Dick Durbin: “I wish to express reluctant support for the fiscal year 2016 National Defense Authorization Act. Many parts of the…”

“I wish to express reluctant support for the fiscal year 2016 National Defense Authorization Act. Many parts of the agreement represent bipartisan consensus between Chairman McCain, Chairman Thornberry, Ranking Member Reed, and Ranking Member Adam Smith. We all appreciate their hard work on those matters for our troops and their families. It provides well-deserved pay increases to our uniformed and defense civilian workforce. It modernizes the personnel benefit system to include a government matched savings plan. It authorizes $300 million in assistance to Ukraine, of which $50 million may be lethal assistance. It codifies the President's Executive order against torture and ensures that interrogations follow the Army Field Manual. I wish to thank Senator McCain and Senator Feinstein in particular for their leadership on this issue. In addition, it extends the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa program so that we may continue to keep faith with foreign translators who risked their lives working with our troops. It authorizes a number of military construction projects around the world, including $29 million in family housing units at Rock Island Arsenal, IL. It reauthorizes the DOD-VA pilot program at North Chicago, the Lovell Federal Health Care Center. For these and many other reasons, I voted for the agreement, but it is a compromise, and I must express my opposition to a few of its provisions.…”