Appropriations
Floor Speech
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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, now on another matter, when the Senate returned last week, we anticipated our top priority would be conducting the appropriations process and avoiding a lapse in government funding. We had a clear roadmap, a bipartisan, bicameral agreement negotiated by the President's team and the Speaker of the House. It set top-line funding targets for both defense and nondefense, and it laid out ground rules to protect the process from partisan politics.
There has actually been reason for optimism. This week, we hope to move to the House-passed bills for Defense, Energy and Water, Labor- HHS, and State and Foreign Ops. This would be our first procedural step to getting the process moving for all of our priorities on both sides.
There is nothing controversial about this particular grouping of bills. In fact, it was Speaker Pelosi who combined this grouping of bills to move first. Furthermore, if any of the funding measures were going to be handled earnestly across party lines, surely it ought to be the bill funding the Department of Defense. Our fundamental obligation is to provide for the common defense of our country, and all Members feel our responsibility to keep the Nation safe.
Fortunately, the caps agreement specifically allows us to increase defense funding to meet the growing threats our Nation faces. Yet here is where we are: One week in, our Democratic colleagues tried to stonewall the defense funding bill in committee and are now indicating they may even filibuster a motion to begin considering the House-passed defense funding bill later this week.
There is only one way to read this. Some of our Democratic colleagues have determined they would rather stage a political fight with President Trump than secure the resources that our uniformed commanders urgently need to do their jobs. National security is taking a back seat to partisan politics.
Let's be absolutely clear about the concerns and the priorities that our Democratic friends are de-prioritizing. The defense spending measure would bolster efforts to modernize our forces and build the U.S. military of the future. Russia is actively modernizing its own forces, just as we have seen the Putin regime step up its brazen steps to exert its destabilizing influence well beyond its borders. In China, the last decade has seen military spending nearly double. Our regional partners continue to feel the tightening grip of the Chinese Communist Party on trade and strategic activity throughout the Indo-Pacific region while the technological ripples of Chinese cyber meddling are felt right here at home.
In the face of surging great-power adversaries, simple upkeep is not enough to keep America and our allies safe from aggression. Comprehensive funding for research, development, and readiness programs is what is needed. In Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, and beyond, we continue to face sustained threats from terrorist organizations. In the Middle East, we have seen how Iran's bid for regional hegemony and its investment in terror, missiles, and cyber activities threaten the United States, our allies and partners, key shipping lanes, and global energy markets.
This bipartisan Defense bill would help us to adapt to meet these new threats while ensuring our commanders can prosecute existing operations without being consumed by the instability of short-term continuing resolutions. Yet our Democratic colleagues would rather provoke a partisan feud with the President. They would rather have a fight with the President than stick to the agreement we all made. At least that is where we are as of the moment.
I remain hopeful that my friends on the Democratic side will join us in honoring the terms of the agreement that has been struck by the President and the Speaker and help us to reboot a bipartisan funding process. The readiness and modernization of America's military and the safety of the American people should not play second fiddle to our Democratic colleagues' political strategy.
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