David Perdue: “the world is more dangerous today than at any time in my lifetime. We face five threats across five domains: China…”

“the world is more dangerous today than at any time in my lifetime. We face five threats across five domains: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and terrorism. The domains have gotten very complicated--air, land, sea. Now we have to deal with cyber and space. But in that background, three times over the last 50 years, this government, under the leadership of three different Presidents, has disinvested its military significantly--under President Carter, under President Clinton, and indeed under President Obama. They cut the military by 25 percent at least in each one of those administrations. The last one was extremely draconian. We saw the impact of that on our readiness, the fact that our modernization program had been killed, and we found ourselves falling behind what we ought to now call near- peer competitors. I would say they are peer competitors now. When you look at the money China is spending on their military, when adjusted for purchasing power parity, it is exactly the same as we are spending. And they don't have the regulatory overhang and they don't have the legacy costs we have here in the United States, so they can get things done quicker and cheaper. In the meantime, the world continues to become very dangerous. Yet here we are in the second month of our fiscal year under a continuing resolution. As we now are becoming educated about, this is devastating our military and has been.…”