Bob Kerrey: “I rise to comment on one of the most important authorization bills to be debated by the Senate each year, the defense…”

“I rise to comment on one of the most important authorization bills to be debated by the Senate each year, the defense authorization bill. In fact, if you consider that the first duty of government is to assure the life and freedom of its people, then this is the most important authorization bill we will take up this year. Our debate, like most of what we do on this floor, will eventually produce a law. In our democracy, Mr. President, law is really our collective national imagining of how something should be. In this debate, America imagines its Armed Forces and crafts a law that authorizes their existence and shapes them to their tasks. This law has global reach and global consequences; so we should approach this debate with seriousness, with respect for those who serve, and respect toward those who wrestle with these issues on a daily basis. Deserving respect in the latter category are our colleagues who serve on the Armed Services Committee. They have produced a good bill, on balance, and they have done an exceptionally difficult task in putting together this legislation because they have to consider not only the threats to the Nation and the nonnegotiable requirements to repel those threats today, but also to support the force that is already deployed, as they are in Bosnia.”