'ite militia controlled by Iran is they had a dud. They were just lucky as hell.

And what is going on in Israel, that could spread like wildfire. We could be in a shooting war with Iran tomorrow. So we need our best team on the field, and the best players we have are being blocked from serving. This needs to come to an end for the national security of this Nation.

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