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Floor Speech
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Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, the Senate gavels in today with our annual defense bill still unpassed, with less than 1 week remaining of government funding, and less than 2 weeks left until our hard stop for the holidays on December 23. That is the bad news. But the good news is that both sides have a clear understanding of what it takes to finish our work on a bipartisan basis.
First, Senators Inhofe and Reed and their House counterparts have passed out a strong bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act. The Senate should turn to it as soon as possible.
But, of course, Congress authorizing the tools, training, and equipment that our Armed Forces need will accomplish very little if we fail to then provide the actual funding.
Both sides know what it would take for the Senate to pass a full-year government funding bill into law. There is no mystery here. A funding agreement would need to fully fund our national defense at the level written into the NDAA without--without--lavishing extra funding beyond what President Biden even requested onto Democrats' partisan domestic priorities. In other words, do not go beyond what the President asked for earlier this year on the domestic side.
Our Democratic colleagues have already spent 2 years massively-- massively--increasing domestic spending, using party-line reconciliation bills outside the normal appropriations process.
So, clearly, our colleagues cannot now demand even more--more-- domestic spending than President Biden even requested in exchange for funding the U.S. military. Funding our national defense is a basic governing duty.
The Commander in Chief's own party does not get to demand a pile of unrelated goodies in exchange for doing their job and funding our Armed Forces.
If House and Senate Democratic colleagues can accept these realities in the very near future, we may still have a shot at assembling a full- year funding bill that will give our military commanders the certainty they need to invest, plan, and stay competitive with rivals like China.
If our Democratic colleagues can't accept those realities, the option will be a short-term, bipartisan funding bill into early next year.
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