National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the men and women of our military defend us on a daily basis without a doubt, but now, today, is our time to do the same for them.

One thing I cannot defend is how we continue to tie our own hands when it comes to funding the U.S. military.
This week we are considering, of course, the Defense Authorization Act that will help ensure that our military has the resources it needs to achieve the mission of today and rise to the challenges of tomorrow, but there is a fundamental problem with the way we equip the men and women we task with defending us. It is called sequestration. The sequester was called for by the Budget Control Act, which puts annual caps on defense and nondefense discretionary spending, and enforces those caps with a kind of budget cleaver. In other words, any spending that exceeds the caps automatically gets axed.

That sounds like a good idea in the abstract. Who doesn't want to treat our addiction to spending? Who doesn't want to put the Federal Government on a diet? I certainly do, but I am not willing to sacrifice our national security and the No. 1 priority of the Federal Government when it comes to providing for our mutual defense. In the words of the junior Senator from Arkansas, himself a veteran, he said: ``Rather than attack America's spending problem at its root, the law only clipped a few stray leaves off the branches.''

If we are going to be serious about reducing our deficit, we must address our budget priorities by looking at and addressing all government spending, not just the 30 percent or so that is discretionary. The reason we are not serious about dealing with our looming deficits and debt is not because of defense spending, it is because of mandatory entitlement spending, which is the political third rail of our government, and politicians are so afraid to deal with that mandatory spending that we cut defense spending into the muscle, to the bone, and it leads to the sort of dangers the Senator from Arizona talked about, in terms of a lack of readiness and training.
The caps in sequester, mind you, do not represent any defense policy;

instead, they were driven by our failure to get serious about the real budget threat: explosive growth in government-funded entitlement programs. Appropriated necessary funding for our Armed Forces should not be held hostage because of our inability to tighten our belts in other areas where the real runaway growth has occurred. It is past time to annually pass appropriations to fund the Department of Defense. It is past time to objectively assess and fund the actual and ever- changing defense needs of our country.

What are the results of the Budget Control Act? Well, we are not really saving money, but we are wasting time. We repeatedly raise the Budget Control Act's budget caps at the last minute, meaning they really don't keep spending down. Meanwhile, our military's ability to plan and forecast is severely hampered. When you can't plan, you are not ready, and it is no exaggeration to say that we now find ourselves in a true state of a readiness crisis. Our military, already under great stress and stretched thin around the world, has suffered from 15 years of continued operations, budgetary restrictions, and deferred investment.

According to General Walters, the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps, more than half of the Marines' fixed- and rotary-winged aircraft were unable to fly at the end of 2016--more than half of the Marines' fixed- and rotary-winged aircraft were unable to fly at the end of 2016. That is outrageous. The Navy fleet currently stands at 277 of the 350-ship requirement.

The Air Force had 134 fighter squadrons in 1991, when we drove Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Now it has only 55--in 2017, 55, and in 1991, 134, and we have 1,500 fewer fighter pilots than we need.

Heather Wilson, Secretary of the Air Force, put it earlier this week,
when she said, ``We have been doing too much with too little for too long.'' We need to hear these words, and we need to remember how they spell out in the real world--how they affect our sailors, our pilots, and our troops on the ground.

This summer, the Nation mourned 42 servicemembers who died in accidents related to readiness challenges. Mr. McCain, the Senator from Arizona, the distinguished chairman of the Armed Services Committee, pointed out the death of 17 sailors aboard the USS John S. McCain and USS Fitzgerald alone, plus other separate actions claimed the lives of 19 marines and 6 soldiers.

Meanwhile, the world has not become a safer, more peaceful place. We keep trying to cash that peace dividend, but there is no peace. In fact, when our adversaries see us retreating from our commitment to fund, equip, and train our military, it is a provocation. They see an opportunity, whether it is Vladimir Putin in Crimea, Ukraine, or China in the South China Sea, or Kim Jong Un in North Korea, they see our retreat, in terms of our financial commitment to support and train our military, as a provocation and an invitation for them to fill the void.

I am reminded of a sobering quote from the former Director of National Intelligence during a hearing last year. Former Director James Clapper said: ``In my time in the intelligence business''--and he served for 50 years in the intelligence business--``I don't recall a time when we have been confronted with a more diverse array of threats.''

In 50 years, he didn't recall us being confronted with a more diverse array of threats. On top of these threats, never before has our country been at war for such an extended period of time, and never before have we done so much with an All-Volunteer military force strained by repeated deployments while defense spending was cut nearly 15 percent over the last 8 years under the previous administration.

So here is what I say. Let's pass the national defense authorization bill, which authorizes $700 billion for our Nation's defense. Let's give our troops the pay raise they deserve. Let's address our readiness problems by authorizing increases in the overall number of soldiers and marines. When doing that, let's also do away with the sequester on defense spending. Reductions to defense spending should be targeted-- think scalpel, not meat cleaver--and our focus on cutting should be where the bulk of our spending is: outside of the military on mandatory spending, growing at a rate in excess of 5 percent a year, out of control and threatening the solvency of these important safety net programs.

Colleagues, while we take the fight to ISIS, while we seek to deter aggression in the Pacific and support our emergency responders here at home, including the military, we can't postpone our problems. Our challenges can't be postponed and are not disappearing.

As I said a moment ago, our adversaries are watching closely and modernizing while at home our readiness wavers. Sequestration causes our aircraft to age, our soldiers to tire, and our national security to deteriorate. Trouble is not going to wait on us getting our act together. Whether our military is ready or not, here it comes.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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