-9999
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. TESTER. Mr. President, this is supposed to be the greatest deliberative body on earth. This body is supposed to be a body that works for the American people and exemplifies what the greatest Nation in the world should exemplify and lead in that vein.
I rise today to highlight that we are not living up to expectations. I want to highlight the very real consequences of this body's failure to deliver a Defense appropriations bill that would provide urgently needed resources to our men and women in uniform and keep this country safe.
As most folks know, I am a farmer. We are getting winter underway, and I am planning for what I am going to plant next spring in the fields. I will tell you that when spring planting time comes, I will have to do that job. And I will work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to get that job done. Because if I don't, I lose the farm--literally. If I don't tend to business, I go broke.
I want you to take a look at this body. We should have had a Defense bill, Defense appropriations bill, done the end of September, 3 months ago. And instead, we did a continuing resolution, then we did another continuing resolution, then we did another continuing resolution--keep kicking the can down the road. And the result of that is uncertainty, and the result of uncertainty is putting this country at risk.
By the way, what I do on the farm is what people do every day in their businesses. And folks who go to work, they don't throw in the towel at any moment in time because they can't. They have to stick around. They have to get the job done. We need to follow our constituents' lead.
I serve as chairman of the Senate committee that works on that military appropriations. I have been working with Republicans and Democrats for months to make sure that we have an appropriations bill that invests in the United States of America; that makes sure we stay ahead of our pacing threat, China; that we defend our country from foreign adversaries; and we take care of our servicemembers and their families.
That Defense Appropriations Committee came together, and we produced a strong, bipartisan appropriations bill in the Senate that meets the needs of our military. That bill passed through committee months ago. In fact, it passed back in July by a vote of 27 to 1. Of course, it was a bipartisan vote.
What that bill did was it included a 5.2-percent pay raise for our troops; it significantly ramped up production of made-in-America defense systems; it modernized our nuclear weapons programs; it accelerated investments in modernization to make sure that we, the United States of America, stays ahead of the countries that want to harm us and threaten our way of life.
Let me be frank. This bill should have been passed by the House and the Senate back in September. If that had been done, we would not be talking here in the middle of December about taking up a bill in February to keep this country safe.
Instead, we lurch from one potential shutdown to another potential shutdown.
Right now, the military is running under last year's budget, a continuing resolution that expires on February 2. Now I am hearing a number of folks talking about the fact that we do not need an appropriations bill for this year; that we will just run off the old bill. Quite frankly, it is stupid, and it is dangerous. Let me give you the consequences of continued inaction because they are serious.
Failure to deliver an appropriations budget for our defense emboldens our foreign adversaries--that is a given--and we are already seeing that play out before our eyes. After the horrific attacks of October 7, carried out by Hamas, the Defense Department ordered an additional aircraft carrier strike group, air defenses, fighter jets, and troops to the Middle East to prevent this conflict from spiraling into a regional war. But because of this body's dysfunction of not being able to deliver a defense appropriations bill on time, the Pentagon has no money to pay for this bill. As we speak, our Defense Department is hunting for literally hundreds of millions of dollars to cover these costs, and it is pulling money away from other critical operations.
It also leaves our men and women in uniform without the certainty and the resources they need to protect our freedoms both abroad and here at home. In my case, it is the brave air men and women serving at Montana's very own Malmstrom Air Force Base. The men and women of the 341st Missile Wing operate our ICBM missile fleet. These missiles are over 30 years old and need to be replaced. The silos that they sit in are over 60 years old. They need to be replaced, but without that appropriations bill, this program will continue to be delayed because of our dysfunction.
Folks, the American military is being weakened across the air, land, and sea because we are failing to provide the predictability of the delivery of assets. For anybody who has ever been in business, you know that predictability is critically important. Without predictability, your chance of losing profits is huge. Well, we are talking about a little different thing here. We are talking about the defense budget, and without predictability, we are talking about some 300 programs that are going to be impacted because they don't know where the money is going to come from.
They can't get started on assembly lines or ramp up production on already approved contracts because there isn't the money to pay for them because we haven't passed our defense budget. That includes things like helicopters. It includes things like B-21 bombers and F-35 fighter jets. It is causing a nearly $10 billion reduction in our shipbuilding programs, halting the construction of new ships and the maintenance of our current fleet, and delaying the completion of already approved Virginia-class submarines. These delays make this country a less safe country.
It is another blow to our already challenging recruitment and retention efforts. By the way, I might add, with the exception of the Marines, every branch of the service needs more people in our volunteer military, but because we haven't passed a defense appropriations bill, we are, once again, putting manpower at risk. Joint Chiefs Chairman C.Q. Brown noted that a yearlong continuing resolution would create a $5.8 billion shortfall in military personnel funding. These are the folks whom we send all over the world--to horrible places--to protect freedom. This is a $5.8 billion shortfall.
Quite frankly, what does that say for the folks who want to sign up for the military, for those folks who want to volunteer and dedicate their lives to keeping this country safe?
They look at Congress and look at the job we are doing, and they say: Why the hell would I want to do that?
And we wonder why our end-strength numbers aren't where they need to be.
It is a slap in the face to our Nation's veterans--the fact that we can't get a defense appropriations bill done. Why? Because these veterans are relying on this body to deliver a defense appropriations bill that will strengthen TRICARE so that they can get the quality healthcare that they have earned.
But maybe the most disturbing thing about all of this--that we can't get a defense appropriations bill or any appropriations bill done, I might add, in a timely manner--is that some will say: Well, we are going to save money.
That is a joke. This whole charade is going to cost money. It is going to waste taxpayer dollars. We know the longer it takes you to buy something, the more it is going to cost. They know, when you shut down production lines, it costs money to start those production lines back up, and without money, that is exactly what has to happen.
Look, I could go on and on about the damage that a continuing resolution--an extension of last year's budget, a budget that was created when we had no idea of the threats that would be going on now-- would do. The fact of the matter is that this Congress isn't doing its job. The greatest deliberative body isn't doing what it needs to do. And what is more important? What is a more important job for us than to keep our country safe? We wonder why our approval numbers are in the toilet. I can tell you. It is because of garbage like this--and it is garbage. They are tired of folks coming back to Washington, DC, and losing track of where they come from.
My point is just like on the farm. We need to stay here weekends, vote nights, and work as hard as we can to get this done because enough is enough. We need to get these bipartisan bills done so that we can keep this country the greatest country on Earth.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source