National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, the rain is no longer falling in Houston, but the streets are still being flooded as the Corps of Engineers lets water that threatens the integrity of dams located north of Houston out of those dams, actually reflooding some of the neighborhoods that previously have been flooded, even after the rain has stopped for a number of days now.

The weight of Hurricane Harvey is still pressing down on my home State of Texas, where many are struggling for some good news and a breath of fresh air. The latest numbers that I have seen are that roughly 100,000 people have lost their homes, 70,000 are still living in shelters or in motel rooms, others are living with friends and family, and more than 700,000 people have registered for individual assistance with the Federal Emergency Management Agency--more than 700,000.

With the water drained in most parts of the city and the area, mold is the next thing that pops up in buildings and houses, and then come the mosquitoes. The mosquitoes aren't just a nuisance. They are a public health hazard as well. We happen to live in an area of the United States where the particular mosquito that carries the West Nile virus and the Zika virus is present. So this represents a public health challenge as well.

These are just some of the aftereffects that I heard about as I traveled the State last week. Those are the more localized problems. As we know, there are others that spread far beyond brick homes and ranches with barbed-wire fences. For example, the challenges, the coordination, and the logistical support among many actors were usually some of the biggest problems that we saw demonstrated with Hurricane Katrina.

Having learned the lessons of Hurricane Katrina, I can't tell you how proud I am of the great collaboration, consultation, and support that we have gotten from the President at the Federal level and all the way down to the State and local leadership, which have stepped up and I think made all of us proud.

While some say it takes a village, my experience in Texas is that it also takes an army. Indeed, Harvey's devastation has been so vast across swaths of the State that we have called in help from our Armed Forces. Members of our military have served crucial roles throughout the storm and continue to do so now that the waters have begun to recede. These include the U.S. Coast Guard, Marine Corps, Army, Navy, and Air Force. More than 12,000 Texas National Guardsmen were activated by Governor Abbott alone, and thousands more have been sent from other States to help out in the rescue and recovery effort.

What did these troops do in their Humvees, helicopters, their amphibious boats, and warships? They did a lot. The Army National Guard alone delivered more than 75,000 pounds of hay to flooded ranches and stranded cattle. Other troops showed up to provide medical services and disaster relief supplies. They assisted with debris management, route clearance, and--in scenes we have all seen on TV--heroic search and rescue operations. That is not all. They provided surveillance aircraft so that imagery could be provided to FEMA of the impact area while State Guard members ensured that people who were evacuated were part of an emergency tracking system. These members of our military are responding to Hurricane Irma in Florida as well.

Earlier this week, the Pentagon sent ships, aircraft, and, of course, fuel to the region to help. So our military has helped in ways that perhaps most of us don't really appreciate. They don't exist just to fight and win our wars; they respond to natural disasters like Hurricanes Harvey and Irma as well. And thank goodness they are there to do that. As the past few weeks have shown, there is always a risk of unforeseen events, and with them, our troops are being stretched awfully thin.

We know the importance of making sure that this week and next, we do everything we can to demonstrate our real support for our men and women in uniform by passing the National Defense Authorization Act. That is why this is so important this week, because not only does it affect our readiness, as I said earlier, to fight and win our Nation's wars in places around the world, it is also important to our ability to respond to natural disasters like Irma and Harvey.

The NDAA, in addition to natural disasters, allows us to address ongoing readiness challenges that we have inherited in the attempt once again to cash the peace dividend when there is no peace.

My colleague and friend Mac Thornberry, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has spoken about just how dire this situation is.

He is just one of many voices on this topic. He calls past inaction a ``funding paralysis.'' The financial straitjacket he is referring to, I might add, is one we desperately need to break out of when it comes to funding and equipping and training and preparing our military to be ready when we call them.

Today, I want to emphasize several amendments I plan to file to the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act. They will help make sure that America is safer and, importantly, take steps to correct some of the foreign policy mistakes we saw under the previous administration.

Let me talk about three of those amendments.

The first amendment focuses on countering the world's foremost sponsor of terrorism--Iran. The amendment targets Mahan Air, that country's largest commercial airline. That airline has repeatedly played a role in exporting terrorism to other places around the world.

Mahan is a government-controlled airline parading as a commercial enterprise. You can go online right now and purchase a ticket to fly to nearly 40 international airports on Mahan Airline, including ones in countries with which we have a visa waiver agreement. Yet Mahan Air supports the efforts of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard to ferry weapons and personnel to Syria and Iraq and supports Hezbollah as well.

In order to operate, it bypasses normal security procedures, omits information from flight manifests, and falsifies documents for maintenance purposes. In so doing, it undercuts the interests of the United States

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and, of course, our ally in the region, Israel.

Today, Mahan Air is working to add more international airports to its flight patterns, including several in Europe. Given its links to terrorist activity, we have to consider the potential security risks to Americans who fly in and out of airports where Mahan operates.

My amendment would require the Department of Homeland Security to compile and make public a list of airports where Mahan Air operates and would require the Department of Homeland Security to assess what added security measures should be imposed on those flights.

I hope my colleagues would agree that this is a commonsense proposal, and I hope they will join me in supporting it.

The second amendment I want to talk about involves a different kind of flight risk. This one is domestic instead of international. It addresses the development and the deployment of wind turbines and other structures surrounding our military installations, particularly where our pilots train and fly. Some of them are being built along flight routes in Wichita Falls, Corpus Christi, and elsewhere, both in Texas and in other States, such as New York.

Currently, base commanders have no say and have no real opportunity to indicate the risks these wind farms, which are in close proximity to military training, pose to pilot training and other operations.

Commanders are really in the best position to understand the nature of the training that needs to be done and to offer suggestions about how risks can be mitigated, if not eliminated entirely.

My amendment would preserve the voices of the base commanders in the evaluation process. It would require those base commanders impacted by a proposed wind turbine project to weigh in explicitly regarding possible risks, including risks to our ability to train and make ready our pilots but also problems with radar and other ways that it is not only a danger to our military men and women but also to civilian aircraft as well. Clearly, base commanders have expertise and knowledge that must be considered during the proposed construction projects in close proximity to their installations. Their voices are vital.

I hope our colleagues will join me in supporting this amendment and ensuring that our base commanders are always heard when it comes to security risks and threats to readiness.

Finally, the third amendment I want to talk about is one that would grant tax-free status to U.S. troops deployed in the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt.

Last year, with the House Homeland Security Committee, I had the chance to visit an international peacekeeping force comprised largely of American troops deployed to the Sinai. I can tell you from having spoken to them, our troops there play a strategic role in maintaining the peace in that critical region. Their work is often difficult, and it is always dangerous. The North Camp is located just 15 miles from the Gaza Strip.

Troops there face mortars, rockets, and explosive attacks, and a number have been wounded during patrols.
By granting our troops on the Sinai tax-free status, we can put them on equal footing with other American troops who are deployed in war zones like Afghanistan and Iraq and other similarly dangerous hot spots around the globe. All of them enjoy the same tax benefit when stationed in those combat zones, and what we would like to do is establish equal footing and parity for these Americans troops engaged in international peacekeeping missions there in the Sinai. Extending this measure of our appreciation will also serve to bolster morale, you can believe me.

Colleagues, I hope you will join me in supporting these Sinai peacekeeping servicemembers, who put their lives on the line to keep the peace, by passing this measure.

I hope that after an open amendment process, we will be able to get other commonsense amendments added to this legislation before we pass it next week.

I know that Senator McCain, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, always says we have never failed to pass a national defense authorization bill, and we shouldn't start this week or next. I hope we will pass the bill. I am glad to offer these three amendments and would welcome support from all of our colleagues.

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum

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