National Defense Authorization Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, this week the Senate will complete its work on the National Defense Authorization Act by holding a final vote. The National Defense Authorization Act is one of the most important bills Congress considers each and every year. I think this will mark the 54th consecutive year in which Congress has passed a Defense authorization bill, recognizing its importance to America's national security interests.

The bill authorizes funding for our Nation's military and our national defense, ensuring that our soldiers get paid, their equipment and training is funded, and that our commanders have the resources they need to confront the threats that are facing our Nation.

In particular, this bill ensures our air men and women maintain readiness levels and receive the training they need to safely return home after protecting our national security abroad.

In my State of South Dakota, we are proud to host the 28th Bomb Wing at Ellsworth Air Force Base, one of our Nation's two B-1 bomber bases. The B-1s are a critical part of the U.S. bomber fleet, providing our military with critical long-range strike capabilities. These bombers have the highest payload capacity, the fastest maximum speed, and the lowest cost per flying hour of any bomber in our fleet.

Bombers from the 28th Bomb Wing have played a key role in the armed conflicts the United States has engaged in over the past 20 years. Whatever the mission, from supporting NATO operations in Kosovo to conducting operations in Afghanistan, B-1s from Ellsworth have been in the thick of the action.

During Operation Odyssey Dawn, B-1s from Ellsworth launched from South Dakota flew halfway around the world to Libya, dropped their bombs, and returned home all in a single mission. This marked the first time in history that B-1s launched combat missions from the United States to strike targets overseas.

After 8 years of review, the Air Force and the Federal Aviation Administration recently finalized the expansion of the Powder River Training Complex, an airspace training range that serves as the primary training space for Ellsworth B-1s, as well as the B-52 bombers based at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota.

The expanded training range will be the largest training airspace over the continental United States. It will save Ellsworth up to $23 million a year by reducing the need for the B-1 bombers to commute for training to other States, such as Nevada and Utah. In an era of tighter budgets, measures such as this, which increase readiness while saving costs, are essential.

I was pleased to work with the Air Force and the FAA on this critical expansion, and I am hopeful our air men and women will be able to start using this range for large-force training exercises in the near future.

In addition to ensuring our military has the resources necessary to maintain our B-1 bombers, the bill authorizes full funding for one of the Air Force's top acquisition priorities--the Long Range Strike Bomber, which represents the future of our bomber fleet. This aircraft is scheduled to come on line by the mid-2020s and is just one of many acquisition priorities necessary to defend our Nation against future threats.

Our Nation's defense budget must consider not only the enemies we face today but also those we will face tomorrow.

In addition to the critical funding this bill authorizes, this year's bill is particularly important because it contains a number of reforms that will expand the resources available to our military men and women and strengthen our national security.

For starters, this bill tackles waste and inefficiency at the Department of Defense. It targets $10 billion in unnecessary spending and redirects those funds to military priorities such as funding for aircraft and weapons systems and modernization of Navy vessels.

The bill also implements sweeping reforms to the military's outdated acquisitions process by removing bureaucracy and expediting decisionmaking, which will significantly improve the military's ability to access the technology and the equipment it needs.

The act also implements a number of reforms to the Pentagon's administrative functions. Over the past decade, Army Headquarters staff has increased by 60 percent. Yet, in recent years, the Army has been cutting brigade combat teams. From 2001 to 2012, the Department of Defense's civilian workforce grew at five times the rate of our Active-Duty military personnel. There is something wrong with that picture. Prioritizing bureaucracy at the expense of our preparedness and our Active-Duty personnel is not an acceptable use of resources.

The Defense authorization bill we are considering changes the emphasis at the Department of Defense from administration to operations, which will help ensure that our military personnel receive the training they need and that they are ready to meet any threats that arise.

The bill also overhauls our military retirement system. The current military retirement system limits retirement benefits to soldiers who serve for 20 years or more--which doesn't apply, by the way, to 83 percent of those who have served, including many veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Defense bill replaces this system with a modern retirement system that would extend retirement benefits to 75 percent of our servicemembers.

This bill is the product of a bipartisan process, and it received bipartisan support in committee. I believe it came out of the Armed Services Committee by a vote of 20 to 6. This makes it particularly disappointing that the President is attempting to hijack this bill for political purposes.

Despite the fact that this legislation authorizes spending at the President's budget request--his budget request--of $612 billion, the President is threatening to veto this legislation if Republicans don't agree to provide more funding for agencies such as the IRS and EPA, and he has tried to convince Democrats here in the Senate to abandon bipartisan efforts on this bill and back up a Presidential veto.

Holding up funding authorization for our troops is reckless, and it is irresponsible. And it is flat wrong for the President of the United States to attempt to hijack this bill not because he disagrees with the bill itself but because he wants to make sure his pet projects receive the funding he wants.

At this very moment, threats are multiplying around the world. Russian aggression is on the rise. ISIS fighters are carving a trail of slaughter across the Middle East. Iran is working to acquire a nuclear weapon. Now more than ever, we cannot afford to be holding up funding for our military, especially for partisan political purposes.

Democrats and Republicans have had a chance to make their voices heard on this bill, and our joint efforts have resulted in strong, bipartisan legislation that will ensure that our military is prepared to meet the threats of the 21st century. The Senate should pass this bill this week and the President should sign it to make sure our troops have the equipment and the resources they need to do the most important thing we can do as a nation, and that is defend our country.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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