National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, the ranking member of this important committee, the Armed Services Committee, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, will be offering an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which I support. I hold the title of vice chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense and have served as chairman of that subcommittee as well.

This is an awesome responsibility--to handle the authorization bill for the greatest military in the world, and I salute both my friend Senator Reed and my friend Senator McCain for the hard work they have put into this bill, but there is a fatal flaw in this bill. Senator Jack Reed addresses it, and I want to speak to it for a minute.

Senator McCain has stated publicly, with others on the Republican side, a sentiment that is shared on the Democratic side. We have to do away with sequestration once and for all. Sequestration is a bad idea. It was supposed to be so bad that we would never see it. It was supposed to be such an extreme, outrageous idea that it would never happen, but it did--because when we fail to hit the budget numbers, we automatically go into sequestration, which leads to across-the-board cuts, mindless across-the-board cuts. Those cuts hurt every agency of government when we did it, but most of all it hurt the Department of Defense.

If there is one agency that needs to be thinking and planning ahead, it is the Department of Defense, and sequestration, sadly, made cuts making it impossible for the planners at the Department of Defense to think ahead, to plan ahead.

So Senator McCain has said--Senator Reed has joined him and others have been in the chorus, me included. Senator McCain has said: Once and for all, we need to get rid of sequestration. We need to have a budget process here that befits a great nation, and we don't.

Unfortunately, this authorization bill perpetuates some of the fundamental flaws of sequestration instead of solving the problem.

I am cosponsoring the amendment of Senator Jack Reed. I believe we have to eliminate the budget gimmicks that are cooked into this Defense authorization bill. It doesn't do our servicemembers any service or our country any good for us to perpetuate this.

For the entire Federal Government to still face ultimately the threat of sequestration, across-the-board cuts--as vice chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, I have heard testimony from the leadership of the Army, the Navy, Air Force, Marines, our Guard and Reserve that sequester-level budgets really harm our national security, and it makes sense.

How can you plan acquisition of important equipment? How can you be sure you can train our courageous young men and women if there is so much uncertainty with the budget? We know these cuts are going to have a dramatic negative impact on training for our servicemembers, grounded planes, wasted wrongheaded impacts to acquisition programs and more.

The National Defense Authorization Act includes the same budget gimmick that was offered in the Republican budget resolutions. It increases spending on something called overseas contingency operations by the same amount as sequestration would cut from the budget of the Department of Defense.

Let me explain. We fought two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and we didn't pay for them. We added the cost of those wars to the national debt.

So this President came in and said we have to put an end to that. So we have to have actual appropriations, and we have to accept the reality that we may face future wars. They created an account called the overseas contingency operations account anticipating that wars might come along. Well, thankfully we have brought our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan but for the limited commitment of troops to fight ISIS in Iraq at this moment.

What we have seen in this budget is the attempt to take these overseas contingency funds and take what was an emergency expenditure and build it into this budget, which is the problem. It was the wrong way to fix the problem earlier this year. It is the wrong way to try to fix sequestration now. Cranking up OCO spending on a 1-year basis just to get us through in the Department of Defense does nothing but add to our deficit and create a bigger problem next year. What are we going to do next year? No answer. That is why this is a gimmick. It is not fixing the sequestration challenge.

What do the Department of Defense leaders say? Are they celebrating because they are going to get this emergency money to come ride to the rescue this year? No. Secretary Ash Carter testified last month to the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee. He criticized this approach which is part of the bill before us. He called it ``managerially unsound'' and ``unfairly dispiriting to our force.'' He then went on to say:

Our military personnel and their families deserve to know their future, more than just [one budget] one year at a time. ..... [O]ur defense industry partners--

Think about the contractors, for example, who are building the planes, the tanks, and the ships of the future--

[O]ur defense industry partners, too, need stability and longer-term plans, not end-of-year crises or short-term fixes, if they're to be efficient and cutting edge as we need them to be.

That is what the Secretary of Defense said.

Then General Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came in uniform. What did he say about the budgetary approach we have before us in this bill? He emphasized that it, too, created problems because of the lack of predictability in defense budgets.

In testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Admiral Gortney of Northern Command and General Kelly of Southern Command pointed out that numerous domestic agencies also contribute to our national security, and they noted the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and other law enforcement agencies that are all subject to these across-the-board cuts. So if we say that in the name of America's national security defense and security, we are going to take care of the Department of Defense and then subject all these other agencies to across-the-board cuts, we will diminish protection for America. These agencies are important, too, not just the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, but also the FBI. For goodness' sake, they fight terrorism every day. The Department of Homeland Security has the same responsibility, the same type of mission. As we go through the list on the so-called nondefense side, we find a lot of agencies that are critically important to keeping America safe, and this approach in this bill does nothing for them.

This gimmick will also come at the expense of other programs not directed exclusively at homeland security and national defense.

So if the Department of Defense gets relief from sequestration by using this overseas contingency operations maneuver, what are the odds that we are going to do the same for the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Veterans' Administration, the National Institutes of Health, or America's infrastructure?

Let me say a word about that. The last time we did sequestration, I am embarrassed to say that we did an across-the-board cut at the National Institutes of Health. It was so damaging to NIH--which is the premier medical research agency in the world--it was so damaging that they are still trying to recover today. Before we went into sequestration--consider this--if you had an application for a medical grant at NIH, your chances before sequestration were one out of three. One out of three. After sequestration and the cuts that took place--one out of six.

There was recently a Fortune magazine which had a cover story about the Alzheimer's crisis facing America. I have done a little work in this area, and it is frightening to think about what we face. One American is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease every 67 seconds in our Nation. I didn't believe that number and challenged my staff. They are right. Once every 67 seconds.

Last year, we spent $200 billion in Medicare and Medicaid when it came to the Alzheimer's patients across America. That didn't even touch the amount of money families put into the care of their loved ones who are suffering from this disease. The projection of the rate of growth of Alzheimer's in America says that in just a few years, we will be spending more than $1 trillion a year on that disease alone--the government, over $1 trillion a year.

The Fortune magazine article--and the reason I rushed to buy it--says that at least two major pharmaceutical companies are starting to develop research that is promising to treat the onset of Alzheimer's, the early stages, and perhaps to alleviation some of the suffering. We have new imaging devices that are coming through that really can show Alzheimer's in living human beings at the earliest stages when it can be treated or at least ultimately should be treated--let me make certain I say that correctly.

But if you look at these breakthroughs, as promising as they are, you will find that in every single instance, the National Institutes of Health was there before, doing the basic research leading to the new drugs that are being developed, leading to the new technology. What happens when you go through sequestration and cut the National Institutes of Health? You stop the research. You slow it down, at least, and in some areas actually stop it. Is that really in the best interests of this country?

So when we come to the rescue of the Department of Defense, as we should, and we say that the Budget Act--sequestration--has to come to an end when it comes to the Department of Defense, we can't ignore what sequestration's across-the-board cuts will do to so many other critically important agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health. Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, is going to offer an amendment to try to address this honestly and directly, and I am going to support him.

Let's talk about infrastructure for a minute. Two weeks ago on the floor of the Senate, we gave the 33rd short-term extension of the Federal highway program, a short-term, 60-day extension. Let me ask, if you are planning to build an interstate highway, is 60 days enough? Hardly. Most of our Transportation bills have been long-term bills, 5- and 6-year bills, as they should be.

There are some Members of the Senate who question whether there should be a Federal program, but most of us believe there should be. And if there is going to be one, we can't limp along every 60 days or 6 months in funding it. Keeping this Budget Control Act and sequestration guarantees we are going to face this over and over again until Congress faces its responsibility.

The unfortunate reality is, if Congress cannot tackle the issue of sequestration honestly, directly, and head-on, our domestic agencies will likely be stuck with these artificial caps for years. America will pay a heavy price for our inability and unwillingness to tackle this challenging issue.

The Senate should be providing real sequestration relief not only to the Department of Defense but to all of the agencies of our government that do such important work. That should be our focus--not a budget gimmick using overseas contingency funds to get through 1 year with the Department of Defense but something more befitting of a nation like ours that deserves real leadership.

I urge my colleagues to support Ranking Member Jack Reed's critical amendment so that we can begin to get serious about the challenges that face us.

I yield the floor.

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