National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016 -- Continued

Floor Speech

Mr. MURPHY. Madam President, we are hopefully going to be able to
vote very shortly on an amendment to the NDAA that I have submitted,
No. 1901, which speaks to a pretty simple concept that when we spend
taxpayer money and 70 percent of the goods that we purchase with
taxpayer dollars come through the Defense Department, we should be
spending that money on American companies.

We should be using our resources as a nation to purchase things from
companies here in the United States. That has been the law on the books
since the 1930s. The Buy America Act, for economic and national
security reasons, directs the U.S. Government to buy at least 50
percent of the components of any good from U.S. companies. The problem
is that over time, loophole after loophole and exception after
exception have been built into the Buy America Act, such that today the
exceptions really are the rule.

The consequences are pretty dire for American workers. It means that
thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of workers have
lost their job because work that should have gone to American companies
to build components for jet engines, tanks, and submarines are going
overseas. But for our national security, we also are faced with issues
as well, given the fact that as our supply chain becomes much more
internationalized, we are relying on countries that today might be our
allies to supply parts but that tomorrow might not. It puts us at risk
potentially down the line.

So I am proposing a pretty simple amendment here, which is really
just about sunlight. I had previously hoped to push an amendment that
would have actually cut down on one of the waivers that is the most
egregious. But I am hoping for a consensus on an amendment that would
just make clear that we have to get some more information about some of
the worst loopholes to the ``Buy American'' law. The worst of them,
and, in fact, the majority of the waivers for the Buy American Act come
through one specific waiver.

There are about eight ways to get around buying things in the United
States for the U.S. military. But one of them is that if you can prove
that the usage of the good is going to be primarily overseas, you can
buy that good overseas. Now, that is an understandable exception if you
are talking about the purchase of something such as fuel or food that
simply does not make sense to import from the United States. But
because there is really no oversight at all on this waiver and because
over the last 10 years, having fought two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,
this relatively small loophole, as it appears on the written page, has
become an enormous loophole.

So $17 billion in goods were made overseas, and in 2014, 83 percent
of them were done through this particular ``Buy America'' loophole. So
I want to just talk for a second about what some of these waivers are
being used to purchase. This is an Opel light-duty cargo van that has
been purchased by the U.S. military for a variety of activities. This
was not an emergency expenditure. Very clearly, you are buying this van
for activities that you can plan for. It is not something that you
could not import from the United States.

This contract, which was entered into at the height of the auto
crisis, was $2.9 million in total--$2.9 million that went to a foreign
auto company instead of going to a company in the United States. This
is clearly something--a cargo van--not being used on the frontlines of
our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that could have been bought from an
American auto company. Ford, Chevrolet, and Chrysler make versions of
this van that are produced by American workers.

There were $39 million worth of waivers for jet engines and gas
turbines. There was $28 million worth of waivers simply for men's
clothing. There were $11 million of waivers that were used for shoes,
for men's footwear. So it is clear that these waivers are being used
not for goods that are urgently needed in the field that had to be
purchased in a place such as Afghanistan or Iraq or in the region but
simply to avoid the ``Buy American'' law.

I want to amend my previous statement. It was not $17 billion in
goods that were bought from foreign firms, it was $176 billion in
manufactured goods that were bought--and services--from foreign firms.
So if it were up to me, we would tighten this loophole. We would bring
billions of dollars of work back to the United States simply by saying
that you have to have an urgent national security need in order to buy
the good overseas.

But if it is not urgent, if you are just buying some vans to cart
around equipment or people, then you should buy them from the United
States. But amendment No. 1901 is a little bit simpler, in that it just
requires that we continue to get reports from the Department of Defense
detailing the waivers that they have been granted for the ``Buy
American'' law, so that we have a pretty good idea as to how much work
we have lost to foreign firms, how many U.S. workers have lost their
jobs because taxpayer dollars are going overseas.

It adds a little new wrinkle to these reports so that when it comes
to these waivers, the waiver for goods that are primarily used
overseas, which was 83 percent in 2014 of all of the waivers that were
granted, we get a little bit more information so that for waivers for
contracts over $5 million--these are pretty big contracts--we know what
you are buying, why you need it, and why you are required to buy it
overseas.

I think that this information is just sunlight on the waiver process.
Again, a waiver process which is sending overseas $176 billion worth of
American taxpayer paid-for jobs should have more information so that we
can make decisions. It is funny, when I talk to my constituents and I
tell them that I am fighting for the ``Buy American'' law and that I am
fighting to make sure that at least 50 percent of their dollars get
spent to buy things from American companies when they are used by the
U.S. military, they have a bewildered look on their face because they
assume that is the policy of the U.S. Government to begin with.

Why on Earth would our taxpayer dollars be used to buy things
overseas?

There are some commonsense reasons why that happens. Obviously, as I
said, when you are buying something like food or fuel for the
military's use in Afghanistan or in Iraq, it makes sense to buy that
overseas. If you can't find it in the United States,
if there is not a single contractor that makes
what you are looking for in the United States, then, by all means, you
are going to have to buy that overseas. If there is such a price
differential, such an enormous price differential that it is a waste of
taxpayer dollars to buy it from American companies--and, frankly, those
are fairly minute exceptions--then it makes sense to do a work-around
on the ``Buy American'' law.

But we have seen hundreds of billions of dollars in waivers, waivers
that are being used for reasons that you just can't justify but also
through a process that includes really no oversight. On that waiver
that allows for goods to be purchased overseas when you can't find it
in the United States, there are examples where a simple Google search
could have found the item in the United States, but a waiver was still
signed, allowing it to be bought overseas because it wasn't available
here--just no oversight, making sure we are only giving these waivers
in the right circumstances.

I have talked a number of times on this floor about a company that
folded up shop in Waterbury, CT, a legacy company in the Naugatuck
Valley, Ansonia Copper & Brass. It made the copper nickel tubing for
the American submarine fleet. It was the only company in the United
States that made this particular item.

It is out of business today because of the loopholes in the ``Buy
American'' law. We are now buying our copper nickel tubing from a
foreign company. Now, that put dozens of people out of work in
Connecticut, but it also put in jeopardy our national security. If the
supplier of this copper nickel tubing, which is not something you can
make easily--it requires incredible expertise, complicated machinery.
If the country we are getting it from today decides they are not going
to supply it to us because they oppose the way in which we are using
it, we can't make it in the United States any longer. You can't just
reassemble the ability to make that particular good, complicated tubing
that goes inside one of the most complicated pieces of machinery in the
U.S. Navy, a submarine. You can't just do that overnight. So at the
very least, we should be getting all of the information we need to do
proper oversight on this process of granting waivers.

I have been pleased at the willingness of Chairman McCain and his
staff, along with the ranking member Senator Reed, to work with us on
this amendment, this sunlight amendment, this disclosure amendment.
Hopefully, over the course of today or tomorrow, we will be able to
include this in one of the managers' packages that we adopt on the
Senate floor, and it will allow us to have a more robust conversation
as to why on Earth we spent U.S. taxpayer dollars on this van, when $3
million--at the height of the auto crisis--could have gone to an
American company making a similar vehicle. That is a conversation that
on behalf of the literally hundreds of thousands of American workers
who don't have jobs today because we are spending taxpayer dollars
overseas--for their sake, they deserve for us to have that debate.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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