[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 84 (Thursday, May 26, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3261-S3265]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION BILL
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise to highlight a number of important
provisions in the fiscal year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act.
This is the measure in its entirety. It comes with this report. It is
about 1,664 pages for the actual bill and another 642 pages for the
report. It is no wonder, as it deals with national security issues as
well as the Department of Defense and many other agencies. It is
clearly the product of many hours and months of work by the members of
the committee, as well as the staff.
We consider it on the floor of the Senate and have a special
responsibility to look at it very carefully. This bill, of course, will
take some time to be digested and analyzed. We have been in that
process this week. Many of us count on our professional staff whom we
have work for the defense appropriations committee. They also look at
this measure to see how it squares up with the actual spending bill. I
don't serve on the defense authorization committee; I am on the
spending part of it, the defense appropriations subcommittee. We
approved our measure
[[Page S3262]]
today and reported it from the full Appropriations Committee. It will
be coming to the floor in a few weeks.
What is the most pressing concern when it comes to our national
defense? Most Americans would rightly say it is terrorism. Terrorism is
a real threat to America and to our families. We have to do everything
in our power to prevent terrorism from reaching our shores and to
dismantle it and destroy it overseas. It is a large undertaking.
The United States leads the world in dealing with global terrorism.
This bill we are considering has elements in it that address that
challenge. I take the threat seriously, and as vice chairman of the
Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, I have worked with the senior
Senator from Mississippi, Republican Senator Thad Cochran, to try to
make sure our troops have the funds they need to wage the fight
overseas.
To defeat ISIS, we should defeat them on the ground in Iraq and Syria
and dismantle their international terror network. We also must continue
to prevent the spread of terrorism here at home through stronger
homeland defenses and work with our allies to strengthen their
intelligence-gathering. To win, we have to mobilize the full force of
the U.S. Government against ISIS and ensure that every national
security agency has what it needs to keep us safe--at not just the
Department of Defense but at all of the intelligence agencies: the
Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
the State Department, and the Treasury Department. It is not DOD's
fight alone.
This Defense authorization bill contributes to that strategy to stop
the spread of terrorism. It authorizes funds for the fight against Al
Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS, and also includes $1.7 billion to build
the capacity of our allies in Iraq, Syria, and the broader region.
Finally, like this year's Defense appropriations bill, this bill also
consolidates a lot of duplicative programs in order to make the fight
more effective. It streamlines the authorization for funding for DOD
efforts to train and equip our top partners. It will mean better
oversight. It will mean more fighting time against ISIS and Al Qaeda
instead of more time fighting among the bureaucracy in the Pentagon.
There are several other good provisions in the committee bill which
represent a bipartisan consensus between the chairman and the ranking
member. I commend the chairman and the ranking member for refraining
from budget gimmickry, as we have seen in the other body across the
Rotunda.
Our House colleagues recommend authorizing and appropriating only
half of what our men and women in uniform need to keep us safe--half an
appropriation--through April of 2017. Testifying in front of my Defense
Appropriations Subcommittee, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter called
this House ``gambling with warfighting money at a time of war,
proposing to cut off troops' funding in places like Afghanistan, Iraq,
and Syria in the middle of the year.'' I am glad we have refrained from
those tactics in the Senate.
The bill also authorizes a well-deserved pay increase for our
uniformed and defense civilian workforce. It rejects a request by the
Department of Defense to authorize a future Base Realignment and
Closure, or BRAC, Commission. Many of us have lived through a lot of
these BRAC Commissions. I am not optimistic that if we embark on
another one, it will have positive results.
Like many of my colleagues, I strongly oppose Russian President
Vladimir Putin's reckless invasion of Ukraine, so I also appreciate
this bill's authorization for additional military assistance for
Ukraine.
There are several issues which are not addressed in this bill which I
hope we can address on a bipartisan basis. Unlike previous years, the
bill contains no extension for the Afghan special immigrant visa
program so that we may continue to keep faith with those foreign
translators who risk their lives to help American troops. Senator
Shaheen and others have championed this effort, and I hope we can deal
with it appropriately.
There are several provisions in this bill that are controversial. I
would like to address a few.
The closure of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba is an issue that I think is
timely and extremely important. This bill once again blocks the
transfer of detainees from Guantanamo Bay to the United States. Some of
my colleagues are threatening amendments to tighten these restrictions
further.
The reality is, every day Guantanamo stays open, it weakens our
alliances, inspires our enemies, and calls into question our commitment
to human rights. Time and again, our most senior national security and
military leaders have called for the closure of Guantanamo.
The troops--the service men and women who are responsible for
maintaining Guantanamo--have an almost impossible assignment. I have
been down to Southern Command in Florida. I have talked to them. They
are doing their level best to make sure Guantanamo Bay meets standards.
I don't hold against them the reputation Guantanamo has in many places
in the world, but the fact is, we should look at Guantanamo in honest
terms.
In addition to our national security costs, every day that Guantanamo
remains open, we are wasting taxpayer dollars. Many colleagues come to
the floor and make speech after speech against wasteful Federal
spending. So let me give a classic example at Guantanamo Bay. According
to this authorization bill, we are now spending $5.5 million a year for
each of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
What if those prisoners were put in the most secure Federal prisons
in America, supermax facilities where no one has ever escaped? How much
would it cost us? Would it cost $5\1/2\ million like Guantanamo? No. It
would cost $86,000 a year. Why, then, would we waste millions of
dollars on Guantanamo when we know these detainees can be held safely,
securely, and without any fear of escape for a fraction of the cost?
Because this has become a political symbol, a symbol which the other
party is willing to fight for even if it means wasting almost $500
million every single year to keep Guantanamo open.
All of us are committed to preventing terrorist attacks. Terrorists
deserve swift and sure justice and severe prison sentences. But holding
detainees at Guantanamo Bay does not administer justice effectively. It
does not serve our national security interests. It is inconsistent with
our country's history as a champion of human rights.
There are convicted terrorists being held safely in Federal prisons
in more than 20 States, including my own. At the Marion Federal
penitentiary in Southern Illinois, we are holding convicted terrorists.
How many people from Southern Illinois have come to me and objected to
the fact that terrorists are incarcerated at the Federal prison in
Marion? Exactly none. Not a one. They trust the men and women in the
Bureau of Prisons to hold these prisoners safely, even if they are
convicted of terrorism. Why, then, do we continue the charade of
maintaining Guantanamo for some bragging rights in some places in this
world? I don't understand it. If you want to save $500 million for the
taxpayers of America, here is a place to start.
There are also some troubling provisions on guns, including on the
reimportation of military firearms for sale. Now, listen to this one.
One section of the bill would circumvent State Department restrictions
on reimporting surplus military weaponry back into the United States
for sale to the public--military weapons for sale to the public in the
United States. This is an item that has long been on the gun lobby's
list--a wish list that hopes that hundreds of thousands of M-1
military-grade rifles that the United States supplied to South Korea
decades ago will come back into the United States, be put in the hands
of gun companies, and be sold back in our country. How many people
think that bringing in these items--hundreds of thousands of military-
grade weapons--and selling them will make us a safer nation? I don't.
Section 1056 of the bill would have the U.S. Army basically serve--
listen to this--as a free shipping service to bring these weapons back
into the United States, thus bypassing State Department restrictions on
the reimportation of these guns by private companies. The bill would
then direct the Army to make these guns available to the companies so
they could sell
[[Page S3263]]
them to the public at large--military-grade weapons.
There is also a provision giving military-grade firearms to museums.
Another section of this bill would authorize the Secretary of the Army
to transfer up to 4,000--4,000 military-grade firearms to public or
private military museums, but there is nothing in the bill requiring
that the guns be rendered inoperable. There is nothing to prohibit
these museums from reselling them to the public as well.
We should be very careful in importing and selling military-grade
firearms in the United States of America.
I will defend Second Amendment rights. I will defend the right of
individuals to own, use, and store guns safely for sporting purposes
and for self-defense. But the notion that we need to bring hundreds and
thousands of military weapons back into the United States and put them
in circulation--do you really believe that will make us a safer nation?
I don't.
The bill also includes a provision affecting Department of Defense-
operated schools and school districts that regularly receive impact
aid. We need to ensure that our kids are safe as they step onto the
bus, walk through school hallways, and enter the classroom each day.
When we entrust teachers, administrators, bus drivers, librarians, and
others to watch over and care for students, we should have confidence
that they are individuals who will actually protect our kids. Indeed,
the vast majority of school employees are hard-working, caring
individuals dedicated to ensuring that students learn in a safe,
nurturing environment. However, we unfortunately have read too many
recent headlines about predators who, instead of teaching and
protecting kids, ultimately harm and abuse them.
I agree with my colleagues that we need to put in place a
comprehensive background check system that will close loopholes and
establish zero-tolerance policies for sexual misconduct by school
employees. That said, I have serious concerns with section 578 in this
bill. This provision fails to provide adequate due process and civil
rights protections for innocent individuals. I am also concerned that
this provision is overly broad and could potentially allow schools to
dismiss highly qualified individuals who pose no risk to any children.
We need to strike the appropriate balance to make sure there is a just
process before we make the final determination.
Another troubling provision is Section 829H, which states that the
Executive order on fair pay and safe work places would not apply to all
defense contractors; rather, just to those who have previously been
debarred or suspended as a result of labor law violations. The
Executive order simply requires transparency about a contractor's
ability to follow long-established labor law. The American people
deserve to know why DOD decides to task billions of dollars' worth of
work to these people. We should ensure that the President's Executive
order is implemented fairly and consistently across the Federal
Government.
The bill also contains three related troubling provisions relating to
the issue of how to best protect Americans' national security as it
relates to the launching of national security payloads into space. I
will have more to say about that as this debate progresses, but I would
note at the outset that the provision in the bill which I am pointing
to has been addressed at the highest levels by our Department of
Defense.
The Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter; the Director of National
Intelligence, James Clapper; and the Secretary of the Air Force,
Deborah James, all disagree with the chairman of this authorization
committee on this issue--every one of them. They all agree that this
Senator's proposal would cost taxpayers across America billions of
dollars more than the current strategy.
In times of tight budgets, when America, its taxpayers, and certainly
the men and women in uniform need every dollar we can save them, you
can't explain or defend the position taken by the committee.
The disagreement is over how to best get the United States off the
dependence of Russian-made rocket engines for the launching of national
security payloads into space. The proposal coming out of the committee
from the chairman last year and again this year continues to suggest a
rash and abrupt halt to the purchase of these Russian-made engines. Let
me make it clear. I want to move away from these Russian engines
quickly. I want American engines, built by Americans, to propel those
payloads into space. But it takes time. For 2 years we have been
appropriating money to achieve this goal. It will take at least 2 or 3
years more for us to reach that goal and have an American-made engine.
This chairman of this committee ignores that reality and says we will
just stop when it comes to these Russian engines and take the
consequences. Well, the consequences, sadly, are going to be an
extraordinary expense for American taxpayers.
As chairman and now vice-chairman of the Defense Appropriations
Subcommittee, I am committing to an American-made engine. We have
appropriated even more funds for this effort than this authorizing
committee has authorized over the last several years. The Air Force is
using these funds to liberate us from Russian-made rockets as quickly
as possible. But Secretary Carter, Director Clapper, and Secretary
James have all testified publically that the proposal from the senior
Senator of Arizona is dangerous to national security and costly.
Secretary Carter, testifying in front of the Defense Appropriations
Subcommittee on May 6, 2015, said:
We want to get off of that dependency on Russia, but it
takes some time to do so. And in the meantime, we don't want
to have a gap. . . . We can't afford to have a gap because we
need to be able to launch national security satellites.
Earlier this year, Air Force Secretary James testified in front of
the senior Senator's own committee--from which we are now considering
the bill--making the same case, noting that the chairman's proposal
``would add anywhere from $1.5 billion to $5 billion in additional
costs.''
That is a lot of money. I have heard the chairman of this committee
come to this floor over and over and over again, suggesting wasteful
spending. According to the Secretary of the Air Force, his proposal
will end up costing us $1.5 billion more than we should have to pay for
this important part of our national defense. That is a waste of
taxpayers' dollars.
I hope my colleagues will pay attention to this issue, and I hope we
have time to debate it in detail. There is simply too much at stake for
our national security, for our troops, and for the taxpayers to accept
the senior Senator's proposal on this matter.
This is a lengthy bill, as I mentioned at the outset. I am sure there
are going to be additional measures that we uncover as we go through it
page by page, and we will take the time to actually do so.
In the meantime, I thank the chairman and ranking member of this
committee for their work to present this body with their committee's
product. I look forward to a meaningful debate on the many issues this
authorization bill presents.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, tomorrow President Obama will make a
historic visit to Hiroshima, the site of the first atomic bombing. He
will become the first sitting President of the United States to do so,
and I commend him for this long overdue Presidential recognition.
Having traveled to Hiroshima in 1985 to witness the commemoration of
the 40th anniversary of that atomic bombing, I know from personal
experience that any visit there serves as a powerful reminder of
America's responsibility to reduce the risk of nuclear war. That risk
remains as real today as it was nearly 71 years ago when we dropped
that bomb that killed 140,000 people in 1 day.
In the last few decades, important progress has been made to reduce
the threat of nuclear war. The United States and Russia have reduced
the size of their nuclear arsenals. The beginning of an additional
change is going to happen in 2018 when both the United States and
Russia will have no more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads after
implementation of the New START treaty.
But that progress has come at a cost. In exchange for the support of
Senate Republicans for passage of the New
[[Page S3264]]
START treaty in 2010, President Obama promised to fund major upgrades
to America's nuclear arsenal.
Since then, the extent of these upgrades and their costs have
swelled. Today it is estimated that President Obama's nuclear
``modernization'' plan will end up costing U.S. taxpayers nearly $1
trillion over the next 30 years.
However this modernization plan is little more than a plan to expand
America's capabilities, its nuclear capabilities. It would create new
nuclear weapons, including a dangerous nuclear air launch cruise
missile that will cost tens of billions of dollars over the next two
decades.
Nuclear cruise missiles are a particular concern because they are
difficult to distinguish from nonnuclear cruise missiles. As a
consequence, if the United States used a conventional cruise missile in
a conflict with Russia or China, it could lead to devastating
miscalculation on the other side and, as a result, to accidental
nuclear war.
Worse still, the Defense Department has justified this new nuclear
cruise missile by asserting that it is needed for purposes beyond
deterrence. The Pentagon explains that the new nuclear cruise missile
could be used to respond ``proportionately to a limited nuclear
attack,'' meaning that this nuclear weapon becomes more usable in a
standoff with Russia, China, or some other country.
When President Obama visited Prague in 2009, he pledged to reduce the
role of nuclear weapons in our national security. If the President
truly wants to make good on this promise, I think it is important for
him to stop these nuclear expansion efforts. He should cancel the
funding for the new nuclear cruise missile, which would make the
prospect of fighting a nuclear war more imaginable.
In the meantime, Congress can and must act. Rather than plunging
blindly ahead by spending money on this dangerous new weapon, we can
call for a timeout while we evaluate its costs and its risks. That is
why I have submitted an amendment to the National Defense Authorization
Act that would delay any spending on the nuclear cruise missile for 1
year so that we can have the full debate on this weapon; so that we can
ensure that we understand the consequences of building this new weapon;
so that we can understand how the Russians and the Chinese might
respond to it; so that each Member of the Senate can understand that
it, in fact, has nuclear war-fighting capabilities.
It is not just a defensive weapon; it has the ability to be used in a
nuclear war-fighting scenario. How do I know this? It is because this
Pentagon, this Department of Defense, says that it is usable and says
that it could be used in a limited nuclear war. Do we really want to be
authorizing in this Senate that kind of new weapon that makes fighting
a nuclear war more imaginable?
I think Americans deserve an opportunity to consider whether tens of
billions of dollars of their tax dollars should be spent on a
redundant, destabilizing, new nuclear missile. They expect that we will
ask the tough questions about the need for $1 trillion in new nuclear
weapons spending, but they especially want us to ask questions about
new weapons that the Pentagon is saying make it possible to contemplate
a limited nuclear war. That is a debate which this body needs to have.
That is a weapons system we should be discussing.
This new cruise missile with nuclear warheads is the tip of the new
$1 trillion nuclear modernization program. We should debate that first.
We can examine the rest of the modernization program, the new nuclear
programs, but we should at least have that debate and that vote out
here. We should give ourselves at least 1 year before we allow it to
commence so that we can study it. Then next year we can have the vote
on whether or not we want to commence. As yet, I don't think we have
had the debate or have a full understanding of what the implications of
this weapon are.
Plans to build more nuclear weapons would not only be expensive, but
they could trigger a 21st century arms race with Russia and China,
which are unlikely--very unlikely--to stand idly by as we expand our
nuclear arsenal. The result would be a tragic return to the days of the
Cold War, when both sides built up ever greater stockpiles of nuclear
weapons. As we get closer and closer to the contemplation that both
sides could actually consider fighting a nuclear war, our goal should
be to push us further and further and further away from the concept
that it is possible to fight a nuclear, limited war on this planet.
The National Defense Authorization Act also contains another
misguided provision that would lay the groundwork for a spiraling
nuclear weapons buildup. Currently, our policy, the U.S. policy, states
that we will pursue a ``limited'' missile defense--limited. This
approach is meant to protect our territory against missile attacks by
countries such as Iran and North Korea without threatening Russia or
China's nuclear deterrent.
As recognized by generations of responsible policymakers,
constructing missile defenses aimed at Russia or China would be self-
defeating and destabilizing. Dramatically expanding our missile
defenses could cause Russia and China to fear that the United States
seeks to protect itself from retaliation from Russia or China so that
we can carry out a preventive nuclear attack on China or on Russia.
That plays into the most militaristic people inside of those countries,
who will then say that they too need to make additional investments and
that cycle of offense and defense continues to escalate until you reach
a point where we are back to where we all started--with those generals,
with those arms contractors then dictating what our foreign policy is,
what our defense policy is.
They were wrong in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, and they are
wrong today. That is just the wrong way to go. We have to ensure that
we are backing away, not increasing the likelihood that these weapons
can be used. We don't want to be empowering those in our own country--
either at the Pentagon or the arms contractors--because they will have
the same people in the Kremlin and their arms contractors who will be
rubbing their hands and saying: Great. Let's build all of these new
weapons, both offensive and defensive. They would love this. That is
why we have to have the debate on the Senate floor.
This generation of Americans deserves to know what its government is
planning in terms of nuclear war-fighting strategy. That is what a
limited war is all about. That is what this new cruise missile with a
nuclear bomb on it that is more accurate, more powerful, more likely to
be used in a nuclear war is all about. That is why the Pentagon wants
it; that is why the arms contractors want to make it. But it is just a
return to the earlier era where every one of these new nuclear weapons
systems that had blueprints and were on the table over at the Pentagon
are over and the defense contractor has the green light to build it.
What happened every single time is the Soviet Union said: We are
building the exact same counterpart system. Was that making the world
more or less safe? Was that bringing us closer or further away from a
nuclear war? Which was the correct direction for our country to be
headed?
Well, thank God, we began to talk at Reykjavik--President Reagan and
President Gorbachev. Thank God, we now have a New START Treaty. But as
part of the New START Treaty, there was a Faustian deal, and that
Faustian deal was that we are going to build a new generation of
usable, war-fighting nuclear weapons in our own country. And that
Faustian deal is one that would then be lived with by this next
generation of Americans and citizens of this planet.
So we need to ensure we can have this debate. The fears that I think
are going to be engendered into the minds of those in China and Russia
would result in a new dangerous nuclear competition that would have our
new defenses be responded to by their building new additional nuclear
weapons and by putting them on high alert. You would have to be on high
alert, if you were in Russia or China, if you thought we had a
defensive system that could knock them down, and if our planning
included attacking them.
We don't want either country to be on high alert for a nuclear war.
We don't want that. That is where we were in the 1980s. That is where
we were in the 1970s--both sides with their finger
[[Page S3265]]
on the button. It is unnecessary, it is dangerous, it is a repetition
of history, and it is something we should be debating out here. It just
can't be something that is casually added without a full appreciation
in our country for what the consequences are going to be long term.
So we have an incredible opportunity. It is timely. The President is
visiting Hiroshima. It should weigh on the consciences of every one of
us that we have a responsibility to make sure we are reducing and not
increasing the likelihood of nuclear war occurring.
I have filed an amendment to strike the provision from the NDAA. I
urge all of my colleagues to support it. I think that second amendment
is also one that deserves a full debate on the Senate Floor. If we want
other countries to reduce their nuclear arsenals and restrain their
nuclear war plans, the United States must take the lead instead of
wasting billions of dollars on dangerous new nuclear weapons that do
nothing to keep our Nation safe.
President Obama should scale back his nuclear weapons buildup.
Instead of provoking Russia and China with expanding missile defenses
that will ultimately fail, we should work toward a new arms control
agreement.
As President Obama said in Prague in 2009, let us honor our past by
reaching for a better future. The lesson of the past and the lesson of
Hiroshima is clear. Nuclear weapons must never be used again on this
planet.
President Obama did an excellent job in reaching a nuclear arms
control agreement with Iran. That was important, because if Iran was
right now on its way to the development of a nuclear weapon, there is
no question that Saudi Arabia and other countries in that region would
also be pursuing a nuclear weapon. We would then have a world where
people were not listening to each other, where people would be
threatening each other with annihilation, with total destruction.
Here is where we are. We are either going to live together or we are
going to die together. We are either going to know each other or we are
going to exterminate each other. The final choice that we all have and
the least we should be able to say--if that point in the future is
reached and those missiles are starting to be launched that have
nuclear warheads on board--is that we tried, that we really tried to
avoid that day.
That is our challenge here on the Senate floor--to have this debate,
to give ourselves the next year to have this question raised as to
whether we want to engage in a Cold War-like escalation of new
offensive and new defensive nuclear weapons to be constructed in our
country, which for sure then would trigger the same response in Russia
and China. By the way, for sure it is saying to Pakistan, India, Iran,
Saudi Arabia, and to any other country that harbors its own secret
military desire to have these weapons that they should not listen to
the United States because we are preaching nuclear temperance from a
bar stool. We are not, in fact, abiding by what we say that the rest of
the world should do.
So we should be debating that right now. We should have this
challenge presented to us and to have the words be spoken as to what
the goals are for these weapons. If the Defense Department says to us
this year that this leads to a capacity to use nuclear weapons in a
limited nuclear war--and they were saying that to us in the last 6
months--do we really want to have these weapons then constructed in our
country? Is that really what we want to have as our legacy?
____________________