National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, I oppose the Ernst amendment. It would undermine what has been the fundamental policy of the United States going back into the last administration: a unified, sovereign Iraq. This amendment would send a signal to the Iraqis that we are supporting the Kurds directly, not supporting a unified, sovereign Iraq. That would complicate our efforts against ISIL. It would complicate our efforts in the region.

Also, it is the situation now where the effort is shifting into Anbar Province in the Sunni areas. We are supporting the Kurds. In fact, Prime Minister Barzani was here a few weeks ago and indicated that he was at least accepting of the arrangements, which I think were appropriate.

If this amendment passes, the perception will be that the United States is now not trying to unify or help the Iraqis unify but put a degree of separation between an autonomy, and that would be a mistake.

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Madam President, at 5 p.m. we will be voting on an amendment proposed by the Senator from Louisiana, Mr. Vitter. The amendment would require the Secretary of the Army to maintain at least 32 brigade combat teams in the Regular and Reserve components of the Army and 28 brigade combat teams in the Army National Guard.

Effectively and deliberately, this amendment would prevent the Army from managing its own force structure, determining how many brigades it needs, how they are disposed in terms of Active, Reserve, and Regular forces. In addition, the way the amendment is paid for, to maintain these additional brigades would be to mandate a 1-percent pay cut for all Federal civilian employees for 2016 and 2017--not a pay freeze, a pay cut.

The Army does not support this amendment. They need the flexibility to manage their forces to respond to the threats as they perceive them in the world, to determine where the forces are mechanized, whether they are located in the National Guard or whether they are located in the Regular force. As such, as the Army draws down--and it is on that trajectory because of many issues, some of them budgetary--they would have to totally reexamine their existing force structure and they would indeed have to, I think, sacrifice what they think is the most optimal force for a legislative mandate of an arbitrary number of brigades in place. This will create readiness problems because it is one thing to have brigades on paper; it is another to have brigades that are ready to deploy, fully trained, fully equipped, fully manned. That would complicate this process for the Army.

So for these reasons, when the amendment is presented at 5 p.m., I will be opposing the amendment, and I urge my colleagues to join me in that opposition. I think the Army is the most capable to determine its force structure and not by legislative fiat.

With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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