Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2015--Continued

Floor Speech

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Mrs. ERNST. I say thank you to Senator Sullivan, the distinguished Senator from Alaska. Thank you for your passion as well. You have served in the Marines, in the Marine Reserves. I thank you for that, for your dedication and your commitment to our United States of America through your service as a marine and now through your service in the Senate.

We are also joined by the Senators from Montana and from North Carolina. I would like to thank my colleagues for joining in a colloquy. The filibuster we have seen on the other side of the aisle sends a message to our troops that we don't care about their security, and we don't care about the Nation's security. We must fund our troops, at a time when, as you stated, the world is virtually imploding.

We see actions going on all around the globe, whether it is from North Africa into Iraq, Syria, North Korea, China, Iran, Afghanistan. We could go on and on, where our troops are needed for safety and security, where they are needed to keep the fight away from our homeland.

So I thank everyone who is joining in today. I appreciate the thoughts we will be sharing with our constituents and with the audience we have. Hopefully, we will see this projected nationwide, with an outcry of outrage that the Democrats are blocking--are daring to block funding for our national security.

This is a bipartisan bill--a bipartisan bill. The Senate version cleared out of our Senate Appropriations Committee by a vote of 30 to 0, Democrats and Republicans. We came together, bipartisan, 30 to 0.

In total, this bill appropriates $515.9 billion for our national security. Some $900 million of this is funding for the National Guard, a critical arm to the security of the United States and where I ended my 23-plus-year career last November in the Iowa Army National Guard.

In fact, my old unit, the battalion I commanded in the Iowa Army National Guard, that battalion headquarters is currently forward- deployed. So the men and women I served alongside, they are out there protecting our freedoms. They are out there securing an area far away from home. They are doing it not just for me and not just for the Senators who are here, but they are doing that for all of you.

The fact that we would reject funding for our forward-deployed troops is appalling to me. Those are my brothers and sisters. These are my friends, my neighbors, my colleagues. They are fighting on behalf of the United States. The United States is now turning its back, with a filibuster, on these troops. So how dare our colleagues block a bill to fund our military, while our troops are forward-deployed. They are out on our frontlines.

I know my colleague from Montana has had some troops who have just recently returned. I know he would like to join us in this discussion as well.

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Mrs. ERNST. I thank my colleague. Yes, of course, they pay attention. They see what is going on in the Senate. We track this. I tracked this when I was a young captain serving in Kuwait and Iraq. We track this because it is so important that we have the funding necessary for our personnel--just basic funding of our human resources obligations to the U.S. Armed Forces.

As to our personnel, we have to have funding to update our equipment, and we have to have the funding for the training necessary so that our men and women are ready and able to forward deploy. Even when they are forward deployed--in Iraq, Afghanistan, or you name it--they pay attention.

It is vitally important that what we do here today is to vote on the DOD appropriations bill. We have to stop this filibuster. Our troops are paying attention. Their families are paying attention. Their families here in the United States want to know the Senate is doing the right thing by protecting our military, making sure we have the troops necessary, the equipment necessary, the training necessary to make sure that when they forward deploy, they come home safe again. That is No. 1--making sure they are properly trained, equipped, and manned so they come home safe.

So yes, Senator Sullivan, they do pay attention. As we are standing here debating the importance of this appropriations bill, we have almost 10,000 troops serving today--right now--in Afghanistan. We have almost 5,000 troops in Iraq. Our special operators are deployed throughout the world protecting our Nation.

Just last week I had the opportunity to visit a hospital and see one of those special operators, and I am going to come back to that special operator in just a second.

I stated before that the world is imploding, and we only have to look at the headlines over the past several days to see what a risk our globe is in. North Korea test fires a ballistic missile from a submarine on July 9. The Chinese Navy holds a live fire drill in the South China Sea--even after the international court has ruled against their claims in the region. Iran, which is now, oddly enough, being fueled by taxpayer dollars after the horrific nuclear deal our administration entered in, drove their boats dangerously close to ours once again. They came dangerously close to American ships. And U.S. intelligence reports come forward saying ISIS is ``adapting'' to our current efforts.

These are the things, folks, that keep me up at night. These are the things that keep many of us up at night. But what lets us rest a little more at ease is knowing that we have our airmen, marines, soldiers, and sailors who are forward-deployed guarding our homeland. What puts my mind at rest is knowing we have these brave men and women doing their job for us. They are not failing us.

Back to the special operator I visited in the hospital last week, this young man--forward-deployed into a theater in the Middle East--had been shot four times. Two weeks ago when I went into his hospital room, he was standing up. This special operator was pretty proud to show me his wounds--standing up, shot four times. He didn't bemoan the fact that he had been injured severely; what he was bemoaning was the fact that he was not with his unit.

He said: Ma'am, I have no idea how long it is going to take me to heal, but I am ready to go back and serve with my unit. I am ready to go back.

These are the men and women we need to be funding, folks. They are our defense--our national defense. So I am asking that the filibuster end and that we take a vote on the DOD appropriations bill.

I know we would like to hear a little more from my colleagues--again, I thank them for coming to the floor--the Senator from Montana, the Senator from North Carolina. And I thank the Senator from Alaska for leading us in this discussion today.

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