December 3, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 192 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session
APPROPRIATIONS; Congressional Record Vol. 165, No. 192
(Senate - December 03, 2019)
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[Pages S6793-S6794] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] APPROPRIATIONS Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, this week, House Democrats are continuing their 3-year-long quest to impeach the President and are continuing to obstruct urgent bipartisan legislation. This has been the Democrats' strategy for months now--obsess over impeachment and obstruct everything else. Take the USMCA, which would create 176,000 new American jobs. Speaker Pelosi has been stalling it for months, constantly saying she is optimistic or getting close or almost there. For months, it has been this broken record. I understand, this very week, while the Speaker of the House has apparently flown to Madrid to discuss climate change, she keeps offering the same empty rhetoric that is no different than what she was saying 10 months ago. American workers have waited and waited and waited. House Democrats keep stalling. Consider the appropriations process. Even after signing a bipartisan agreement to forgo poison pills, Democrats ignored it and thrust other policy disagreements back into the appropriations process. They voted twice to filibuster funding for our Armed Forces. Well, last week, Chairman Shelby and Chairwoman Lowey reached an important agreement to address allocations at the subcommittee level. This was an essential step. It will take a lot of work and cooperation to move the appropriations process forward in the short time ahead of us. Our Democratic colleagues will finally need to rediscover that our men and women in uniform are more important than their partisan fights. Speaking of our Armed Forces, let's talk about the NDAA. Congress has passed an annual defense authorization bill every year since 1961. Every year, after some jousting and jostling, the Congress has put aside all of our extraneous disagreements to fulfill one of our most basic responsibilities and reauthorize our Armed Forces, but remember the Democrats' new playbook: Obsess over impeachment, obstruct everything else, including, apparently, even our troops and national security. [[Page S6794]] Imagine being so far left that even the routine annual bill to reauthorize the U.S. military is some controversial thing you have to be goaded into supporting. House Democrats abandoned longstanding traditions of compromise and larded up the NDAA with partisan policy riders. For what appears to be the first time ever in either Chamber, they passed an NDAA on a pure party-line vote--the first purely partisan NDAA in 58 years. In the Senate, by contrast, Chairman Inhofe and Ranking Member Reed collaborated on a bill that passed the Senate 86 to 8. We certainly did our part to stick with an annual tradition. Now my colleague, the Democratic leader, is moving the goalpost and enabling Speaker Pelosi's reckless strategy. Longstanding bipartisan precedent says that in order for any subject outside the Armed Services Committees' jurisdiction to travel in the final NDAA, the chairmen and ranking members of the actual committee of jurisdiction need to give bipartisan signoff. This basic test protects the Senate; it protects our committees; and it protects the NDAA from being held hostage for specific partisan ends. Every year, dozens, if not hundreds, of provisions meet that bar. Those that don't end up on the cutting room floor. Thus far, in the Senate, Chairman Inhofe and Ranking Member Reed have worked hard to respect those norms, but this year, the Speaker of the House and my colleague the Democratic leader want to scrap this precedent, undermine the committees, and demand special treatment for partisan priorities that have no business being crammed into this essential legislation for our Armed Forces. We are talking about a new taxpayer-funded benefit for all Federal employees and sweeping changes to U.S. foreign policy. This is what they are trying to shoehorn into the NDAA. It is not good-faith policymaking, not when these demands pour in at the eleventh hour over must-pass legislation for our servicemembers. It is just political theater that is taking precedence over our Armed Forces. So, right on cue, I am sure we will hear made-for-TV histrionics about all of the new provisions the Speaker and the Democratic leader want to shove into this bill--bypassing hearings, markups, and negotiations between chairmen and ranking members. We will probably keep hearing the dishonest myth that the Republicans are soft on Russia--never mind that a few years ago, President Obama was mocking the Republicans for being too tough on Russia; never mind that this administration has aggressively pursued sanctions, expelled Russian operatives, provided lethal defensive weapons to Georgia and Ukraine, taken major steps to protect our elections, and more. It is just more bluster and histrionics to distract from the core fact that is crystal clear to the entire country: There is no legislation, no matter how crucial, that the Democrats will not obstruct in order to pick fights with this President. The very bills the Democrats are resisting are essential for our national defense strategy--for our needed investments in cutting-edge weapons, in the European Defense Initiative, in modernizing our nuclear force. They are all critical for competing with, deterring, and defending against Russia and China. If the Democrats divide Congress over nondefense issues and kill these bills, they will have played right into our adversaries' hands. If we jettison the longstanding bipartisan process for negotiating the NDAA, they will have made this basic national security requirement far more difficult in the future. Our Democratic colleagues must understand that national security comes before ``the resistance.'' The country cannot afford this new tactic of obsessing over impeachment and obstructing everything else. I hope this changes soon. ____________________