Water Resources Development Act of 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. SULLIVAN. I say to Senator Daines, I again thank you for your leadership. All of my colleagues, the Presiding Officer, you, the other colleagues we have seen on the floor--your leadership has been outstanding, my good friend from Montana.

It begs the question. Why have we, the Republican freshman class-- really for weeks, we have all been coming to the Senate floor to talk about what is happening. We have been coming to the Senate floor to counter the minority leader's decision to filibuster our troops, as Senator Rounds mentioned, six times. There is no other bill in the Senate, since we have become Senators, that the minority leader wants to focus on and filibuster than the bill that funds our troops. It is pretty remarkable. I think it is a disgrace.

So we are here because we want to bring attention to this issue. What is happening here? Sometimes it can be confusing.

We have the press that sits above the Presiding Officer's chair, and they watch what is going on. We want them to report this. We want the American people to know what is happening here because it doesn't matter where you are from, what State you are in, what party you are affiliated with in terms of politics, if you knew your Senator from your State was filibustering the spending that supports our troops when they are in combat all around the world right now, you would probably be very disappointed. You would think it was a story the press would want to write about, but they haven't yet, but we are trying because it is a very important issue. I believe the American people really care about this issue. That is why we are here.

I will tell you another reason why we are on the floor, why we have spent hours and weeks coming to this floor and talking about this issue, because there is someone else who cares about this issue--the men and women in the U.S. military. They really care about this issue.

I know there is this kind of sense in the Senate--when these votes are taken late at night and there are filibusters and procedural issues, I think a lot of my colleagues think that the troops don't know what is going on, that somehow they don't know the minority leader of the Senate and his colleagues have filibustered the funding for their mission and their welfare and their training six times in the last year and a half. But the troops do know that. They know it. They read about it. I guarantee you they are concerned about it. I think in some ways they think it is demoralizing, as Senator Perdue mentioned. It doesn't give the military leadership the chance to plan long term.

Another reason we are on the floor--you know it--is we need to let our troops know we have their back. There might be somebody in this body who thinks filibustering spending for our troops six times is a policy they can be supportive of. Again, I don't know why the minority leader is doing this. I certainly don't know why my colleagues on the other side are blindly following him. But we need to be on the floor to let the troops know, when they watch this, when they hear about this and it confuses them, that we have their back. We don't think this is appropriate.

Yesterday when a number of us were on the floor, we talked about what we are asking--what the President, the Secretary of Defense, and our generals are asking our men and women in uniform to do. They are all over the world keeping us safe--in Iraq, in Syria, in the South China Sea, in Europe. Many of the initiatives undertaken by the President in terms of our troops in these places--many of us are supportive of them, but this is a lot that they are responsible for. They are doing so much. You come back to this body, what is this body doing? Filibustering spending for our troops. They are certainly doing their job; it is time the minority leader let us do our job to fund them.

Recently, of all the different things they are supposed to be doing, we learned about something new that they might be doing. In a deal recently negotiated by Secretary Kerry, the men and women in the U.S. military might possibly soon be conducting joint airstrikes and sharing intelligence with the Russians. There was a New York Times article today that makes it clear that our military leaders are very, very skeptical of this deal. So it is another thing we might be asking them to do--share intelligence and conduct joint operations with a country we shouldn't be trusting, particularly in terms of military terms.

I will quote from the New York Times today. The result of this deal potentially--and by the way, the State Department has not yet allowed us to see the terms of it. We haven't been able to see it. It kind of sounds like that other deal Secretary Kerry negotiated, the Iran nuclear deal.

This is from the New York Times:

The result is that at a time when the United States and Russia are at their most combative posture since the end of the Cold War, the American military is suddenly being told that it may, in a week, have to start sharing intelligence with one of its biggest adversaries to jointly target Islamic State and Nusra Front forces in Syria.

This is from Gen. Philip Breedlove, the recent NATO Commander, who is very well-respected and who just stepped down.

I remain skeptical about anything to do with the Russians. There are a lot of concerns about putting us out there with this kind of agreement.

So that is again what we might be asking our military to do soon, yet we are not going to fund them.

The Washington Post today, in an editorial about this deal--titled ``Either way, Putin wins''--made it clear this is a deal that is not in our interest. Yet that is what our military might be asked to do. But we will not fund them, and the minority leader continues to filibuster.

Mr. President, one of the things we have been asking of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle is to come down here and explain why they are doing this--why, for weeks--six times in a year, year and a half. Why?

To the credit of the Senator from Illinois, yesterday he actually did come down. Senator Durbin did. He kind of had to because we made a unanimous consent request to move this funding forward, so somebody actually had to come down and say no and do a little explaining. But at least he did. For those who saw it, the explanation fell way short. It was kind of DC mumbo jumbo, process bureaucratese. It was not convincing at all--at all. So it would be good if they could come down and explain it a little better than the Senator from Illinois did. But at least he gave it a shot.

Here is what we know. We need to fund our troops now. They are working so hard for us. It is the right thing to do. The American people want it, our troops need it, and it is our solemn responsibility and our duty in the Senate.

I thank Senator Daines again for his leadership on this. This is a critically important issue, regardless of whether the media picks it up. We are going to continue to highlight it because it is an outrage that the No. 1 bill filibustered by the minority leader for the last year and a half in the Senate is the bill to fund our troops. It is an outrage.

I thank my colleague again for his leadership.

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