Roy Cooper: “I thank Ranking Member Smith, Chairman Thornberry, Chairman McCain on the Senate side, and Ranking Member Reid. It is…”

“I thank Ranking Member Smith, Chairman Thornberry, Chairman McCain on the Senate side, and Ranking Member Reid. It is very important that Congress continue this great tradition of passing a Defense Authorization Act. This will be the 57th year. My constituents back home want nothing more than for us to cooperate in a bipartisan fashion for the good of the country. This bill, H.R. 2810, does that. In particular, I would like to thank the Chairman of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, Mike Rogers, who has been a great partner, as we do several very important things: Number one, modernize our nuclear forces and keep the effort going on nuclear nonproliferation; we fund critical missile defense needs in the face of rising threats from North Korea and other countries; we support U.S.-Israeli missile defense; and we also strengthen, dramatically, our capabilities in space. This Defense Authorization bill takes a decisive first step to address the fragmentation and lack of focus on national security space issues that the Air Force has shown by reorganizing space within the Air Force and within the Department of Defense. While it does not create the Space Corps that we preferred, it achieves many of the goals that we set out to achieve. Notably, it consolidates acquisition, operations, and training of space forces under the Air Force Space Command and eliminates ineffective or redundant authorities across the Department.…”