Providing for Consideration of Conference Report on S. 2943, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017

Floor Speech

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Mr. COLE. I thank the gentleman from Alabama for yielding. Frankly, I thank him for the wonderful work he provided as a member of the Armed Services Committee to bring this legislation to the floor today.
Mr. Speaker, I also want to quickly associate myself with my friend from Massachusetts' remarks about the authorization. I think he is absolutely right on that issue--we have worked together on that--and it is something that ought to happen. It is an institutional question of whether or not we retain our war-making authority, and he has done admirable work in that area.

The bill, itself, which I support--and, of course, the rule and the underlying legislation--is a very important piece of legislation.

I commend our friends on the Armed Services Committee for working in a bipartisan fashion, first, to make sure they stop the erosion of the end strength of the military. It is an absolutely critical thing to do.
It could not have happened had they not worked together and made some tough decisions.

Second, I want to point out all of the reforms in this legislation-- procurement reforms, in particular. They have gone well beyond simply appropriating money for the military as they have done some important work to put important tools in our hands that, I think in going forward, will save billions of dollars.

I also commend them for fully funding a pay raise for the men and women in uniform. That is an important thing. The amount of money--a 2.1 percent increase--is relatively modest but appropriate. The more
important thing is the signal it sends to the men and women who put themselves between us and harm's way, and I thank the gentleman for his role in that.

Finally, I want to pick up on one of the points that my friend from Alabama made that I couldn't agree with more. As important and as good as this legislation is, if we do not marry it with the money that it takes to actually implement it, we are making the mistake of a lifetime. In my opinion, we could do that, literally, this year if we were to do an omnibus; but if we fail to do that and if we do a CR, my friend is exactly right in that we should act as rapidly as possible in January to make sure that we actually put the money together with the excellent authorization work that is done here. Otherwise, we simply undercut all of the good work of the Armed Services Committee.

This is something that we need to focus on. The authorization is important, but if we don't appropriate the money, a lot of the hard work that was done on the Armed Services Committee will be for naught, and it will be for naught until we actually make that decision. We shouldn't wait until the end of April or the end of May. We ought to get it done as quickly as we can. I would like to get it done before we go home, but if we can't do that, we certainly ought to get it done as quickly as we can when we get back.

With all of that aside, again, I congratulate both sides of the aisle. This is a model of bipartisanship. My friend from Massachusetts mentioned some other measures in here with regard to Russia that, I think, are absolutely also appropriate, and I applaud their inclusion.

I urge every Member to support the rule and, certainly, to vote for the underlying legislation.

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