National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, I rise this morning to speak in favor of the National Defense Authorization Act. We are currently negotiating with Members of the Republican and Democratic Parties on how to consider amendments. We will eventually get there, as we do every year, because the NDAA bill has passed Congress--the Senate and the House-- and has been signed by the President for 57 years in a row on a wonderfully bipartisan basis. I expect, when it is all said and done, that will happen again this year.

As a matter of fact, I was just speaking to a group of Hawaiians who were gathered together under the leadership of Senator Mazie Hirono. Senator Hirono is the ranking member of the subcommittee that I chair, the Seapower Subcommittee. We were able to make the point and have been able to make the point at several forums about what a bipartisan issue this is, to protect our country through a strong Navy and through the provisions that we will enact under the Seapower title. Of course, this bipartisan exercise is a very important fulfillment of our constitutional responsibility. It is right there in the preamble--to ``provide for the common defence.'' And that is what our subcommittee has done.

The bill this year authorizes $716 billion for national defense. This is an increase from last year, and we finally got rid of the notion that we can somehow be a safe and secure nation and have this defense sequestration that had come upon us due to our inability to deal with the budget. Last year we authorized and appropriated $700 billion for national defense, and this bill would up that a little to $716 billion. My position is that we need every penny of that. The top line matches the figures we have set in the 2-year budget. That was passed by the House and Senate on a bipartisan basis and signed into law by the President of the United States, President Trump.

Secretary Mattis says this defense spending is essential at these levels to keep America safe and to support our men and women in uniform. Secretary Mattis authored the new national defense strategy, and it prioritizes preparing the Armed Forces for long-term strategic competition with China and Russia. We would like to be on a friendlier basis with China and Russia, but sadly, at this point, we are not. We are in a long-term strategic competition. I believe Secretary Mattis, when he says we need to do this, and the NDAA, which is the subject matter before us on the floor right now, recognize that. Strategy is driving the budget this year, not the other way around.

As I noted, I am chairman of the Seapower Subcommittee. Senator Hirono is my ranking Democratic member. We both recognize that upholding our maritime interests is becoming more and more critical. We are a maritime nation, and Americans need to understand this. The Seapower title recognizes this. It positions the Navy and Marine Corps to retain superiority over rapidly modernizing Chinese and Russian maritime forces.

I am happy to say that it accelerates the naval buildup toward the statutory 355-ship Navy, which was signed into law as a result of the NDAA last year. The SHIPS Act, which Senator Hirono and I both persuaded every member of our subcommittee to cosponsor--every Republican and every Democrat on the Seapower Subcommittee sponsored this. We were able to add the SHIPS Act to the NDAA last year and have it signed by the President of the United States.

The bill this year builds on what we hoped would be the result of the SHIPS Act. It authorizes $23 billion for building 11 new ships that we didn't intend to build otherwise--an increase of $1.2 billion above the DOD budget request. The statutory language signed by the President is actually getting us there. It adds over $1 billion in advanced procurement funding for attack submarines, destroyers, and amphibious ships that will stabilize the industrial base, encourage new suppliers to enter the marketplace, and save taxpayers money in the long run through this mechanism of advanced procurement funding for our attack submarines. It authorizes multiyear contracting--another cost-saver-- for our Super Hornet fighters, Hawkeye early warning planes, and two types of standard missiles fired from our Navy ships.

I am pleased with the progress we have made, and I am pleased that our work on the SHIPS Act last year is already paying dividends in terms of getting us much more quickly to the 355-ship fleet.

The NDAA also includes 12 provisions that were contained in a bill that Senator McCain and I authored in response to the tragedies of the USS John McCain and the USS Fitzgerald collisions. Frankly, there were other mishaps in the Pacific also. In the McCain and the Fitzgerald, 17 soldiers tragically died because of accidents involving our ships.

Based on studies that we commissioned in this Congress, we came back--Senator McCain and I--and introduced provisions. I will mention five of them today.

They are included in the base NDAA bill.

First, we direct a comprehensive review of the Navy's cumbersome and confusing chains of command. This confusing chain of command in the Pacific has been a problem.

We limit the duration of ships homeported overseas to no more than 10 years. After 10 years of being homeported overseas, forward-deployed ships must now rotate back to the United States more frequently to avoid being overtaxed from constant operations. That is in this bill.

We give forward-deployed ships more sailors. We have had a shortage there, regrettably, inflicted somewhat because of defense sequestration.

We require the Navy to develop a more realistic standard workweek assessment. I know the Presiding Officer understands this from the testimony we have received. The old system led to sailors routinely working 100-hour workweeks. Is it any wonder that our sailors were fatigued and burned out, with 100-plus-hour workweeks? This NDAA bill, which we must pass and get to the President, would end that. It would also allow the Secretary of the Navy more flexibility in the personnel process to keep talented officers in the Navy and to keep talented officers in the Marine Corps.

One other thing I will mention is that we have the title of CFIUS reform. CFIUS simply stands for Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States--CFIUS. This provision is designed to protect our interests with regard to the designs of China, and it came to us, actually, out of the banking bill. We need to stop China from gaining access to military technology and gaining access to strategically important industries in the United States through buying our companies. China is buying American companies and then getting access to the intellectual property owned by those companies. This is what CFIUS reform does.

NDAA includes the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act, adopted unanimously by the Senate Banking Committee, and would give the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, more authority to prevent foreign acquisitions of our sensitive technologies.

This is a good bill. It is a wildly popular bill in the military. It provides increased resources for those men and women who strapped on the boats, who put on the uniform and stepped forward voluntarily--not a single person in the military has been forced to do this; they stepped forward voluntarily--to do the hard things so that we can live in peace and prosperity and comfort in the United States.

This is a popular bill in the other body. We are taking their bill and making some adjustments, but we will get that ironed out in conference. We will, once again, fulfill our constitutional duty to provide for the common defense and show that when it comes to national defense and providing security for the people of this great Nation, this is, indeed, a bipartisan determination and a bipartisan exercise.

So I urge us to get moving on this, and I certainly believe--I am convinced--that before the end of the week, we will have an affirmative vote and move this bill toward the President's desk.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Seeing no other Members seeking recognition, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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