National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2010

Floor Speech

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2010 -- (Senate - July 21, 2009)

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Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I thank the Senator for yielding time on this important debate.

As we consider the future of the F-22 program, it is important for us to remember the most fundamental goal we have for our defense industry and the way we have met that goal for many decades. That goal is to give our men and women in uniform technology and equipment that is far superior to that of our enemy so they can protect themselves and defend our Nation. It has been our mission from the time of the Wright brothers to the days of Rosie the Riveter, to the era of stealthy technology.

But maintaining that technology has depended on an important partnership and that is a partnership between the Pentagon, which determines the needs of our war fighters, and industry, which does the research and design and builds the next generation of military equipment that meets those needs. It is a partnership that is vital to our military strength, to our economy, and to the health of our domestic industrial base.

Unfortunately, it is also a partnership that is being weakened by amendments such as the one we are considering today. Instead of treating military procurement such as the partnership that it is, this amendment envisions it as a one-way street. This amendment cancels a vital military program without adequate thought of the men and women we rely on to design and build the equipment our war fighters depend on without any consideration of the fact that if we end the F-22 program, we are cutting a link in technology that we will not be able to repair overnight.

As many of you know, this is not the first time I have come to the floor to talk about the erosion of our Nation's industrial base. It likely will not be the last. That is because protecting our domestic base is not about just one company or one program or one State or one industry. This is about our Nation's economic stability, it is about our future military capability, and it is about the ability to retain skilled family-wage jobs in communities throughout the country.

Just last week, the Aerospace Industries Association issued a major report that finds the Pentagon failed to consider industrial effects when choosing strategies. That report urged the Pentagon to take into account the impact decisions such as the one to stop production of the F-22 make on our manufacturing base. That report also noted that our manufacturing base was not taken into account in past Quadrennial Defense Reviews, and when Secretary Gates unveiled his program cuts in April, he specifically said defense industry jobs were not a factor in his decisions.

As our country faces two difficult but not unrelated challenges--safeguarding our country in a dangerous world and rebuilding a faltering economy--ignoring the needs of our industrial base should not be an option. Whether it is the scientists who are designing the next generation of military satellites or whether it is the engineers who are improving our radar systems or the machinists assembling our war planes, these industries and their workers are one of our greatest strategic assets. What if they, all of a sudden, were not available? What if we made budgetary and policy decisions that did not take into account the need of making sure we have a strong domestic workforce in our country?

Actually, that is not impossible or even unthinkable. It is actually happening today. We need to be clear about the ramifications of amendments such as the ones we are considering today because once we give up on producing this technology, once we say that certain research and development is no longer needed, we lose that. We lose it and we cannot rebuild it overnight.

Today, as we consider a critical tool for the future of our military across the globe, we have to also remember the partnership we have built with our industrial base because, unless we consider the needs of that partnership, we are not only going to continue to lose some of our best-paying American jobs, we are going to lose the backbone of our military might.

Supporting continued F-22 production will help defend against potential threats, it will protect family-wage jobs, and, most importantly, it will preserve our domestic base. That is important because we do not know what conflict will come in the future. We don't know what our challenges will be 10 or 15 or 20 or 30 years from now. If we lose our engineering or our production base and we face a challenge in the future and go back to rebuild that, it will never happen. We will be at a disadvantage in whatever future conflict we might face.

I urge our colleagues to think about the long-term interests of this decision. I oppose the amendment and I look forward to further debate.

I yield the floor.

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