Department Of Defense Appropriations Act, 2016 -- Motion To Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, later this afternoon, the Senate will decide whether to advance or filibuster the Defense authorization legislation which is before us. Senators will take a vote and Senators will make a choice. One option is for Senators to follow the bipartisan example of the House of Representatives and the Senate Armed Services Committee, both of which passed Defense authorization legislation with bipartisan backing.

It means reaching across the aisle to support the men and women who support us every single day. It means voting to transform bureaucratic waste into crucial investments for brave troops and their families, raises they have earned, quality-of-life programs they deserve, and the kind of medical care and mental health support they should expect when injured on the battlefield or haunted by memories at home.

It means ensuring our military has the tools it needs to help America navigate a treacherous world beset by an ever-growing array of challenges. It means advancing a bill that contains ideas and priorities from both parties and one that gives President Obama the exact level of funding authorization he asked for in his own budget request.

It also means endorsing the Senate's return to considering Defense authorization bills through the regular order, allowing real bipartisan debate and a real bipartisan amendment process as we have done this year, as opposed to the bad old days of ramming it through at the last minute. That is one option: voting for cloture, voting for a bipartisan bill that is good for our troops and our country.

But there is another option too: voting to filibuster, voting to raise the curtain on this truly bizarre filibuster summer, a strategy we hear Democratic leaders boasting about in the press. Democratic leaders are apparently so passionate--passionate--about dumping more cash into gargantuan DC bureaucracies like the IRS that they now seem prepared to block and filibuster the benefits owed to our troops and their families or even--even--shut down the government altogether if they can't get their way.

As one newspaper reported this morning, ``Democrats appear eager to return to shutdown politics.'' The minority leader seemed to put it plainly enough the other day: ``We're headed for another shutdown,'' he said. But that can only happen if commonsense Democrats allow their party leaders to advance the shutdown-seeking filibuster summer gambit.

Today is every commonsense Democrat's chance to say, Enough. This is a bad strategy. Today is every commonsense Democrat's opportunity to help pull their party back from a senseless path of forcing endless filibusters and a shutdown no one wants but the hard left. That is what they want. Because here is what every Senator knows deep down: Voting to filibuster would mean allowing Democratic leaders to take from every soldier, every sailor, every marine, and every man and woman in the Air Force the pay raises they have earned, so Democratic leaders can use it as an ante in the game of shutdown roulette.

Voting to filibuster would mean allowing Democratic leaders to hold our military hostage at a time of unprecedented global threats as part of some partisan ploy to extract--extract--a few more bucks for Washington bureaucrats. I just cannot imagine serious-minded Democrats feeling comfortable going along with their leaders' plan. It is just too callous. It is just too extreme. So I hope they will not. I hope every one of my colleagues, no matter which party they are in, will stand together instead for bipartisanship, for regular order, for the idea that we should support the troops who support us.

I thank Chairman McCain for all of his hard work to get us to this point. He did a marvelous job working across the aisle to craft a serious defense bill, with input and amendments from both sides. The Senate, our military, and our country stand to benefit immensely from his dedication. So I hope every Senator of good will will stand up and vote to advance this bipartisan bill later today.

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