Roger Wicker: “I want to congratulate and thank my colleague from West Virginia for her remarks and for her leadership to make America…”

“I want to congratulate and thank my colleague from West Virginia for her remarks and for her leadership to make America strong again so that we can have peace through strength. The distinguished Senator mentioned a hearing that the Committee on Armed Services had yesterday. Our witnesses were two distinguished experts in the field of national security. The Democrat who testified before us was none other than former Representative Jane Harman of California--a high-ranking committee chair when she was in the House of Representatives and a loyal Democrat, but she is someone who understands that we are not where we need to be under this administration when it comes to national defense. The other witness was Eric Edelman, a very distinguished diplomat and Ambassador. Their message was absolutely as the Senator said: The United States is not ready to face and to face down and to deter this axis of aggression that threatens the United States as we have not been threatened since 1945. Those are not my words. Those are the words of this bipartisan Commission on a unanimous basis. We are more threatened as a nation than we have been since 1945, and we know what was happening during that decade. Just over a year ago, in a late-night vote after a long, long day, 86 Senators stood together and passed the National Defense Authorization Act and advanced American security. As I say, we had spent a full day with debate. We had 24 rollcalls.…”