National Defense Authorization Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I know this year is rapidly coming to a close, and we are all anxious to join our families for the holidays.

The impeachment frenzy, though, has almost completely engulfed the Capitol, particularly on the House side, for the past few months and has made it very difficult, if not impossible, for Congress to get much of its work done; hence, the last-minute rush to get things done that we should have done weeks and perhaps months earlier.

One of the victims of this impeachment mania has been the National Defense Authorization Act, and I am glad we finally were able to pass that today.

For the last 58 years, the NDAA--the national defense act--has passed with broad bipartisan support. But this year, things took a little different turn. While we maintained historical norms here in the Senate and passed the bill by a vote of 86 to 8, our House Democratic colleagues took a completely different route. They managed to come up with a bill that was so partisan that not a single Republican voted for it in the House.

A party-line vote in the House may not be newsworthy, but a party- line vote on the national defense authorization bill is.

Fortunately, after months of negotiations, Senator Inhofe, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Senator Reed, the ranking member, were able to work with their House counterparts to reach a compromise on the bill, as I said, that passed earlier today.

This legislation is vitally important because it will give our commanders the predictability they need, as well as the troops the resources they have earned.

It also authorizes $400 million for military construction projects in places like Texas and 90 new F-35 Joint Strike Fighters that are made in Fort Worth.

Overall, the NDAA will strengthen our national security, and it will benefit all of our servicemembers and their families and our military bases, including those in Texas.

So I just want to say that I appreciate the hard work of Chairman Inhofe and Senator Reed, the ranking member, and all of our colleagues on the Armed Services Committee on both sides of the Capitol and look forward to it being signed by the President, hopefully, without further delay.

This was a critical step to strengthen our Nation's military, but it is only part of our duty to provide our troops with the resources and training and the equipment they need to succeed. Now we need to take care of the defense appropriations bill, which has now been passed by the House and which will be coming over here to the Senate soon and which I expect we will act on by Thursday.

Sadly, though, this has also fallen to the wayside while our Democratic colleagues in the House have worked tirelessly to try to remove the President from office. We are in the posture of having to do that this week only because the agreement that was made last August on spending caps was walked away from by our Democratic colleagues in the Senate, and it has taken us all this time to get back to where we thought we were in the August timeframe.

Despite the deal reached over the summer to keep the appropriations process free from poison pill riders, our friends across the aisle have tried to force liberal wish list items into the bill.

Thanks to Senator Inhofe, that has largely been avoided. I must also thank Mac Thornberry, the ranking member on the House side.

We have also managed to avoid a government shutdown, but the process has certainly not been pretty. We have been forced to pass two short- term funding bills, which have kept the trains running but failed to provide the predictability we thought we were going to get into the future once the 2-year budget deal was agreed upon last August.

So I am happy in one sense that the deal was finally reached to avoid a government shutdown, and I am in the process of reviewing these huge funding packages that total about $1.4 trillion.

Let me just say that I also appreciate the hard work of our friend from Alabama, Chairman Shelby, and our colleagues on the appropriations committees for their work to keep the doors open and to keep our commitments to our men and women in uniform.

I am hopeful we will be able to act before this funding expires this Friday.

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