Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2016 -- Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, let me begin by saying that I believe
defense spending is the most important obligation of the Federal
Government. That doesn't mean we throw money away or we put money in
places where it doesn't belong or we fund projects that have no
utility. But it does mean the most important thing the Federal
Government does for America is to defend it.

We have benefitted from the fact that for the last 100 years, America
has had the most powerful military force on the planet. This is
especially true since the end of the Second World War. There have been
times in our history when we tried to save money by cutting back on
defense spending, and each and every time, it has forced us to come
back later and spend even more to make up for it.

It is interesting to point out that in times in the past when we have
taken a peace dividend--this idea that the world is no longer unstable
or unsafe and we can now spend less on defense--each and every time, we
have had to come back and make up for it later as a new threat emerged.
I don't think we can make the argument that this is a time when the
world is stable or peaceful. Yet this is a time of dramatic reductions
in defense spending.

During this administration, first came the defense cuts of $480
billion over 10 years. Adding insult to injury, by the way, was that
the savings found in the defense budget were redirected to already
bloated domestic programs.

Secretary Gates wrote in his memoirs about the extent to which he was
forced to cut costs, saying: ``[N]o other department had done anything
comparable--even proportionally.''

This was then followed by tens of billions more in defense cuts each
year through sequestration, which will add up to a total of a trillion
dollars over the next decade, despite the warnings of three secretaries
of defense and our entire military leadership.

All in all, inflation-adjusted defense spending has declined 21
percent since 2010. Even if we discount the drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has still declined by a dangerous 12 percent. This is happening at the same
time that China is undergoing the most expansive, most aggressive
defense increase in modern history; at a time when Russia, despite
being eviscerated by economic sanctions, has held their defense
spending largely harmless; at a time when radical Islam around the
world--both the rise of ISIS and the existence of Al Qaeda and other
groups such as al-Nusra and the Khorasan group and others--poses an
ongoing threat to the United States. This at a time when many of our
potential adversaries and adversaries, such as North Korea and Iran,
are developing long-range rocket capabilities that could reach the
continental United States. This is the worst possible time to be
reducing our defense spending, and yet that is what we are doing. We
are setting ourselves up for danger.

I would recognize that people who have worked hard on this budget
have tried to find new ways to address this through contingency
funding. I respect the work they have done, and ultimately that may be
where we end up. But before we do, it is important for this body to
have a serious debate about how we are underfunding defense spending in
this country and the dangers it poses for our future.

That is the purpose of this amendment. The purpose of this amendment
is to replace the defense numbers in this budget with the projected
fiscal year 2016 number from the fiscal 2012 Gates budget. This was the
last defense budget, the Gates budget, that was put together solely on
the assessment of the threats we face and the requisite military needs
to deal with it. It is the budget that the bipartisan congressionally
mandated National Defense Panel stated was the minimum required to
reverse course and set the military on more stable footing.

With that, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to enter into a
colloquy with my colleague from Arkansas, Senator Cotton.

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Mr. RUBIO. I would ask Senator Cotton, who has extensive experience
both serving in uniform and here in the Senate as well as in the House,
his views on the dangers this poses, the rates that we are reducing
military spending, and what it means to the long-term security of the
United States.

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Mr. RUBIO. I would say there is not much to add to what the Senator
from Arkansas has pointed out. As he well knows, the importance that we
have made to the men and women of our armed services, that is, that we
will never put them in a fair fight. It will always be an unfair fight
to their advantage. They will be the best trained, best equipped, and
best-taken-care of fighting men and women on the planet.

We cannot keep that commitment if we continue to reduce spending on
the military and on defense at the rate we are going today.

I would add one more point, that is, that much of the world security
today is based upon American military alliances that are built upon
American military assurances, so, for example, in the Asia-Pacific
region, where the Japanese, the South Koreans, and other allies in the
region look to an American umbrella of defense to provide them
certainty in the face of real risk, whether it is territorial claims
made by China that are illegitimate, or the nuclear threat of North
Korea.

Why haven't the South Koreans developed their own nuclear weapons?
Because they believe the United States will be there to help them
defend themselves. Why have the Japanese never felt compelled to use
their technological know-how to build a nuclear program? Because they
believe the United States is their ally and will come to their
collective self-defense.

These countries do their own spending. The Japanese have a very
capable military force and a great force multiplier in the region,
despite not being called a military force.

The South Koreans are a very impressive fighting force and have a
very courageous history. But that American security alliance in the
region is critical to the long-term stability and security of that
region, a region where a lot of global growth is happening on the
economic front, where 50, 60, 70 percent of global trade and commerce
transits through the South and East China Seas.

The U.S. Navy's presence in the region, along with our other
branches, is critical for the defense of the region. The same is true
with the NATO Alliance in Europe. It relies on American security
guarantees. The same is true--if a terrible deal, God forbid, is
arrived at by this administration with Iran, our partners and allies in
the region, particularly Saudi Arabia and others, are going to look to
the United States and say: Well, what are you going to do to help us be
protected from an Iranian nuclear weapon, with the missiles they are
able to acquire?

So what is going to happen when they turn and we say to them: We are
with you; we are going to be there; We are going to continue to work
with you; we are going to continue to live up to our defense
capabilities, but we do not have the capabilities to meet our
obligations? In essence, you can talk pivoting to Asia, but you have to
have something to pivot with. If we have eviscerated our military, we
have eviscerated our naval capacity, if we are on pace, as we are now,
to have the smallest Air Force and the smallest Navy we have had in a
very long time, we can say whatever we want, but our allies will not
believe us because we will not have the capabilities to meet it.

The other challenge we have is when we talk about modernization, we
are not talking about the Commander in Chief today. When we decide how
much money we are going to spend on modernizing our military
capabilities, what we are deciding is what are the technologies and
tools that are going to be available to a future Commander in Chief in
5, 10, or 15 years.

These innovative systems that we use today that have cut down on
civilian casualties, that allow us to improve our targeting, our
intelligence-gathering capabilities, that have made the United States
the premier fighting force in all of human history--all of those things
were developed a decade ago or longer, through years of experimentation
and testing, through innovation.

So if we cut back on that now, in 10 years a future Commander in
Chief will be faced with a threat to our national security, and will
not have the latest, greatest technology on the planet to address it.

What about the asymmetrical capabilities that China and others are
developing? Instead of trying to out-aircraft-carrier us, they build
weapons to destroy aircraft carriers. As we try to adjust to that
threat, what is going to happen in a few years if we do not keep pace?

The absence of a long-range bomber, the need to replace an aging
submarine fleet, a Navy that is headed for a catastrophic low number of
ships, all of these things need to be confronted, not to mention the
fact that we are not modernizing at an efficient and effective rate our
nuclear arsenal, which is a key part of our deterrence, in a world
where China, Russia, and others have significant stockpiles of weapons,
particularly the Russians.

All of those things are important. These are long-range, long-term
decisions that will have an impact on a future Congress, on a future
Commander in Chief, and on our children and grandchildren, who will be
the ones who have to live in that world. I promise you that a world
where America is no longer the most capable fighting force on the
planet is a world that is more chaotic and less safe.

I look forward to having a debate on this. I encourage my colleagues
to rally around these numbers. This is what we should be funding
defense at. As my colleague, the Senator from Arkansas, accurately
pointed out, and I am honored to work with him on this, strategy should
not be driven by defense spending, the defense spending should be
driving the strategy. In essence, to put it succinctly, we should not
have a strategy that is based on limited resources. We are going to
have to do the best we can with limited resources. We should first
outline a strategy. This is what the strategy should be for the future
of our country to keep us safe. Then we should fund that strategy, not
the other way around. That is not what we are doing now. We are setting
a dangerous precedent. More importantly, we are putting at risk the
national security of this country. Once you have made that decision, it
is very difficult to reverse it in a timely way. We have learned this
lesson the hard way multiple times in our history. I hope we do not
have to it learn it again.

I look forward to working with the Senator from Arkansas on this
amendment, and with my colleagues. There is great respect for the work
that has gone into this budget, and the work of many others who are
equally committed to the national defense of our country. I acknowledge
the hard work they have put into finding a solution to get more money
into defense, but it is not enough. Everyone knows that. The sooner we
deal with this, the safer our country is going to be.

With that, I yield the floor.

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