National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2018--Motion To Proceed--Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the National Defense Authorization Act.

The Defense bill has a long tradition of bipartisan cooperation, and I was glad to join in that tradition as part of the Armed Services Committee. As with any far-reaching legislation, there are a number of provisions in this I support and some I do not, but, on the whole, this bill is a win for national security and a win for Massachusetts.

Massachusetts has a lot to offer our national security. Each of our military bases is unique in making vital contributions to our defense.

The Massachusetts National Guard has a proud history, dating back to 1636, and it contains the oldest units of the U.S. Army.

Today we are proud of our military tradition, and we have a unique ecosystem of universities, industries, startups, and military labs, all focused on the next-generation needs for our warfighters. Research and development is critically important to this effort. It will literally save lives. I have made research funding a major priority, and I am very pleased we have secured an additional $45 million in funding for the Army's Basic and Applied Research accounts, for places like Natick, where researchers are doing cutting-edge work to better protect our soldiers. Overall, the bill increases funding for science and technology $250 million above the President's budget.

The bill also recognizes the critical role that MIT Lincoln Lab plays in national security research, and supports the construction of a new advanced microelectronics integration facility that will begin in 2019.
It also fully funds the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, or DIUx, which is doing great work connecting DOD with innovative startups in Cambridge and around the country.

Our military bases, which are the lifeblood of their communities in Massachusetts, are also receiving much needed facility upgrades.

Hanscom Air Force Base will receive $11 million to build a new gate complex that will dramatically improve its security. Westover Air Force Base in Chicopee will receive more than $60 million to construct a new maintenance facility and build a new indoor small arms range to improve readiness. Natick Soldier Systems Center will receive $21 million to improve family housing facilities, bringing our families working at Natick closer to the base.

All three of my brothers served in the military, and I know the demands of the military can be hard on families and on servicemembers.

I have spent a lot of time over the last 9 months working hard with both Republican and Democratic Senators to do everything I can to help improve the lives of our military personnel and their families. I partnered with Senator Ernst, a Republican from Iowa, to introduce the Leadership Recognition Act, which has been incorporated into this larger Defense bill. Our proposal ensures that our servicemembers get the pay raises they deserve.

Over the last 15 years, Congress directed the Pentagon to raise military pay so it was more comparable to civilian wages, but it also gave the President the authority to waive the requirement to raise military pay. Unfortunately, that keeps happening, and military families who are already sacrificing so much don't get the pay raises they are entitled to.

Our new provision restricts the use of this waiver. We promised our military their regular pay raises in line with inflation, and they ought to get those raises, period. This one is a no-brainer. I am sorry it is taking Congress so long to get it done, but we are there now.

The Defense bill also includes my Service Member Debt Collection Reform Act. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has identified how unscrupulous debt collectors often take advantage of military personnel, for example, by alleging that servicemembers owe disputed or imaginary debts and sometimes even by contacting a servicemember's commanding officer to intimidate a servicemember into paying a debt they don't owe. This is outrageous. My provision requires DOD to review and update its policies regarding harassment of servicemembers by debt collectors.

Our military personnel are also entitled to educational benefits that can help them earn a degree or transition to civilian life. However, too often military members don't actually use these benefits because they can't navigate a frustratingly complicated and bureaucratic application process. That is why I offered an amendment to the NDAA to make sure DOD works with the Departments of Education and Veterans Affairs to automate the application of student loan benefits available to military borrowers. These Departments can use this information that already exists in Federal databases to expedite student borrower benefits for servicemembers, and there is no reason we shouldn't just do that right away. This will make life a little easier for our vets, and it will help put many of them on the road to a better education and higher earnings for the rest of their lives.

There is another problem in our military that we need to address. I was appalled earlier this year at reports that some male servicemembers shared nude photos of their fellow female servicemembers without consent, and harassed them on a website called Marines United. The military is not immune to the rise of so-called revenge porn online.

Make no mistake, revenge porn is sexual harassment. DOD concluded in a May 2017 report that such harassment can lead to sexual assault.

Just last week, I sat with women in Massachusetts who had been sexually harassed and sexually assaulted during their time in the military. They volunteered for the military out of a deep sense of patriotism, and now they are struggling hard to come to terms with what happened to them. Their sense of betrayal--betrayal by their fellow servicemembers--ran deep.

Acts like these are deeply wrong, and they undermine unit cohesion and readiness. The Marine Corps and other services have taken some positive steps in response to the website scandal, but military prosecutors need the tools to combat this specific behavior.

Commanders have always had the ability to prosecute disorderly conduct, but the Uniform Code of Military Justice does not explicitly prohibit nonconsensual photo-sharing in all cases. To solve this problem, I teamed up with Senator Sullivan, a Republican from Alaska, to introduce the Protecting Servicemembers Online Act. Our proposal closes the revenge porn loophole, making it unlawful under the UCMJ for military personnel to share private, intimate images without the consent of the individual depicted. It does this by balancing privacy protections and survivors' rights, and I am grateful this year's Defense bill takes similar steps to address this revenge porn problem.

There is more to do to make sure each person who signs up to serve our country is treated with dignity and respect, but this is a positive step.

This year's Defense bill also addresses an issue which is very personal to me--how we care for victims of terrorist attacks. I had been a Senator for only 3 months when the twin explosions went off at the Boston Marathon finish line on April 15, 2013, killing three people and wounding hundreds more. I was on a flight from Boston to DC when the bombs went off. I didn't even leave the DC airport. I just caught the next flight back to Boston.

The next day, I met with Jessica Kensky and Patrick Downes. They had been recently married. When the bombs went off, they were both seriously injured. Each had a leg amputated at the scene. They were rushed to separate hospitals, where they underwent more lifesaving treatments and where Jessica lost her other leg.
When I first saw Jessica, she still had gravel and glass embedded in her skin--injuries the doctors hadn't yet cleaned up. She was grateful to be alive, but worried about Patrick. When I first met Patrick, he had the same question: How is Jessica?

The Boston hospitals at which they received emergency care are among the world's best, and they saved many lives on that day, but those hospitals don't specialize in the long-term recovery from such complex and serious injuries like limb amputation. For that, you need military hospitals, like Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, but right now, access to Walter Reed requires a special exemption from the Secretary of Defense. Jess and Patrick say they owe their recoveries to the doctors, physical therapists, and prosthetic lab technicians who treated them at Walter Reed and who have treated thousands of troops since 2001.
Earlier this year, Senator Collins, a Republican from Maine, joined me in introducing the Jessica Kensky and Patrick Downes Act, which would allow all victims of terror attacks to receive treatment at military medical facilities if there is space available. I hope we will never see another attack like the Boston Marathon bombing, but this bill will help us be ready if it happens.

I am glad the Defense bill includes language to implement the policy in our bipartisan bill, and I am particularly thankful to Senator Collins for working with me so other victims of terrorist attacks will be able to access our world-class military medical facilities if they need them the way Jessica and Patrick did.
The work on servicemember pay, GI student loan benefits, and help for civilian victims of terror made me proud to be in the U.S. Senate. At the same time, I worked hard this year to ensure the Defense bill contains a number of provisions that will strengthen our national security.

Like my colleagues on the Armed Services Committee, I am concerned about Russian aggression. Too often this year, this issue has been obscured by partisan sniping, and it shouldn't be that way. Russia's attempts to sow global instability are a major national security threat, and on the Armed Services Committee we have treated it that way.

Earlier this year, I introduced the Countering Foreign Interference with Our Armed Forces Act. This bill contains two provisions--one requiring annual reports on the new and disturbing trend of Russian efforts to target our military personnel with disinformation campaigns and a second bill in response to the Michael Flynn scandal so DOD will be required to report to Congress when a retired general officer requests permission to accept payments from a foreign government. We need to protect our military and our country from outside influence, and these are two steps we can take right now.

Another area which concerns me is the money we spend to outfit our military. The DOD buys a lot of goods and equipment, which means it pays an extraordinary amount of money to government contractors. It shouldn't be too much to ask those contractors to provide high-quality products at a reasonable price, to treat their workers decently, and to knock off any efforts to extort extra profits out of the government. I am pleased the Defense bill also includes a number of my priorities to promote these kinds of reforms.

Step one in this process needs to be a full audit of the Department of Defense. DOD spending makes up half of the discretionary budget, and yet the DOD--unlike other government agencies--has never been audited.
That makes no sense at all. Senator Ernst and I teamed up to fight for a provision to incentivize the Department to achieve audit readiness by mandating a pay reduction for the Secretary of each military service unit that does not achieve audit after 2020, and we got it passed.

Senator Perdue, a Republican from Georgia, and I joined together to press the Defense Innovation Board to study how we can improve the way the Department acquires software.

Senator Rounds, a Republican from South Dakota, and I successfully fought for a provision requiring DOD to open source software methods and open source licenses whenever possible for unclassified, nondefense software, in accordance with best practices from the private sector.

This one is particularly important so contractors can't shake down the Pentagon for new piles of cash every time DOD needs to upgrade and improve its software systems.

Finally, after stories about contractors with terrible safety records continuing to get DOD contracts, one after another, I successfully secured a provision that will require DOD contracting officers to consider workplace safety and health violations when they evaluate a potential DOD contractor. I introduced the Contractor Accountability and Workplace Safety Act to address this issue, and I am very glad it has been included in the NDAA.

This Defense bill isn't perfect. I don't agree with all of it. In a Republican-controlled Congress, I wouldn't expect to agree with all of it. For one thing, I vehemently disagree with the decision to authorize funding for research and development for a new generation of intermediate-range missiles. Everyone knows the Russians have violated the INF treaty already, but that is not a reason for the United States to violate this core anti-nuclear proliferation treaty as well. Our military doesn't want it. Our European allies don't want it. Even the White House doesn't want it. We obviously don't need it. In a world of limited resources, spending tons of taxpayer money to build an unnecessary weapon that will make all of us less safe is a terrible idea.

I also disagree with the committee's recommendation to zero out the funding for the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical, otherwise known as WIN-T. I have listened to the critiques of this system, but WIN-T Increment 2 is the only tactical communications system the Army currently has that permits communications on the move. GEN Mark Milley, the Army Chief of Staff, has noted the importance of remaining mobile on the battlefield. ``If you stay in one place longer than 2 or 3 hours, you will be dead,'' he said. We should improve WIN-T, not junk it, and we definitely shouldn't abruptly cancel this program without having any earthly idea of what will replace it. Fortunately, this program is not zeroed out in the House version so I will continue to fight for this during the House-Senate conference.

Finally, I am concerned about the overall increase in defense spending contemplated by this bill, particularly when there is no real plan in place to pay for it. The Defense Department is not the only agency that is critical to our national security, and most of those other agencies are under attack in this Congress. Moreover, it is important for us to make the investments we need here at home, to do things like address climate change and promote resilience after natural disasters, to invest in scientific research and discovery, to improve access to healthcare and education, to build new schools, and to repair aging roads and bridges. We cannot support a buildup in military spending that leaves our country weakened and unable to build a strong economy going forward.

Fortunately, the bill we are putting forward today merely authorizes new defense funding. Actual dollar amounts for Federal spending will be determined later this year for all of our agencies as part of the appropriations process. At that point, all spending--defense and nondefense--will be on the table at the same time. If that process is going to serve the American people well, it must provide for significant increases in spending on education, infrastructure, basic research, and the other building blocks of a strong country with a vibrant future.

I commend the leadership of Senators John McCain and Jack Reed throughout this process. Our committee has a long history of bipartisanship, and Senators McCain and Reed have continued that proud tradition. This legislation supports our servicemembers and their families, promotes commonsense Pentagon spending reforms, advances cutting-edge defense research, and bolsters the Commonwealth's innovation economy. Most importantly, this NDAA will make a real, positive impact on the lives of Americans. For those reasons, I intend to support it, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

I yield the floor.

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