National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020

Floor Speech

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Mr. TURNER. Mr. Chairman, I am disappointed by the fiscal year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act that is offered here on the floor today. This bill represents a significant deviation from our past sentiment of bipartisanship.

Now, the Senate has passed their bill by 86 votes, but not the House, not this year. This bill, in its totality, makes us less safe, which is why it does not have bipartisan support on this floor.

Chairman Smith said that we were able to negotiate through a few things, and that is right. But there are also some that we were not, and one of them is a big one, and it is why there is not one Republican who voted in the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces for the bill to come out of subcommittee, and not one Republican in the full committee voted for the Strategic Forces portion of this bill to be referred to the full committee and to this floor.

That is because it contains a provision that can only be described as unilateral nuclear disarmament. It is unilateral because it does not involve anybody else; it only inhibits us. It is nuclear because it involves our nuclear weapons; and it is disarmament because it recalls a nuclear weapon.

It prohibits the use of funds for the deployment of low-yield ballistic missile warheads that have already been funded and produced and are to be deployed on a bipartisan basis. Efforts by Congress to recall these assets from deployment is unilateral disarmament.

Now, even if you are against nuclear weapons, you should be against the other side having nuclear weapons, and that means that you should be pursuing restrictions by treaty.

Imagine how this conversation is going to go in Moscow. Someone in the Kremlin is going to walk into Vladimir Putin's office, and they are going to say: Vlad, you have modernized our nuclear weapons. You have invaded our neighbors. You have threatened the U.S. and our adversaries and their allies. And now, the U.S. Congress has just voted to unilaterally pull the low-yield nuclear weapon that was scheduled for deployment.

Putin is not going to believe them. He is going to think that this is a joke, because no one would believe that the United States Congress in the National Defense Authorization Act would reward Russian aggression in this bill by pursuing unilateral nuclear disarmament.

I am comforted that many of these provisions will never become law. I never thought I would say this, but I am going to: Thank God for the Senate.

I encourage my colleagues to oppose this bill and oppose unilateral nuclear disarmament.

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