National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014

Floor Speech

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Mrs. FISCHER. Mr. President, I rise today to speak on the series of historic reforms adopted by the Armed Services Committee to combat sexual assault in the military. The women have taken the lead on this matter. Sexual assault is not a gender issue, it is a violence issue.

I rise to voice support for a bipartisan amendment that I have offered with Senator McCaskill and Senator Ayotte to directly confront this violence, and I urge my colleagues to oppose any radical changes that would undermine justice for the victims and take away responsibility from commanders.

I am proud to have supported several measures to strengthen the rights of victims, hold perpetrators accountable, and strengthen oversight of military commanders to ensure that justice is delivered.

As a result of a truly bipartisan effort, the committee has put forth a bill that takes an unprecedented step of providing victims with a special victims' counsel to make certain they are receiving unbiased, independent legal advice. It strips commanders of the ability to overturn jury convictions, makes retaliation against victims a crime, requires dishonorable discharge or dismissal for those convicted of sexual assault, and provides critical civilian oversight.

Despite achieving these unprecedented reforms in committee, my colleagues and I continue to explore ways to enhance the current bill after the committee's work had concluded.

Senators MCCASKILL, AYOTTE, and I introduced an amendment last week to expand upon the committee's progress. Our proposal extends current protections to service academies, boosts evaluation standards for commanders, and allows victims increased input. It also eliminates the good soldier defense in most cases.

These changes, both in our amendment and in the whole NDAA, are significant but, importantly, they are also serious and thoughtful. They are based on sound policy, not on political sound bites.

Rather than radically remaking the entire military justice system, which would carry significant risks, our proposals improve and update the current system. To do so, we applied lessons from history.

In 2006, Congress hastily changed portions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice to address instances of rape.

These changes disrupted victims' paths to justice, and Congress was forced to rewrite its own changes a few years later.

Congress can't afford to get something this important wrong. We cannot let our deep desire to solve this problem lead to imprecise solutions because victims suffer when we do. Any changes to the UCMJ should come after a deliberate and transparent process, with feedback from all sides. The McCaskill-Ayotte-Fischer amendment is the result of such a process, and I encourage my colleagues to support it.

Finally, I urge my colleagues to oppose any amendment that undermines a commander's responsibility for his or her troops. Senator McCaskill put it so well when she spoke on the floor earlier today: The amendment offered by my friend and colleague, the junior Senator from New York, offers a solution that is ``seductively simple,'' but its simplicity creates a host of complex policy problems.

In addition to technical concerns, I do not agree with the underlying goal of removing commanders from the military justice system. As Senator McCaskill noted, we know commanders pursue courts-martial when their legal advisers recommend against doing so. We know, based on the experiences of our allies, that removing commanders from that judicial process does not achieve the desired results. And we know that commanders have risen to the challenge in the past to confront contentious issues within their units, including integration. These facts lead me to conclude that the changes in this bill, combined with the reforms included within our amendment, will best serve the interests of victims and punish those responsible.

I commend the Senator from Missouri for her leadership on this issue, and I am grateful for the opportunity to work closely with her, Senator Ayotte, and many other colleagues to help our men and women in uniform.

I yield the floor.

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