National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I would like to tell my colleagues that I
think we are winding down here. We have several other issues to
address, but I think it is very possible that we could see the end here
for final passage of the bill. There are still some issues that need to
be resolved, but I am grateful for the progress all of my colleagues
have made on both sides of the aisle.

I would like to call up and speak briefly on McCain amendment No.
1482. This amendment would prohibit the Secretary of Defense or the
Secretary of a military department from funding or conducting medical
research or development projects unless the Secretary determines that
the research or project is designed to protect, enhance, or restore the
health and safety of members of the Armed Forces through phases of
deployment, combat, medical recovery, and rehabilitation.

I will not seek a vote on this amendment, but I will say that it is
an issue which must be addressed if we are going to spend American tax
dollars on defending this Nation, the security, and the men and women
who are serving.

What I am going to show my colleagues is what happens with almost any
bad deal around here, and that is the incredible increase in
congressionally directed spending on medical research which is on the
Department of Defense authorization bill--not on the Health and Human
Services appropriations but on Defense. When we are cutting defense,
when we are experiencing all the bad results of sequestration, we
continue to grow to nearly $1 billion in medical research that has
nothing to do with defense.

I am all for medical research. I am all in. The National Institutes
of Health is doing great things. I am all for it. But when we take it
out of defense spending rather than what it should be taken out of,
which is Health and Human Services, then I object to that.

I am aware of the outcry that has taken place at these various
organizations which are dedicated to improving the health of Americans,
and so therefore of course I am not subjecting it to a vote. But it is
outrageous that this has gone up to nearly $1 billion in spending that
is taken out of the Department of Defense.

My friends, what it is, is the Willie Sutton syndrome. When the
famous bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he
said, ``Because that's where the money is.''

So this medical research, which has nothing to do with defense, comes
out of the Department of Defense. It is wrong, and it needs to stop, as
every scarce dollar that is earmarked for defense must go to the
defense of this Nation.

I know what the response is going to be: Oh my God, McCain, you want
to take money away from--fill in the blank. No, I am not asking to take
money from any medical research; I am asking that it be put where it
belongs, and that is not in the Department of Defense. It is not about
disputing the great value of much of the medical research Congress and
America's taxpayers make possible. I will match my record on support
for medical research with anyone's. Any person who has reached my
advanced age likely has some firsthand experience with the miracles of
modern medicine and gratitude for all who support it. Much of the
medical research for which Congress appropriates money each year helps
to extend and improve the lives of many Americans. This amendment is
not about the value of medical research or whether Congress should
support it.

Immediately I will hear the response waiting now: Oh, McCain, you
want to cut very beneficial research that helps the lives of Americans.
No. No, I do not. I want it appropriated from the appropriate
appropriations bill, not from defense.

This amendment is absolutely about what departments and agencies of
our government should be funding what kinds of medical research and
specifically what the proper role of the Department of Defense is in
this work.

Over the past 20 years, Congress has added billions of dollars to the
Department of Defense's medical research portfolio for disease research
that has nothing to do with defense. Since 1992, Congress has
appropriated almost $10 billion for medical research in the Department
of Defense's Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs, and
only about $2.4 billion of that $10 billion was for research that could
be considered in any way relevant to the military.

To be sure, the Department of Defense has a proper and vital role to
play in medical research that benefits the unique work of our men and
women in uniform in areas such as prosthetics, traumatic brain injury,
and spinal cord injury, among others. However, through years of
congressionally directed spending, the DOD medical research program has
been used to fund research on breast cancer, prostrate cancer, lung
cancer, genetic disorders such as muscular dystrophy, and even mad cow
disease.

In other words, over the last 2 decades, in a time of war and fiscal
challenge, even despite sequestration, Congress has appropriated $7.3
billion for medical research that is totally unrelated to the
military--money that the Department of Defense did not request and our
military did not need.

This graph right behind me shows the explosive growth that has
occurred in this program since 1992. At that time, in 1992, Congress
had funded one research project for breast cancer. Over time, that has
now grown to 30 separate medical research projects funded by the
Congress. Funding has increased by almost 4,000 percent, from $25
million in 1992 to almost $1 billion last year. I will repeat that for
the benefit of my colleagues. Spending on medical research at DOD--
nearly 75 percent of which has nothing to do with the military--has
grown 4,000 percent since 1992. Even the late Senator from Alaska, Ted
Stevens, under whose leadership the original funding for breast cancer
was added, reversed course in 2006 because the money would be ``going
to medical research instead of the needs of the military.''

During the floor debate on the annual Defense appropriations bill,
Senator Stevens had this to say:

We could not have any more money going out of the Defense
bill to take care of medical research when medical research
is basically a function of the NIH. . . . It is not our
business. I confess, I am the one who made the first mistake
years ago. I am the one who suggested that we include some
money for breast cancer research. It was languishing at the
time. . . . Since that time it has grown to $750 million . .
. in the last bill we had, dealing with medical research that
had nothing to do with the Department of Defense.

My friends, when Senator Ted Stevens is saying that a congressionally
directed spending program has gotten out of hand, we know there is a
problem. Yet, despite the urgings of Senator Stevens in 2006, the
problem has only gotten worse since then. Last year alone Congress
appropriated $971.6 million for medical research programs that the
Department of Defense did not request in its budget. More than $280
million of that money was appropriated for cancer research in the
defense budget while six other Federal agencies spent more than $50
billion on cancer research in fiscal year 2015.

I will put that in perspective. For the amount of money that Congress
appropriated for medical research last year at the Department of
Defense--again, most of which had nothing to do with the military and
which the Department did not request--we could have bought 12 F-18
Superhornets, 2 littoral combat ships or roughly 1 Army brigade combat
team.

My friends, in these days of sequestration, that is not acceptable.
Once again, I am sure every Member of this body agrees that this
research is vitally important to Americans suffering from these
diseases, to the families and friends who care for them, and to all of
those who know the pain and grief of losing a loved one. But this
research should not be funded by the Department of Defense. It belongs
in civilian departments and agencies of our government.

Appropriating money in this way only harms our national security by
reducing the funding available for military-relevant medical research
that helps protect service men and women on the battlefield and for
military capabilities they desperately need to perform their missions.
Furthermore, this kind of misguided spending only puts decisionmaking
about medical research in the hands of lobbyists and politicians
instead of medical experts where it belongs.

So I say to my colleagues, what I had proposed and will not seek a
vote on--because the result is very clear--is a commonsense amendment.
It focuses the Department's research efforts on medical research that
will lead to lifesaving advancements in battlefield medicine and new
therapies for recovery and rehabilitation of servicemembers wounded
both physically and mentally on the battlefield. It could finally begin
the long overdue process of shifting the hundreds of millions of
dollars of nonmilitary medical research spending out of the Department
of Defense and into the appropriate civilian departments and agencies
of our government. That is a change that needs to start now, and I hope
my colleagues, especially my friends on the Appropriations Committee,
will make that happen.

I want to point out again that we started in fiscal year 1992 with
$25 million. We are now up to nearly $1 trillion, and I am sure that
the appropriators have an equal or like amount that they are proposing.

I see that my colleague from Illinois is here on the floor, and I
know he will defend with vigor, passion, love, and every emotion he has
what we are doing because of those who are suffering from illnesses
such as breast cancer and all of the other terrible things that afflict
our society. I say to my friends who will come to the floor in a high
dudgeon over what I am proposing: I am not saying that we should cut
any of these programs--not a single one. We should probably increase
them. But let's put them where they belong, and that is not in the
Department of Defense.

While I have the floor, I want to talk about some other issues.
Former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates said in an interview over the
weekend:

What it feels like to me is really what the President said
last week, which was a lack of strategy. Just adding a few
hundred troops doing more of the same I think is not likely
to make much of a difference. . . . We should have had a
strategy a year ago. . . . And we have to be willing, if we
think ISIS is truly a threat to the United States and to our
interests, we have to be willing to put Americans at risk.
That's just a fact of life. . . . [I]f the mission [President
Obama] has set for the military is to degrade and destroy
ISIS, the rules of engagement that he has imposed on them
prevent them from achieving that mission.

I don't know anyone who is more respected by both sides of the aisle
and served Presidents of both parties in key administrative positions
than Secretary of Defense Bob Gates. Quite often, I and my friend from
South Carolina, Senator Graham, are accused of being biased and
partisan and attacking the President and his strategies in a partisan
fashion. I will remind my colleagues that in 2006 Senator Graham and I
called for the resignation of the Secretary of Defense, who was then in
a Republican administration. In 2006, we said: We are losing the war.
In 2006, I had a spirited argument with then-General Dempsey--who was
in charge of training the Iraqis and assured me everything was going
fine--when I was showing him the facts when things were going to hell
in a handbasket. So to somehow accuse me, Senator Graham, and others of
making these comments about a feckless and without-foundation foreign
policy that is allowing ISIS to succeed does not bear scrutiny.

I agree with former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates when he says:

``What it feels like to me is really what the President said last week,
which was a lack of a strategy.'' There is a lack of a strategy.

I want to tell my colleagues that we will be having hearings when we
get through with this bill, and we will try to figure out what the
Congress and the American people should know about what is happening in
the world, not just in the Middle East.

Facts are stubborn things. The fact is we can knock off an ISIS or Al
Qaeda leader, and we can trumpet that as a great victory and thank God
that it has happened. But to think that really has a significant, long-
term impact on the ability of ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other terrorist
organizations to not reconstitute and continue their success, with
occasional setbacks--which they are achieving and spreading that poison
throughout the Middle East and the latest being Libya, aided and
abetted in many cases by the Iranians--is obviously a fact that cannot
be denied.

For example USA Today reports: ``Death of al-Qaeda leader may benefit
Islamic State.''

The U.S. missile strike that killed al-Qaeda's No. 2 leader
is another in a string of devastating blows to the terrorist
group's old-guard leadership that might inadvertently help a
more brutal terror group: the Islamic State, analysts said.

The Washington Post Editorial Board writes today: ``A dangerous
mission in Libya requires a firm approach.''

The Washington Post editorial board, not known as a rightwing
periodical, writes:

It's good those two militants have been taken off the
battlefield, but their elimination will not remedy the
growing crises in Libya and Yemen. In that respect, the
operations are another example of the limited benefits of
President Obama's narrow approach to counterterrorism.

The New York Times reports today: ``As Vladimir Putin Talks More
Missiles and Might, Cost Tells Another Story.''

Reuters reports today: ``China gives more details on South China Sea
facilities.''

This is very disturbing. I say to my colleagues and all of us--
whether we are members of the Intelligence Committee or members of the
Armed Services Committee--that we must address this issue of cyber
security.

My friends, we just went through a long back-and-forth debate and
discussion over whether we should restrict the kinds of telephone
information and whether it be shared or not shared and who should store
it and all of that. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported on
Friday: ``Hackers Likely Stole Security-Clearance Information During
Breach of Government Agencies.''

Hackers who raided the U.S. government's personnel office
gained access to secret background investigations conducted
on current and former employees, senior administration
officials said Friday--an ominous development in the recent
threat of federal data, one of the largest in history.

The Washington Post editorial board writes today: ``A pathetic breach
of responsibility on cybersecurity.''

[T]he breach of Office of Personnel Management networks
this year . . . represents a failure of stewardship and a
serious external threat.
After the OPM suffered a cyberintrusion in 2014, its
director, Katherine Archuleta, asked Congress in February for
$26 million in additional funding for cybersecurity. She said
the agency stores more personally identifiable information
than almost any other in the government, including banking
data for more than 2 million people and background
investigations for more than 30 million, among them
individuals being considered for military enlistment, federal
job appointments and employment by federal contractors. ``It
is imperative,'' Ms. Archuleta wrote, that . . . ``threats to
identity theft, financial espionage, etc., are real, dynamic
and must be averted.'' They were not averted.
In April, the new breach was uncovered. Intruders had
stolen the names, Social Security numbers, pay history,
health records and other data of some 4.2 million current and
former federal workers.
It seems to us that just slamming doors and building more
firewalls may be an insufficient response to an assault of
this magnitude. An essential aspect of deterrence is the
credible threat of retaliation.

Why do I quote from that? It is because every time we ask a question
as to what the policy is, whether it is strictly defensive against a
cyber attack or whether offensive in order to prevent one, the policy
has ``not been determined.''

I say we have to address this issue. First of all, we have to have an
administration policy or that policy somehow may be developed in the
Congress, which is not the right way to do it, obviously.

So I intend to work with Senator Burr, Senator Feinstein, Senator
Reed, and others in holding hearings and figuring out what we need to
do because this is a serious threat in many respects that we have faced
in recent times.

Finally, I wish to mention this: ``Former CIA Chief Says Government
Data Breach Could Help China Recruit Spies.''

Retired Gen. Michael Hayden, who once led the National Security
Agency and later the Central Intelligence Agency, said the threat of
millions of U.S. Government personnel records could allow China to
recruit U.S. officials as spies.

The general said:

This is a tremendously big deal. My deepest emotion is
embarrassment.

He said the personnel records were a ``legitimate foreign
intelligence target.''

He continued:

To grab the equivalent in the Chinese system, I would not
have thought twice. I would not have asked permission . . .
This is not ``shame on China.'' This is ``shame on us'' for
not protecting that kind of information.

So I urge my colleagues to understand that this new issue of cyber
security is an area which the United States of America, in the view of
many experts, does not have a significant advantage. It is an area
where, in some respects, we may even be at a disadvantage, if we look
at the extraordinary events that have taken place in the issue of cyber
security. The latest information, of course, of 4 million people has to
get our attention. It has to get the attention of the administration.
We need to work together. I stand ready--and I know my colleagues on
the other side of the aisle do as well--to sit down and come up with
some policies and then implement those policies into ways of combating
this new form of warfare we call cyber.

Again, I anticipate the comments of my friend from Illinois who will
vigorously defend all of the research that is done in medical research.
I wish to point out, again, that I am not in opposition to one single
dime of any kind of medical research. I say it is coming out of the
wrong place. We cannot make a logical argument that this belongs in the
Department of Defense. Some of it does, and I have pointed that out.
The majority of it belongs with other agencies.

When we are facing sequestration and when we are cutting our national
security to the bone, according to our military leaders who have said
that continued sequestration puts the lives of the men and women who
are serving in the military in danger, we cannot afford another $1
billion to be spent on medical research. We want the money spent on
medical research. We want it spent from the right place.

I look forward to addressing the remaining amendments with my
colleague and friend from Rhode Island.

Hopefully, we can wrap up the Defense authorization bill sometime very
soon. Then we can move on to conference and then bring the bill back
after the conference to the floor of the Senate so we can carry out our
first and most urgent responsibility; that is, the security of the
Nation and men and women who defend it.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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Mr. McCAIN. I am aware that the Senator from Oklahoma feels very
strongly about this amendment. We discussed it and voted on it in the
committee. At that time, I told the Senator from Oklahoma--who is my
friend, for many years--that I would do what I could to see that he got
a vote before the entire Senate. I am in disagreement with his
amendment, but I want to respect his right to offer it. So--and I
appreciate less than you know his tenacity--Mr. President, I will not
object.

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Mr. McCAIN. Is it my understanding from the Senator's statement that
Secretary Kerry is now saying that was not an accurate quote of his----

Mr. GRAHAM. Yes.

Mr. McCAIN. That it was not urgent that the previous activities
concerning the development of nuclear weapons would be absolutely
required?

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Mr. McCAIN. I say to my colleagues, this Defense Authorization Act is
a reform bill. I repeat: It is a reform bill--a reform bill that will
enable our military to rise to the challenges of a more dangerous world
both today and in the future. It tackles acquisition reform, military
retirement reform, personnel reform, headquarters and management
reform.

We identified $10 billion of excess and unnecessary spending from the
President's budget request. We are reinvesting it in military
capabilities for our warfighters and reforms that can yield long-term
savings for the Department of Defense. We did all of this while
upholding our commitments to our servicemembers, retirees, and their
families.

On acquisition reform, we put the services back into the acquisition
process, created new mechanisms to ensure accountability for results,
streamlined regulation, and opened up the defense acquisition process
to our Nation's innovators.

On military reform, we modernized and improved our military
retirement system. Today, 83 percent of servicemembers leave the
service with no retirement assets or benefits. Under this new plan, 75
percent of servicemembers would get benefits. This reform, over time,
is estimated to save $15 billion per year in the outyears.

On management reform, we ensure that the Department of Defense and
the military services are using precious defense dollars to fulfill
their missions and defend the Nation, not expand their bloated staffs.
Targeted reductions in headquarters and administrative staff in this
legislation--which is a 7.5-percent mandated reduction per year, up to a 30-percent reduction
in the size of headquarters and administrative staff--will generate
$1.7 billion in savings just for fiscal year 2016.

With these savings and billions more identified throughout the bill,
we accelerated shipbuilding, added an upgraded fighter aircraft,
invested in key modernization priorities across the services, and met
our commanders' most urgent needs. As adversaries threaten our military
technological advantage, the bill looks to the future and invests in
new breakthrough technologies, including directed energy and unmanned
combat aircraft.

The legislation is a reflection of the growing threats we face in the
world. The legislation authorizes nearly $3.8 billion in support for
Afghan security forces as they continue to defend their country in the
gains of the last decade against our common enemies. The legislation
authorizes the provision of defensive lethal assistance to Ukraine to
help it build combat capability and defend its sovereign territory. It
supports the efforts by Lebanon and Jordan to secure their borders
against ISIL. It creates a new initiative to help Southeast Asian
nations build maritime domain awareness capabilities to address growing
sovereignty challenges in the South China Sea.

This is an ambitious piece of legislation, but in the times we live
in, that is exactly what we need.

Henry Kissinger told our committee earlier this year that our Nation
faces the most diverse and complex array of crises since the end of
World War II. Rising to these challenges requires bold reform to our
national defense. This legislation represents a strong first step in
that direction.

As I said, this is a reform bill. This is an authorizing bill. This
brings about much needed reforms. I cannot go to the people of Arizona
and justify defense spending when there is a $2.4 billion cost overrun
on an aircraft carrier, when there are a number of weapons systems
which billions of dollars have been invested in and which have never
become reality. That system has to be reformed. That is what this bill
does.

We have to reform our military retirement system. We allow people,
after just 2 years of service, to contribute to their own retirement.
Today, they have to wait 20 years in order to do that.

We upgrade fighter aircraft.

We tell the defense industry that they cannot have those cost
overruns. If there are cost overruns, the service chiefs have to
personally sign that they know of, are aware of, and are taking action
to prevent further cost overruns.

So there is a lot in this legislation. It is an authorizing
legislation. That is why it disturbs me a great deal to hear my
colleagues on the other side of the aisle saying they want to vote
against it because of OCO. That is not sufficient reason in these
times. If they want to fight against OCO, the place to do it--the
overseas contingency operation money which brings up authorizing
spending to the same level that the President has requested--if they
want to do that, then let's have that fight in another arena. But let's
not take away from the men and women who are serving in this military
the equipment and the training and the leadership that is demanded in
the world as it is today--in the words of Henry Kissinger, more diverse
and complex array of crises since the end of World War II.

So I urge all of my colleagues to restate their commitment to the
defense of this Nation by voting in favor of this legislation and
cloture prior to that. I urge my colleagues--all of them--to understand
that we can fight about this funding situation, the need to repeal
sequestration--sequestration is destroying our military's capability to
defend this Nation. Every uniformed service leader who appeared before
the Armed Services Committee said that with sequestration, we are
putting the lives of the men and women in uniform at greater risk. We
should not do that. We ask young men and women to volunteer for the
military, and yet we here in Congress won't take action to keep them
from being placed in greater danger. That is an abrogation of our
responsibility. This bill does not fix all that, but it certainly is a
major step in the right direction.

Almost all of this legislation was done on a bipartisan basis. There
were literally--there were some small disagreements, but overall the
committee together.

Now, at the behest of their leadership and perhaps the President of
the United States, they are so torqued up about OCO that they may vote
against this legislation's passage, and that, my friends, is an
abrogation of their responsibility to the men and women who are serving
this country. If they choose to vote against this legislation on the
grounds that they are opposed to the funding mechanism used to do so,
then they have their priorities upside down, and I intend to tell the
American people about it because I believe that we are not serving the
men and women who are serving this country to the best of their ability
and not receiving the support they need and deserve from the Senate of
the United States of America.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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