They FY13 National Defense Authorization Act

Floor Speech

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, I regret that I will not be able to support this National Defense Authorization Act. I hope that will change when it returns from the Senate.

This is only the second time I have voted against the NDAA. The first was last year. That bill contained a number of serious flaws including an overly broad provision that allowed the Executive wide latitude to commit U.S. forces to military action without congressional approval. Similarly, this bill contains provisions that I cannot support in their current form. It is unfortunate that the Republican majority has chosen to depart from the longstanding tradition of trying to shape bipartisan defense authorization bills.

The recently departed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen, said that ``Our national debt is our biggest national security threat.'' He also made clear, ``..... with the increasing defense budget, which is almost double, it hasn't forced us to make the hard trades. It hasn't forced us to prioritize. It hasn't forced us to do the analysis.''

In accordance with that advice, the top civilian and military leaders developed a strategy to meet our national security needs more efficiently. Recognizing that the Defense Department still has not passed a Government Accountability Office audit, they identified important savings without compromising our national security. That plan was incorporated into the Budget Control Act enacted last August.

In developing its plan, the Defense Department conducted a comprehensive review of force needs, capabilities and obligations. Difficult choices were made about which programs to keep and which to cut in order to maintain a fiscally responsible mission ready capability. In his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in February, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dempsey, said of the Defense budget, ``This budget will maintain our military's decisive edge and help sustain America's global leadership. It will preserve our ability to protect our vital national interests and to execute our most important missions.''

Unfortunately, the Republican Budget and the NDAA violate the bipartisan agreement reached just 9 months ago by adding billions of dollars of unwanted and unnecessary expenditures to the Pentagon. At a time when we need to be putting our fiscal house in order, this excessive spending cannot be justified.
These are some of my specific objections to the bill:

I oppose the provisions that put limits on the end-strength reductions put in place by the Administration. According to DoD, the limitations set by the bill would limit the Defense Department's ability to reduce the end strength of the Army and Marine Corps as troops return home from Afghanistan. Since the Administration has set these reductions in light of declining commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan and in order to implement a new defense strategy which emphasizes a smaller and leaner force, maintaining excessively high troop levels will unnecessarily drive up costs.

The bill contains provisions that block the Administration's ability to retire aging and unnecessary military aircraft including C 27J, C 23, C 130 and other aircraft and the RQ 4 Global Hawk without including necessary funding for the manning, repair, maintenance and modernization of these aircraft. Additionally, I oppose the bill's insistence on maintaining a minimum of 12 ballistic missile submarines in the fleet because it limits the Navy's ability to manage the strategic force.
The bill authorizes the establishment of a missile defense site on the East Coast that the DoD says threatens funding for the maintenance and construction of other more urgent elements of the country's missile defense.

I also oppose the bill's provisions that limit the reduction of nuclear forces that the Administration says are necessary to implement the New Start Treaty requirements and to set the country's nuclear policy.

And finally, I oppose sections 1035 1043 of the bill which would constrain the flexibility needed by the Nation's armed forces to deal with evolving counterterrorism threats. These provisions pertain to the treatment by the military of terror suspects captured on American soil and elsewhere.

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