Bring Jobs Home Act--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. I thank the Senator from New Hampshire for yielding on that point--more important, for the great work she is doing as a member of the Armed Services Committee. She has been a very active member of that committee and a strong and clear voice for New Hampshire and for America's national security interests.

I might also add that we serve together on the Budget Committee, where really this should have originated. Unfortunately, since we did not pass a budget, it is very hard to have a plan for how to proceed with spending the taxpayers' money, and this is what you end up with.

Because we have this process put in place where, if action is not taken to avoid it, we have an across-the-board sequester that would occur at the first of next year--half of which would come out of the defense budget--we need to be able to find out exactly how these cuts would be implemented.

The thing we do not know is how the administration plans to implement this. I think that is what the transparency act that passed in the House of Representatives is designed to get at. By the way, it was an overwhelming vote, 414 to 2. The House of Representatives, in an overwhelmingly bipartisan way, weighed in on the issue about whether the administration ought to spell out in clear detail to the Congress and the American people how it intends to implement its sequestration plan.

I might say, it is going to be very difficult for us as Members of the Congress to come up with an alternative replacement plan if we do not know what their plan is for implementation. We know half the reductions are going to come out of defense--at least that is the plan--the other half out of nondiscretionary spending. It is clear this would have a profound impact on the defense budget on top of the $ 1/2 trillion in cuts as part of the Budget Control Act last summer.

I say to my colleague from New Hampshire, she has very clearly and well laid out the impacts--as have been delineated and described by many of our service chiefs, by many of our military leaders in this country--what those impacts would be on our national security, on our readiness. Also, I think she has elaborated extremely well about the economic impact, what it is going to mean in terms of jobs in our economy.

For a moment, I want to come back to this fundamental point because I believe it is one that should not be missed by people who are following this debate; that is, if the Budget Committee and the Senate had done their work in the first place and passed a budget, we would not be where we are today--if we had actually passed a budget.

The Senator from New Hampshire--I think this is her second year on the Budget Committee. Even before she got here, we had not passed a budget. I got on the Budget Committee in this last session of Congress, so it has been 2 years since I have been on the committee, but it is a committee without a purpose, without a mission. If you are not going to pass a budget, I am not sure why you want to have a budget committee.

The other thing that is interesting about this is that we are not going to pass any appropriations bills. Not only not a budget, but in the Appropriations Committee here in the Senate are usually 12 bills that come across the floor. The majority leader said he is not going to bring appropriations bills to the floor.

I think the House of Representatives passed nine appropriations bills. They passed a budget. The Appropriations Committee here in the Senate has been moving and passing appropriations bills out of committee, but the leader of the Senate has said we are not going to move appropriations bills this year.

We did not move a budget. We are not moving appropriation bills. So what you end up with is a budget control act like what we passed last summer that takes these Draconian whacks out of the defense budget and puts America's national security interests at risk and in great peril.

I ask my colleague from New Hampshire, who, as I said, is a member, along with me, of the Senate Budget Committee, might this situation have been avoided had the Senate done its work as it is supposed to do in an orderly way, followed the law, actually passed a budget, actually worked on getting appropriations bills on the floor of the Senate? Might we have avoided what is before us; that is, these devastating, disastrous, and what some have described as catastrophic cuts in our defense budget? It seems to me at least that is where you end up when you do not do your work in the first place.

To my colleague from New Hampshire, I simply ask her, as a member of the Budget Committee, might we not be in a different situation if we had passed a budget now for 3 years?

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Mr. THUNE. I think the Budget Control Act, which passed last summer, created this process, and led us to sequestration, which is where we are today. This is a function and a clear outcome of having not passed a budget. It is ironic in many respects because, as the Senator from New Hampshire has pointed out, the first fundamental responsibility we have as Members of Congress is to tell the American people--the taxpayers who pay the bills for this government--how we are going to spend their money. This is now the third year in a row that the Senate has failed to do that.

Again, I might simply add that the House of Representatives did do a budget, has been passing appropriation bills, has been following the law in accordance with what has been the practice around here up until the last 3 years of actually working on a budget. When we are borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar we spend, it would strike me that it would be important we go through an exercise and figure out how we are going to start whittling away at the deficit and get the debt at a more manageable level and how we are going to spend the American taxpayers' dollars.

As the Senator from New Hampshire pointed out--again, I don't think we can emphasize this enough. Last summer we already called for $1/2 trillion in defense cuts, and that was half of the amount of reductions that were made last summer. It was about $1 trillion, a little over that, overall in spending cuts last summer. Those were immediate spending cuts, half of which came out of defense; $487 billion was already taken out of the defense budget.

So what we are talking about now is another $1/2 trillion over the next 10 years on top of that $1/2 trillion. In other words, $1/2 trillion out of the national security budget. The President's own Secretary of Defense has said it would lead to the smallest ground force since 1940, since before World War II, and the smallest fleet of ships since 1915, almost a century, and the smallest tactical Air Force we have had literally in the history of the Air Force. That is what we are talking about. That is the dimension of the problem we are referring to. It completely impairs our ability to project power in many of these critical areas of the world.

The world is a dangerous place, and it is not getting any less dangerous. It is getting literally more dangerous, according to the headlines, every single day. Our ability to project power in the Middle East, Asia, and all the areas of the world we need to keep an eye on will be in serious jeopardy.

I want to make a serious observation about that, and it is important to me. My State of South Dakota is home to a bomber base. One of the key ways our Nation projects power is through the use of the bomber fleet. Our bomber fleet is aging. Nearly half of the fleet was built before the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, if you can imagine that. So it is highly important we modernize our bomber fleet and Secretary Panetta has stated that the development of the next-generation bomber would be delayed by sequestration until well toward the middle of this century. So we are talking about dramatic reductions in our ground forces, Navy, and Air Force. All the assets we use to protect this country and defend America's interests around the world would be at great risk if this sequestration goes into effect.

As the Senator from New Hampshire has appropriately pointed out, the No. 1 priority we have is to defend this country. If we don't get national security right, the rest of this conversation, including all the other things we talked about, is secondary to defending and protecting America and the American people.

This is a very serious debate, and I would come back to the question the Senator from New Hampshire posed in the first place, and that is yesterday the House of Representatives passed by a 414-to-2 vote a piece of legislation that would require the administration to tell us how they intend to implement these cuts by program, project, and activity level. That way we know with some detailed specificity how these proposed cuts are going to take effect, and that would allow us to come up with an alternative plan and perhaps be able to replace and substitute other cuts elsewhere in the budget for what are going to be disastrous cuts in the defense budget.

I introduced companion legislation here in the Senate very similar to what the House passed yesterday. I hope the Senate will pick up the House bill and move it and pass it so we can get the administration and the President to engage in this discussion about what they intend to do in terms of implementing sequestration. Then perhaps they can work with us to avoid the catastrophe we are referring to and talking about. This has been documented and validated by all of our military leadership and would be a very serious and dangerous reduction in America's national security resources and in our ability to keep our country ready and able to defend America and America's interests around the world.

I appreciate so much the leadership of the Senator from New Hampshire on this issue. I know the Senator has been very active in trying to get the administration to provide more information with regard to what the impact should be on the defense budget as a member of the Armed Services Committee.

I also think they ought to furnish all the information on these cuts not only on the defense part but the nonnational security part of the budget. Defense represents 20 percent of all Federal spending, but we are going to get half of the cuts. The proportionality of this is a real issue, in my view. That happened last summer. Half of the cuts made last summer came out of defense even though it is only 20 percent of Federal spending. Half of the cuts in this sequestration would come out of the defense budget, even though it represents 20 percent of all Federal spending.

I would hope, as my colleagues here in the Senate continue to hear from people around the country who are impacted by this--not only our military leadership but also those whose jobs are going to be impacted by this--that there will be a new sense of urgency, a new intensity to try to resolve this issue, and that is to get the administration to show how they intend to implement sequestration.

I look forward to working with my colleague from New Hampshire to make that happen. I hope our colleagues on the other side, the Democratic leadership, will agree to moving that legislation.

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