National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the amendment proposed by the senior Senator from Arizona. What it comes down to is that Republicans and Democrats have fundamentally different approaches to providing for our troops, our national security agencies, and our government.

Democrats are committed providing the funds necessary to protect our Nation, grow our economy, invest in research, and shelter the most vulnerable. Republicans have a different approach. They accept massive cuts to almost every agency and only provide defense funding through an accounting trick which the Defense Department's own leadership has rejected as inadequate.

This is a debate about how best to protect our national security. And my Republican colleagues are on the wrong side of it.

Senate Democrats are committed to defeating ISIS on the ground in Iraq and Syria, dismantling its terror network, and protecting our homeland. The only way we can do that is by supporting budget relief for all of our national security agencies, including Homeland Security, the FBI, and many others. Republicans haven't been willing to do that so we must figure out how to allocate funding with the existing budget agreement.

The amendment offered by the chairman of the Armed Services Committee is a return to gridlock. Last year's attempt to provide only the Defense Department with additional OCO funds resulted in a stalemate and a 3-month long continuing resolution. Do we have to repeat this failed strategy again?

The answer is no. The chairman of the Appropriations Committee and I took a different approach in drafting the Defense appropriations bill: no poison pill riders, stick to the budget deal, eliminate wasteful spending proposals, and reinvest in our priorities.

If you compare the results in the Defense appropriations bill to the amendment proposed by the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, here is what you will find: His proposal violates last year's budget deal with $18 billion more in spending. Our bipartisan Defense appropriations bill invests $15 billion in important programs while adhering to the deal.

The pending amendment relies on an OCO gimmick to authorize increases for Israeli missile defense programs. However, every cent requested by the Israeli Government, all $600.9 million, is funded in the Defense appropriations bill without using OCO funds.

This amendment authorizes OCO funding for a littoral combat ship and a DDG-51 destroyer. This would be the first time that OCO funds would be used to buy ships for the Navy.

The appropriations bill goes even further in supporting shipbuilding by providing $1 billion for a new icebreaker to support our Arctic strategy, an item not included in the pending amendment.

The amendment also adds various aircraft--more F-18s, F-35s, C-130s, helicopters, and so on--that are also funded in the Defense appropriations bill without running up the Nation's OCO charge card.

The bottom line is that, in the Defense appropriations bill, we were able to fund most of the items in Senator McCain's OCO gimmick amendment, but we were able to it within the budget caps. It wasn't easy, but we made it work.

I would prefer that we find a way to increase both defense and nondefense funding so we can invest more in all of the agencies that work together to keep America safe.

The Reed amendment does exactly that. It amends last year's budget deal to include $18 billion more for defense and $18 billion more for important nondefense programs.

The Reed amendment includes $2 billion more to address cyber security vulnerabilities to stop the type of attacks that resulted in the theft of millions of personnel records from the Office of Personnel Management. It includes $1.4 billion for more law enforcement efforts, including more security screeners at airports, more FBI agents and police officers on the street, and more grants to State and local first responders.

The Reed amendment addresses public health emergencies, including $1.9 billion for the response to Zika. It also provides $1.9 billion to fix our broken water infrastructure, which would help ensure we don't face another lead contaminated water crisis like what happened Flint, MI.

Finally, the Reed amendment includes $3.2 billion in funding to address infrastructure problems at VA hospitals, fix our roads and bridges, and invest in our rail and transit systems.

Last year, Congress voted to provide fair and balanced relief to our Defense and our nondefense agencies. The Reed amendment is consistent with that agreement, and it deserves our support.

In conclusion, we should be supporting all of our national security agencies as they work to protect this Nation, including cyber security, homeland security, and local law enforcement, the FBI, and TSA.

We also should support critical issues like the opioid epidemic, water infrastructure, the Zika outbreak, and research across the Federal Government among other items.

I urge my colleagues to support Ranking Member Reed's amendment.

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