On the recordOctober 22, 2015
I thank Congresswoman Hartzler for her leadership in this role. This is of vital importance. I want to start this discussion with just a little bit of reference. When I got elected 9 months ago, everyone said: You have to go to Congress. You have to get some things done. You have to work across the aisle. You have to build some friendships. You have to do these things. I think in the one committee that I sit on, Armed Services, we do that. We talk about the military. We talk about what is best for it, what is best for America, what is best for the readiness, and what are the programs and the projects and the arms and the things that we are going to do to make sure that our men and women are the best prepared to go into battle, if called upon. But today I think we saw a little bit of politics, and maybe we have seen that for the last week or more. But political football shouldn't happen around the military. We should be able to hammer these things out. As you heard from some of the speakers before, this has been vetoed four times, and every time it has been basically an issue that has then been worked out. We have come back, we have taken care of that issue, and it has gone forward. So for 53 years, the NDAA has worked like it is supposed to: put the military first, put America first, and move forward through the disagreements. But as you have heard--and we heard this in the discussion with part of the NDAA--that this was going to be vetoed.…
