National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I do believe the Defense authorization bill has been moved in the way more legislation needs to be handled in the Congress. I am confident that is in large part due to the leadership of Senator Levin, who is a professional, skilled lawyer, who knows the big picture and the small details of the legislation. It has been a pleasure to work with him over the years. I have learned a great deal about our defense from him and how legislation is enacted. So I want to express my appreciation for that.
And I thank Senator McCain, who brings a vast knowledge of defense and military issues, and who is courageous in defending what he believes the legitimate interests of the United States are. That has been a real pleasure.
I will join Senator Levin in thanking Senator Ayotte for her leadership. Her contributions to our committee have been immediate, and that is reflected in the fact that Senator McCain has asked her to manage the floor today for him. I also appreciate the Senator's work on the budget and the effort we have made there.
AMENDMENTS NOS. 1182, 1183, 1184, 1185, AND 1274 EN BLOC
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to temporarily set aside the pending amendment and call up the following amendments en bloc: amendment No. 1182, dealing with Army brigade combat teams; amendment No. 1183, dealing with the nuclear triad; amendment No. 1184, dealing with naval surface vessels; amendment No. 1185, dealing with missile defense; and amendment No. 1274, dealing with the detention of enemy combatants.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I wish to share a few general comments about where we are. All of us have been confronting, whether we want to or not--I think some of us more realistically than others--the debt situation this Nation faces. We are, indeed, borrowing 40 cents of every $1 we spend. That is an unsustainable path. We have already had 3 consecutive years of deficits exceeding $1 trillion, and we are projected to have another trillion-dollar deficit next year.
The debt under President Obama has now increased by 42 percent in the first 3 years of his term in office. It is an unsustainable course. We have to do better.
The National Defense Authorization Act represents our committee's vision for defense in the future. We have done something about the spending problem America has. As we calculate the numbers, we are down from $548 billion--in actual money spent on the Defense Department last year--to $527 billion this year, an actual reduction, in noninflation-adjusted dollars, of over $20 billion, which represents about a 5-percent reduction, a 4-percent reduction in defense spending.
That is what all of our accounts should be doing. But, indeed, that is not happening. In the other aspects of discretionary spending--defense being the largest portion of discretionary spending in the Congress--the other agencies and departments are not showing a reduction at all. Indeed, they are showing an increase, even after nondefense discretionary spending increased 24 percent in the first 2 years under President Obama.
Some think the base defense budget has been surging--and it has been increasing over the last decade--but it has increased 84 percent over the past decade. I will note that Medicaid, for example, has increased over 100 percent. Food stamps are now up to $80 billion this year. It is four times what it was in 2001, from $20 billion to about $80 billion.
So defense has not been surging out of proportion, I would suggest, to the other spending programs in our government. In fact, it has been increasing, even in this decade long of war against terrorism, at a rate that is not excessive, in my view. It has been a pretty significant increase under realistic controls and not out of proportion to what we are concerned about. However, it is looking to be hammered a great deal more in the future, disproportionate, again, to what is happening in other spending accounts.
The Defense Department now is working on a total reduction in spending of $489 billion more, which is about 10 percent of what we would expect to spend in the next 10 years. That is because of the Budget Control Act we passed in August that required reductions in spending in discretionary accounts. The choices so far have been to reduce defense spending far more than the other accounts.
In addition, if the deficit committee--the 12 supercommittee members--if they do not reach an accord, we all need to understand there will be an automatic sequester. Many people thought--and I think Senators probably thought--if that were to be done, it would be done across the board in an equal way. Not so. If that happens, $600 billion additional would be taken out of defense, and items such as food stamps, Medicaid, the earned income tax credit, Social Security--all of those would have no reductions. So it would amount to almost a 20-percent reduction in the Defense Department in real dollars over 10 years.
It should not have been that way. The agreement should not have targeted the Defense Department in such a Draconian way. We cannot allow that to happen.
All accounts need to be tightened. Every agency and department has to tighten its belt, including the Defense Department, but not disproportionately so.
Admiral Mullen said, if this were to occur, it would ``hollow us out,'' it could break the Defense Department and our military; so did Leon Panetta, President Obama's Secretary of Defense. He said it was basically an unacceptable situation, and he agreed with Admiral Mullen, who was sitting beside him at the time of that testimony, and in response to questions I asked of him.
When I asked him about it--the hearing was on another subject--he responded with passion, Secretary Panetta did, and expressed deep concern about the course of our Defense Department if these cuts were to take place.
I will quote former Secretary Robert Gates, who served President Bush and President Obama. Recently, he said this:
I think, frankly, the creation of this supercommittee was a complete abdication of responsibility on the part of the Congress. It basically says, ``this is too hard for us. Give us a BRAC. Give us a package where all I have to do is vote it up or vote it down and I don't have to take any personal responsibility for any of the tough decisions.'' So now we're left with this sword of Damocles hanging over the government, hanging over defense, and if these cuts are automatically made, I think that the results for our national security will be catastrophic.
That is what the former Secretary of Defense, a most respected Secretary, said not long ago. So I think that is fundamentally correct, that we are proceeding on a path that disproportionately impacts the Defense Department and would be damaging in a way that is not necessary and should not happen.
A lot of these other programs have been surging out of control with problems after problems--whether it is Solyndra loans that were made, apparently knowing the company is going under--those kinds of things we need to focus on. To suggest they cannot have any cuts, and all the cuts have to fall on defense, or a disproportionate number of them, is a mistake.
I am a firm believer that the Defense Department, and every department of our government, has to tighten its belt, and we cannot continue with business as usual, and we should be having reductions in spending in every single bill that is coming before us. But I am afraid the only bill that will actually show an actual reduction in spending is the Defense bill, when we have men and women in harm's way right now on guard to defend our country.
I feel we need to get our act together. I am hopeful this committee of 12 can reach an accord that would not hammer the Defense Department additionally from the huge cuts they are already being asked to make over the next 10 years. Maybe they can help us begin to get on a path to fiscal responsibility. But I am doubtful they are going to make a big change. Hopefully, they will make some agreement, but it does not look hopeful we will have the kind of financial alteration of spending in America that is necessary to get our country on the right path.
After all, Admiral Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last year that the greatest threat to our national security is our debt. We are already seeing how it impacts us when you see these cuts being discussed and being threatened.
I want to thank Senator Ayotte--a former prosecutor, attorney general of New Hampshire--for jumping in right away into the very critical issue of detainees and how they should be treated in the United States. In the short time she has been here, she is making a big difference on that.
I was involved in it on the Judiciary Committee. I have been involved in it on the Armed Services Committee. I am basically exhausted with it. I remain flabbergasted. I think you are right, Senator Ayotte. This is progress I believe you have made in these negotiations, but I think we have gone too far in many of these ideas already. It does not make common sense.
Let me say a couple of things about it. When a person is at war against the United States and they are captured in combat activities against the United States, they are able to be detained. They do not have to be tried. They do not have to be given Miranda rights. They have to comply with the Geneva Conventions about food and the right to communicate, and, within limits, they can be interrogated. All of those things are part of the Geneva Conventions. And they are to be detained until the war is over. That is so fundamentally logical. Why in the world would a person who is fighting an enemy and could have killed the enemy at one moment and captures them the next moment then be required, while the war is still ongoing, to release them so they can shoot you again and attack you again?
This is perfectly logical. It is part of the history of war, and it has long been established that when you capture enemy combatants, you can detain them until the conflict is over. But we have had this obsessive desire and attack by some that the people who have been captured need to be released, and they insisted that they be released. So they started with the least dangerous members, and they have released, I guess now, a majority of the people who have been detained. And among the least dangerous members who have been released, as Senator Ayotte says, we now have 27 percent who have been identified as in the war, attacking us now, and one of them is one of the top leaders in al-Qaida. This was never necessary.
Guantanamo is a perfectly logical place to hold these individuals, and how it became such a political issue--and President Obama campaigned on it, and Attorney General Eric Holder was out there complaining about it. Then he gets in as the Attorney General of the United States, and they commence to make some serious errors, in my opinion.
One of the biggest errors was to create a presumption that somebody who has been apprehended attacking the United States should be treated in civilian courts. I know Senator Ayotte just said this earlier, but people need to know. If you are going to try someone in civilian court, you have to give them the Miranda immediately because when they come before the judge, if they made an admission without Miranda, it cannot be used against them. And you have to tell them immediately that they are entitled to a lawyer. When you capture people in a war, you don't give them lawyers. That has never been a part of the rules of war. And they are guaranteed presentment, the right to speedy trial in Federal court within 70 days. They are entitled to a preliminary hearing. So all of the other bad guys and terrorists now have an opportunity to know that you have captured their co-conspirator, perhaps, and are aware of the circumstances and may scatter in a way that you would not want to occur.
So these are realistic things. So if there is a presumption--first of all, I would say all of the cases should be tried in military commissions, if they are tried, and not in civilian court. But certainly the presumption should be that they would be in military commissions because if the presumption, as Attorney General Holder has declared, is that it is civilian, then you have to do the warning.
I remember in one of my hearings, Senator Lindsey Graham, a JAG officer in the Air Force--still trains as a reservist--grilled I believe it was Attorney General Holder and asked him: Well, what would happen if bin Laden were captured? Would you give him Miranda rights? And he could not answer the question. He would not answer the question because under his presumption, if Osama bin Laden were apprehended, he should be given Miranda rights.
So that is the nub of the problem we have been wrestling with, and we have had a lot of political rhetoric, in my opinion, attacked President Bush time and time again. They did not conduct everything perfectly, but many of the attacks on President Bush, his Department of Justice, and his military were unfair.
Do you know that not a single person in Guantanamo was ever waterboarded, that the U.S. military never participated in that? These were intel interrogations done under limited circumstances to a very few people. Whether they should have been done or not, we can all argue and disagree, but the idea that the U.S. military, the Defense Department, was systematically torturing and abusing prisoners is absolutely untrue. No military under such difficult circumstances has performed so well.
Another subject. One of my amendments deals with a subject I have had an opportunity to be engaged in for some years. Around 2002, 2003, or 2004, I led a congressional delegation to Europe dealing with the extent of our forces in Europe, how many we have deployed there, and the opportunity we had and maybe the need we have to bring home some of those forces.
We were going through a BRAC process in the United States, closing bases and consolidating bases. That process did not apply officially to Europe and bases around the world. And a number of us were engaged in that. I recall that Senator Saxby Chambliss and Mike Enzi traveled with us to Europe, and we examined--went to Germany and Italy and Spain, and we saw the bases that were important to the United States, bases that we really needed and we had good support from our allies on and that would be enduring bases. And there was a plan in place to reduce the deployment in areas where it was less important.
So as a matter of background, I would share these thoughts. Since 2004, the Defense Department has had a plan to transfer two of its four combat brigades in Europe back to the United States as part of a larger post-Cold War realignment. However, in April of this year---April of this year--the Department of Defense announced it would maintain three combat brigades and the fourth would not leave Europe until 2015.
Earlier this year, Admiral Stavridis told the Senate Armed Services Committee that roughly 80,000 troops remain in Europe. Moving a brigade combat team back to the United States would have cut U.S. forces by 5,000 personnel.
A 2010 plan developed by a congressionally appointed committee found that cutting one-third of the U.S. military presence in Europe and the Pacific would save billions of dollars over 10 years. I do believe significant cost
savings can be realized. In addition to these savings, stationing these troops in the United States would have a stimulative effect on State and local economies, with these soldiers and families living in their local economies and being able to stay with their families more easily and reducing the number of extensive movements of personnel and families to deploy in different places around the world. So I believe we need stay on track with this plan.
A February 2011 GAO report found that DOD posture planing guidance does not require the EUCOM--the European Command--to include comprehensive cost data in its theater posture plan. As a result, DOD does not have critical information that can be used by decision-makers as they deliberate posture requirements.
The GAO analysis showed that of the approximately $17 billion obligated to the services to support installations in Europe between 2006 and 2009, approximately $13 billion--78 percent--was for operation and maintenance costs. Now, those countries want our people there. It brings American money to their economy--just like we would like to have a brigade combat in Alabama, New Hampshire, or some other places. It is good for the economy.
NATO and European allies, however, are not meeting their defense spending obligations. Many of our allies do not meet the EU standard. The United States should not be continuing to subsidize NATO and European allies' defense spending. They need to participate some more.
I believe there are significant savings that could be found by bringing both of these brigade combat teams to the United States, as has been planned.
I would ask, is Europe more threatened today than it was 2, 3, 4, 6 years ago? I do not think so. They do not think so. Europeans committed to 2 percent of their GDP to be committed to defense, but many of those nations are down to 1 percent. They are not even fulfilling their 2 percent goal. The United States is at 4 percent of GDP on defense, almost.
I think the Europeans need to be prepared to understand that they cannot live off the United States. There is a great book by Kagan called ``Paradise and Power.'' It is very insightful, a very insightful book. It says, in a sense: Europeans are comfortable. Why? Because they are under the umbrella of American power. They have been comfortable with that. They do not feel threatened. They are not paying their fair share of the defense burden. And they do not like it when we want to bring home troops. Give me a break. It is time to do something about that.
I believe all of our allies around the world, whether in the Pacific or in Europe or in other areas of the globe, ought to work with us in partnership so that we can be most effective in providing some stability around the world. But the idea that the United States can unilaterally fund a security force for the whole world is unrealistic. It can't be sustained.
I just cannot possibly see how we need this many troops in Europe at this point in history. I believe it would be good for our economy to have those troops back home in the United States. You can have the bases there that we could surge and meet any challenge in short order. I believe that is the right approach.
I see my friend, Senator Enzi. We traveled together on that trip to Europe a number of years ago to examine the bases that we felt should be permanent and the ones that should be closed.
I yield the floor.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source