Jon Kyl: “I rise to speak for a while on the pending business before the Senate this past week and next week, which is the Defense…”

“I rise to speak for a while on the pending business before the Senate this past week and next week, which is the Defense authorization bill. Now, constituents, people who have been watching the proceedings of the Senate for the last week, might be a little confused because if they know a little bit about how the Senate has historically done its business, they know the Defense authorization bill is the bill we adopt each year to set the policies and the spending priorities for the Defense Department to ensure our national security will remain strong for the next year. However, this year, instead of talking about the acquisition of equipment we need, the new aegis cruisers we are going to be sending around the world--deploying to ensure we have a missile defense that is not only on land but on the seas--instead of talking about the space test bed--a research project that enables us, among other things, to find out how to deal with antisatellite weapons that the Chinese, for example, might use to destroy our satellites--or instead of talking about the need to increase the number of our military--primarily, our soldiers and marines--by about 90,000, so we have a more robust military to have boots on the ground anywhere in the world--instead of debating these various issues about our military posture, we have spent almost the entire week focused on what, the argument about the Iraq war.”